Haytil -
There is nothing wrong with the idea of Batman trying to leave something behind to the people of Gotham. While I agree with DiFabio that the "quintessential Batman" was supposed to be the dark, anti-hero, driven mostly by his own twisted psyche and problems, but since TDKR deals with the END of Dark Knight saga, its fitting that he wanted to leave down a legacy. Nolan allready showed Batman driven mostly by his own problems in the first two films. In "Rises", he wanted to show Bruce getting past the mask and doing some lasting change. As for Bruce retiering, its not like its a totally uncharacterstic of Batman. This dark, brooding Bruce, haunting the corridors of Wayne manor, is something that actually fits the twisted character of moody ******* like Bruce, in a way. So the idea was ok, the execution though, was flawed, for reason that were allready mentioned many times. Some of the problems regarding the retirment, would be solved by making him active during a few more years in the 8-year gap.
That is I think the defining characteristic of Nolan bats. He is angry, furious, mentaly twisted by the events of his childhood and living in a setting that is far more bleaker and nihilistic than most comic book movies, but he himself is mostly driven by the desire to help people of Gotham. His Batman is an anti-hero, but what happend to his parents also filled him with a need to better that damned city, and to do lasting change, as opposed to limiting himself to petty crime fighting only to satiate whatever need coming from his twisted psyche.
Personally, I actually prefer the vision of Batman as a total, uredeemable psycho, but the idea behind Nolan version is sound too, especialy since the three films are showing a progessive character arc, with a proper ending. It's an elseworld interpetation of the character that adds new ideas and themes, but still stays mostly true to the "cannon", even though the comic cannon is so ****ing cluttered, messed up, and choked with different ideas and versions, that its hard to really say what is a truly "cannon" version of Batman.
As for the timeline - it doesn't really matter if its a year or ten. Couse he managed to do planety over the time we saw him. It would be great if he was to be more active during the 8 year gap, but what was shown works too.
I think he meant the arguments on the previous page