Walking out of the movie theater in 2008, having just seen Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, I felt uneasy. I knew I had just seen an astounding accomplishment for cinema. However, I also knew that there was something morally troubling about the film's ending. As you may recall, at the end of The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne decides to take the blame for Harvey Dent's wicked conduct. Wayne does so in order that Gotham might keep its White Knight - Harvey Dent - as its hero. Thus, a lie is born.
The Dark Knight presented Bruce Wayne's decision as an admirable, even heroic, decision. And yet, I cannot accept that promulgating a lie is ever admirable or heroic. How satisfied I was, then, leaving the theater in 2012, to have witnessed a redemption from lying. The Dark Knight Rises shows how Bruce Wayne's lie has now been used against him. Bane, the new villain, riles up Gotham's populace by telling them that Gotham's Government has used the lie of Harvey Dent as an excuse to repress the people. Thus, Wayne's lie has failed, and he must repair the damage it so grievously caused. Gotham needs a dark knight, not a white knight. While The Dark Knight Rises may lack the pitch-perfect precision of The Dark Knight, it is nevertheless a marvellous ending to an epic saga. Thematically and morally, the film brought the series to a moral and thematic fulfillment.
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