When we return to the city of Gotham in July, it will be eight years since we last saw it. I know that The Dark Knight was released in 2008, but in Batman years it’s been a significantly longer period of time since the Caped Crusader took the fall for Harvey Dent’s crimes.
This eight-year gap means there’s been plenty of time for change in Gotham; plenty of time for newly-commished Commissioner Gordon to clean up the streets. Several press releases for the movie have mentioned that he’s been using the (very) dead Harvey Dent as a legal martyr, one around whom he could build an entire case, a martyr who could keep on being Gotham’s ‘white knight’ even in death.
opens we’ll see a (moderately) cleaned up Gotham thanks to Gordon’s spearheading of ‘The Harvey Dent Act’, a plot Maguffin that could in all likelihoodnot be mentioned in the movie at all. It’s responsible for the weakened, Batmanless city that Bane tries to seize in the movie. Thanks to Mountain Dew (yes, the drink) we finally get to see it!
It seems the crux of The Harvey Dent act is the right of GCPD to deny members of the Falcone family and other mobsters access to parole. This means that Harvey Dent’s legacy has truly been carried over as this sentiment echoes a speech Dent gave to Mayor Garcia in The Dark Knight Rises. (Remember the one before fat, fake Batman Bob smashed into his window totally dead with his face all Jokered?)
Either way, it’s a fantastic little gem of viral marketing and I really love the little reference to our friend the masked vigilante.
We’re really starting to see just how Bane will manage to conquer (or at least think he can conquer) Gotham; with the mob behind bars for good, the Batman MIA and a city becoming comfortable enough to slump into a period of relaxation.
We’ll find just exactly what Bane will do to this soft and gentle city on July 20th.
