20 Years After Batman Begins, These Remain The Nolan Trilogy's 10 Most Important Characters

Most wouldn’t pick this seemingly random character from The Dark Knight, whom Batman never even meets on screen, as important to Batman’s crime-fighting career. But for the story and the audience’s reaction to seeing Tommy “Tiny” Lister’s huge, imposing presence on the screen as a handcuffed prisoner, he perfectly plays on our preconceived notions of a bad guy. It’s Deebo from Friday, man. In Dark Knight’s epic ferry scene, the Joker (Heath Ledger) rigs two separate ferries with explosives, one holding citizens and one holding prisoners, and places each ferry’s detonator on the opposite boat. He wanted to show Batman that the citizens of Gotham aren’t worth saving because they’d kill each other to save themselves.

No one saw that ingenious plan being shattered not by a good, upright, working citizen but by this criminal who took it upon himself to do what the police and the citizens on the boats couldn’t. He was the one who knew the only choice was to choose life over the false choice of “survival.” Batman’s speech to the Joker after the boats in Gotham Harbor fail to explode is due to someone who could be on the opposing side of the Dark Knight. Did Batman inspire this person to make this choice, or did even the lowest in Gotham have enough moral and ethical standards and community with everyone in Gotham to inspire Batman from falling to the Joker’s nihilistic outlook and continuing to protect the city?

Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow is the only recurring villain in this series, as he’s a constant thorn in Batman’s side. Besides Batman Begins, each appearance was a surprise to the audience. Jonathan Crane exploits the many factions in the city to see people overcome with fear because he gets off on it. He even joins Bane’s (Tom Hardy) autocratic government judging the wealthy and the state in The Dark Knight Rises. You see early on how Batman utilizes his own fears as a tool and engine for his crusade for justice and protection of the people. That head-on conflict with Scarecrow embodies this internal triumph, illustrating how it’s an ongoing battle for all of us to overcome our fears.

Real talk: Bane (Tom Hardy) is Clubber Lang from Rocky III. His whole purpose in The Dark Knight Rises is to show Bruce that he’s washed, he doesn’t have it like he used to, and that he can’t just come back from retirement. Even Alfred’s (Michael Caine) plea for Bruce to not face him early in the film feels like Mickey pleading with Rocky not to fight Lang at a similar point in that film. Rocky jokes aside, Bane’s false class savior is an excellent foil for Bruce (and Gotham) to overcome in order to finally save the city from the mistakes he and Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) made after the events of Joker’s (Health Ledger) reign of terror and Harvey Dent’s (Aaron Eckhart) fall from grace.

Bane is the manifestation of those lies coming home to roost, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests in real life; it plays with the idea of a rich billionaire taking it upon himself to decide the best for the city while others have less. Should Bruce have become a costumed adventurer? Was stopping that crusade the right path for everyone in Gotham? Hardy’s performance also sold the transition from the monster-heel luchador look of the comics to a captivating European populist terrorist, which has become iconic in its own right.

Speaking of The Dark Knight Rises, the film also brought Catwoman back to the cinematic landscape. This Selina, more inspired by Frank Miller’s retooling of Batman: Year One, has shed the mystical cat powers from Tim Burton’s film adaptation and evolved into a more grounded, lower-class Robin Hood-style figure from modern comics. Another character bringing class disparity and a different inspiration for Bruce to suit back up after retirement, Selina opens his eyes to the world in a much different way than his usual allies have.

Through her, he gains an actual voice from the poor and lower-class citizens of the city, as well as from individuals who commit crimes out of necessity due to a lack of options rather than grand plots or a desire to exploit the Gotham citizenry. She comes into his life and reignites his drive to help Gotham, which had been dormant since the loss of Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes and Maggie Gyllenhaal). Her perspective, much like Dawes’s, forces Bruce to come to terms with the fact that he’s not doing enough for the people of the city, even if he thinks his boogeyman persona is enough to let the police, politicians, and his fellow rich folks decide, at the cost of so many under them. There is, of course, attraction and the usual cat-and-mouse chase we want and expect from Batman and Catwoman, with Anne Hathaway and Christian Bale having the right chemistry to pull off this duo.

A character played by two actresses fits a more classic-styled love interest in movies and superhero stories. She’s a character who knows Bruce the best, outside of Alfred, and possesses the moral center and dedication to not only justice but also to Gotham. She’s an inspiration for Bruce’s journey, just as much as seeing those bats in the cave. Rachel is a person Bruce loves and trusts so much that he trusts her with his identity from the moment he creates it.

This love for Rachel is one thing that separates Nolan’s Batman from other interpretations; as much as he wants to protect the city and make it better, he also doesn’t want to be the Caped Crusader forever because he wishes to be with her and have a life beyond being the city’s protector. Her desire to also fight crime as a prosecutor, and her relationship with Dent, beautifully complicates the story of The Dark Knight. With Joker targeting both Rachel and Dent, it threatens Bruce’s hopes and, in turn, destroys his goals. His only choice is to sacrifice Batman’s reputation to save the city. She was his north star, and her loss caused our gritty hero to cease being Gotham’s savior.

Played by Morgan Freeman, Lucius is the genius inventor and executive who, along with Alfred and Rachel, serves as Bruce’s primary support system. This version of Fox is much of a mentor-like character, someone who can call Bruce on his mess and also show him some things he might not know. As a man who knew Bruce’s father, he’s one of the three father figures in the orphan hero’s heroic journey to save an embodiment of the 21st-century American city. While not similar to the comics, having Lucius Fox work with Bruce to create the physical persona of Batman by utilizing unused Wayne Enterprises technology also gives the billionaire vigilante a James Bond-esque relationship. By the end, the student becomes the master as Bruce finally fixes something that Fox couldn’t, giving their mentor/mentee dynamic a fulfilling closing.

I believe in Harvey Dent. That was a campaign slogan that meant more than just running for District Attorney; it was the heart of The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent is more of a damsel than Rachel Dawes. He loved her, and she loves him, but her goal is to protect him. She introduced him to Bruce because of her belief in what Dent could do for Gotham and its people. He fought corrupt police; he went after organized crime; he went out and inspired Gotham. Bruce thinks he can stop being Batman, and can pass the responsibility of looking after Gotham to someone like Dent.

Just as Bruce sees what he sees, Joker sees it as well and that little bit of darkness there. With just one bad day, Joker can destroy that hope, and he cunningly got just what he wanted – to make Harvey like him and not Batman. From that point, Dent’s submission to his darkest side puts the reluctant hero in a despair that he doesn’t escape until his back is broken by Bane halfway through The Dark Knight Rises. While Gotham survived, that hope it had at the beginning of The Dark Knight is gone, and so is eventually Bruce.

You can’t make a list about this trilogy without mentioning the Joker and his performance, which is so iconic that it outshines the hero of the story. It is an interpretation that, when first seen in a picture, initially received negative feedback. But now, all that has essentially been erased from reality, as if no one had ever had a negative thing to say about it. Heath Ledger’s Joker reinterpreted this character for a new era in our culture, and this Joker, not much different than other versions at its core, was perfect for this Michael Mann crime film-inspired world of The Dark Knight. It was an interpretation that changed the way the Oscars work. This take on the Joker is one of the first times I recall a superhero movie where people argue that the Joker is right.

From his messy makeup to his dark jokes about his scars he uses to scare people, the Joker is something Bruce just doesn’t understand, even with constant advice from Alfred. The Joker’s terrorism in Gotham shakes everyone to their core, from citizens and the government to even the criminals, as he attacks the soul of Gotham to prove his nihilistic views of the world.

The Joker attacks what is in this film the heart of the city—Harvey Dent—and shatters Batman’s hope. Batman loses in this film; while the Joker is stopped, he ultimately achieves his goals in the end. It wasn’t Batman who proved the Joker wrong – it was a convict. Batman and Gordon had lied to everyone so that the city wouldn’t fall apart, and in the end, Batman had to become the villain to the public. It’s rare to see Batman lose, but with the Joker, it’s the only time it ever makes sense.

You can’t have Batman without Jim Gordon; he’s been there from the first-ever story told. He’s the only police officer Batman ever truly trusts. Gordon, at times, works almost like a point-of-view character for the audience as he navigates being an honest cop in a corrupt city, where he must deal with some of his own people he can’t trust. Yet he trusts Batman through each major event that befalls the city, from poisoned water to the Joker and then losing control of the city to a madman while being left for dead by the federal government. Yet it’s the trust that Bruce has in him, as the policeman who was there for him on the night his parents were murdered and helped keep alive that small flame of faith in the goodness of people and justice, that helps lead Bruce to become Batman. His loyalty to Batman remains even through the flawed plan of the Dent Act. The climax of The Dark Knight Rises makes their connection apparent to Gordon as he finally discovers who Batman is and just how his simple act of being there for a child helped save the city and many lives.

C’mon, it’s cheating, but it’s real, especially for this series of films. First, having Michael Caine play the classic character completely changed how you viewed Alfred. He wasn’t the stereotypical image of the English butler with the tuxedo and the little mustache and bald head that brings Bruce soup and can also perform an oil change on the Batmobile. Changing his backstory to that of a former soldier changed how this character has been adapted ever since. Also, Caine is just cool, and he brings that coolness to Alfred as he advises Bruce on his new journey to protect Gotham through his own means. He has stories and experiences to call upon that inform each film. From the soldier who threw away jewels and wanted to see the world burn to his pitch-perfect read on Bane, he is there to tell Bruce the truth no matter what.

He reminds Bruce of his father’s lesson in the first film: “Why do we fall, Master Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.” He’s constantly there in many ways to remind Bruce and the audience of that lesson, as it’s not just for Bruce but for all of Gotham. Their falling out in The Dark Knight Rises is literally heartbreaking, featuring some of the most emotionally resonant performances in the entire trilogy. With the end of the trilogy focused on Alfred seeing Bruce living out the future he wanted for him, Nolan’s Batman canon achieves an ending that no other version of Batman gets to have – happiness.