Here’s where I, along with Andy, must delve into the nitty-gritty of the film. So, just as Andy said, spoilers ahead. That’s my only spoiler: that there are spoilers ahead.

Bane’s takeover of Gotham is where he really comes out as a “spiritual” villain. He holds the city hostage with a nuclear bomb and announces that he will release the city “to the people,” understanding that when given the chance people’s natural inclination is toward evil. He was right.

At this I would ordinarily agree in theory. But this is where the film’s limitations come into play: the story did not do well in setting up this pent-up inclination toward evil. That’s why the whole French Revolution / “Occupy” setup didn’t affect me as much, unless I imported a slow story building from the outside.

I will add specifics: we needed to see people complaining about the Batman’s crimes before he vanished, and lauding the supposed martyrdom of Harvey Dent, but also simultaneously leaning toward the very anti-system beliefs the Joker represented. Then when Bane comes along, that evil would find an outlet. But as one reviewer (I believe it was Jeffrey Overstreet) already noted, no revolutionary would start with such obvious ploys of evil as blowing up a football stadium and bridges. Instead he would have blown up the “right” targets: the stock exchange, for example, or Wayne Tower, or some supposed symbol of the “oppressor.” Perhaps the story originally included such details, and decided to pull back on them. In this case, attempted subtlety masked the clear themes they had hoped to convey.

Regardless, any buildup of the populace’s discontent would have had to fit with canon. In fact, long before Harvey Dent was revealed to have done anything, The Dark Knight showed that “common grace” was still alive and well in Gotham. Given the Joker’s “social experiment,” two ferries full of people, both regular citizens and condemned prisoners, refused to detonate the other. Batman’s faith that not all people are as depraved as the Joker is proven right, and for the first time, we see the Joker actually shocked that his latest anarchy ploy did not work. Rewarding!

The majority of people in Gotham indulge in their carnal desires. They condemn to death those they feel deprived them of their desires and “needs.” People steal from each other, the strong prey on the weak. When Selina Kyle witnesses a mob taking over a home, she says “this was someone’s home.” Her young tag-along says, “It’s the people’s home.”

I appreciated that moment, but felt it would have more poignant with the context I mentioned above. Usually in such stories, evening-news-style excerpts, perhaps man-on-the-street footage either in the film itself or on TV-in-the-film, is a good “cheat” for this (The Dark Knight used both to great effect, to show Batman’s and the Joker’s effects on the populace). I’m not sure why TDKR didn’t do similarly.

When given the choice, we have all done evil (Romans 3:23), and only a few of us repent and follow Jesus down the narrow path (Matthew 7:14). Likewise, the masses in The Dark Knight Rises choose to do evil while a heroic remnant stand strong.

That part I did appreciate, yet again, I felt I had to “import” those beliefs from outside to make up for the film’s lack of context. The story should stand on its own.

For me, though, the true villain Talia al Gul–Bane fully embraced her message, but she was the real mastermind, coming to finish her father’s work.

Which theoretically should have made sense; however, I felt she lacked motivation. If anything, she could have been as “spiritual” a villain as Ra’s al Guhl, yet we did not get much about why Finishing Her Father’s Legacy was so important to her. I am familiar with this trope mainly from her character in Batman: The Animated Series, but even there she was a more-conflicted character and showed signs of truly loving Bruce Wayne. By contrast, the film’s presentation of their tryst had very little context and motive, and her “turning bad” by the end was unpredictable only because I had (falsely) trusted Nolan not to opt for something so predictable!

(But I’m biased, ever since I heard rumors that she would make appearance, I waited with anticipation to see if it were true, and I wasn’t let down…and I admit I felt wonderfully geeky when I recognized her braided profile before other people gasped in the theatre when she announced herself).

Brief aside: wasn’t there a misstatement early on that she was not Talia al Guhl?

She and her father Ra’s are rightly indignant at the evils and injustices in the world, but they return evil for evil, seeking destructive measures to achieve the balance they seek.

Yes, and you need to carry that over from the first film. She never re-states it, does she? (Maybe I simply missed it. I was, after all, a little jittery throughout the film; I couldn’t kept keeping my mind on the exit door, two rows down and to the right.)

This time instead of tearing apart the city by gassing the city into fear-inducing toxins, Talia simply gives the city over to vices by removing the established order to prove how evil Gotham really is before she wipes it off the face of the earth with an atomic detonation.

Originally I thought Bane’s attack on the stock exchange was the first part of a slow buildup to his “revolution.” The dialogue between the police officer (I keep my paper money at home) and the stockbroker (if the exchange goes down and we lose ours, even yours won’t be worth anything anyway!) could have reinforced this, but instead came off as isolated, even an agenda moment. (It’s an agenda with which I can agree, but it remained isolated from Bane’s main plan to attack Gotham City.)

I think that in recognizing humankind’s evil nature, The Dark Knight Rises echoes Romans 1: 21-32: […]

Agreed and amen times ten, brother. Yet I ask: which film and which villain showed this more effectively, without needing to import from Scripture: The Dark Knight with The Joker, or The Dark Knight Rises with Bane? I recall so many Christians coming to exactly the wrong conclusions about the Joker, aghast at how insulting and “unrealistic” it was to portray a human being as so evil. Yet others were drawn to contemplate how evil we can truly be. I’m unsure Rises will have that same effect. Only the real-life Colorado theater shootings may have that effect.

When looking at people that we place more highly on our scale of evil, it is easy to be like the al Guls and see nothing there to save. But Jesus died for them just the same.

Ground that I felt the first film covered very well, anyway. Perhaps that is why TDKR sort of left it “assumed,” and why that story aspect seemed unsupported.

As for not comparing Gotham’s anarchy to Occupy Wall Street…honestly, as a historian and a conservative, I compared it to both. While there are differences, the Occupy movement has parallels to the French Revolution–people had disdain for anyone that had more than they had and demand entitlements. 

Oh, I didn’t mean to imply I reject any and all comparisons. What I mean is that any OWS comparisons must be qualified, as that fake “movement” began after TDKR had already been scripted and was in production. It elevates that “cause” to compare the film’s antagonists only to OWS, without exploring the real-life and more-consistent anarchist “revolutionary” movements that preceded it.

I think that’s why makes the wrongly-defined-“justice” and wrongly-defined-“freedom” elements of Les Mis so enduring: they’re grounded in history, yet refer to timeless extreme beliefs. And yet even The Incredibles, I believe, dealt more effectively with the notion of “the common people” trying to tear down the extraordinary people, out of envy and false notions of “democracy.” (But perhaps C.S. Lewis, in his short satirical essay Screwtape Proposes a Toast, did it best.)

Bane, and the scriptwriters behind him, could have taken a page from both those stories to make his rhetoric more tempting, and more “spiritual.” We need not just to see his evil, but be forced to reckon with it — and then, with our hero, defeat it.