Dr. Walsh ,'Potential'
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I guess the point is (and it took me till the second viewing to try and accept it for what it is) that it's Just That Bad. Yes, it's a thing we consider inconceivable--that's how serious he is.
I would be more surprised to see it in the comics, but I'm not sure how I'd take Alfred lying about Rachel there too. I'm torn on that also.
That is straight from the comics. The only difference is the timing: in the comics, Alfred quit when Bruce decided to return to Gotham after his spine was handwaved back together.
I remember that now!
I love that moment. Never read Nightfall in comics but the novelization is surprisingly awesome.
I think the one thing that I didn't get/catch was the leaving something in Bruce's will for Blake. I was confounded by the scene where Blake picked up the duffel bag, and then of course where the heck the coordinates came from. I was either overwhelmed with feelings or an overly-loud score at the time.
He was picking it up from the final settlement of the Wayne estate. In the bag was a GPS, and apparently he needed that to guide him back to the Manor, but this time via backdoor into the secret lair...where he would begin to be a pretty inexperienced cop who'd promptly get beat down by a whole bunch of very pissed off bad guys with a grudge against Batman. After spending so much time stressing Bruce's training...how does that make sense?
Harrumph.
But finding the bat lair doesn't mean that Blake will immediately begin picking off bad guys vigilante style. I saw it as, firstly, that he was geeking out over seeing his hero's lair. Secondly as Blake starting to figure out what he wanted to do with that knowledge and access, and thirdly, when he'd gotten all trained up, whether he'd become Batman or his own person (Nightwing/Robin).
Also, Bruce in Paris doesn't mean he's hung up the cowl for good, right? I mean, he couldn't leave Gotham City forever?????
I'm with Juliebird. Dude's got the chops and now he starts training.
But where is he training? The first movie made a huge deal of Batman's training--it was the whole point. He had to give himself over to a man who wanted to raze cities to the ground. Blake has the keys to a lab and some nifty cars. That he can't afford to gas up. I'd rather have seen him in a barebones loft somewhere, studying arcane mysteries of fucking one's shit. Those are the tools that make Batman capable of what he is.