The Dark Knight Rises

Spoiler alert: this breakdown contains crucial information about the plot.

The three Batman films from Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer are incredibly ambitious super-hero movies. These writers aspire to high art, and in the case of The Dark Knight, they succeed. The Dark Knight is a truly great film. But the pressure to build on that success for The Dark Knight Rises was immense. And while the ambition for this final film of the trilogy is nothing less than a critique of modern worldwide capitalism, the writers fail to create a bridge that can carry that massive weight. It’s a bridge too far. So it all comes tumbling down.

To see why this happens structurally, we need to begin by identifying the story challenges these writers faced in writing The Dark Knight Rises, and then look at the solutions they came up with. No doubt they began by asking themselves: how do we take The Dark Knight, the best super-hero movie ever made, to a new level? How do we explore the mythology of Batman in greater depth and scope so that it can stand not just for a city in decay, but a worldwide system where injustice is embedded in its very fabric?

In executing their vision, the writers of The Dark Knight Rises have always had a tremendous advantage, which is that Bob Kane’s original Batman story has the most advanced and complex of all super-hero mythologies. Embedded in the concept is the dark side of the super-hero itself, the self-destructiveness that comes from relying on a savior to fight the criminal among us.Other super-heroes like Spiderman and the Hulk have their ghosts and weaknesses. But Bruce Wayne/Batman is Hades himself, a man of the darkest demons who will use almost any method, both illegal and immoral, to fight crime.

But this advantage is not absolute. We saw what Tim Burton and the original writers did with the concept in the first Batman films. Other than Michelle Pfeiffer’s fabulous performance as Catwoman in Batman Returns, these films were pretty forgettable. What the Nolans and Goyer were able to do was to see the dramatic and epic potential of the concept so that Batman became a modern savior, and was loathed because of it.

Besides expanding the basic concept, the key technique the writers used to kick the Batman stories above all other super-hero franchises and into the realm of dramatic art was to build the stories with various moral philosophies. For Batman Begins, the origin story of the trilogy, it was elements of eastern philosophy and Old Testament justice that provided the opponent’s justification for using total force to fight crime and moral decay.

In The Dark Knight, the writers went with Nietzsche and the Existentialists for Batman’s bout with the terrifying Joker. The Joker, in a common misunderstanding of the Nietzschian Overman (aka Superman), thinks he can break any law because he is superior to the herd. The Existentialists provided the classic “dirty hands” argument that says you can never stay morally clean when you fight dirty people.

Here we see the fundamental technique that made The Dark Knight a great film but which is missing from The Dark Knight Rises. The plot of The Dark Knight is a series of increasingly difficult moral challenges the Joker gives Batman to prove his worldview that man is nothing more than a brutal animal.

Notice this brilliant plotting technique has three great advantages. First, it grounds the philosophical questions in specific moral choices the hero must make. Second, it builds the scope of the philosophy through a sequence of increasingly difficult and deadly options. Third, it hangs the larger philosophical issues on a strong narrative line, the hero’s desire.

None of this is present in The Dark Knight Rises. The writers try to kick the film up to a higher philosophical level by returning to the fundamental theme of Batman Begins, where Ra's Al Ghul first introduced the idea of wiping out a society when it has become corrupt beyond repair. Batman’s main opponent in this film, Bane, is Ra's Al Ghul’s new executor of this moral philosophy, which is a form of fascism.

But what is Bane attacking? Crime is actually way down in the eight years since the days of The Dark Knight. The writers introduce Catwoman as a Robin Hood figure, but she seems solely out for herself, and not a model for egalitarianism. A couple of traders on the stock exchange are a little haughty, but that does not constitute an attack of the 1%.

To put this in story terms, there’s no set up. If the writers want this third film in the trilogy to expand to a critique of worldwide systemic injustice, they have to show specific examples of how the little guy is being destroyed. And they have to show that these individuals are all connected within a system of slavery.

For a while we don’t notice the lack of a larger thematic set up, because we are too busy keeping track of all the plot lines. The Nolan brothers are the only screenwriters in mainstream Hollywood that suffer from too much plot. We would all like to have their ability to string reveals and surprises, but here it gets way out of hand. Besides straining and at times breaking all believability, these plot lines start to slow the narrative drive, which is determined primarily by the hero’s goal.

That’s when the writers spring the fatal plot beat. Batman foolishly walks into Bane’s lair and is promptly tossed into some obscure prison. For the next hour of the film, with no set up and Batman out of commission, the writers try to pay off their critique of world capitalism. After turning Gotham into an armed camp, Bane “gives” the city back to “the people.” How exactly does that work when the people are the ones being enslaved? Then we go through the major beats of the French Revolution, complete with storming the Bastille, or Batgate as it’s called here. And we get the citizen tribunals, whereby the rich 1% are sentenced to the guillotine. In wintry Gotham that means walking out onto the ice until you break through.

If this modern revolution had been set up in the beginning, maybe, just maybe, it would have worked. But with Batman stuck in a hole, the desire line of the hero has effectively stopped. So there is no spine, no suspension bridge, to support all this philosophical baggage. Narrative drive grinds to a halt. And we get one hour of stall.

Knowing how to weave a powerful theme into a storyline is one of the marks of the finest practitioners of the dramatic art. It is even more difficult to do in the lean story form of the screenplay. Most writers are so afraid of preaching to the audience that they avoid theme altogether. That’s a big mistake.

The writers of The Dark Knight wove theme into the plot so well that it may have been the single biggest reason for that film’s greatness. The failure of those same writers to weave theme through story structure in The Dark Knight Rises is just as instructive. Because this aspect of the craft is so important I spend a great deal of time in my Anatomy of Story Masterclass explaining in detail how it’s done. But I will tell you this: it all starts with constructing a strong story spine, the hero’s desire, that can carry the weight.

Inception

Inception takes off like a rocket and then slowly runs out of fuel. I loved the mind teaser of a plot, but found the longer the movie went on the less I cared. How a film can generate two such different responses has to do with the most important relationship in a story, the one between plot and character.

In the past with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan, along with his co-writers Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer, has shown himself to be one of the masters of movie plotting. Once again, Nolan gives screenwriters a masterclass in how to build plot. Plot is the most underestimated major skill in storytelling, with a lot of specific techniques you must learn to work as a pro. And make no mistake, the ability to pack more plot in your script is the single most distinguishing feature in a script and film that hits big.

Most writers don’t realize that many of the plot techniques they will use for a particular story are determined by one of the first choices they make in the writing process: what genres will I use to tell this story? Indeed, Nolan’s most brilliant move in writing this script was in combining two genres that are almost never together: science fiction and caper.

Science fiction is the biggest of all genres, as huge as the universe and beyond. That’s why it’s so notoriously difficult to write well. It has a broad, loose structure that covers vast scales of space and time. The caper, also known as the heist film, is among the tightest and most focused of forms, built on a specific and high-speed desire line. That’s why caper stories are almost always very popular.

By combining these virtually opposite forms, Nolan allows the audience to have their cake and eat it too. They get the epic power of science fiction with the driving speed of the caper.

Using the caper gives Nolan one other big advantage. The caper is one of the most plot-heavy of all genres, right up there with detective stories and thrillers, and is designed to fool not only the opponent in the story but also the audience. The prime technique of the caper writer is trickery. Like a magician, you point the audience’s attention in one direction while the real action is happening somewhere else.

The rich plot provided by the caper is magnified many times when the mission takes us into the dream world where the rules of logic change. This is where the power of science fiction kicks in. Science fiction is the most creative genre, because you can take nothing for granted. The writer must literally create everything, including the space-time rules by which human life itself operates.

To get maximum plot and puzzle, Nolan smartly creates three levels of the dream world, using the technique of “revelation plot.” Plot in this kind of story comes from digging deeper and deeper into the same world, with each new level providing a whole new batch of reveals, and thus plot, for the audience.

In combining the caper story structure with a three-level dream world, Nolan takes the audience on a high-speed but mind-bending journey down three levels and back out. In yet another level, the hero’s guilt-filled sub-conscious acts as the story frame and provides even more reveals. Like I say, this guy is a master of plot.

Spoiler alert!

Creating a multiple-level plot is a real blast, especially when it’s connected to such dazzling visual elements as the attacking freight train, the fold-up city and the ghost-town like land of limbo. But there’s a catch. All this plot can kill character and emotion if you are not extremely careful with the story set-up.

The character/emotion problem for Inception starts right at the desire line, the second of the seven major structure steps and one of the strengths of the caper genre. Desire is the hero’s goal. It provides the spine of the story, along with the stakes, or why this story matters. In Inception, the goal is a concept, specifically planting an idea in someone’s head. Not only is this a cold abstraction, it means the stakes are ultimately meaningless. We are told this idea will prevent ecological catastrophe. But that’s just a line of dialogue. We don’t see it, and none of the story is at all related to it.

Another source of an emotionless story has to do with the hero’s relationship to those most important to him, or lack thereof. No, I’m not talking about the other members of the team, which is where most caper stories gain their emotional juice. Think of the buddy camaraderie among the Ocean’s Eleven team. I’m talking about the hero’s wife and children. From the beginning of the film, the wife is already dead so there is no chance to get to know her or see her interact in the present with the hero. What interaction they do have is tainted by the fact that she is morose, deadly and generally a real drag. Supposedly the hero is doing all this to get back with his kids, but again he has no personal interaction with them, except to see them as an unreachable image.

With such a weak goal – which propels a story forward - and such a strong ghost – which pulls a story back, the narrative drive of Inception must inevitably grind to a halt. And that’s just what it does. We get some beautiful, haunting imagery, but the final part of the film feels like a slow trek through a dream museum.

And that’s the negative side of making your story world the land of dreams. Stories about dreams are almost always less than meets the eye. They seem highly intelligent at first glance, because we are entering the realm of pure mind. But they are also as evanescent as a dream, made of elaborately detailed walls that are just fronts to the nothingness behind.

There is one final structure element that causes this visually stunning film to slow down and become less involving as it goes on. In the 22 Step Great Screenwriting Class, I talk a lot about the moral argument found in all great storytelling. Knowing how to execute this crucial element is one of the marks of a professional writer. It’s the sequence under the surface that made the plot of The Dark Knight build in intensity and was the real key to the film becoming a cinematic masterpiece and blockbuster hit. The plot of The Dark Knight is built on a series of moral tests that The Joker throws at Batman. Each test is progressively bigger and more difficult than the one before, ending with the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma where the passengers of two ships must decide whether to blow up the other ship first.

Don’t think for a moment that moral argument is primarily designed to increase the intellectual quality of a film. It increases the emotional power of a story many times over, because the stakes now involve lots of other people and not simply the psychology of the hero.

In Inception, Nolan again infuses moral philosophy into the plot. In this case we’re dealing with Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith,” literally applied to love (a technique normally used in the thriller genre). But Nolan’s understanding of this moral principle is much weaker than his thoughts about the savior in Dark Knight, and it’s not applied to the plot in as seamless or sequenced a way. Viewers come out of the film confused and think it’s their fault. They believe that this philosophical complexity is the mark of a brilliant filmmaker and far above their meager powers to understand, at least on one viewing. Wrong. Moral argument in story is very complex. Sometimes you nail it, and sometimes you just don’t.

Inception is well worth breaking down structurally to see a master of the screenplay form try something new and challenging. But don’t get caught on the dazzling surface. Look at how the writer’s original choices in combining genres and setting up the story gave him both strengths and weaknesses. The more you learn about the all-important connection between plot and character, intellect and emotion, the better writer you will be.

The Dark Knight

Spoiler alert: this breakdown divulges information about the plot of the film.


For anyone who wants to look beneath its action surface, The Dark Knight proves that a movie can be a huge hit because of theme, not in spite of it. The Dark Knight is the closest thing to a fictional exploration of moral philosophy to come out of Hollywood in a long time, and that includes No Country for Old Men. Amazingly, writers Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, and David Goyer create this complex moral expression on the foundation of superhero action crime genre.

The writers begin their elegant construction with the depiction of the main character, Batman, and here they had a tremendous advantage going in. Of all superhero characters, Batman highlights and consistently questions the very concept of the hero and the savior. He is truly a dark knight, concerned with justice but also willing to use illegal and immoral means to achieve it.

He is also deeply aware of the negative effects a savior can have on the general populace. He knows, and probably believes in, the great moral principle of “If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha.” But he is unable to live the principle when faced with so much injustice. And when, in The Dark Knight, the bad guys escalate their evil acts, Batman is dragged into a war of tit for tat that soils everyone. Interestingly, Batman’s garbled voice has a strange resemblance to Clint Eastwood’s, especially in his Dirty Harry films.

In the Blockbuster story development software, we place a lot of emphasis on the “character web,” and The Dark Knight uses this crucial technique to perfection. The first character to be compared to Batman is the main opponent, The Joker. A lot has been written about Heath Ledger’s terrific performance. But we need to look at what he built his performance on, and that is found in the script. Non-writers might think I’m referring to the dialogue, but I’m not. The writers constructed this character to drive two major story elements, the moral argument (theme) and the plot.

The classic crime story is based on a master criminal who believes he is above the law and society itself. The Joker is just such a character, a genius psychopath whose massive intellect is shown not so much in dialogue as in his ability to plot. He accuses Dent and Batman of being schemers. But in fact he is the master schemer, a modern Moriarty, who acts, not out of greed or revenge, but for the game. And he is better at the game than anyone else, so much so that we have the rare example of a story with too much plot.

The Joker is literally the author of Gotham City, constructing criminal plots that will remake the city to express his moral vision. Many have called The Joker a nihilist, a man in love with chaos. But this is a serious misreading. If Batman is the Dark Knight, The Joker is the Dark Philosopher. The entire plot of The Dark Knight is a series of moral conundrums The Joker creates to expose what he believes is the true animal nature of mankind. Tracking the beats of the crime story that goes all the way back to its originator, Crime and Punishment, The Joker creates ever more difficult versions of the genre’s central question: What would you do if you had to choose between two bad options?

First, does Batman expose his true identity or let the Joker kill someone every day? Then does he let Dent take the risk of getting killed to pull The Joker out of hiding? Does he save Rachel, his true love, or Dent, the righteous hope of the city? Does he listen in on the entire city in order to save a few?

For the film’s final choice, the writers use the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma, central to game theory and moral philosophy. In Prisoner’s Dilemma, two prisoners suspected of a crime are placed in separate cells. Each is given the following choice: If you both remain silent, you both get only six months in jail. If you both confess, you both get 5 years. If you remain silent but your partner confesses, he goes free and you get 10 years in jail. As you can see, the only real choice each person can make is to confess, since neither can risk the harsh 10-year sentence trusting that his partner will remain silent.

In The Dark Knight, two ships filled with passengers are given the choice of pushing a button to blow up the other ship before a time deadline. If one ship fails to blow up the other, The Joker will destroy them both. This sets up a unique battle in which not only two forces but also two entire moral systems are brought into opposition. The battle is marred only by the fact that the writers don’t play true to the reality about human beings they have carefully crafted throughout the film. In other words, the people on the boats don’t make the believable choice.

Though The Dark Knight has too much plot, resulting in a movie that is at least 20 minutes too long, its plot is worth studying to see masters at work. These writers use a vast array of plot techniques, and a lot of professional writers I know, while bemoaning so many false endings, have said the plotting is what they studied the most. Ironically, one of the main techniques these writers use is character web, proving again that at the deepest level of good storytelling, plot and character are the same. I’ve already mentioned the plotting power the main opponent brings to the story. But plot also comes from the second lead, Harvey Dent, as well as a number of other characters who appear to be friends but are really enemies, or appear to be enemies but are really friends.

Screenwriters and storytellers can learn all kinds of lessons from The Dark Knight. Perhaps the most important is placing all story elements at the service of the larger moral argument, and expressing that argument primarily through the story structure. Using the crime genre as its foundation, The Dark Knight focuses on whether someone can remain a hero when the opposition becomes increasingly ruthless, a question that is central to our world. But as the cop in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil says about how hard it is being a cop, “It's supposed to be (tough)... A policeman's job is only easy in a police state.”

Interestingly, the writers go all the way back to the classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, for their ending. When it turns out the hero of a gunfight didn’t actually kill the bad guy, the newspaperman refuses to print the truth. “When the legend becomes fact,” he says, “print the legend.” Batman decides to let Harvey Dent die a hero, so the people will have hope in justice, while he accepts his role as the scapegoat. With a subtle flip on the ending of Shane, Lieutenant Gordon’s little boy doesn’t say, “Batman, come back.”

The Dark Knight is a writer’s genre movie, even a transcendent one, and screenwriters would do well to study it closely.

The Prestige

Using advanced storytelling techniques (see the Advanced Screenwriting Class and the Masterpiece Software) is probably the single best way to set yourself apart from the Hollywood screenwriting crowd. But this approach is extremely challenging as well, and if you aren't careful you can weaken the very story you are trying to showcase.

In their story of competing magicians, the writers of The Prestige use a double storyteller. While not uncommon in a medium like the novel, this advanced technique is extremely rare in mainstream Hollywood film. Structurally a double storyteller creates two equal main characters. When you have virtually unlimited amount of time to explore character (as in a novel), this isn't a problem. But in the relatively short two-hour time period you have in a Hollywood movie, it's a huge problem.

If you add the advanced technique of making both characters unsympathetic, you compound the problem even further. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, characters don't have to be sympathetic. But they do have to be compelling. By cross-cutting between two main characters in the time a writer normally has to define one, these writers make both of their heroes superficial and opaque.

The great strength of The Prestige is the plot. But ironically, that simply highlights the fatal weakness of the story. This film about slight of hand and trickery has plenty of slight of hand and trickery in its plot. But without the proper character work, it's all just pulling strings. By being extra complicated, the mechanics of the plot actually become more, not less, obvious. The audience pulls back and notices they are watching a movie.

Instead of showing us how clever they are, these talented writers show us how they have failed in the first job of the writer, to make the audience care.

Insomnia

Insomnia shows one of the dangers of writing the thriller form. This is a very popular genre, but it is extremely narrow. Most writers of thrillers have great difficulty creating plot because there is usually just one suspect. The audience learns fairly soon who probably committed the crime.

In this film, casting compounds the problem of the single suspect. The audience knows you don't cast Robin Williams as the bad guy unless he's really the bad guy. The only surprise comes from how the opponent attacks the hero - which isn't much - and how the hero catches him.

The writer tries to compensate for this basic deficiency by making the hero morally culpable. But the result is that both the main plot line and the hero's moral decline are given short shrift.

Bottom line: if you are going to do a thriller, pay the dues and do the genre right. Hit the beats that make it a surprising plot. Without them, you have a small film that lasts way too long.