As everyone probably knows by now from having seen The Dark Knight Rises or at least reading up about it, there is an eight year gap between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises during which time Bruce Wayne quits being Batman and disappears from the public view. Being the Batman fan I am I just have to say that Bruce Wayne retiring from the Batman just does not make sense to me for two reasons.

1) The Batman does not quit-

In the movies Batman faces three great tragedies that supposedly causes Bruce to retire from his identity as the Batman: the death of Rachel Dawes, the fall of Harvey Dent, and being wanted by the cops for taking "murdering" Harvey Dent. The thing is he's faced worse in the comics. His friend Harvey Dent would become Two-Face just like in the movie and he would have to fight his former friend many times throughout the years. More tragic than that is the death of Jason Todd at the hands of the Joker which as we know haunted him for many years, and continues to haunt him since he has had to fight Jason Todd now known as the Red Hood. Other tragedies have hanuted him in both comics including the crippling of Barbara Gordon and the death of Sarah Essen Gordon both by the hands of the Joker. However, despite these tragedies he never quit being Batman. Also Batman has been hysically defeated in combat after being crippled by Bane. However, Bruce Wayne makes sure that Gotham still has its hero by choosing Jean Paul Valley as his replacement while he recovered. The only major time that Bruce Wayne retired from being Batman for a long period of time was in the Dark Knight Returns, but that was only in an alternate universe in which Batman never recovered from Jason's death, that did not take place in the main universe.

2) Gotham peaceful?

Supposedly after Dent's death, Gotham is at peace for the eight years before Bane comes to Gotham. That just can't be. Gotham is not known for it's peace otherwise you may as well call it Metropolis. Surely, new threats would have arisen that Batman would have to face whether it's minor villains like Ventriloquist or Clayface or Killer Croc., or some of the big leaguers like Mr. Freeze, Riddler, Penguin, or Poison Ivy. Also some of the main villains from the movies could have escaped from Arkham or wherever they're held. Why would someone like the Joker or Scarecrow sit in their cells twiddling their thumbs for eight years when they could have easily escaped and caused more chaos for the Batman.

The point is Bruce Wayne will always need Batman and Gotham will always need it's hero just like Metropolis or Keystone City will always need Superman and the Flash. Evil never takes a rest especially in Gotham.

yeah Batman quitting is one of my major problems with the movie

Nolan's going for a realistic movie. A real person would be affected by the loss of a loved one, it's only natural. He thought he was going to hang up the cape and marry Rachel, but that didn't happen, so he became depressed. Comic Batman is unrealistic in a lot of ways. In real life, cities don't get attacked by monsters and crazy maniacs everyday. You're complaining because it's not like the comics. What you forget is, there are police. The police can handle the small time criminals. Croc, Clayface, Freeze, etc, don't exist in Nolan's universe.

Its a different interpretation of the character, similar to how basically all movie versions of characters have a lot of differences from the comics
 
Bruce Wayne in the Nolan movies never wanted to be Batman for a prolonged amount of time...he merely wanted to inspire and take the city back from corruption.......which he accomplished, so there was no need for Batman as it wasn't like the comics with super villains springing about every day...the police had it under control.....
 
seems logical to me

It didnt bother me much, it made sense for me in the universe Nolan created.

It's only natural. Read Kingdom Come or The Dark Knight Returns, and as it was said. It's a realistic portrayal, Batman never quitting is not realistic. Bruce Wayne may be Batman but he wasn't the hero Gotham needed.

Except Nolan's Batman isn't supposed to be the "canon" version of Batman. Since Bruce quit in both Dark Knight Returns and Batman Beyond, there's no reason why he can't quit in Nolan's films.

In the mainstream Comics he can never quit.

Nolan Batman isn't comic Batman and comparing them is only going to give you a headache.

I think that eight years are too much, three years would definitely be enough for Batman to recover. It doesn't matter if it is movie or comic book Batman, he is freakin' goddamn Batgod and he never quits!

@Blood1991 : Actually you are quite wrong. Nolan pretty much stuck to the source material from the beginning.

Batman, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and Lucius Fox are pretty much the same no real big changes there.

The villains were pretty much the same except for how they came to be: The Joker wore makeup instead of falling into a vat of chemicals, but he's still the psycho we all know and love. Ra's al Ghul doesn't have the Lazarus Pit (at least to my knowledge. I haven't seen TDKR yet where it was rumored that the Pits would make an appearance.), Scarecrow worked at Arkham Asylum instead of teaching at Gotham University, Catwoman is still a cat burglar and lover of Batman, and Two-Face was blown up by the Joker instead of having acid thrown in his face. But despite the origin differences they are pretty much depicted the same way as the comics have them depicted.

The only character that Nolan took extreme liberties with was Bane. Instead of being the roid-raging monster born in the Pena Duro prison who has a huge vendetta against Batman. This Bane is a member of the League of Shadows and wants the people to rise up to take the city. I haven't seen the movie yet unfortunately to say whether I approve or disapprove. The only thing that really bothers me is that he is without his Venom which is like the thing that makes Bane who he is even after he gave up the addiction in the comics.

@AweSam : Well I am a firm believer that if a director decides to depict a comic book hero in some movie they should stick to the source material as much as possible, otherwise it's just not that good. It's like a director making a novel into a movie and it be nothing like the book. If the director of the Harry Potter movies had taken extreme liberties with the characters then fanboys would have raged. For this reason I don't like the new Spiderman movie that came out as much as I do the original trilogy because they left out the single most important line that makes Spiderman who he is, "With great power comes great responsibility." The new Spiderman movie also didn't have the spider-sense which in my opinion would be as bad as some director taking away Superman's flight.

@vandinejd_1991: I will agree to disagree and leave it at that.

@vandinejd_1991 said:

@AweSam : Well I am a firm believer that if a director decides to depict a comic book hero in some movie they should stick to the source material as much as possible, otherwise it's just not that good. It's like a director making a novel into a movie and it be nothing like the book. If the director of the Harry Potter movies had taken extreme liberties with the characters then fanboys would have raged. For this reason I don't like the new Spiderman movie that came out as much as I do the original trilogy because they left out the single most important line that makes Spiderman who he is, "With great power comes great responsibility." The new Spiderman movie also didn't have the spider-sense which in my opinion would be as bad as some director taking away Superman's flight.

This is Nolan's universe. He wanted it to be realistic. Nothing realistic about comic Batman. I think it would have been a bad idea to relate him to the comics.

@vandinejd_1991 said:

@Blood1991 : Actually you are quite wrong. Nolan pretty much stuck to the source material from the beginning.

Batman, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and Lucius Fox are pretty much the same no real big changes there.

The villains were pretty much the same except for how they came to be: The Joker wore makeup instead of falling into a vat of chemicals, but he's still the psycho we all know and love. Ra's al Ghul doesn't have the Lazarus Pit (at least to my knowledge. I haven't seen TDKR yet where it was rumored that the Pits would make an appearance.), Scarecrow worked at Arkham Asylum instead of teaching at Gotham University, Catwoman is still a cat burglar and lover of Batman, and Two-Face was blown up by the Joker instead of having acid thrown in his face. But despite the origin differences they are pretty much depicted the same way as the comics have them depicted.

The only character that Nolan took extreme liberties with was Bane. Instead of being the roid-raging monster born in the Pena Duro prison who has a huge vendetta against Batman. This Bane is a member of the League of Shadows and wants the people to rise up to take the city. I haven't seen the movie yet unfortunately to say whether I approve or disapprove. The only thing that really bothers me is that he is without his Venom which is like the thing that makes Bane who he is even after he gave up the addiction in the comics.

I very much disagree with you there. Don't get me wrong, it's Nolan's film trilogy and it's perfectly fine that he changed a lot of aspects of the universe. His changes even worked well in his favor. But he certainly didn't stick as close to the source material as you are saying.

The whole thing about this thread is that Batman is different. Some say more realistic than he is in the comics. I disagree. There's a difference between more realistic and more human. And Bale's Batman is more human - that's where his difference lies.

Alfred isn't much different except in the way that he seems to view being Batman as something Bruce should give up. While comics Alfred may worry for Bruce's safety and hope for his happiness, he never condemns being Batman and always appears supportive of it and the good that he does.

Agreed that Gordon is more or less the same as the young Gordon from the comics. And I'm not very knowledgable of Lucius Fox so I'll take your word for it there.

All of the villains, however, we altered to fit Nolan's plot - not just their origins.

While Ledger's Joker certainly takes a lot of his aspects from comics Joker, his origin is not the only way that the two differ. Ledger's Joker was less about the "funny" and the "big joke that life is" and was more about anarky and chaos. He lacked some of classic Joker's biggest tools - namely his laughing gas (again, Nolan's choices make perfect sense for his universe; my only point is that Nolan's characters are very different from the comic characters).

Ra's al Ghul I agree with you. He may lack the pit but he's still all about purging a corrupt world.

Scarecrow was a very 2D character throughout Nolan's series. He's not like the Jonathan Crane we all know in that he is never really shown to have a genuine obsession and fascination with seeing others in a state or intense fear. He is just a criminal who wants money and power it seems.

Two-Face is driven by love rather than by genuine madness.

Catwoman, though, was relatively true to character in most aspects except she didn't seem to be having as much fun with her crime-filled life as she usually does.

And Bane, like you said, had the major alterations.

As I said previously, this is not me condemning Nolan's choices. I approve of most of them and think that almost all of his decisions fit in perfectly with the universe he created. My only point is that he changed a lot of aspects of all of the characters and that those we see on the big screen are not the same as those we read about in the comics.

Batman quit in the most mainstream Batman comic of them all, it makes perfect sense.

@SupBatz: Yes Scarecrow was a 2D character, but i still like to think that he took the role as judge in DKR, because he enjoyed seeing the fear in his victims faces. In my eyes that make him a little more like the comic book version.

@Vulshock: I liked to think of it that way too. But the fact remains that no time was spent in the films showing Crane take delight in the fears of others. To comic book fans or others familiar with the Scarecrow, it is possible to take the court scene as you and I have. But I don't think that it It really emphasied his insanity the way it could have if we were seeing a more traditional version of the Scarecrow.

The eight year gap only doesn't make sense to me because Bruce Wayne hasn't aged a day just like in Batman Begins, where he disappeared for what - 5 or 7 years? :/