The Dark Knight Trilogy: 3 Things Each Movie Did Better Than The Others

Whereas most superhero movie trilogies have a weak link, every installment in The Dark Knight trilogy is great in its own way.

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Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, dubbed The Dark Knight trilogy, has been celebrated as one of the greatest trilogies in film history. Mainly spurred on by post-2008 film students, the trilogy has been ranked alongside such three-part cinematic tales as The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings, and the original Star Wars trilogy.

Whereas most superhero movie trilogies have a weak link – Iron Man 2, Thor: The Dark World, Spider-Man 3, etc. – every installment in The Dark Knight trilogy is great in its own way. So, here are 3 Things Each Movie In The Dark Knight Trilogy Did Better Than The Others.

9 Batman Begins: The hero’s journey

Since The Dark Knight is a study of corruption in the American city and The Dark Knight Rises is a Dickensian epic about social upheaval, Batman Begins is the only chapter of this trilogy that really gives Batman a “hero’s journey.” Although its lengthy retelling of the Bat’s origin story impacts the movie’s rewatchability, Batman Begins closely follows the “monomyth” popularized by Joseph Campbell.

It doesn’t feel like it’s following a traditional structure, hitting all the beats we’ve come to expect, because it carves out its own niche. Christopher Nolan has a strong command of what makes his version of Batman tick, and that makes Batman Begins work.

8 The Dark Knight: Villain

Christopher Nolan did a great job of bringing all the villains he adapted from the comics into the gritty, realistic world he created for Batman on the big screen. But the one that he really nailed – the one that has been praised as one of the greatest villains in movie history – was the Joker in The Dark Knight.

And not all of the credit can go to Nolan and his co-writers. Most of the credit goes to Heath Ledger for his sinister, captivating, Oscar-winning performance, stealing every scene he’s in. The now-iconic dialogue, from “Why so serious?” to “Madness, as you know, is like gravity,” all served as fuel for Ledger’s gripping performance.

7 The Dark Knight Rises: Epic scale

All of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies are epics. In fact, all of the director’s movies, after Batman Begins, have been epics. But The Dark Knight Rises has the most epic scale of the trio. This is fitting, because the film’s story of an uprising in Gotham City was inspired by the French Revolution, a real-life epic.

From the opening aerial sequence to an attack on Gotham’s stock market, to the destruction of every bridge out of town and a court governed by anarchy that sentences people to march to their deaths across a frozen river, The Dark Knight Rises is, by far, the most epic entry in the trilogy.

6 Batman Begins: Depicting the dichotomy between Bruce Wayne and Batman

The most important part of any Batman story is the man himself. The fighting and the theatrics and the gloomy visuals all serve to reflect the Bat’s conflicted soul. Bruce Wayne is a billionaire who lives in a mansion and has an empty, solitary life, recovering from terrible childhood trauma. In many ways, Bruce Wayne is the mask he puts on to conceal his identity. He sees Batman as his true self.

As a whole, The Dark Knight trilogy tells the story of Bruce’s journey towards a healthier mental state. At the end of this journey, he feels ready to hang up the cowl for good. Arguably, Batman Begins nailed the dichotomy between the character’s two parallel selves better than its sequels.

5 The Dark Knight: Examining Gotham City

In Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan depicted Gotham with noir-ish visuals, with the same gothic glitz seen in most comics and in Tim Burton’s old movies. But in The Dark Knight, he changed Gotham for the better. Instead of trying to emulate past styles, Nolan gave us his unique version of Gotham: slick, ultra-wide aerial shots of skyscrapers, filmed with IMAX cameras.

He also explored Gotham beyond the aesthetic, shedding light on its residents, the local political scene, corruption, law enforcement, and most importantly, the impact of the presence of a masked crime-fighting vigilante – with points made both for (criminals are scared) and against (it inspired copycats) it.

4 The Dark Knight Rises: Giving both villains equal footing

It’s a longstanding tradition for Batman movies to have two villains. And Christopher Nolan upheld this tradition, but he always favored one villain over the other. In Batman Begins, Ra’s al Ghul has a much bigger role than the Scarecrow, who’s basically a plot device. In The Dark Knight, the Joker steals every scene from Two-Face, and even takes the spotlight away from Batman himself.

But in The Dark Knight Rises, the two villains each have equal footing. Bane is the primary antagonist, presenting a physical and psychological threat to the Caped Crusader. Meanwhile, Catwoman has an equally important role as the femme fatale who flits between good and bad.

3 Batman Begins: Romantic subplot

There isn’t much about The Dark Knight trilogy that’s been received negatively – and anyone who does say something negative about it is usually met with their own negative reception – but most viewers can agree that the romantic subplots are among the films’ weakest elements. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s take on Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight was pretty dull and inconsequential (and in most scenes, she served simply as a damsel in distress), while Bruce’s sexual relationship with Talia al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises seemed completely unnecessary.

But Bruce Wayne’s conflicted relationship with Katie Holmes’ Rachel in Batman Begins was actually pretty interesting. They were lifelong friends whose romance was marred by Bruce moonlighting as a masked vigilante. Rachel made him choose between dating her and being Batman, and he chose the latter.

2 The Dark Knight: Thematic resonance

Everything in The Dark Knight – from the dialogue to the shocking action sequences to Hans Zimmer’s unnerving music to the fact that the Joker is always one step ahead of Batman (and the audience) – supports the theme. The Joker is the face of terrorism: a relentless threat that wants nothing more than to disrupt the order and keep people living in fear.

The Joker continually forces Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and Harvey Dent to make impossible moral decisions that test the codes of honor that they each try to stick to. The Clown Prince of Crime himself sums it up perfectly: “This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.” But ultimately, good triumphs over evil.

1 The Dark Knight Rises: Climactic set piece

As with any comic book movie, the entries in The Dark Knight trilogy each have an action-packed set piece to cap off their third acts. Each one escalated from the last. In the climax of Batman Begins, Batman battles Ra’s al Ghul on Gotham’s monorail system. In the climax of The Dark Knight, Batman strings up the Joker while Two-Face threatens Commissioner Gordon’s family and the passengers of two ferries are pitted against one another.

But in the climax of The Dark Knight Rises, Gotham’s criminals go to war with the city’s police, while Batman triumphantly returns to fight Bane and ends up sacrificing himself to save Gotham from a neutron bomb.

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