Dark Knight, Logan and Winter Soldier: A Thematic Comparison

Throughout the last several years, the American public has seen many interpretations of superheroes from both Marvel and DC. 

Up until the 21st century, audiences were often treated to campier films. The four Christopher Reeves Superman films, their pseudo-successor Superman Returns, and the first four Batman films are all peak examples of this. This camp was a natural evolution of earlier superhero stories, such as Adam West’s Batman television show. 

For a time, DC dominated the world of comics, and more specifically, their adaptations. Marvel only just started to surpass them when they faced a rough financial period, and though they recognized the potential of comic book movies, they simply couldn’t afford to create them on the same caliber as the Superman and Batman franchises. Sony and 20th Century Fox were just as interested in the idea of comic book movies, and had the money to afford them; deals were struck one-after another, and Sony offered to buy the film rights to Spider-Man and his villains in the 1990s, while Fox would buy the rights to the X-Men and mutants as a whole a short while later. 

In the year 2000, the comic book scene was rocked by the introduction of X-Men. I can’t stress this enough to modern audiences, but for the time, this movie was groundbreaking. It dealt with racism and prejudice on-screen in a way that was completely faithful to the source material, holding onto all of what made the comics great while still injecting some of its own charm and aesthetic. Are the movies perfect adaptations? No. Are they even perfect stories? No, obviously not. But X-Men did what no other comic book film had done up until this point: a story once thought to be completely unadaptable took itself 100% seriously, and instead of making fun of its genre, it embraced the weirdness of the genre to create characters audiences could relate to. 

This marked a shift in the genre. Before, superhero movies were the live-action equivalence of Saturday Morning Cartoons. Now, in the 2000s, they were character explorations and grounded, realistic epics. X-Men paved the way for Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, which received critical acclaim; niche titles such as Hellboy, Watchmen and V for Vendetta; and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, the crown jewel of which was with The Dark Knight. 

The Dark Knight quickly became one of the highest rated movies on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, and the late Heath Ledger (who masterfully portrayed the Joker in the movie) won a posthumous award from the LA Film critics, got a Golden Globe, and a BAFTA. 

Of course, this wave of character-driven epics came to a close with the MCU’s explosive popularity in the 2010s. Again, the game changed, and the focus shifted to continuity, attention to detail, and cameos. Even still, nobody can deny the impact that these movies had on the general public and on writers for years to come. 

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For a long time, as a kid, I was not aware that X-Men was a property of Marvel Comics. Bear in mind, I was born in 2002. I grew up with the comic book films of the 2000s, which laser-focused on a single character or team, with no mentions of larger, shared universes. 

I knew Batman and Superman were both properties of DC comics, that much was certain in my 6 year-old brain because of Bruce Timm’s Justice League cartoon. Spider-Man films might have been made by Sony, but it was still a character owned and created by Marvel Comics, which I also recognized as the company behind a lot of heroes like Captain America, Thor and Iron Man. But X-Men? Well, for many years, when all I had to go on were the films and animated shows, I just sort of assumed they were set in a third, separate universe. It’s a funny assumption, of course, and as I got older I realized just how intertwined the X-Men and Mutantkind actually were with the larger Marvel Universe; but as I look back on the X-Men films, it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. 

If we look at things purely from the perspective of the films, X-Men stands far apart from the MCU and the many works of DC Comics. DC enjoyed success with solo films, and their dedication to this method only strengthened in the years since Justice League’s failure; while the MCU built up a shared universe that rewarded continuity and an eye for detail. 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films stand between the two, alternating between a more traditional ensemble superhero film series and character-driven tales. 

Fox, Marvel and DC all gradually got bolder and bolder with their films, taking their heroes to hell and back, in the process deconstructing who these icons of pop culture actually are, and what they represent. 

In this essay, I want to look at what I feel are some of the crown jewels of the superhero genre of films: 2008’s The Dark Knight, 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and 2017’s Logan. 

The Dark Knight:

At its core, all three movies are about social connections, loss, isolation, the price of being a hero, and dealing with failure. 

The Dark Knight focuses on Bruce Wayne. Not just his darker alter-ego Batman, but Bruce Wayne himself. In a radical departure from modern comic lore, where Bruce is often treated as the alter ego for Batman to gather information; here, Nolan goes back to the notion that Bruce is a normal man and Batman is the secret identity. 

Putting on the cowl after dark has exacted a heavy toll on Bruce, but it’s one he’s always ready to take. (This is a recurring theme in the films I’m going to discuss today: willingness vs reluctance to accept their responsibilities.) The first scene of the movie shows Bruce fighting against a gang of copycats and violent imitators, who have used his likeness to exact their own vigilantism on the streets of Gotham. Bruce swoops in, tears through them effortlessly, and goes home to stitch himself up without so much as help from Alfred. Bruce has only been Batman for a year, yet he’s jaded, experienced, and though he’s had a massive social impact on Gotham City, he wants this to be a one-man crusade as much as possible. 

Bruce believes that Batman is his responsibility because it’s his creation, not a symbol for others to use. It’s important to think about that statement (and, indeed, all three of the films I’m analyzing today) in the context of their broader trilogies. In Batman Begins, Bruce conceives of Batman as a symbol of hope for the innocent and a symbol of fear for the corrupt. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce begins opening up to others, and he accepts help from his fellow men, passing the symbol onto Blake in the film’s ending. The Dark Knight is the middle chapter of that character arc, where the purpose of Batman has been realized but Bruce still believes it’s his symbol alone. 

That’s an important diversion from the source material. Modern comics portray Batman as an outlet, freeing Bruce from his survivor’s guilt, letting him vent his frustration in the pursuit of justice. Here, the Batman identity is a burden. Bruce has isolated himself from the rest of the world to keep them safe, but he’s not happy about it. He wants to be free. He wants to rejoin the outside world he works so hard to protect. 

I mentioned that all of these films deal with social connections, loss, isolation and failure. In contrast to the other movies I’ll discuss, Bruce’s isolation is one of his own creation. Batman is a symbol not just for hope and fear, but protection. Throwing himself into the Batman persona night after night helps him keep his loved ones safe, but it ironically distances him from them just as much. Grounding him to reality are his three mentors: 

Gordon aids Batman at night, reminding Bruce time and time again the necessity of this crusade, and giving him optimism that he might one day leave Gotham in better hands. 

Alfred acts as a father figure during the day, comforting Bruce and dealing with the emotional fallout of the film’s events. 

Lucius Fox stands at the border of both those worlds, fully aware of Bruce’s secret and capable of helping in any way. 

All three men provide sagely advice for Bruce, and Bruce holds onto their guidance, believing that their words and support will guide him towards a future with Rachel. Yet none of them could have predicted the sheer destructive force of Joker. 

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In this film, Bruce’s greatest failure is the death of Rachel and the disfiguring of her fiance, Harvey Dent. 

Bruce’s relationship with Rachel should be obvious to anyone who watched the previous film, but his relationship with Harvey is far more complex. Remember, in Nolan’s interpretation of the character, Bruce is the real man and Batman is the mask, not the other way around; so his surface-level analysis of Harvey is that he’s merely an obstacle for Rachel’s affections, not someone he should take seriously as a rival for her interests. He wants to be annoyed with Harvey, and he has no problem showing up Harvey...but the more logical, rational part of his brain acknowledges that Harvey and Rachel do treat each other well, and he respects Harvey’s devotion to law, order and safety. Besides, Bruce believes that he may one day be free of the Batman identity, and he believes the best way for him and Rachel to be together is for Harvey to save Gotham as its “White Knight” in contrast to his “Dark Knight.” He can’t hate Harvey, because he thinks Harvey might be his chance at happiness. 

When Harvey is disfigured, Bruce takes it personally. Harvey was supposed to be Gotham’s public defender during the day, while Bruce would watch over the city from the shadows? Bruce believes Harvey’s disfigurement (and subsequent transformation into Two-Face) is his fault. Essentially, from Bruce’s perspective, his own failure cost himself his only chance at love, peace and happiness. 

Of the three films I’ll be discussing today, The Dark Knight is the one that’s most unambiguously a tragedy. Bruce’s once-noble tendency to take on the burdens of Gotham becomes a problem when he holds himself accountable for what happened to Rachel and Harvey. 

Bruce never got a chance to be with the love of his life because she died. But even if she hadn’t, it doesn’t matter, because she and Harvey were going to elope. Bruce thought happiness was within the palm of his hand, but it was so far out of reach he couldn’t even see it. 

By the end of the film, Bruce’s life has fallen apart in ways we hadn’t even though possible. He has lost the woman of his dreams, Harvey is dead, Gordon has severed their relationship by destroying the Bat Signal, and Fox has eradicated the spy network they’d built up throughout the film. The people he’d worked so hard to defend hate him, and all that he has left is Alfred, who lies to him about Rachel and Harvey to spare him pain. 

Bruce begins The Dark Knight thinking that his long nightmare is almost over, but it’s barely begun. But it doesn’t matter. Just like in the beginning of the film, Bruce is ready to bear these burdens alone. That, of course, leads into his character arc in The Dark Knight Rises, where he has to trust the people of Gotham (such as Selina and Blake) to help in his crusade. 

The Winter Soldier:

Often praised as The Dark Knight of the MCU, The Winter Soldier covers much of the same themes. But whereas The Dark Knight focuses on self-imposed isolation and the severing of social connections, Winter Soldier focuses on involuntary isolation. 

Like Bruce Wayne before him, Steve Rogers is separated from the outside world. He devotes himself day in and day out to protecting the innocent, and he does it without a second thought; not in the hope of a brighter tomorrow, but because it’s all he has left. And when your whole life is putting your life on the line for other people…well, you don’t have much of your own life at all, do you?

Steve’s world is an unfamiliar one. The love of his life is now an elderly woman. Gods exist, aliens invade the world, and men in iron suits fly around the globe. He works with SHIELD, which supposedly has the same values as him, but the world that they’re protecting isn’t the same as the one he fought for. 

Steve’s arc in the film plays out like Bruce’s in The Dark Knight, only accelerated. Steve loses his mentor figure Nick Fury, becomes a hated enemy of the law, and the people he was trying to protect (SHIELD) turn on him. But the one thing that keeps Steve going—the one thing that keeps him sane—is Bucky. 

Just as the Rachel-Bruce-Harvey love triangle is the heart of The Dark Knight, the Steve-Bucky friendship is at the heart of The Winter Soldier. But this isn’t a film about Steve failing Bucky, like Bruce failed Rachel and Harvey; this is a film about Steve attempting to undo his failure. 

Bucky Barnes represents the last piece of Steve Rogers that has survived into the modern era. Like the country he fought for and the woman he loved, Bucky is almost unrecognizable from the version Steve knew, but the difference is that Steve has a chance to restore Bucky. 

In The Winter Soldier, Steve effectively has no identity of his own. He’s a man defined entirely by the things he did decades ago and the strange people he associates with now. Just like with Bruce, he’s more symbol than man, more Captain America than Steve Rogers. But if Bucky is alive, and if Steve can get Bucky back to his side, it would legitimize all of the pain that Steve has gone through and validate his identity as a man instead of a symbol. This isn’t a movie about Bucky’s redemption, it’s a movie about Steve’s redemption, and how far one man is willing to go to undo the biggest failure of his life. 

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Ultimately, Steve cannot get Bucky to his side. His old best friend saves him but leaves him half-dead in the movie’s close, and Steve is forced to pick up the pieces of his life with his new allies, Natasha and Sam. It would be easy to call it there, to say that, as with The Dark Knight, happiness is not in Steve’s grasp. As with Bruce and Rachel, we could say the theme of the film is that we cannot restore things to the way they were, even when we seem so close. But to say this would be insincere. 

Just as we examined The Dark Knight in context of its trilogy, we have to examine The Winter Soldier in the context of the MCU. If The First Avenger established Steve’s old world, and The Winter Soldier establishes this new and unfamiliar world, Civil War establishes the meeting of the two. That film shows Steve saving Bucky once and for all, protecting him from this cruel and bizarre world they inhabit, and giving him a new chance at life, but not without a cost. 

Effectively, Civil War shows Steve reconciling his old friend with his new family. That’s why I still love the Airport Battle and the aftermath, with Natasha betraying Team Stark and Team Rogers being imprisoned on the Raft. It shows that even though Steve can’t make things go back the way they were, even though he can’t reverse time (yet), he can try to forge a better tomorrow. The Winter Soldier effectively sets up Steve’s arc in Civil War, where he makes peace with his past without abandoning all of it. 

Logan: 

Just as Winter Soldier was praised as TDK of the MCU, Logan was hailed by critics as the X-Men’s take on that same film. As with our previous two films, the titular hero has sealed himself off from the world and lost his social connections, a common theme with the character of Wolverine. And as with Winter Soldier, the titular hero is isolated in an involuntary fashion. 

There has been some confusion about where the film is set, and Fox’s final verdict seems to be that the film is set in the same universe created at the end of Days of Future Past. While it ultimately doesn’t matter too much, I bring this up because it will inform how we think of the themes of the film and the broader context behind it. 

The first three X-Men films tell a cohesive story, albeit one that varies tremendously in quality. Logan begins the story as an outsider scared of commitment, takes on new responsibility in X2, then ascends to the role of leader and hero in The Last Stand. 

But then, we got an interesting trilogy focusing on just Wolverine. 2008 gave us X-Men Origins: Wolverine explains how he became the amnesiac outsider of the first film, while 2013’s much better The Wolverine put him in an outsider role once again, this time so he can come to understand his past and move on from his actions in the original trilogy. Logan is the third film of that trilogy, bringing a close to this character. 

Jean’s death is the driving failure that motivates Logan in The Wolverine, but that films ends with him coming to terms with the necessity of his actions and reembracing his role in society as a hero. Logan is set in a new timeline, one where he didn’t have to kill Jean, but the X-Men are all dead anyways, and mutantkind is on the brink of extinction due to genetically-engineered drugs erasing the X-Gene. The X-Men’s death and the extinction of mutantkind are not Logan’s fault, but he carries guilt for them anyways, because he was responsible for the creation of this timeline in Days of Future Past. And it’s these failures that have sent him to the fringes of society, once again an outsider with no place in the world, this time with an old man to look after. 

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Unlike Bruce, who isolates himself in the hopes of creating a brighter tomorrow, and Steve, who isolates himself because his world is unfamiliar; Logan isolates himself to deal with his guilt and care for Charles, the only person in this world who understands the guilt he feels for creating this timeline. 

That’s an interesting distinction: in this trifecta of films, Xavier is once again a fallen mentor / father figure, but he differs from Fury, Gordon, Alfred or Fox in that Logan is looking after him, not the other way around. Emotionally, this forces Logan into the role of a caregiver, a far cry from the animalistic young man he was in Origins and the guilt-ridden ronin he was in The Wolverine, and this caregiver role sets up his interactions with Lara. 

If Steve and Bucky are the beating heart of The Winter Soldier, and Bruce, Harvey and Rachel are the beating heart of The Dark Knight; Lara and Logan are the beating heart of Logan. 

Whereas The Dark Knight is about failure to save the ones you love, and The Winter Soldier is about trying (and failing) to undo that same failure by painstakingly restoring things to the way they once were; Logan is about successfully redeeming yourself from that failure by creating a new future. Logan holds himself accountable for not preventing the psychic seizure that killed the X-Men, and taking care of the father figure responsible is his form of penance. 

When Logan becomes a father figure himself, guiding the next generation of mutants and teaching his clone to be better than him; this represents him rejoining society, and he’s essentially undoing his mistakes, redeeming himself for a crime that he was never to blame for in the first place. 

Like The Dark Knight, Logan is a film that ends in tragedy. Charles was killed in his sleep, Logan perished trying to avenge him, and the few people who were willing to help Mutants have been killed along the way. But hope has not been extinguished. Lara lives on, ready to lead a new generation of X-Men. And for a moment—just a moment—Logan was a son, and a father, and he was happy.