When Christopher Nolan began making the Dark Knight trilogy for DC, it became quickly clear that his Batman would be darker than what most audiences were familiar with. As Batman on the silver screen had familiarly been portrayed by men like Adam West and Michael Keaton, Christian Bale seemed like a much grimmer turn.
The franchise ended up darker than many interpretations of Batman, but audiences enjoyed this aspect of it. However, in incorporating so many different aspects of Batman’s lore from DC Comics, a few details slipped through the cracks. Nolan included a lot of information, but not everything he put into the films Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012) made logical sense.
10 Who Is Rachel Dawes?
The Christopher Nolan Batman movies introduced a character who didn’t exist in the comics at all, right off the bat. As the first film, Batman Begins, opens, a young Bruce Wayne is seen playing with his childhood best friend, a child named Rachel Dawes.
The two of them are obviously close — but Rachel has never existed before in canon. Katie Holmes was cast as Rachel originally; when she couldn’t return for The Dark Knight, she was recast with Maggie Gyllenhaal, only to be killed off in this movie. This character could’ve been played by any number of people Bruce Wayne actually knows in the comics, but instead a completely new person was made up for seemingly no valuable reason.
9 Lucius Fox Has Every Technology Possible
Bruce Wayne needs a great deal of skill and technology if he’s going to become the Batman. He spends years honing his skills, but the technology is a bit harder to come by. With the Wayne name, Bruce has more than enough money, but he needs a supplier from somewhere. This is where Lucius Fox comes in.
Lucius Fox works for Wayne Enterprises; he used to be a higher up in the company but was recently demoted. He also has apparently every technological advancement under the sun. He’s able to provide Bruce with military-grade armor and the Batmobile. He even has anti-toxins for the Scarecrow’s scare toxins to give Bruce. Somehow, despite logic, Lucius Fox has literally everything.
8 Ra’s Al Ghul Hates Gotham
Gotham is apparently a harbor for people who want to destroy the city. It’s certainly a hotbed for crime, so it makes sense that criminals would zero in on it, but why do all of these criminals have such a personal beef with Gotham? Even before Batman is guarding the city, villains like Ra’s Al Ghul want Bruce Wayne to destroy the entire thing.
It’s only because Bruce Wayne refuses the offers of the League of Shadows that Gotham survives the first movie at all. Ra’s Al Ghul’s determination to destroy Gotham fuels the plot of the movie, but what does he truly get from this choice?
7 What Were Those Buses Even Doing Together?
As the second film in the Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight, opens, a team of different clown-themed criminals is seen working. However, each reveals that they’ve been paid by The Joker to kill the others. Eventually, this leaves only one criminal — who is revealed then to be The Joker himself.
He steals a school bus, busts through a bank's wall, and joins a line of school buses slowly making their way through Gotham. Despite this, apparently, he isn’t caught at all. Fans still wonder what that line of school buses was doing there, and why The Joker was apparently able to blend in so seamlessly with them as to not be caught.
6 People Still Join The Joker
Word on The Joker spreads quickly through Gotham, and it becomes clear to many quickly that he’s quite insane. At the beginning of the movie, he’s shown being the one responsible for his entire team turning on each other and killing one another. Later on, The Joker offers to kill Batman — and kills a mobster in the process.
He’s constantly threatening and killing people indiscriminately, and yet people still feel the inclination to join his cause. When The Joker threatens people into joining him, this makes more sense — but The Dark Knight doesn’t really show any real reasons for people to want to join The Joker, or see him as any stable sense of criminal activity in Gotham.
5 Batman Just Uses Interrogation Rooms
The Gotham Police Department is a corrupt force. Bruce Wayne knows he can’t trust them, which is part of why he feels the need to work as Batman at all. This is also why he works almost exclusively with Jim Gordon, one of the employees for the Gotham Police Department, who got promoted to the role of commissioner in The Dark Knight.
It was at this point that Bruce, apparently, decides he has no qualms just walking into Gotham Police Department offices and using their interrogation rooms. In the second movie in the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman freely uses the police department’s interrogation rooms to beat The Joker senseless, and works with law enforcement frequently — something Batman most often avoids, not utilizes.
4 Harvey Dent’s Evil Motivations Are Strange
The introduction of Rachel Dawes into the Dark Knight trilogy is strange in the first place, let alone her involvement in the trilogy’s second film. In this movie, Rachel is not only involved in Bruce’s life but in Harvey Dent’s life as well. This new character somehow got tangled up in Batman and Two-Face — and even ended up being the motivation for Harvey Dent to become Two-Face.
Before Rachel Dawes’ death, Harvey Dent was seen as a beacon of hope. He was someone even Bruce Wayne wanted to throw his support behind. After losing her, though, Harvey Dent goes completely insane and becomes a criminal monster. This change is quite wild and doesn’t quite line up with the Harvey Dent fans knew before.
3 Batman Heals Surprisingly Quickly
Breaking the Bat is something that fans came to expect with a great deal of anxiety. It seemed inevitable that Bane was going to snap Bruce’s spine sooner rather than later, and this event came in the third movie in the Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. In this movie, Bane, as he does in the comics as well, fights Batman and wins, dealing devastating blows to Bruce’s back in the process that should have killed him.
In the movie, he then throws Bruce in prison, as well, under the assumption Bruce could never escape. In under half a year, though, Bruce is able to heal, train, and escape prison; by the end of that time, he’s back to being Batman like nothing happened.
2 Talia Al Ghul Dies Before Damian
One of the biggest fumbles that DC has made on the silver screen in the 21st century is how they deal with Robin. In the DCEU, Jason Todd’s Robin has apparently already been killed, and the timeline is completely out of whack. In The Dark Knight Rises, Talia Al Ghul is introduced — and killed before the movie even ends.
By killing Talia before she and Bruce can conceive Damian Wayne, the DC removed yet another Robin from the timeline. It doesn’t make logical sense for Talia to die before Damian can be born. Then again, this movie is so rushed that Batman has never even had a Robin, so this is not seen as this trilogy’s strong suit.
1 John Blake’s Birth Name Was Robin
The most confusing moment in The Dark Knight Rises — and arguably the most confusing moment in the entire Dark Knight trilogy — is the way John Blake’s story ends. John Blake was introduced in The Dark Knight Rises as an orphan, much like Bruce Wayne, who figured out who Batman really was. In rescuing Jim Gordon and confronting Bruce Wayne, John Blake is able to convince Bruce to return as Batman.
At the end of the movie, it’s revealed to John Blake that his legal birth name — his first name — was Robin. At that point, he leaves the Gotham Police and gets summoned by Batman to the Batcave. If this character is supposed to be Dick Grayson, this is a huge tangled mess and doesn’t make any actual logical sense for introducing Robin at all. Luckily, nobody ever had to sort this out, though fans are disappointed to never see Joseph Gordon-Levitt portray Dick Grayson.