The Dark Knight - 9/10

After four previous tries to make an interesting Batman film, Christopher Nolan made Batman Begins, which finally took the character seriously. The film studied Bruce Wayne’s psychology, how it was affected by the murder of his parents, and his eventual decision to become a masked vigilante to fight crime. Begins was easily better than any previous Batman film, even though it’s introverted style put limitations on what type of villain could be faced.

In The Dark Knight, Nolan’s sequel to Batman Begins, we are introduced to The Joker (Heath Ledger). The Joker is a terrorist who doesn’t ever seem to have a plan, let alone a motive. He may be one of the most complicated villains ever to appear in a film, and maybe that is the point Nolan is making with his inclusion. Throughout the film, Batman (Christian Bale) attempts to find and capture The Joker as he terrorizes Gotham. There really isn’t much more of a plot than that.

Batman is helped by two other crime fighters: Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), and the newly elected District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Dent also is dating Bruce’s old girlfriend Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), something which eats at Bruce throughout the film. These three men are the focus of the film and are forced to work together to fight The Joker and give Gotham hope for the future. Two others who return from Begins to help out Batman are Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who helps Bruce build a new Bat-suit, and his butler Alfred (Michael Caine).

The theme throughout The Dark Knight lies within The Joker and Gotham’s attempts to not only capture him, but to understand him. The villains in Begins were very scattershot and small-time because there was nobody for him to fight. Only the Scarecrow showed any psychotic capabilities, while the rest of them were mostly higher-up mob figures. Simply, these were all easy people for Batman to catch.


Cut to the opening of The Dark Knight, the Scarecrow has been dealing his hallucinogenic drugs to Gotham dealers and the dealers are complaining that they aren’t getting any repeat business. This doesn’t bother the Scarecrow since there is nobody else to mass distribute drugs, Batman caught them all. While the Scarecrow isn’t the most terrifying of Batman villains, he represents a void in the underground crime world where mid-level and lower gangsters must turn to someone like him in order to make any sort of living. This point is never made clearer than the first big scene with The Joker.

Thus the journey to understand The Joker begins. From the very beginning he points out the mob’s inability to find success and offers to take care of Batman for them. He says he will do it for a lot of money. Later in the film, he will claim several other motives, from sending a message to simply having fun. At times, The Joker may seem to have the most intricate of plans, yet later on he admits that he has no clue what he’s doing.

Batman at least attempts to know what he’s doing, yet The Joker, as well as some federal laws might prohibit some of his actions. Topics such as extradition and privacy are approached. There is a scene in The Dark Knight where Batman drops someone off a building in order to get some information. This parallels a scene in Batman Begins where Batman drops someone else off of a building, looking for information. However, in Begins, Batman has his legs tied up and makes sure he doesn’t get hurt. In this film, Batman breaks the guy’s legs.

The Dark Knight is filled with questions about morality, yet there are two which seem to stand above the others. One of them is “How important is it to be able to understand an unknown threat like The Joker?” There is a ton of symbolism in the film comparing The Joker to a mad dog. The criminals all keep dogs around them because they found out that they are the only weapon which can hurt Batman through his armor. The Joker is the only criminal who has had the ability to hurt Batman regardless of his armor, so far. Harvey Dent compares him to a “dog who has been let off his leash,” in his fight against the mob. The Joker compares himself to a dog chasing cars. At one point, Batman catches The Joker by tying him up and essentially putting him on a leash. Is The Joker really just a dog which has gone crazy?


The other big question is “At what cost is it acceptable to break laws in order to protect your citizens?” This question has many implications on how we view our world today. Like the previously mentioned scene where Batman throws someone off a building, he seeks information by beating and torturing many people. He also invades the privacy of a significant amount of Gotham’s residents in his search for The Joker. With all of this power, how much damage is allowed to be done to the people of Gotham if it means that they will be protected from violence? On the other side, how much violence will the people be willing to put up with before they can accept the intrusion?

It isn’t hard to see how Gotham in The Dark Knight mimics our real world today. Nolan has captured the post-9/11 zeitgeist perfectly and created a film which asks some very serious questions about our future. How much do we need to understand an unknown threat in order to not only be able to combat it, but to not live in fear of it? How willing are people to forego their freedoms so that they may be protected? How much power is too much power for one man, and how much does that power corrupt? These questions may not come with easy answers, but they are issues which need to be talked about, and The Dark Knight starts off the conversation better than any other film could have.