The Dark Knight Rises - No Talia Al-Ghul, Please

The Dark Knight Rises - No Talia Al-Ghul, Please

....

Editorial Opinion
By moviemoron - Jan 18, 2011 01:01 PM EST
Filed Under: Batman

A prominent rumor flying around the Intertubes is that Talia al-Ghul will be one of the characters in Christopher Nolan's conclusion to his Batman film saga.

http://christopherelam.blogspot.com/2009/08/batmans-thoughts-on-love.html


Now, I hate to say this - actually, no, I really don't - but Talia al-Ghul...has got to be the least interesting suggestion for an antagonist I have ever heard. How would a conversation between them go, pray? Something like this?

----

Talia: “You killed my daddy. That makes me hate you. Die!”

Batman: “That’s a shame, because after fighting you for a while I find myself attracted to you.”

Talia: “How fascinating! I, too, sense a chemistry of sorts between our characters. But the fact that you killed my daddy makes this…complicated.”

Batman: “Sure does. Why don’t we spend half the movie alternating between fights and sexual tension?”

Talia: “Super-duper-diddly-umptious! The viewers will lap it up.”

Gordon: “Uh, guys, I thought we were, y’know, fighting for justice? And redeeming Gotham and stuff?”

Batman: “Hush, you. I’m busy being in love with a woman who happens to be the daughter of my old mentor! Because Nolan just can’t get ‘Brazilian Soap Opera’ right in this series!”

Viewer: "Is there a bucket in this theater? I think I'm going to be sick. Also, *snore*"


----

Urgh. I know this is a long shot, but could we just wake up and withhold all love interests from Batman until he's done being, y'know, Batman?
The point here is that Nolan's film series was never about Bruce Wayne's personal life. You may think Batman Begins was about Bruce's personal life. Well, sorry to say it, but you're wrong. Nolan's film franchise is about...can you guess?
http://www.the-isb.com/?p=1988

Gotham City.

These films tell the history of Gotham, a history in which Batman happens to play a pivotal part.

Let's run with this briefly. Is the climactic conflict about Bruce's emotional problems? No, it's about compassionate justice versus extreme justice.

Here's another one: who is the protagonist of The Dark Knight? Batman, you say? Nope. It's Harvey Dent. Batman's a supporting character. If you think about it, the title could apply to Harvey just as easily.

So where am I going with this? My ultimate point is that something as mundane and as personal as a love life is simply not part of Bruce's agenda right now. Or shouldn't be, if he's spending all his time beating up criminals and dismantling their organizations. The Dark Knight makes pretty much this point, as Bruce's interest in Rachel backfires on him every time. It prevents him from catching the Joker less than halfway into the movie,and it turns Harvey insane. You think he'd get the hint.

That's not to say that Bruce can never be with someone. But there's a time for Batman to start honing his dating skills...and that time is after the end credits.

Have a wonderful day.
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golden123
golden123 - 1/18/2011, 1:18 PM
The fact that batman shouldn't date right now is exactly why Talia needs to be brought in.
moviemoron
moviemoron - 1/18/2011, 1:37 PM
I'm not sure I understand your logic there.

Also, I don't think Nolan could incorporate Talia without turning her into a love interest, which for me would distract from the story.
moviemoron
moviemoron - 1/18/2011, 1:46 PM
Basically, the only way I can see Talia working is if she's basically a Ra's al-Ghul clone, allowing Gotham to understand the contrast between Batman's "compassionate justice" and the League's "extreme justice"...but who wants to see Ra's al-Ghul again by a different name?
golden123
golden123 - 1/18/2011, 2:08 PM
My logic is that Talia wants him to love her but the fact that he can't have a love interest (the reasons you stated) is only making her want him even more. I in no way want to see The Dark Knight Rises turned into a chick flick. Though if you think about it the relationship he already had with her father would affect Bruce's relationship towards Talia. Thats how you can get around with making her a love interest but not really alove interest (it would depend on your definition of love interest). That factor plus the ones you stated give a good reason of why TDKR won't be turned into a big budget romance film. Plus a connection to the first film (like the main villains daughter being a villain) to rap the trilogy up would make the film more epic than it already will be.
P.S. Please let me know if I still wasn't making sense because my comment to me seems a little confusing (and I wrote it).
golden123
golden123 - 1/18/2011, 2:10 PM
Also any plot can sound lame if you try to make it lame. Like what you did with that little conversation you had up there.
moviemoron
moviemoron - 1/18/2011, 2:21 PM
@Gaston
I'm quite confident that Nolan will make a good or great sequel. I just don't think as highly of his track record with love interests.

Edit: And Mask of the Phantasm is very underrated if you ask me.

@golden123
I see what you mean. It's just that for me series hasn't had an extremely personal focus. For me, the fact that the Joker has no backstory gave him a lot of coherence. It wasn't about his feelings; it was about his philosophy and what that said about Gotham's concept of justice. Adding things like family relationships and personal rivalries IMHO interferes with the more operatic scope of this particular take on the franchise. As Nolan put it, his aim was "to tell a very large, city story or the story of a city". Not so much the story of a man, or a family.

At the risk of over-analyzing the whole thing, if you think about Shakespeare's Julius Caesar it's a very similar sort of story. In JC the characters themselves don't matter as much as the attitudes and historical forces they represent - revolution, autocracy, greed, republicanism. A love story would be badly out of place in Julius Caesar, and similarly I think wouldn't work in this sort of film. Nolan tries to portray his main characters as "forces of nature", the Batman representing fear in the first film, the Joker chaos in the second, Gordon legitimate law-enforcement, Alfred and Fox the conscience, etc., etc. I felt Rachel was the least necessary character in this respect which was why she didn't really work for me; the only thing she uniquely represents is Bruce's romantic aspirations.

Sorry if this sounds like an overkill reply. I just like to lay out my thoughts in as detailed a manner as I can. Thanks for your comment, and of course feel free to keep disagreeing with me.
moviemoron
moviemoron - 1/18/2011, 2:23 PM
"Also any plot can sound lame if you try to make it lame. Like what you did with that little conversation you had up there."

Fair point. I guess that sequence was more having fun with sarcasm than reasoned debate. It's just that if they did something like the Batman/Catwoman relationship in Batman Returns, this really is more or less how silly it would feel for me. The little comic panels probably make that point a tad more eloquently.
golden123
golden123 - 1/18/2011, 4:56 PM
@moviemoron: Just because the Joker worked magic without an origin or strong feelings doesn't mean all the villains now have to be that way. Villains should be portrayed however they work best. Think about the role that one powerful persons feelings and emotion can do for "the story of a city". I mean Batman in Batman Begins, you said yourself, represents fear. Fear is an emotion and his feelings had a major role in the story of that city.
As for your second comment I've never actually seen Batman Returns but I've heard people praise the way Catwoman was portrayed in that film. I need to see BR for myself because it may be the CBM with the most mixed reviews (with the possible exception of Ironman2) and I should form my own opinion about.
moviemoron
moviemoron - 1/18/2011, 5:26 PM
@golden123

Two points:

I understand your argument about emotion. What I mean to say is not that these characters are without strong emotions (the Joker is really highly emotional when you think about it), but that the way Nolan does it, these emotions serve the larger story of Gotham - and never the other way around (except possibly with Rachel Dawes, which again is why she didn't quite work for me). We don't watch Bruce's emotional development in Batman Begins for its own sake; we watch it because it's representative of that process whereby an ordinary man becomes a larger-than-life figure, a hero and vigilante. Harvey's emotional downfall, again, is not for its own sake but is a way of telling us that his brand of justice is ahead of its time, that Gotham wasn't ready for the end of vigilantism yet. My point in mentioning the Joker's backstory was that his backstory is unimportant; his previous emotional development wouldn't have contributed much to that moral discussion. What matters is his current state of mind, his philosophy, and how it relates to the morality of the film. We don't get any backstory for Harvey either, if you think about it; no "Harvey Dent Begins" in the same sense as Bruce. Harvey is Harvey, Batman is Batman, the Joker is the Joker. Their clashes aren't so much about their feelings as about the role they play in Gotham's healing process.

I don't mean to lecture you or anything, but just to establish my point here, which is: I don't really see how a love story can contribute to that higher moral level. For me, Batman becoming the embodiment of fear made sense because fear is a powerful social force, historically much more so than love; fear (theoretically) drives wars, empowers autocrats...and in this case, deters criminals. It's an instrument of change. If there's an emotion that will save Gotham, I don't think it would be love so much as courage; Gotham is healed when Gotham can take stand up to crime by itself.

The second point:

I don't have a problem with how Catwoman was portrayed in that film either. Batman Returns was more or less a fairy tale; it never aimed at anything like realism, and so the idea of these, let's say "freaks", who alternately love and hate one another works for that style - a very Gothic, theatrical display of grotesquery. I have no problem with that. This is not a Burton Batman film, however, and so an element that theatrical would be out of place in the realism of TDKR. I'll concede that it's not impossible for a frenemy/romantic relationship to work in the Nolan-Batman approach, but I still think it's so unlikely that Nolan couldn't pull it off if he tried.

So hopefully I got my point across OK on those counts. Again, I don't mean to steamroll with all the verbiage, it's just how I think these things out. I'm actually quite grateful for the debate :)
Organa1978
Organa1978 - 1/18/2011, 6:17 PM
YES TALIA AL GHUL!
NO CATWOMAN!
THAT´S ALL !
3087208
3087208 - 1/18/2011, 6:58 PM
I agree. Love intrest kinda defeats the movie. No catwoman without her being relevant, not talia without her being relevant. I also thing for Nolan to say that this one will "be clear to wrap it up" we can say whoever the female leads are wont take away from the finality of it. He will choose women characters not just to have em(fanservice) but more to a story which is what most people who watch or read Batman or any comicbook movie forget.
TheShadow
TheShadow - 1/18/2011, 7:11 PM
I want 2 1/2 hours of action...
Not 2 1/2 hours of nudity!

Great Article
moviemoron
moviemoron - 1/18/2011, 8:29 PM
@3087208
Yeah...I just can't remember a single female character in the Burton and Nolan films who wasn't some sort of trophy for Batman to win. Ramirez from TDK maybe, though she was a very minor character.
cadairjr05
cadairjr05 - 1/19/2011, 8:33 AM
the story is about Gotham City? yes--but much more about Bruce's relationship with Gotham City, its effect on him and vise-versa.

The story's protagonist is Harvey Dent? No. Not the best defintion for him. Though seen as Gotham's honorable "hero" at first, he's not the leading character. He just helps show that Gotham doesn't need him as much as they need Batman right now. So not sure I understand the logic entirely.

And didn't Ra's Al Ghul say that he had a wife and family but they were killed in Batman Begins? It wouldn't look good to try to bring her back after saying that. We don't need another Spiderman 3 twist--finding out two movies later that it wasn't the burgular who killed his uncle but the Sandman (wack)
Tetsuo
Tetsuo - 1/19/2011, 9:53 AM
http://www.slashfilm.com/catwoman/
batzack
batzack - 1/19/2011, 12:17 PM
@moviemoron

I like you. you have make valid points
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