• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

You are here: Home / Culture / Film / The Dark Knight Trilogy and Intertextuality: Stallone, Dumas, Hugo, and Dickens

The Dark Knight Trilogy and Intertextuality: Stallone, Dumas, Hugo, and Dickens

May 22, 2017 by Geoff Leave a Comment

I’ve always loved intertexuality. I especially love the interplay between books and film.

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is a great example.

The movies have many resonances. For instance, the trilogy is intentionally based upon Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Most obviously, when Commissioner Gordon reads from the book:

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

But there were other allusions as well. Some outside of French literature. For instance, there’s an almost plagiarized line from Rocky III in the film:

“I was wondering what would break first…your spirit…or your body!”

And then:

“If I can’t break your spirit, I sure enough can break your back.”

And then, of course, the movie also follows the pattern of Rocky III as well as the Rocky III theme song, Eye of the Tiger:

So many times it happens too fast
You change your passion for glory
Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive

And again:

“Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you.”

While Thunderlips couldn’t break Rocky’s spirit, Clubber Lang did. But his former opponent, Apollo Creed invites Rocky into a dangerous and new training environment in order to come back and attempt one last fight against Lang. Similarly, Bruce Wayne, after having his body and spirit broken by Bane ends up in a prison filled with the criminal element of the world (Wayne’s primal enemy). But it is the criminal element that understands the fear of death and the desire for life and freedom that allows the Batman to fight Bane with renewed vigor, “Rising up to the challenge of survival.”

But aside from Rocky and the Tale of Two Cities, what other literature adds meaning to the films? Two examples are Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.

The character Bane, is essentially a combination of Javert from Les Miserables and Dantes from Monte Cristo.

For instance, Javert and Bane are both born in prison. Both are deeply obsessed with the idea of innocence. To the extent that both are willing to die rather than be implicated in actual wrong doing. Bane is willing to die in a nuclear blast in order to cleanse Gotham of evil as well as for the sin of allowing Batman to escape prison. Similarly, Javert ends his life when he realizes the contradiction between the law and his own life. Also, in Javert’s confrontation with Valjean (I’ll quote the musical for familiarity’s sake), he claims that he can easily understand and defeat Valjean despite Valjean’s superior strength because of his personal familiarity with the scum of the earth:

Valjean

I am warning you, Javert
I’m a stronger man by farThere is power in me yetMy race is not yet run!I am warning you, JavertThere is nothing I won’t dareIf I have to kill you here

I’ll do what must be done!

Javert

Dare you talk to me of crime

And the price you had to pay

Every man is born in sin

Every man must choose his way

You know nothing of Javert

I was born inside a jail

I was born with scum like you

I am from the gutter, too

This is essentially Bane’s line when the Batman attempts to use the power of the shadows to defeat him:

“I was born in the darkness…the shadows betray you because they belong to ME.”

Both Bane and the Batman are painted with shades of Edmond Dantes. For instance, in the comic books and in Bane’s backstory in the movie, he was trained in prison by a priest who taught him deeply in philosophy, mathematics, science, and linguistics. And Bane, in the film, can perform advanced nuclear physics in his head, not only so, but he was picked up and trained by the League of Shadows partly due to his already considerable fighting prowess. But this training is what Edmond Dantes received when he was wrongly imprisoned, with the addition of fencing. Bane, after further training from the League of Shadows, seeks to do anything possible to cleanse civilization from any elements which are dangerous or corrupting of children. But Bruce Wayne is also an allusion Dantes. When Bruce Wayne is wrongly imprisoned, he sinks into despair and wishes to simply die until a wise sage-like character (perhaps Bane’s teacher) who encourages him to regain his strength and escape and gain vengeance upon the man who broke his spirit and left him to languish unjustly in prison. This is, of course, very important in the Nolan Trilogy, because Bruce Wayne becomes the Batman from prison in the first film, for there he means the leader of the League of Shadows.

While I doubt anybody still thinks about those films, they really are rich with intertexts as well as archetypal figures (remember, in the first film the penultimate villain is a Jungian psychiatrist!). The key archetype is the relationship of vulnerable humanity to the chaos and danger in the world. For Bruce Wayne (or Bane) to overcome evil in the world, they must descend into the depths of the underworld as well as their own souls. This is analogous to the Christian discipline of confession. One must truly discover one’s own filth and admit it in order to take any steps to clean up the world. Or, to put it another way, one must gain the cunning abilities of the serpent, but only use them innocently in order to avoid becoming the serpents prey (Matthew 10:16). You have to have the teeth of the predator in order to be a protector, etc.

Because the movies touch on such universal themes, they will remain significant to any who watch them regardless of whether their legacy will endure.

Related Posts:

  • Music Monday: Dark Necessities by Geoff
  • On Rhetorical Aims and Defense Against the Dark Arts by Geoff
  • Replacing the Beautiful and Wise with the Cute and the… by Geoff

Share:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Film, Culture

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • 2020 Has Been a Big Year or I Finally Quit
  • Steps to Open a Bible College
  • You Have No Power Here, This is a Library
  • What is true wealth?
  • What’s Wrong with Conservatives?

Recent Comments

  • Sharon on Whether we live or die, Aslan will be our good lord.
  • Alishba lodhi on Effort Habit: Keep the Faculty of Effort Alive in You
  • Geoff on Why is Covetousness Idolatry?
  • Geoff on 2020 Has Been a Big Year or I Finally Quit
  • Kelly Jensen on Why is Covetousness Idolatry?

Archives

  • August 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • March 2013

Cateories

WordPress · Log in