"Want to see a magic trick?" The Prestige & Nolan's Dark Knight

First off, if you haven't seen The Dark Knight Rises, stop reading this. Also, what are you possibly doing on the internet instead of inside a movie theater right now? Even if Warner Brothers manages to reach deep enough into its pockets to find the unfathomable combination of money and creative control that it would probably take to convince Christopher Nolan to do a fourth Batman movie, The Dark Knight trilogy will still be a trilogy. I (like everyone) would welcome and watch the hell out of another Nolan/Bale Batman. But the magic trick is complete. In 2006, I was generally underwhelmed by The Prestige. In the intervening years, I’ve changed my mind. Not only is it a solid film in its own right, it also lays out the course of the entire Dark Knight trilogy – in 2006. The Prestige opens the way every movie should: with a Michael Caine narration. His character, who we soon learn is an ingénieur (magician’s engineer), lays out some magician's theory:

Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't.The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back.That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige."

The Pledge: Batman Begins

The ordinariness of Batman has always been one of his most compelling features. Unlike Superman or Spiderman, he does not possess superhuman strength or agility. The only thing separating Batman from you or me is several years of martial arts training and about $6.9 billion (Forbes). Batman Begins came out in 2005. In the midst of the comic superhero movie craze following 9/11, Batman could have been sentenced to mediocre ignominy with the likes of Superman Returns and Catwoman. Sure, Batman has always had a strong fan base, but Joel Schumacher’s be-nippled travesty of Batman & Robin (1997) had burned up a lot of the gravitas and masculine mystery of Bruce Wayne. His story was played out.

Enter Christopher Nolan. The story he tells is ordinary – Bruce Wayne, orphaned by crime, turns to vigilante justice. Batman Begins isn’t just exciting – it’s plausible. Each aspect of the Bat Man is inspected, from the initial fear that incited his identification with bats to the personal inner turmoil that resulted from his parents’ death. His very fear of bats leads to the unfortunate mugging that orphans Wayne, forming an inextricable link between bats and injustice. But Nolan’s Batman isn’t as normal as he appears.

The Turn: The Dark Knight

Heath Ledger’s turn as the Joker takes a character that by its very nature is something of a punchline and forms a place for him in possibility. Batman has, by this point, grown into his role as Gotham’s protector. Wayne Manor and Ra’s al Ghul are gone. Batman’s only misstep comes as the result of Rachel Dawes’ death. Following Harvey Dent’s murder spree, Batman assumes Dent's guilt in fear of what might happen with the destruction of Dent's legacy with the means-justifying line, “Because sometimes... the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.” Although this is the noble action, it is dissatisfying for Batman to shoulder the blame of Two-Face’s actions, and for both Gordon and Batman to agree to a lie based on what they believe the people of Gotham can handle. In doing so, they inadvertently prove their assent to the words of the Joker, that people are “only as good as the world allows them to be.” Batman – and everything the world thought of him – disappears.

The Prestige: The Dark Knight Rises

Everything that has been lost must return in the third act of the Dark Knight trilogy. In this post-Batman Gotham, crime is down, Batman has been branded a criminal, and Bruce Wayne has disappeared deep into the east wing of Wayne manor in a pre-Belle-Beast of a move. Only Gordon knows the truth about Harvey Dent and clearly struggles with the Faustian deal that has enabled him to clean up Gotham’s streets. Wayne Manor has been restored, and Bruce must once again possess the young man’s rage that first led him to the mask, the fear that must accompany him to sustain him, and the genuine wish for a life outside this burden.

This great magic trick concludes true to form: Nolan brings back all that has disappeared. In order for Nolan to complete “The Prestige” element of the trilogy, he has to bring back the Batman of the first act and all must truths be revealed. The shared lie of Harvey Dent proves to be the undoing of order. Batman must once again confront the specter of Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Shadows.

The opposite of hope in Nolan’s Gotham is not despair, as Bane would have us believe, but expectation. Hope has no place where certainty resides. The idea that Batman must be a symbol more than a man has been used throughout the three movies, but we, like Bruce Wayne, only understand at the very end that the great trick of Batman has never been one man's fight against injustice – it has been to give hope to carry on in the face of certain despair, and that the truth of ordinary people is more than they have shown.