Afterthought : Life After The Dark Knight Rises

It's over. 

Those two words were the first things, and for a time the only things, that popped in my head when the credits started rolling at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. 
It wasn't a gleeful thought, nor was it a mournful thought.
It was merely a thought, a resolve, an understanding, a fact. 
Nolan's Batman trilogy was over and it was never coming back. I didn't want it to end. I don't know about you, but I wanted to see what happened to Gotham City next. I wanted to know which of Batman's expansive rogue's gallery would attack Gotham City next. Most of all, I wanted to know what would happen to Batman. Not Bruce Wayne, mind you. Wayne's story is done, but Batman endures.

In Nolan's world, the Batman is a symbol, much like Lee Falk's pulp hero Phantom. Nolan's Batman is a mythical figure rather than a person. He is something to be feared, a myth that mothers tell their children to coax them into sleep.
Nolan's Batman is what Batman wants to be to his criminals : a monster, a myth, a legend.
But the myth is over. The legend has ended.
It's time for something new.
Batman, the character, has endured for the past 73 years. In the beginning, he was envisioned as a ripoff of pulp heroes like Zorro and Shadow, dressed in a costume and was made in hopes that the character would repeat the success experienced by Superman.

73 years on, Batman is the most famous comicbook character. People who know jackshit about films, comics or pop culture in general will know about Batman... and Robin. 

Batman is immortal. Professors, Doctors and Historians have tried to find out why, but for all their conclusions and reasonings, they don't really have an answer other than "Batman's badass." 
The fact of the matter is that the character will endure. No matter what shit you throw at him, he'll live. Long after you are gone, your children are gone and your bones have become dust, Batman will be there, either in the pages of a comicbook or on a screen, moving, breathing. He'll always be there. 
Batman is immortal. And he doesn't need a dip in the Lazarus Pit to be so. 

After the success of Joss Whedon's Avengers, a Justice League film is inevitable.
Unfortunately, the world Christopher Nolan has created has no place for superheroes. You can't have a Superman or a Flash or a Green Lantern flying over the gritty skyline of Gotham City. Nolan's world just doesn't have any space for the Justice League.

  

Batman will be rebooted, there's no other way around it.
It definitely won't find a director greater than Nolan's stature, but I hope  it finds someone worthy of the franchise. I hope the Batman reboot gets a director who respects the character.
So, what can we expect from the reboot?
I want it gritty, I want it dark as it gets. But I don't want it to be real. What Nolan did was make Gotham City feel real. I like my fictional cities... fictional. I don't want Gotham to be real, and I think it'll work better that way. It'll make Batman an allegory, a myth, more of a legend than the Nolan films tried to make him. It'll be Batman as he should be. At the same time, I don't want Batman to be treated like a mythic symbol in the films. He is a symbol to the people of Gotham, and to pop culture in general, but to us, the audience and the readers, he is but a character. Batman is a person.

I hope the reboot is more about Batman the character than Batman the legend. It is inherent that humanity will desire a legend over a human being, but does humanity need a legend now? No. Legends are often overrated. What humanity needs now is a character they can connect to, a character they can empathize with. The Batman needs to be Bruce Wayne now.
And then of course, he'll be joining the Justice League. I'm a hardcore DC fan to boot. I mean, I love me some Marvel, but DC... you can't beat the DC Universe. Although it's not doing very well now, DC will forever be Marvel's more iconic, slightly pretentious big brother. To say that I can't wait for the Justice League film is an absolute understatement. It's preposterous. Seeing those characters together on the big screen will be a sublime experience and I hope the film gets the director it deserves.
My top pick for the helmer's chair is Avengers director Joss Whedon. Not because he's already handled something similar, but because there's nobody better to do it. He respects these characters, he loves these characters, and if anyone can do justice to them, it's him.
Alas, it won't be him. Warner Bros has already treated him badly when he presented his Wonder Woman idea to them and I don't think Whedon will do them any favors any time soon. The prospect of Warners getting someone with Whedon's passion for comicbooks also looks bleak.
We can but hope now that the inevitable Batman reboot gets a director who respects a character, we can only hope that justice will be done to the Justice League.
For Nolan and co., the road has reached it's end. As for Batman, the road goes ever on.