Yes, “The Dark Knight” is a piece of fiction.  It is a piece of fantasy, based on a comic book.  However, the clear premise of the rebooted Batman series, and the clear goals of Chris Nolan, the director, is to ground the fiction in reality.  Nolan goes to great effort to place the world of Batman into the real world, including: the locations, the characters, the story dynamics, and the plausibility of the elements of the story and plot.  That is the obvious goal. Especially in “The Dark Knight”, extending from the basis of “Batman Begins”, there is a persistent focus on keeping things realistic and not idealistic.  TDK is an attempt at taking something sourced from fantasy and placing it into reality, and also removing any semblance of idealism.

That’s all find and good – it’s an interesting goal and “Batman Begins” pulled it off quite well.  Watching BB, the audience can truly believe the various aspects of the story.  The main problem with TDK is that it fails miserably in that regard.  There are numerous scenes and situations that are completely not plausible at all, and the audience is expected to have a greater suspension of disbelief than what is implied throughout.  It steals from the audience the very thing that is meant to prop the value of the movie up in the first place.  The movie contradicts itself, it cheats itself, and the audience.  To compensate, what the audience is given is a lot of explosions and sadistic scenes, and the masses appear to have bought into it.

So one would think that given this degradation of bat suit quality, there’s a prime opportunity in the movie for the addition of cool new gadgets.  Ya know – to make up for the stupidity.  What we get is: some sharp stuff that shoots out of his gloves.  Wow, cool.  Sharp things that fly out of the forearms of his gloves.  And the Bat Pod (motorbike) which lasted all of a single segment before getting trashed because, although he could control it enough to do a 180 against a wall, he can’t keep from crashing it when trying to avoid smashing into The Joker.

I almost forgot – we also got the amazing new addition of a short-lived hydraulic glove which allows him to bend steel… only in the first minutes of the movie.

So in anticipation of Batman 3 (or is it 6?), here are some thoughts for new gadgets and costume ideas:

• Taser guns, so he can keep The Joker from getting close enough to beat him nearly bare-handed when endless ninjas can’t
• Mace, so when The Joker or a small child with an attitude does manage to get too close he can distract them long enough to run like a bat out of hell
• A stick, so he can hit people and inflict actual damage – like causing blood to come out of their face (apparently as the interrogation room scene shows us, his fists can’t make blood come out of The Joker’s face even when he punches him dead-on and hard multiple times)
• A piece of steak so he can distract ravenous puppies
• A muzzle – not for puppies but for himself so that nobody has to listen to his rock-gargling voice as batman

I know it’s a lot of expensive-sounding gadgetry, especially for a billionaire, but we’ve got to suspend SOME disbelief, OK?

I’ve heard some fanatics try to explain this away (“there are no nearby buildings”, “the buildings are too far”, “maybe people would think he’s wearing Batman pajamas”) but then there’s this other dangling question: Clearly in every scene when he’s in his costume, he’s got black face makup all around his eyes.  Where was that makeup if he had just plopped down in the chair to stare so meditatively out the window?  His eyes should have looked like those of a raccoon when Alfred came around to bring him breakfast.

Now, it could be that Nestor Carbonell, the actor who played the Mayor, just has some VERY thick lower eyelashes, possibly due to his heritage (I believe hispanic), but I’ve never met anyone whose heritage affected their lower eyelashes so much that it would give off the appearance of thick mascara.  It totally threw off every scene he was in.