The story in this movie draws from the story of Siddhartha Gautama, the Supreme Buddha (enlightened one). The Buddha was a prince until age 29. At that age, tired of the decadence of his kingdom (located 300 kilometers west of Kathmandu), Gautama tours Nepal to meet the people. Bruce Wayne, like Buddha, grows up in a life of privilege. Likewise he comes to despise his inherited wealth, telling Alfred he would like to tear down his father’s estate.
Wayne travels to Nepal (I think – somewhere in the Himalayas) where he seeks to understand poverty and the criminal mind. He comes to see that the wealthy man’s world of rules makes less sense to people who do not have enough to eat. Wayne, unlike the Buddha, but in a fashion necessary to the story of Batman, begins to train with a group of ninjas in a monastery; their mission is to fight back against crime (I am not sure how this fits with Bruce’s rejection of the wealthy world he escaped). An interesting and slightly unsettling discussion between Christian Bale and Liam Neeson takes place. On the one side is the sympathetic view toward the plight of most criminals, who are motivated by desperation. On the other, is “the criminals who thrive on the indulgence of society.”
The indulgence of society is symbolized by Gotham, a wealthy, economically supreme city rotting from the inside out with corruption and decadence, like Constantinople and Rome before it (as Neeson later explains).
Perhaps Bruce’s change of heart parallels the Buddha, and explains his determination to fight crime and therefore see the innocence in, and benefits of, civilization. At age 35, Gautama abandons his six years of ascetism after nearly starving to death. He meditates for 49 days, adopting his Middle Way of moderation. Most of us, when looking around for rules to live by, tend to settle on moderation as well, especially after bouts of extremism.
So too does Wayne come to accept his father’s legacy and see the goodness in it; his father chose to become a wealthy benefactor of the city that made him rich. At his expense, he constructed a monorail through the city to provide cheap transportation for all. Wayne decides that Gotham is, as Hemingway said, “worth the fighting for.” This might be a Middle Way; cities are giant wealth creation engines that also generate a lot of pollution, real* and spiritual. But they are inevitable, and arguably better than the alternatives.
I have tried in vain to identify the politics in Nolan’s Batman films; conservatives have tried to claim that the Dark Knight is a conservative movie, because it shows torture of the Joker and the fighting back against terrorists. However, the films seem more inclined to present the whole, complicated picture (and why there are both liberals and conservatives). The final conflict in the first film might be viewed as one between a moderate liberal and an extreme liberal (an anarchist, say).
Neeson reveals that he and his band of ninja thugs (the League of something) have been ransacking cities for generations; they burned London, sacked Constantinople and Rome, and so forth, and now are here for Gotham (New York, presumably). They are a check on society’s decadence and corruption. They use different methods, including “economics” in Gotham’s case (I’m not sure what role the ninjas play in fostering a market based economy, ha ha), which will inevitably lead to the rotting cities in his view. He implies a role in Bruce’s father’s death at the hands of a criminal who gunned him down in an alley. Bruce’s father, a giant of capitalism, was nonetheless a good advertisement for capitalism; he took his riches and tried to make the plight of the common person more bearable. Neeson, as a result, perceived him as a threat to his agenda. So he decided to prove a point; one of the “losers” that Wayne championed would bring about the icon’s demise.
However, the murder of Wayne’s parents had the reverse effect; upon seeing its progenitor gunned down, Gotham rallied and clamped down on crime and decadence. For a while. But by the time Bruce was an adult, the old ways had begun to set in again. This time, the League was not taking any chances; they planned to poison the city with a hallucinogen that preys upon the (unnatural) interconnectedness of a large city, via the water mains.
So, the stage is set for Batman kicking ass, and Wayne’s transformation is complete. After Neeson burns down his house, Bruce tells Alfred “I’m going to rebuild it, brick for brick.”
*Lest the film fool one into believing that places like New York are responsible for the earth’s pollution problems, consider that New York has been ranked as one of the greenest places in the world (I can only cite my memory on this one). I believe this is based upon per capita consumption of resources. The fossil fuel used to transport food there gets a large bang for the buck. Compare this with the suburban sprawl that takes tremendous amounts of energy because of the distances involved.