Character Analysis
We're looking at a very tricky character analysis here, because a character like Batman has all kinds of permutations, including two other movies with the same director and Christian Bale in the part. Getting at the heart of Bruce Wayne in this movie means ignoring most of the other Bruce Waynes out there, along with their delightful psychological scars.
In this case, we've skipped over the origin story: how little Bruce became the big bad Bat and why he chooses to do what he does. (That was in Nolan's first film, Batman Begins, and you really should give it a look if you want to tackle this one.) Most people know the basics: his parents were gunned down in front of him, leaving him with stupidly huge amounts of money and a burning desire to pummel senseless every criminal he finds. Naturally, he can't do that if everyone knows who he is: hence the coy disguise and the oodles of Q-branch goodies designed to give him the edge over the felonious hordes of Gotham.
And why dress like a bat? To scare the bejesus out of them. "Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot," he famously said in the comics. "My disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts." Or, to quote Christian Bale in Batman Begins, "Bats frighten me. It's time my enemies share my dread."
The fact that bats actually scare Bruce Wayne is solely the purveyance of the Nolan movies. We're just stating that for the record, so you can see how easy it could be to make assumptions about this character that actually don't appear in the movie.
Getting The Job Done
Those are the basics. As The Dark Knight opens, Bruce has been at it for a couple of years, with a staggering amount of success. The street-level scumbags are literally running scared, and the mob bosses creep around like mice afraid of the cat. Clearly, Bruce's unorthodox tactics are working.
And it does look like tactics, rather than something more personal. The pain that drove him to scamper around rooftops in the dead of night is still there, but it's deeply hidden under the minutiae of the task at hand. It's a big task. Small wonder that he talks about his gear and methods with Alfred instead of his dead parents. "Batman has no limits," he says, which is the closest he gets to talking about his underlying drive. The rest of the time, it's all "I need new armor" this and "those vigilantes are gonna get themselves killed" that.
There's a good reason for that: he doesn't want to be Batman forever. He's looking for a final victory, something that will let him hang up the tights for good and settle down with some nice girl (if not Rachel, then perhaps a certain raven-haired kleptomaniac with a similar animal fetish). This breaks from a lot of the earlier incarnations of Batman, when he was in it for the long haul. It also suggests that maybe he's less unhinged than he is elsewhere: someone who envisions an end game other than lying dead in the street with some gloating scumbag standing over him with a smoking gun.
That's vital as far as this movie goes, because it gives him a goal to work for. In fact, he's almost reached it. Crime is way down, citizens feel hopeful, and this Harvey Dent guy looks like just the sort to finally put the ball in the end zone. He tells Rachel:
BRUCE: You know the day that you once told me about, when Gotham would no longer need Batman? It's coming.
He's looking for an exit strategy and with Dent, he may have found it.
The Joker Ruins Everything
From a dramatic standpoint, there's really nowhere to go but down here. Either he puts the bad guys away and completes his mission (boring) or some really serious wild card enters the mix. Enter the Joker, there not only to destroy all of his hard work, but show him how pointless that work was. Just as he's getting ready to grab the big brass ring, he suddenly finds himself pushed to the breaking point by someone who can push his buttons like a deranged chimp.
So the test becomes one of resolve: seeing how far Bruce is willing to go to defend his efforts, and watching what happens when he has to make the toughest possible choices. Who's he gonna save? Who's he gonna let go? What happens when people around him start dying for his mistakes? And if he kills the Joker and saves all of those unnamed future victims, does that simply make the Joker's point?
Bruce gets plunged into a psychological sharknado, one so bad that it breaks his ally Harvey Dent in half and kills his only friend, Rachel Dawes. We can see how deeply it affects him, slumped in his penthouse in despair after Rachel dies, hesitating when Alfred admonishes him to be the outcast, and finally embracing a giant, horrific lie just to keep his city safe. And we know how much he loses in the process.
The thing he, he's still the hero. He not only endures, but he finds a way to keep his city safe. "I have one rule," he tells the Joker in the interrogation room, and for all the exploding hospitals and ferries full of hostages and cackling clowns saying mean things on the TV, he never, ever breaks it.
More importantly, he keeps his faith in the people of Gotham, trusting them not to blow each other up on the ferries and seeing his faith rewarded. Unlike Harvey, he doesn't snap. He shoulders his burdens and renews his commitment to the whole flying-around-on-rooftops-in-the-dead-of-night thing… all while making sure the Joker finally gets the padded cell he deserves.
Victory with Consequences
Nolan mixes that with another, darker truth. Even though Bruce is a hero, he can't save everyone, a lesson he has to learn the hard way when Rachel gets killed. The other casualty? His reputation as a good guy. He doesn't kill anybody, but he takes the rap for all the people Harvey's killed: absorbing that heinous spiritual mojo so that the city doesn't lose its soul.
And Bruce, being Bruce, doesn't flinch. With a look of supreme realization on his face, he tells Gordon:
BRUCE: I killed those people.
If the good guys are going to win, they need to let him take the blame and vanish, leaving the city he loves safer at the cost of his own safety and reputation. He lies (or at least he lets Gordon lie about him) and in making that compromise, he preserves the practical effects of his victory. Granted, he also proved the Joker's point that no rule is sacred, but he also said he only had one rule… and taking the blame for killing someone is a long way from actually killing that person yourself.
Thus does Big Bruce experience what real defeat might feel like, and still finds a way to snatch victory from its grinning red jaws.
"I'm whoever Gotham needs me to be," he tells Gordon at the end, which is as potent a statement of sacrifice as you're likely to hear. Just a short while earlier, he was looking at hanging up the cape and cowl for good. Now he's lost everything—his girl, his reputation, even his ability to cruise around in that awesome Batmobile every night—for the good of the city he loves.
His sacrifice actually means a whole lot more because he wants to give it all up. We see what's waiting for him at the end, we sense that he wants a happy ending just like everyone else does. That he chooses to give it up hammers home how Nolan views heroes in worlds as dark as this one. The good guys can't always close the deal, Bruce tells us. Sometimes the dark forces really do overwhelm us. But there's always a way out. There's always a way through. And you can usually find it by putting other people above yourself. Bruce loses a lot by the end of the film, but he knows what that buys his city. And this is a guy who's always ready to pay the price.
Batman's Timeline