Nolan's Batman Trilogy Repeated a Clever Trick With Its Villains (And It Clearly Worked)
Did you ever notice that each of the main villains in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy repeated the same trick at the beginning of their movies?
Specifically, Ra's al Ghul, the Joker and Bane, during their introductory appearances in their respective installments of the trilogy, all resorted to the same stratagem: posing as one of their own henchmen.
When Ra's al Ghul meets Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, Ra's doesn't introduce himself, but instead used the alias Henri Ducard, with an underling posing as Ra's al Ghul, the leader of the dreaded League of Shadows.
The opening sequence of The Dark Knight features a gang of criminals in clown masks robbing a bank. While they appear to be the Joker's henchmen, by the end of the scene one of those criminals is revealed to be the Joker himself, after he picks off the rest one by one.
And In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane disguised himself as one of his own henchmen who had been taken prisoner along with scientist Leonid Pavel, as a part of his complicated plan.
And not only all of them disguise themselves as their own underlings, each of those scenes includes a conversation about the main villain, as a way of distracting the audience, while informing them about the villain's reputation.
When Bruce meets Henri Ducard in prison, the latter presents himself as an associate of Ra's al Ghul, whom he describes as a man feared in the criminal underworld. During the robbery in The Dark Knight, the criminals talk about the Joker and why they think he's called that.
Finally, in the opening scene of The Dark Knight Rises, the CIA operative attempts to interrogate the prisoners about Bane, clueless about the fact that Bane is one of the prisoners.
As to why Nolan liked this trick so much, we сan mostly speculate.
To some extent, it might be his love of unexpected twists, combined with effective demonstration of the villains as scheming and intelligent masterminds. However, he also might be saying that these men, despite all of their outward dissimilarities, and having no seeming connections in terms of their plans and motives, might be not so different, after all.