Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-12509038-20140330054928

One of the major criticicisms of The Dark Knight Rises was that it did not feature enough of Bruce Wayne in the Batsuit, AKA, there was not enough Batman in the film. I even heard someone say that Batman only appeared a total of 10 minutes throughout the entirety of The Dark Knight Rises. That peaked my curiosity, and so I went back and rewatched the film, and timed every moment Batman/Batsuit made an appearance in the film (I will tell you that it was not only 10 minutes). That made me curious, and so I went back and watched the previous two Nolan films, as well as the two Burton films (not the Schumacher one, as they never existed), and timed how long Batman appeared in those films, as well. And as you will see by my findings, Batman appeared a lot more in The Dark Knight Rises than initally thought, and as well as much more than other Batman films (please take not that I rounded up as I did this, and so it is pretty much an approximate time- for instance, if it was 22:55 minutes, I simply rounded up to 23 minutes):

The Dark Knight Trilogy Batman/Batsuit Screentime- Total Screentime: 90 Minutes Worth of Batman

1A. Batman Begins- 24 Minutes Worth of Batman (Full Length Film- 141 Minutes)

1B. The Dark Knight- 36 Minutes Worth of Batman (Full Length Film- 152 Minutes)

1C. The Dark Knight Rises- 30 Minutes Worth of Batman (Full Length Film- 165 Minutes)

Burton Batman Films- Total Screentime: 51 Minutes Worth of Batman

2A. Batman- 28 Minutes Worth of Batman (Full Length Film- 126 Minutes)

2B. Batman Returns- 23 Minutes Worth of Batman (Full Length Film- 126 Minutes)

Though this is almost irrelevant, as I am mostly comparing just the Nolan films, the official list of films in which all 5 good Batman films are compared by the number of minutes Batman appears is as follows-

1. The Dark Knight- 36 Minutes Worth of Batman

2. The Dark Knight Rises- 30 Minutes Worth of Batman

3. Batman- 28 Minutes Worth of Batman

4. Batman Begins- 24 Minutes Worth of Batman

5. Batman Returns- 23 Minutes Worth of Batman

My data clearly proves now that the argument that Batman wasn't in The Dark Knight Rises as much as it's predecessors has just been proven invalid. Though The Dark Knight has the most amount of minutes with Batman on screen, The Dark Knight Rises featured the second most number of minutes of Batman, not only for The Dark Knight Trilogy, but also including the Burton films as well. Now the argument still stands that there should be more Batman. I can't disagree, as I would have loved to see more Batman in TDKR. In fact, there has been footage from trailers and fan videos during the filming of TDKR, as well as images that had been released that had shown more Batman scenes than the one we never saw. Of course this is extremely unfortunate (as I really wish there was a director's cut so we could see more Batman action), but overall, I think this film did an amazing job at balancing out the Batman and Bruce Wayne appearance ratio. Nolan did an incredible thing that no one else has done: he made me care too much for the character of Bruce Wayne, that frankly I was okay with the fact that he was not in the suit for the majority of the film. Normally I would hate this, but Nolan and Bale made it possible for me to care about Bruce when he was not wearing the suit, which is an incredible feat.

Well, what do you think of this new evidence that has been presented? Does it make you feel different about the amount of time Batman was on screen in TDKR? Do you still hate it? I can't wait to read your thoughts, so please let me know what you think below! 