The current superhero landscape owes a lot to Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, especially The Dark Knight. But despite the trilogy’s brilliance, these films aren’t immune to issues and plot holes, ranging from Batman’s rapid return to Gotham from the prison in The Dark Knight Rises to the character surviving a neutron bomb at a point-blank range.
While these plot contrivances don’t break the immersion and fans mostly ignore them, even the first entry in the acclaimed trilogy has its fair share of plot holes, with the major one being Ra’s al Ghul’s Plan.
Ra’s al Ghul’s Big Plan in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins Is Far From Perfect
Although Batman Begins is the most underrated entry in the film, which arguably is a better Batman film than the later entries in the acclaimed trilogy, it isn’t perfect and far from it. Even though it delivers a great villain in the form of Liam Neeson‘s Ra’s al Ghul, who shares a personal bond with Bruce Wayne, his big plan of destroying Gotham is riddled with holes.
While the plan involves spiking Gotham’s Water level with Scarecrow’s hallucinogen and vaporizing it with a microwave to cause extreme madness in the city, this doesn’t exactly make sense. Keeping in mind that the plan revolves around the fact that people would then inhale the vapor LSD, the citizens, who are at home boiling water and taking hot showers, would be at risk of inhaling the vapor too early. Also theoretically, the citizens in the immediate vicinity of the microwave were likely to blow up once it was activated.
However, these issues don’t really ruin the film, as the final battle between Ra’s al Ghul and Batman is more philosophical than practical, and it laid the foundation for one of the greatest CBMs ever made.
Liam Neeson Has No Plans to Return as Ra’s al Ghul
One of the major reasons why Christopher Nolan‘s TDK trilogy was such a huge success was its villains, as their motives were understandable in their own twisted way, especially Ra’s Al Ghul. And with Matt Reeves busy crafting The Batman Part II, Liam Neeson was asked by fans whether he’d be open to playing the character one more time, but his response left fans heartbroken.
In an interview with Men’s Health, Neeson said,
“I was Ra’s al Ghul. He wasn’t really a bad guy. He was trying to reorganize the world as it needs to be organized.”
Despite some holes in his end plan, Liam Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul deserves the same adoration as other major villains in Christopher Nolan’s TDK trilogy.
Batman Begins is available to stream on Max.
Source: WatchMojo YouTube, Men’s Health
