The first act of “Batman Begins” is “The Man Who Falls,” though with some differences. Once the flashbacks start in the comic, the story flows chronologically. “Batman Begins,” on the other hand, cuts back and forth between Bruce’s childhood and his present circumstances where he’s stranded in Tibet (first in prison and then training with the League of Shadows under “Ducard”).
Despite the more complex structure, Nolan’s movie streamlines Bruce’s training; he spends years aimlessly wandering Europe and Asia, living in poverty to understand the desperation of criminals. It’s only when he gets to the League of Shadows that he begins to focus his rage on a mission and picks up everything he needs to be Batman.
In “The Man Who Falls,” however, Bruce learns from many different teachers. He studies martial arts with a Korean master named Kirigi. Bruce excels in mastering his body, but Kirigi claims that taming the anger inside him will take 20 years — time that Bruce does not have, if he even wanted to forget his rage at all. When he travels to France, Bruce then witnesses Ducard killing a fugitive they’d been tracking and decides that brutality is a step too far; his war, Bruce decides, is one where he will save even his enemies’ lives.
When Bruce finally becomes Batman in “The Man Who Falls,” the narration puts some distance between our protagonist and the mask he now wears. Batman isn’t merely Bruce Wayne in a costume, but something more entirely.
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The overarching, movie-to-movie theme of the “Dark Knight” trilogy is that Batman is more than a man. Bruce begins his quest not thinking that Batman can single-handedly fix Gotham, but instead that he can inspire the rest of Gotham through his theatrical heroics. Batman is a symbol — but Bruce Wayne is a man, and a man can fall.
In “The Dark Knight Rises,” Bruce tries to step back into being Batman after an eight-year hiatus. He stumbles, and to devote himself fully to an unbreakable ideal, he must once more climb out of a pit like the one he tumbled into as a boy. This time, his father doesn’t come to lift him out of the pit; he must climb out on his own.
“The Man Who Falls” concludes that Bruce Wayne “falls” every day. By being Batman, Bruce plunges straight into his darkest self, constantly reliving his parents’ death and embodying his own childhood fear. But no matter how dark he gets, he never takes a life, because he understands that criminals are often just desperate people who need help to climb out of their own worst selves.
Even when Batman falls, he always rises back up.
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