"Batman the Dark Knight" was better than "Batman the Dark Knight Rises"

Let"s compare how Nolan"s films managed to show their respective scale levels by using a simple summer blockbuster standard; blowing stuff up! In "Batman Begins" Nolan burns down Wayne Manor and the League of Shadow"s temple. He also destroys Gotham"s mono rail public transportation system. In "The Dark Knight" he upped the ante by blowing up Gotham General Hospital and has the Joker threaten to blow up two large ferry boats filled to capacity with people, albeit one was full of convicted criminals. In "The Dark Knight Rises" he takes it to a whole new level. Nolan blows up the Gotham City Rogue"s football stadium while a game is being played. He destroys every single bridge to the city except the one used to transport goods in for Bane and his followers. He blows up countless other buildings throughout the city using the concrete laced with explosives. And let"s not forget that Bane and the League of Shadow"s have possession of an armed nuclear bomb ready to destroy the entire city at a moment"s notice! The scale level is raised so much that we see a television broadcast from the President of the United States personally talking to the citizens of Gotham City. We see United States military action. We see Bane and his League of Shadow"s destroy Blackgate prison and free 1,000 of Gotham"s worst criminals while arming them with weapons. Nolan has perfectly pushed the scale meter as far as it can go without breaking while still remaining believable in the world he has created. When it comes to the summer blockbuster scale "The Dark Knight Rises" does just that, rises above "The Dark Knight". Threat Level I am not going to lie. Heath Ledger"s masterful performance made the Joker very threatening and very creepy. The last place I would want to be is in a room with him and his knife being told the story of how he got those scars. It was without question the best acting performance in any of Nolan"s Batman movies. However it is also clear to anyone who has seen the movies that Tom Hardy"s bulking and strutting Bane posed much more of a physical threat to Batman than the Joker did. This is evident by their physical appearances and through their fights. Once Batman found where the Joker was in "The Dark Knight", it was game over. Once Batman found where Bane was in "The Dark Knight Rises", it was game over; for Batman"s back. It is not just the physical threat each villain poses to Batman that I am talking about. It"s the overall public threat level that the villains plan entails. In "The Dark Knight" the Joker himself says it best when he calls himself a "dog chasing cars" when it comes to his plan. He wouldn"t know what to do if he caught them. He even asks Harvey Dent if he looks like a guy with a plan while visiting the newly scarred district attorney in the hospital. And it"s true. While creepy and threatening as a man, the Joker"s plan is not overly threatening to the general public as a whole. He wants to play these games with Batman, forever. He plans and succeeds in killing several high profile members of Gotham City and its police force as pawns in his game. Minus the one boat filled with citizens, the rest of the general public was basically safe. Sure innocent bystanders and Batman copy-cats were killed by the Joker. But for the most part it wasn"t the public"s fight. This is not the case with "The Dark Knight Rises." Bane kills hundreds of people at the football game and anyone who was unfortunate enough to be on one of the bridges or in one of the buildings when they blew up. Not to mention all the upper class citizens who were ripped from their homes and sentenced by Dr. Crane and the League of Shadow"s to death. Then there is that whole nuclear bomb that would kill every living person in the city lingering around again. When it comes to overall threat level it is once again "The Dark Knight Rises" that outdoes "The Dark Knight." Batman has been one of the most popular superheroes for decades. One of the fundamental reasons for this is that unlike any other superhero you can think of there is nothing super about Batman at all. He doesn"t garner super agility from being bit by a radioactive spider. He doesn"t have super strength or the ability to fly solely because he is from another planet. He is just a man, flesh and blood. Given the right physical ability and motivation anyone in theory could be Batman. There is something very primal and elemental about the fact he is risking his life day in and day out. At any moment, Batman could die. This is a main reason why Batman is the most relatable of the comic book superheroes. He is vulnerable. He is mortal. This fascination with Batman"s mortality is evident in the fact that once it was known that "The Dark Knight Rises" was Nolan"s final Batman installment, and that Bane was going to serve as the Caped Crusader"s main adversary, the overriding question on every fan-boy and girl"s mind was will Nolan actually do it? Will he kill Batman? This idea really struck a chord for an obvious reason; it"s never happened before on screen. As we now know it will have to wait for another day and another director"s interpretation of the character. But the fact that he didn"t die in Nolan"s finale doesn"t matter. It"s the basic idea that he could. And during certain parts of "The Dark Knight Rises" it really felt all but certain he would. It is within this mortality concept and its exploration that "The Dark Knight Rises" separates itself from "The Dark Knight." In "The Dark Knight" Bruce Wayne was fighting the good fight as Batman. He was continuing to try to stop the injustice and the corruption of Gotham City. More importantly he was on top of his game. There was no doubt that Batman would defeat the Joker due to the fact that, as I discussed earlier, the threat level wasn"t quite to that "will he die" plateau that "The Dark Knight Rises" and Bane achieved. In "The Dark Knight Rises" things took on a completely different feel. Bruce Wayne reluctantly took up his mantle as Batman yet again. He tried to go through the motions as if nothing had changed. Unfortunately for him, a lot had changed. This time it wasn"t the Joker he was going up against. It was Bane. And this time Batman wasn"t at the top of his ability as a crime fighter. He was mentally and physically rusty from not donning his Bat-suit for eight years. Batman is then literally broken by Bane and thrown into a prison pit never to be seen again. He has to suffer through excruciating pain and recovery as well as some serious self-reflection and soul searching before he fully understand what it would take to come back from this to not only save himself but to save his city. It is the journey we love watching hero"s make. During this journey Nolan yet again shows his brilliance for story telling by including that five second clip from "Batman Begins." It was such a subtle scene that many average movie goers might have missed it completely. Of course I"m referring to the scene where Bruce"s father is climbing down the well to save Bruce after he fell in. His dad then asks him that so simple yet such a trilogy-defining-question, "why do we fall?" As any fan of Nolan"s Batman movies knows by now, it is so we can learn to pick ourselves back up. That is just what Bruce Wayne does. That is just what Batman does. Seeing him go through all that and come out on top is what makes Batman captivating to so many fans. It is what helps make "The Dark Knight Rises" truly the best of the Nolan Batman films and yeah, I said it, better than "The Dark Knight."