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.

5 Keys to Summer Blockbusters

It used to be that summer was the season for blockbuster movies. Now it's a year-round phenomenon. Hollywood is in the business of selling films to a worldwide audience, which means they are always looking for a script with blockbuster potential.

Most screenwriters think a blockbuster is simply a film that does really well at the box office. Technically speaking, that's true. But the reality is that a script with blockbuster potential is a very special kind of script, with a number of story elements that studio executives are looking for.

I'd like to point out five of the most important blockbuster script elements, out of about forty that we consistently see in the top money-making films.

Technique 1: The Myth Genre

The first blockbuster story element has to do with the genre you use to tell your story. A genre is a particular kind of story, like detective, action or comedy. When Hollywood was selling primarily to an American audience, executives thought that movie stars were the key to a hit film. But in the last ten to fifteen years, the vast majority of blockbuster films have had no movie stars.

Instead the emphasis has changed to genre films with great stories. For a film to reach a worldwide audience, it must be popular in over 100 different cultures and nationalities. Story forms are instantly recognizable anywhere in the world.

But you can't just choose any genre if you want to write a script with blockbuster potential. Most writers don't know that some genres travel well while others don't. For example, comedies based mostly on funny dialogue don't travel.

Ironically, the story that travels best is the oldest genre of all, the myth form. Myth is found in more blockbusters than any other genre by far. Add up the box office for the following myth-based movies: Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Lord of the Rings, Shrek, Star Wars and Avatar.

The reason myth transcends national and cultural boundaries so well is that the form tracks archetypal characters and archetypal life situations. These are fundamental character types that everyone knows, and life experiences everyone passes through from birth to death.

Like any genre, myth has a number of unique story beats you must learn, and include, if you want to tell the form well. And remember: in blockbusters, myth is almost always combined with one or two other genres, such as action, fantasy and science fiction, that serve to update and unify the myth story for a young audience.

Technique 2: The Hero's Goal

The single most important element in an international blockbuster is narrative drive, the ability of the story to propel forward at an increasing rate. Narrative drive comes primarily from the hero's desire line. Desire is one of the seven major story structure steps, and provides you with the all-important spine on which you hang all characters, plot, symbol, theme and dialogue.

Average writers tend to make at least one of the following mistakes when coming up with the desire line: their hero has no clear goal, he/she accomplishes the goal too quickly, or the hero reaches the goal by taking only a few action steps.

There are three keys to a good desire line. First, make it specific; the more specific the better. Second, extend the goal as close to the end as possible. Third, make sure the hero is obsessed with it. Above all, intensify the desire.

Technique 3: The Opponent

As screenwriters, we are taught to focus on the hero, since this character drives the story. That's sound advice. But in blockbuster films, the opponent may be even more important. One of the great principles in all storytelling is that the hero is only as good as the person he fights. Also, the opponent is the key to plot. And in the last ten years, blockbusters have become more plot heavy.

When writing your script, first make sure you have one main opponent to focus and build the conflict. Then look for ways to intensify the central opposition.  Make your main opponent bigger, smarter, more aggressive, more passionate. In writing Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan said, "What was important to me in creating an incredible frightening villain is that everything he says is true and at some level reasonable and also makes sense." Nolan then used this same approach in The Dark Knight when he created The Joker, one of the all-time great opponents and probably the key element in that film's huge success.

Once you're clear about the main opponent, try to come up with one or two secondary opponents, with at least one of them hidden from the hero and the audience.

Technique 4: The Scam

The emphasis blockbuster films place on plot leads to another story technique. And it's designed to solve a problem that plagues almost all screenwriters: how do you create maximum plot in the middle, where 90% of scripts fail? In blockbuster movies, the hero's plan is often a scam, or a plan that involves deception.

The trick here is to make the plan more deceptive for both hero and main opponent. When the hero scams, he becomes a trickster character, which audiences love. When the opponent scams, it gives you more plot and makes him/her a more challenging foe.

Technique 5: The Story World

The rise of the videogame along with the ability of special effects artists to realize wholly imaginary worlds has made the story world one of the three or four crucial elements in a blockbuster film. As little as a decade ago, Hollywood didn't care about story world, because it slows down narrative drive. Special effects were designed primarily to heighten heroic action.

But videogames showed Hollywood the power that comes from having viewers immerse themselves and explore a world in all its facets. And there's no medium that can do that better than the big screen film medium.

Many screenwriters believe that this aspect of the film is the responsibility of the director and the special effects artists. Wrong. A good story world is written into the script, and it is intimately organic to the story. That's why you must make sure that every visual element contributes to the story. In other words every element should have story meaning embedded within it.

How you do that is a major story skill right up there with character, plot, dialogue and rewrite. All of the major techniques for creating a rich story world are found in my Blockbuster story development software. The first step is to define a distinct and recognizable arena. Then create a map of the world, with as much detail as you can provide, especially when depicting the central community within which the story takes place. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Avatar were all written by masters of the story world.

If you are serious about succeeding as a professional screenwriter, start with these five techniques and you will be well on the path to writing a script that Hollywood is eager to buy.

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.