What Happens in The Dark Knight Rises
Posted 14 Jan 2017
The Dark Knight Rises returns to the story of Bruce Wayne, already in progress after a minor interruption involving an evil clown who robs banks. The film opens with a scientist being kidnapped by… somebody. The somebody takes the scientist onto his plane along with a few hostages, but little does he know that one of the hostages is a mask-wearing man called Bane. Bane is to be the Mega Bad Guy of the film, and like most Mega Bad Guys he can do anything, regardless of how implausible it is, so he naturally has his own cargo plane and uses it to kidnap the scientist himself and destroy the somebody’s plane.
Meanwhile, Gotham has actually lived up to its status as the world’s best city by totally eradicating crime. Now if you do so much as run a red light you can be locked up for life, no questions asked. However, Commissioner Gordon is not so sure this is a good idea, but he’s not going to be a party pooper.
Bruce Wayne, meanwhile, is moping because without crime he doesn’t know what to do with himself. His mope is cut short when a Mysterious Woman steals a necklace that belonged to his mother. Uh-oh, crime! That gets Bruce’s attention real good.
In order to recover the necklace, Wayne traces her to a high-society bash, where he also meets a woman with a foreign accent. Nobody else in this film has an accent, so this is probably indicative of Deep Evil. Wayne doesn’t think of that, though, and for some reason he trusts her so much that he turns over control of Wayne Enterprises to her.
Bane, like most villains, has a deep grudge against The World’s Best City, and he strikes where it will hurt the most: the Department of Public Works! This is actually a surprisingly good plan. He also attacks the stock exchange, which is a less good plan, but leads to a motorcycle chase. Vroom!
Wayne Enterprises has, of course, continued its campaign of building dangerous weaponizable energy sources. This time around it’s constructed a fusion reactor that can be made into an atom bomb with minor modifications. (A job for the kidnapped scientist! Did you forget about him?)
When Bane finds out about this, he steals it and threatens to blow up Gotham! In the meantime his army of mercenaries (volunteer mercenaries, the worst kind!) sacks the city and force rich people to walk on thin ice.
Bruce Wayne, meanwhile, got in a fight with Bane that landed him in a prison somewhere in the Middle East. It is a literal hole in the ground which light cannot penetrate, and yet it is very well-lit. While Wayne is in the prison, he finds out that the Influential White Guy lives on in spirit… he had an offspring who is even now behind the plot to destroy Gotham! That guy just can’t give it a rest.
Soon, Wayne escapes from the foreign prison and gets back to Gotham by… by… I guess he learned to teleport himself while he was in there. Anyway, he gets back to Gotham in time to find out that Foreign Accent Woman is not only in league with Bane, but she is the offspring of the Influential White Guy! She tries to blow up the city, but it’s not going down without some vehicular action. Vroom!
So the whole crew pulls together: Wayne, Gordon, and Mysterious Woman manage to strap the bomb to Wayne’s Bat-Copter and Wayne flies it away just in time for it to blow him up… or does it???
Soon things are back to normal in Gotham despite having been the site of the most horrific terrorist coup in American history. Wayne’s mansion is turned into a Dickensian orphanage. And Bruce Wayne, who did not die, elopes with the Mysterious Woman. God bless us, every one!