The Dark Knight trilogy is full of dialogue that hasn’t aged the most gracefully, with plenty of lines that miss the mark when revisited in the years following the end of the franchise. The Dark Knight trilogy is still considered the gold standard of grounded superhero melodrama, with plenty of insightful and iconic quotes that have long outlasted the relevancy of even the movies themselves. However, on a modern re-watch, not every bit of the script holds up to the sands of time quite so well.
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In general, Christopher Nolan’s movies have a tendency to go overly-dramatic and philosophical with their dialogue, with many characters speaking in quotable witticisms that feel more at place in a movie trailer than in an actual human conversation. The Dark Knight trilogy certainly struggles with this at times, with many lines that are too ambitiously clever for their own good, ultimately coming off as pretentious or unfitting with the scenes they take place in. For every brilliant line in the series, there are a handful of awkward phrases that don’t work as well.
10 “I Won’t Kill You, But I Don’t Have To Save You”
Batman, Batman Begins
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One of the most contentious things many fans have about Batman’s many live-action movie portrayals is the willingness of a given Caped Crusader to kill people. While Ben Affleck’s Batman was an overt psychopathic murderer, Micheal Keaton’s Dark Knight was a little more vague, clearly killing some crooks in the background without much fanfare. Christian Bale’s Batman has a no-killing rule on the surface, but Batman Begins made it clear right away he was willing to be morally flexible.
As his mentor, Ducard, a.k.a. Ra’s al Ghul, hurtled to his doom in a runaway train car, Batman asserted that while he may not be willing to directly kill him, he also wouldn’t necessarily save him. When this line is given more than a moment’s thought, it makes little sense. Even if Batman isn’t personally delivering the finishing blow, leaving Ghul to his fate in such a deadly scenario while Batman simply flies out with the help of his rigid cape means he may as well.
9 “No, I Came Back To Stop You”
Batman, The Dark Knight Rises
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Sometimes, a line from a superhero movie ages poorly not because of shifting context, but due to the simple failure of the line. In The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan’s normally sharp dialogue within the universe seems to have run out of steam, with Batman firing off some particularly lame comebacks. The worst of them is in his final confrontation with Bane, where Batman’s response to Bane asking if he came back only to die with his city is “No, I came back to stop you“.
This line has been infamously lambasted as one of the laziest pieces of screenwriting across the entire trilogy. Many fans have written pages of suggestions for a better line in response to Bane’s goading, with the final product that actually made it into the finished film feeling like a placeholder that never got upgraded. For it’s reputation alone, this brief quip is easily one of the most poorly-aged pieces of dialogue in the entire The Dark Knight trilogy.
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8 “So We’ll Hunt Him, Because He Can Take It”
Commissioner Gordon, The Dark Knight
The ending of The Dark Knight is quite a tragic one, with Batman somehow absorbing the majority of Gotham’s ire in favor of preserving their perception of Harvey Dent as a hero. The film closes out with a tense monologue from Commissioner Gordon, one of the few Gotham Citizens to know the truth of Batman’s sacrifice, nevertheless accepting the grim fact that the vigilante will remain a wanted man. Gordon assures him that while he’ll never stop fronting as a pursuer of Batman, he knows deep down, The Dark Knight “can take it“, not giving up so easily.
It turns out that Batman could not, in fact, take it. The Dark Knight Rises quickly establishes that Batman retires not long after the ending of the previous film, meaning that the GCPD were perhaps more adept at harassing Batman than Gordon initially expected. The movie may try to play off the reason for Batman’s retirement as an unprecedented era of low crime rates in Gotham, but knowing the dreary city, this seems incredibly unlikely.
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7 “What Is The Point Of All Those Push-Ups If You Can’t Even Lift A Bloody Log?”
Alfred, Batman Begins
The closest Batman comes to death in Batman Begins is when Ra’s al Ghul attacks him where he sleeps, setting the historical Wayne Manor aflame and nearly completely destroying it. In the chaos, Bruce Wayne is pinned by a falling support beam, only saved by the quick work of Alfred, who is somehow able to heave the piece of debris off of him. Annoyed at the task, Alfred asks his young charge what good all his training has done him if he still needs to be bailed out in such situations.
In all honesty, this line ages poorly because Alfred actually has a good point here. For a piece of debris light enough that a 72-year-old Micheal Caine could deadlift it off of Bruce Wayne’s body, the young crime fighter should certainly be able to free himself from the pin. Sometimes, humorously calling attention to a plot hole in such a tongue-in-cheek manner can actually be more of a detriment to the enjoyment of a film than a boon.
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6 “You Should Use Your Full Name. I Like That Name…Robin”
Secretary, The Dark Knight Rises
One of the most puzzling decisions made by Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises was the introduction of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Blake, a boots-on-the-ground cop whose boots the film spends an odd amount of time in. The purpose of this milquetoast everyman becomes clear in the end, when it’s revealed that Blake’s legal first name is actually Robin. This leads to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “Robin” discovering the Bat-Cave, implying he’ll be Bruce Wayne’s successor as the crime-fighter Robin.
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This tease for a film that was never meant to come doesn’t work on so many levels. For one, Blake fighting crime with his legal first name as an alias makes no sense, and the reveal would hit much harder if his real name was revealed to be Dick Grayson instead. Secondly, the fact that Nolan had no intention of making a Robin movie makes the whole exchange feel pointless, a gratuitous bit of misguided fanservice that ages the movie painfully. Even if there was a Nolan Robin movie, this ham-fisted set-up for it feels awkward in retrospect.
5 “This City Just Showed You Its Full Of People Ready To Believe In Good”
Batman, The Dark Knight
For the most part, The Dark Knight is easily the strongest of the Nolan Batman trilogy, especially when it comes to the writing. However, even here there are moments where the dialogue stumbles, particularly in a brief exchange Batman has with Joker towards the end of the film. When one of Joker’s ploys to demonstrate to Gotham just how morally bankrupt its citizens are to one another, Batman rubs the failure in his face with a triumphant speech about the quality of their character.
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As great as the sentiment is, Batman’s actual choice of words here is almost cringe-worthy in its unabashed earnestness. This line is perhaps the pinnacle of Nolan’s tendency to write dialogue that sounds better as a trailer snippet than an actual sentence that would come out of a real person’s mouth in The Dark Knight Trilogy. It’s a shock that Heath Ledger’s Joker doesn’t burst out into laughter upon hearing such a corny read.
4 “So That’s What That Feels Like”
Batman, The Dark Knight Rises
Among its busy cast, The Dark Knight Rises also found some time to introduce Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, a cat-burglar who shows up towards the end of the movie to help Batman take back the city. At one point, Catwoman pulls Batman’s signature trick, suddenly disappearing mid-conversation, on the Caped Crusader himself. The stunned Batman can only mutter to himself “So that’s what that feels like“, gazing on the now-empty rooftop.
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This line is one of Nolan’s corniest attempts at comedy in the entire The Dark Knight trilogy. The fact that Batman essentially says this line directly to the audience is an odd tonal bump that feels out-of-place in the otherwise gritty realism of Nolan’s Gotham City. In addition, even if Batman could be believed to be talking to himself, it begs the question as to why he would continue to put on the infamously silly, growly Batman voice even if no one else was nearby.
3 “Two-Face, Harvey Two-Face”
Commissioner Gordon, The Dark Knight
The reveal of Robin’s real legal name isn’t the only time The Dark Knight trilogy has a hard time dramatically revealing the comic book-accurate names of characters with unearned weighty fanfare. The initial reveal of Harvey Dent as Two-Face also has a pretty gratuitous lead-up. As the disfigured Harvey Dent lies recovering in the hospital, Commissioner Gordon approaches him to ask why he won’t accept surgery or pain medication, only for Dent to ask Gordon to remind him of his old nickname from his time in internal affairs.
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Gordon admits that the nickname was Two-Face, officially blessing Harvey Dent with his new moniker as the villain. Sometimes, there doesn’t need to be such a contrived explanation behind every name in the Batman mythos, something The Dark Knight trilogy struggled with a lot. There’s no need for even such a grounded universe to have an obvious reason as to why superheroes and villains are called what they are.
2 “It Would Be Extremely Painful…For You”
Bane, The Dark Knight Rises
Sometimes, Nolan’s attempts to give characters clever comebacks are completely butchered in the final edit of his films. One of the biggest offenders is Bane’s first appearance in the plane heist that opens The Dark Knight Rises, in which Aiden Gillan’s CIA agent character attempts to threaten him by ripping off his breathing apparatus. The agent asks if Bane would die should the mask come off, only for Bane to retort that “It would be extremely painful…for you“.
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What makes this read so awkward is that in between Tom Hardy’s statements, the CIA agent pipes in before Bane can say “For you“, calling him a “big guy” out of nowhere. This clunkiness has led to the scene becoming something of an infamous beat for those in the know of The Dark Knight trilogy. The line also isn’t done any favors by the fact that it debuts Tom Hardy’s hilarious Bane voice, exacerbating Nolan’s issues with dialogue clarity right away.
1 “When A Forest Grows Too Wild, A Purging Fire Is Inevitable And Natural”
Ra’s al Ghul, Batman Begins
Custom image by Nicolas Ayala
If there’s one thing that never made complete sense about The Dark Knight trilogy, it was the strange obsession Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Shadows had with Gotham City. According to Ra’s, the purpose of the League of Shadows is to strip back important cities that become too powerful, claiming that Rome and London had both previously been attacked by the organization. Ra’s’ explanation of the organization’s targeting of Gotham in particular still leaves a lot to be desired, however.
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If the League of Shadow’s goal was to destroy or even economically hinder powerful cities like Rome and London, then they haven’t done a terribly good job, as both cities are still very important today (and, assumingly, are still in the world of Nolan’s Batman universe). It would make more sense for the League of Shadows to be traditional eco-terrorists that want to restore the world to a pre-technological state, but their obsession with Gotham in particular is never clarified any better than this weak explanation early on in The Dark Knight trilogy.
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