The Dark Knight Trilogy

Batman Begins

In Gotham City, young Bruce Wayne falls down a well and develops a fear of bats. One evening, Bruce visits the opera with his parents; the performers masquerading as bats upset him, and he asks to leave. As the Waynes leave the theater, a mugger named Joe Chill attempts to rob Bruce's parents and shoots them dead. Police sergeant Jim Gordon comforts the orphaned Bruce. The Gotham police capture Chill, who is sent to prison for his crime. Bruce is raised by the family butler, Alfred Pennyworth.
Fourteen years later, Chill testifies against mafia crime boss Carmine Falcone, and is paroled. Bruce intends to murder Chill to avenge his parents, but an assassin in Falcone's employ kills him first. Bruce's childhood friend, Rachel Dawes, confronts him about his desire for vengeance. After confronting Falcone, who says real power comes from being feared, Bruce spends the next seven years traveling the world, training in combat, and immersing himself in the criminal underworld. In a Bhutan prison, Bruce is approached by Henri Ducard, who recruits him into the League of Shadows, led by Ra's al Ghul. Ducard trains Bruce to conquer his fear using a hallucinogenic compound derived from the mountain's blue flowers. After completing his training, Bruce rejects the League's mandate for capital punishment and learns they plan to destroy Gotham, which Ra's believes is corrupt beyond saving. Bruce escapes after burning the League's temple; Ra's is killed by falling debris, while Bruce saves an unconscious Ducard.
Intent on fighting crime and redeeming Gotham, Bruce returns to Gotham, Alfred, and his family's company, Wayne Enterprises, which is being taken public by businessman William Earle. Company archivist Lucius Fox, a friend of Bruce's father, allows him access to prototype defense technologies, including a protective bodysuit and the Tumbler, an armored vehicle. Finding the well from his childhood, Bruce explores further, discovering a vast cave underneath Wayne Manor. Bruce poses publicly as a shallow playboy while taking up the vigilante identity of "Batman", inspired by his childhood fear.
Intercepting a drug shipment, Batman provides Rachel, now an assistant district attorney, with evidence against Falcone and enlists Gordon, one of Gotham's few honest police officers, to arrest him. In prison, Falcone meets with Dr. Jonathan Crane, a corrupt psychologist with whom Falcone has been smuggling drugs into Gotham. Falcone threatens to inform the police about a secret compound in the drugs unless Crane's mysterious employer cuts a deal with him. Donning a scarecrow mask, Crane sprays Falcone with a fear-inducing hallucinogen, driving him insane. While investigating Crane, Batman is sprayed with the hallucinogen. He awakens on his birthday, having been saved by Alfred and Fox, who developed an antidote for the toxin.
Rachel confronts Crane, who reveals the drug has been introduced into Gotham's water supply and gives her a potentially lethal dose. Batman captures Crane, who claims to work for Ra's al Ghul. Evading the police in the Tumbler, Batman saves Rachel and administers Fox's antidote. He gives her two antidote vials: one for Gordon, and one for mass production. At Bruce's birthday party, Ducard reveals himself as the true Ra's al Ghul, who employed Crane to weaponize the League's blue flower compound. Having stolen a powerful microwave emitter from Wayne Enterprises, Ra's plans to vaporize Gotham's water supply, rendering Crane's drug airborne and causing mass hysteria that will destroy the city. He burns down Wayne Manor, but Alfred rescues Bruce.
The League of Shadows releases Crane and the other Arkham inmates into the Narrows, a poverty-ridden district of Gotham. Rachel enters the Narrows and finds Gordon, but the police isolate the district. Ra's loads the emitter onto Gotham's monorail to release the drug at the city's central water source under Wayne Tower. Rachel is attacked by Crane but fends him off with a taser. As the gas strikes the Narrows, Rachel, the inoculated Gordon, and Batman struggle to survive. Batman reveals his identity to Rachel before fighting Ra's on the train. Gordon uses the Tumbler's cannons to destroy the monorail's track and Batman glides from the train as it derails and crashes, killing Ra's.
Rachel now respects Bruce but refuses to be with him, promising they can be together when Gotham no longer needs Batman. Batman becomes a public hero. After purchasing a controlling stake in Wayne Enterprises, Bruce fires Earle and replaces him with Fox. Gordon is promoted to Lieutenant, shows Batman the Bat-Signal, and tells him about a criminal who leaves behind Joker playing cards. Batman glides away into the night to investigate.

The Dark Knight

A gang of masked criminals rob a mafia-owned bank in Gotham City, betraying and killing each other until the sole survivor, the Joker, reveals himself as the mastermind and escapes with the money. The vigilante Batman, district attorney Harvey Dent, and police lieutenant Jim Gordon ally to eliminate Gotham's organized crime. Batman's true identity, the billionaire Bruce Wayne, publicly supports Dent as Gotham's legitimate protector, believing Dent's success will allow him to retire as Batman and romantically pursue his childhood friend Rachel Dawes—despite her being with Dent.
Gotham's mafia bosses gather to discuss protecting their organizations from the Joker, the police, and Batman. The Joker interrupts the meeting and offers to kill Batman for half of the fortune their accountant, Lau, concealed before fleeing to Hong Kong to avoid extradition. With the help of Wayne Enterprises CEO Lucius Fox, Batman finds Lau in Hong Kong and returns him to the custody of the Gotham police. His testimony enables Dent to apprehend the crime families. The bosses accept the Joker's offer, and he kills high-profile targets involved in the trial, including the judge and police commissioner Gillian Loeb. Although Gordon saves the mayor, the Joker threatens that his attacks will continue until Batman reveals his identity. He targets Dent at a fundraising dinner and throws Rachel out of a window, but Batman rescues her.
Bruce struggles to understand the Joker's motives, to which his butler Alfred Pennyworth says that "some men just want to watch the world burn." Dent claims he is Batman to lure the Joker out, who attacks the police convoy transporting Dent. Batman and Gordon apprehend the Joker, and Gordon is promoted to commissioner. At the police station, Batman interrogates the Joker, who says he finds Batman entertaining and has no intention of killing him. Having deduced Batman's feelings for Rachel, the Joker reveals she and Dent are being held separately in buildings rigged to explode. Batman races to rescue Rachel while Gordon and the other officers go after Dent, but they discover the Joker has given their positions in reverse. The explosives detonate, killing Rachel and severely burning Dent's face on one side. The Joker escapes custody, extracts the fortune's location from Lau, and burns it, killing Lau in the process.
Coleman Reese, a consultant for Wayne Enterprises, deduces and tries to expose Batman's identity, but the Joker threatens to blow up a hospital unless Reese is killed. While the police evacuate hospitals and Gordon struggles to keep Reese alive, the Joker meets with a disillusioned Dent, persuading him to take the law into his own hands and avenge Rachel. Dent defers his decision-making to his now half-scarred, two-headed coin, killing the corrupt officers and the mafia involved in Rachel's death. As panic grips the city, the Joker reveals that two evacuation ferries, one carrying civilians and the other prisoners, are rigged to explode at midnight unless one group sacrifices the other. To the Joker's disbelief, the passengers refuse to kill one another. Batman subdues the Joker but refuses to kill him. Before the police arrest the Joker, he says that although Batman proved incorruptible, his plan to corrupt Dent has succeeded.
Dent takes Gordon's family hostage, blaming his negligence for Rachel's death. He flips his coin to decide their fates, but Batman tackles him to save Gordon's son, and Dent falls to his death. Believing Dent is the hero the city needs, and the truth of his corruption will harm Gotham, Batman takes the blame for his death and actions, persuading Gordon to conceal the truth. Alfred burns an undelivered letter from Rachel to Bruce that says she chose Dent, and Fox destroys the invasive surveillance network that helped Batman find the Joker. The city mourns Dent as a hero, and the police launch a manhunt for Batman.

The Dark Knight Rises

Bane, a former member of the League of Shadows, leads an attack on a CIA plane over Uzbekistan to abduct nuclear physicist Dr. Leonid Pavel. Meanwhile, eight years after the death of Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent and the arrest of the Joker, organized crime has been eradicated in Gotham by the Dent Act, legislation that gives expanded powers to the police. Commissioner Jim Gordon has kept Dent's killing spree a secret and allowed the blame for his crimes to fall on Batman. Bruce Wayne, still mourning the death of Rachel Dawes, has become a recluse.
Bane conspires with Wayne Enterprises board member John Daggett to take over the company by obtaining Bruce's fingerprints. Burglar Selina Kyle steals them from Wayne Manor for Daggett, but he double-crosses her, prompting her to alert the police. Bane's henchmen capture Gordon in the sewers but he escapes and is found by John Blake, an orphaned police officer who has deduced Bruce's secret identity. Blake persuades Bruce to resume his vigilantism. Bane attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange and uses Bruce's fingerprints to verify fraudulent transactions, leaving him ousted from his company and bankrupt. Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce's butler, resigns out of fear that Bruce will get himself killed fighting Bane, revealing that Rachel and Dent had intended to marry. Bane kills Daggett, while Bruce and Wayne Enterprises' new CEO, Miranda Tate, become lovers.
Selina agrees to take Batman to Bane, but instead leads him into a trap under Wayne Tower. Bane gloats that he intends to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's mission to destroy Gotham City before he brutally cripples Batman in combat. He takes Bruce to an ancient underground prison in the Middle East, where Bruce learns that Ra's al Ghul's child was born and raised there, but had a protector who helped that child escape. Back in Gotham, Bane detonates explosives to trap the police forces in the sewers, destroys all but one bridge surrounding the city, kills Gotham mayor Anthony Garcia, and forces Pavel to convert the fusion reactor core owned by Wayne Enterprises into a decaying neutron bomb before publicly killing him. He exposes Dent's crimes to the city and releases the prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary, effectively taking over Gotham. He also has Gotham's elite exiled and killed in proletarian kangaroo courts presided over by Jonathan Crane.
Five months later, Bruce, now healed, escapes the prison. As Batman, he returns to Gotham and frees the police, and together they war with Bane's militia. During the battle, Miranda stabs Batman, revealing herself as Ra's al Ghul's daughter Talia. Bane was her protector who had helped her escape the pit, becoming mauled in the process. Talia activates the bomb, but it fails due to Gordon blocking the signal. Selina kills Bane and helps Batman pursue Talia, hoping to return the bomb to the reactor chamber, where it can be stabilized. Talia's truck crashes, but she remotely floods and destroys the reactor chamber before dying. With no way to stop the detonation, Batman reveals his identity to Gordon, and uses his aerial craft, the Bat, to haul the bomb over the bay, where it safely explodes.
In the aftermath, Batman is presumed dead and honored as a hero. Wayne Manor becomes an orphanage, and Bruce's estate is left to Alfred. Gordon finds the Bat-Signal repaired, while Lucius Fox discovers that Bruce had fixed the Bat's malfunctioning autopilot. In Florence, Alfred discovers that Bruce is alive and in a relationship with Selina, and they acknowledge each other with a smile. Blake, whose legal first name is revealed as Robin, resigns from the police department and receives a package leading him to the Batcave.