Visual to Textual -- The Dark Knight Rises, Part 2

Visual images register in the human mind instantaneously. In a matter of seconds, an audience can see as many main characters as is necessary. In The Dark Knight Rises, simultaneous events are shown by quickly switching back and forth between characters in the same moments. While viewers can keep track of the events visually without any words, the novelization requires a much slower transition which can drag out one particular scene much longer than intended by filmmakers. The dramatic tone created by the quick montage of images and short speeches is also significantly decreased when converted to a verbal system. While quick action scenes are often well-executed in novels on a regular basis, it is difficult to reduce the quick flux of images on a screen to book form and retain all the original dialogue and sequence of shots. While the novelizer of The Dark Knight Rises tastefully adapts the film to text, the intensity of the scene is diminished. The tone is especially cheapened when the cornerback's thoughts come into play.

Foley followed his men into the subway tunnel, putting the lights of the platform behind him. He was tired of waiting. He needed to check on the search with his own eyes. He owed Gordon that much.

He owed Gotham that much.

“Sir!” a lieutenant came running after him. He thrust a radio into Foley’s hand. “It’s Blake. He says it’s urgent.”

Foley took the radio. As much as he hated to admit it, the hotheaded young detective had been on the ball so far.

“Foley,” he said.

“It’s a trap!” Blake’s voice shouted. “Pull everyone out! Bane’s been pouring concrete laced with explosives—”

Foley froze in his tracks.

“Where?”

“There’s a ring around the tunnels, Blake answered. “They’re gonna blow it up and trap the cops underground!”

Foley spun around and stared back at the mouth of the tunnel which suddenly seemed dangerously far away. His mouth went dry.

“Pull out!” he shouted. “Pull ‘em out!”

He raced toward the light.

The boiler room was in a sub-basement of the stadium, far below the cheering crowds. With all eyes on the field, no one was watching as Bane’s men broke through the basement floor. Drills and explosive charges had carved out a path from the tunnels below. The mercenaries climbed up into the stadium.

Bane emerged from the underground. His utility harness was strapped to his chest.

The National Anthem could be heard wafting down from above. He imagined thousands of sports fans, standing at attention as they paid tribute to bombs bursting in the air. No doubt the mayor had his hand over his heart.

The mercenaries advanced to the empty locker room tunnels. They took out their detonators. Bane cocked his head at the sound of the kick off, like a hunting dog scenting the wind.

Now, he decided.

“Let the games begin.”

The men hit the detonators.

Foley scrambled for the light. Along with his men, he raced out of the subway tunnel only heartbeats before explosions rocked the underground. The tunnel roof collapsed behind him, and enormous slabs of concrete crashing down onto the tracks. Sparks flared from the electrified third rail.

A billowing cloud of dust and debris filled the station. Booming echoes were amplified by the tunnel walls, forcing him to throw his hands over his ears. Cops and SWAT team members dived for cover. An injured officer screamed.

Somehow Foley managed to stay on his feet. Panting, he made it all the way back to the passenger platform before turning around to inspect the damage. Pulverized stoen and concrete caked his sweaty face. He coughed hoarsely, chocking on the dust. His eyes bulged from their sockets.

Tons of fallen concrete blocked the mouth to the tunnel. Frantic radio reports, coming from all around the city, confirmed Blake’s dire prediction. Explosions and cave-ins had closed off every entrance to the underground, trapping thousands of cops beneath the city. Foley gazed in horror at the heap of rubble. He may have gotten out just in time, but what about the rest of his people?

He already knew the answer.

Practically the entire GCPD had been buried alive.

The football spiraled through the air.

Come to daddy, the Gotham receiver thought as he caught the ball and made a break or the end zone. The hometown crowd went wild, screaming their lungs out as eh started his run, pursued by the visiting linebackers. He ran past the mayor’s box, guessing that His Honor was cheering, as well, and ducked past a Rapid City cornerback who was trying to block him.

The looming goal posts called out to him. He could practically taste his victory.

Touchdown, here I come!

The mayor’s box exploded, raining blood and debris onto the field. The cheers turned to screams. People panicked and leapt from their seats. Smoke blew over the field.

What the—?

Confused, the receiver glanced behind him—and saw the grassy field drop away into the earth, swallowing players. Rogues and Monuments alike tumbled into a smoking chasm that seemed to be chasing after the receiver as eagerly as any opposing linebacker. The pigskin slipped from his fingers as he sprinted even faster than before, desperate to stay ahead of the collapsing field.

An earth-shaking rumble competed with the shrieks of more than sixty thousand spectators, many of whom were already stampeding for the exits. The terrified player stumbled past the end zone, abandoning all thought of scoring.

Get me outta here!  

* * * 

This last example of the difficulty the novelization of The Dark Knight Rises finds in transferring visual to verbal takes an extensive passage from the book and shows the efficiency with which the film establishes a situation and what happens as a result. Bane inciting Gotham to free the prisoners of Blackgate Prison and revolt against the upper classes is a prime example of effective visual timing gone wrong in book form. Bane's speech is drawn out line by line while the camera shows the effect of it: total anarchy. What the film does in just shy of two minutes the text takes six pages to show. While I do not claim that a novel on its own cannot portray a dramatic scene of revolt and bloodshed, the problem is when the written word attempts to capture what viewers see on the screen on the page. In this case, presenting the excerpt from the film first is more advantageous to illustrate the problem.

“We take Gotham from the corrupt,” Bane ranted, shouting over the clamor of the mob. “The rich. The oppressors of generations who’ve kept you down with the myth of opportunity. And we give the city to you, the people. Gotham is yours—none shall interfere.

“Do as you please!”

Hellfire blasted from the cannon, blowing the heavy iron gates to pieces. Twisted metal fragments clattered down onto the sidewalk, leaving an open, smoldering cavity in the walls of the prison.

“But start by storming Blackgate and freeing the oppressed,” he continued. “Step forward, those who would serve . . .”

Bane’s men rushed the prison, surging through the burning gates. The mob chased after them, eagerly joining in the revolt. Pounding boos trampled over the blackened remains of Harvey Dent’s photo. Alarms sounded, but the outnumbered guards offered little resistance.

The cell doors slid open and the prisoners poured out, trashing the place on their way out. Unlucky guards—the ones who hadn’t fled or hidden in time—found themselves on the receiving end of eight years of pent-up grudges. It wasn’t a good day to be wearing a uniform or a badge.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Selina quietly slipped away through the throng.

In the hours and days that followed, Bane’s fiery oration was played constantly over the airwaves, as all that he prophesied came to pass.

“For an army will be raised. . .”

Mercenaries had handed out weapons to the prisoners escaping Blackgate. Shots were fired into the air in celebration, as the criminals rampaged through Gotham, encountering no resistance. Other men and women, eager to join in the looting, poured into the streets as well, swelling the ranks of the ad hoc army. They found the city ripe for the taking.

Looters invaded a tree-lined boulevard across from the park. What had once been one of Gotham’s tonier neighborhoods was overrun by a lawless horde that stormed the luxury apartment buildings. Gun-wielding rioters shot off the locks or battered down the doors. Hopelessly outnumbered, cowed doormen and security guards either retreated from the mob or else joined the insurrection. Mercenaries, convicts, gang members, vandals, anarchists, and opportunists whooped uproariously as they helped themselves to the homes of the rich and famous.

“The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests . . .”

On Park Boulevard, looters ransacked a palatial penthouse apartment. High-end televisions, computers, and other pricy electronics were seized and fought over before being hauled out the door. Drawers were yanked out and dumped onto the floor, the better to rifle through their contents. Antique desks and chairs were overturned, pricesless vases and paintings trashed.

The one-time owners of the apartment, an investment banker and his much younger trophy, cowered in a corner as the rioters rooted throught heir closets, tossing designer dresses and tailored suits onto the floor. Thirstier looters raided the well-stocked liquor cabinet, passing around rare vintages of wine and bottles of fifty-year-old Scotch and bourbon. Empty bottles shattered against the walls. Costly spirits spilled onto an imported Persian carpet. Cuban cigars were smoked with abandon.

“And cast into the cold world the rest of us have known and endured. . .”

At first, the terrified owners thought that they themselves might be spared, that the rioters were only after their possessions. But then men with guns descended upon them and herded them roughly out into the street, where they were rounded up along with the rest of their scared and affluent neighbors. Despite the cold fall weather, and not even given a chance to dress for the outdoors they were marched at gunpoint away from their former homes.

Raucous laughter followed them down the block. Thrown rocks and garbage pelted them. An empty bottle hit the banker in the face.

“Courts will be convened. . .”

The stock exchange, site of Bane’s first assault upon Gotham’s wheelers and dealers, was converted into a mock courthouse attended by crowds of jeering spectators. An escaped convict who had traded his orange prison jumpsuit for an ill-fitting black robe presided over the trial of the banker and his wife. They found themselves accused of high crimes and treason against the people of Gotham. They clung to each other, shivering in the dock, as Jonathan Crane, a convicted killer who had once terrorized the city, pronounced sentence on them.

He pounded his gavel upon the trading floor’s elevated bell podium.

The mob roared in approval.

Bane watched silently from an upper gallery.

“The spoils will be enjoyed. . .”

A once-exclusive apartment became Party Central. Dozens of squatters occupied the penthouse, helping themselves to whatever the first wave of looters had left behind. Winos, addicts, prostitutes, and homeless runaways cracked opened bottles of champagne, spraying one another with the foam while trampling over broken furniture and heirlooms. Hookers and crackheads put on an impromptu fashion show, modeling liberated furs and jewelry. A drunk peed in a corner.

Selina kept to herself, frowning as she watched the revelry.

“Blood will be shed. . .”

Officer Ross peered up at the daylight, high above his head. The light penetrated a narrow storm drain partially clogged with shattered concrete. A basket full of supplies was lowered into the ruins of the tunnels, where he and hundreds of other cops found themselves buried alive.

At first, he had expected the city to launch a full-scale rescue, employing heavy machinery and teams of workers to dig their way down to the trapped personnel, but apparently that wasn’t happening anytime soon. They remained stuck in the sewers.

He remained stuck in the sewers. Away from his wife and daughter.

Ross grabbed onto the basket, which contained stale bread, moldy fruit, and dented cans of lunch meat. His stomach growling, he handed them out to the other officers, hoping it would be enough, but knowing that it wasn’t.

He shivered, trying to remember what it was like to be warm.

“But the police will live, until they are ready to serve true justice. . .”

The reactor core glowed brightly, and lit gauges crept toward the red zone, as the large metal sphere was loaded into the back of an unmarked black truck. Mercenaries made sure the bomb was secured within the vehicle.

“This great city will endure. Gotham will survive.”

Inside the truck, a digital counter ticked toward zero.