More Bruce Wayne than Batman in The Dark Knight Rises?

If you haven’t seen The Dark Knight Rises teaser trailer yet, then here you go:

Basically, it’s an okay teaser trailer that at first seems fan-made.  Qui-Gon Jinn is narrating, and we get clips from Batman Begins, not of Batman, but of Bruce Wayne.  Then we get Commissioner Gordon on a hospital bed.

There is one serious thing to note, that many people have seen: that’s not Batman talking to Commissioner Gordon.  It’s Bruce Wayne.  While a lot of people have pointed out that Gordon might not know he’s talking to Bruce Wayne, it’s obvious that he knows because Bruce isn’t doing the Batman voice.  He’s not growling at Gordon.

You’ll recall that Wayne will be Batman sometimes, even when he isn’t wearing the costume – he does it in both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, when he switches into his Batman persona and voice if someone cannot see him.  But he’s not doing that here.

No, not this Bruce Wayne.

What this boils down to is that in The Dark Knight Rises, for one reason or another, there will be more Bruce Wayne, and that apparently Gordon figures out Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same person.   Think about it: their entire conversation seems to be about Batman missing in action.  Whether this conversation happens at the beginning or the middle or right before the final fight, it means that Batman will be gone for an extended part of the new film, and that it will hearken back to Batman Begins, when the whole movie was about Bruce Wayne and not The Bat-Man.  Which probably means that this time, a villain is terrorizing Gotham, and there is no Batman to fight the villain (Bane) until Batman comes out of hiding.

You might recall that the last time Bruce and Gordon had a meaningful conversation as themselves, it was shortly after this happened.

But I do have to say that, overall, this really does feel like a bad fan-made trailer.  Why the terrible CGI at the end as the camera zooms up through buildings toward a sky bat?

For more on my thoughts on the Bale/Nolan Batman films, see Why Catwoman Will Be Sarah Palin and Regarding The Dark Knight Rises .

3 Comments

  1. I agree that there is a good chance this is fan made. I don’t think that Nolan would call one of his own films epic. He seems a little above that.

    1. That, and the font seems sort of cheesy. I would expect more from Nolan. I’m wondering if maybe he didn’t really approve this and it just got cranked out by the studio without his knowledge,
      using the one scene that was filmed and clips from the previous trailers.

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