Yes and no.

I had that same thought. And it would have been funny. But Joker was so much about chaos and anarchy that having him as a judge dolling out sentences in an "orderly" court would have felt really false, to me.

Is he even producing? I thought he was just "grandfathering" it. Whatever that means.

I think if Nolan has a producer credit on the film, it's token.

OK, I think I misheard some of the dialogue in the prison scenes then.

So what does re-gaining fear mean for Bruce? How was that relevant to Bruce saving Gotham? What is there to justify the prison even existing in the movie?

As I recall, the doctor comments on Bruce's fear of death. He says he isn't afraid of death, and the doctor tells him that's why he fails.

The rope eliminates the fear of death. If you don't make the jump, you know you're going to be fine.

I agree with this. The false choice nature of the exile-or-death sentencing was Jokeresque, but the whole ideological force behind the "Occupy Gotham" movement was not Joker's style. I think he'd have been trying to expose the League of Shadows' self-righteousness, if anything.

That's how I'm treating it. As advertisement, basically.

Well, I think, he's able to fight Bane harder. The doctor tells Bruce that the reason Bane is so powerful and fights so hard is that he's fighting through the fear. Bruce has to learn to do that.

I think it also helps justify Bruce's decision to escape death at the end. Bruce doesn't want to die. We all know Batman won't die. He'll live on as a symbol. Even before we're 100% sure about Robin John Blake becoming Batman 2.0, we know Batman will live on.

For me, it worked thematically. What bothered me about it was the cramming down our throats that the auto-pilot didn't work. Why did Batman lie about it at the end? To mislead the AUDIENCE. That's a foul as far as I'm concerned. If Catwoman would have just said, "what's the plan fly out, and eject..." and Batman hadn't answered and just given a look it would have meant more. Because the audience was already tracking that plot point. Batman's lie made his escaping death cheaper, to me.

I still liked it, but it was cheapened a bit.

Ah, I see how I was getting that twisted. To my mind, you want the safety rope because you're afraid to die. The rope means you won't. Going sans rope to me means you accept the consequences of failure -- it's a brave, less-fearful thing to me.

At any rate, I don't know what that lesson imparts to Bruce or to the film.

One of the major themes of the movie, obviously, is hiding. So much of it is about exile. Learning not to run and hide (from feelings, the past, enemies, fear, truth, etc) is a big lesson for almost every character in the film.

I agree that it was cheapened. Just in service to the plot twist.

Even if Bruce was unafraid to die, even if he never learned a lesson about fear, I'm 100% sure that if he could eject out of the plane safely and not die in a nuclear explosion then he would.

Regaining fear in the end humanized him and made him able to return to life as Bruce Wayne. The prison scene is vital to the story to introduce the main bad guy, Talia al ghul.

Damnit, I'm gonna' have to see this again, I think.

1. **** David Letterman
2. It was really good.

Lol I was thinking that toward the end of the movie too

I would say that Bruce Wayne had to find a reason to live again. The entire movie, from that standpoint, was building up to Bruce Wayne's decision to accept life over death. This was a story about the character becoming human again. The rope was about letting go of whatever is holding you back so that you can move on to the next step in your life. Bruce Wayne needed to do something like that before he could stop being Batman.

Batman was always going to live on. With or without Robin taking over, the symbol would live on forever. But the only way for Batman to be effective was for the legend to be handed over to someone else. I like the idea of "Batman" and "Catwoman" retiring together. Selina Kyle saved him. Quite a while ago I posted that Catwoman is a great villain if handled correctly. She needed to be that crazy chick that makes you go, "**** being a superhero. I'm with her." I don't know if it would have worked if she had been as crazy as I envisioned but it worked with her as his outlet to a more normal life.

This. Yes.