Thoughts on The Dark Knight.

By nature, the superhero movie seeks to start a discussion on the nature of heroes (or at least it should). I think that every child when growing up has had heroes that he or she looks up to, whether they be real people they interact with, historical people, or imaginary, fictional characters. Indeed, I think as adults, although we might not talk about it as much, heroes still loom large in our subconscious minds. Unfortunately, most superhero movies fail to deliver, with most descending into pure mindless CG brawls, with uninteresting villains and heroes that are not well written. A few do stand out tho, like Spiderman 2 (Dr Octopus), Iron man 1 and the Winter Soldier, but I feel that no movie has ever come close to Nolan’s masterpiece, The Dark Knight.

Why so? Is it because of them having a good villain? Is it because of its excellent cinematography? The popularity of Batman? All these are factors, yes, but ultimately, I feel it’s because of its plot, that dares to tackle the question “What makes a hero different?”, and does so in such a way that isn’t superficial, or without real character growth, and gives an answer that, while not all will agree with, is undeniably able to challenge and speak to our inbuilt ideas of what a hero is truly like. Or in other words, it can speak to one of the aspects of our very core of humanity.

We begin with the villain. While most villains tend be one dimensional, or underpowered, or maybe even mildly interesting, almost all plots boil down to either 1) The villain is just evil and wants power/wealth/whatever, or 2) Something happened to the villain who used to be “good” and now he is trying to take revenge/right the world/shake things up. Writers and directors who feel the need to humanise their villains tend to do the second. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s just predictable, and so far, these villains tend to be unable to make their movie become exceptional.

Enter the Joker.

The Jokers motivations are very different from the usual ones. He doesn’t really have an origin story, nor is he in the remotest sense easily relatable, if it all. Sounds like a disaster in the making, right?

What drives the Joker? Simple: He wants to make everyone in Gotham see that, in Batman’s words, “Deep down, everyone is as ugly as you(Joker)”. He wants to show the world that everyone’s true nature is deeply non-heroic, selfish, and only concerned with one’s own wellbeing, and anyone who thinks otherwise is hypocritical. Indeed, he find it so amazing that we can justify and get used to soldiers dying in the truckloads during a war, yet get so upset when “…I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody loses their minds!”. He wants to reveal the truth that everyone is “only as good as the world allows them to be.” This motivation is truly unique. He might be pure evil, he might not be, but he undeniably is out to challenge Gotham’s sense of humanity and morality. He’s definitely not relatable (I mean, who in life sets out to destroy others sense of morality?), but his goal is deeply threatening to us sitting outside the world of Gotham. When cities in movies get destroyed, it’s hard to imagine those things happening to us, and indeed might not even be possible, but when the Joker wants to tear down Gotham’s soul, it can resonate very deeply within all of us. Just look at generations of philosophers and theologians past, musing on questions like this, on how to be moral, on how to protect our souls, on what makes good, good, and bad, bad.

And where does he start? He starts off with the intention to get rid of Batman, as the only force capable of hindering his plans. But very quickly he realises that Batman, while he does pose a problem, isn’t really all that he seems to be. Indeed, he is quick to notice that underneath the makeup and the suits and bat mobiles, Batman is far, far more similar to him than even Batman realises at first. So now he has a secondary goal: To see how far he can push Batman, and to make Batman break. Not physically break, mind you, but mentally break.

What does that mean? Batman was essentially born out of Bruce Wayne’s rage against the injustice of the world. In fact, in Batman Begins, he starts off wanting to kill the murderer of his parents, which is the catalyst for him to become Batman. Along the way, while his sense of justice never dies, he rediscovers the fact that killing is wrong (or some variation about that theme). He takes it upon himself to fight the forces that might conspire to pass apocalyptical judgement on Gotham (like how Ra’s al Ghul has decided that Gotham is irredeemably corrupt and thinks its judgement day has come in Batman Begins), but he also develops one rule: He will not take a life. He might choose not to save (like how he chooses not to save Ra’s al Ghul in the ending of Batman Begins), but he is quite clear that he won’t seek to kill.

So, when the Joker wants to break Batman, there are a lot of things going on under the hood. I think the Joker does realise that if someone is truly able to keep to this rule, it poses a challenge to his outlook on the world and humanity. It’s not arbitrary, and it’s clear, and its motivation is quite undeniably good. But he doesn’t believe that this is possible (“The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules”). And he’s gonna make Batman break that one rule.

But over the course of the movie he also comes to realise that Batman isn’t really his enemy. Both of them are outcasts from society, “freaks”, and the only reason why they idolise Batman for now is because he is useful to them now. He readily admits this to Batman, that he doesn’t want to kill him, and in his twisted way, says that they “complete each other”. And he spends a lot of time trying to convince Batman that they aren’t really that different after all. He tries to turn public opinion against Batman, by killing people until Batman reveals his true identity, juxtaposes Batman’s choices to not reveal himself as “killing” the innocent lives that otherwise would not have been taken had Batman given up, and always refers to Batman as “not one of them (the authorities/police)”.

And this troubles Batman deeply. Bruce Wayne more than anything wants to live a normal life, to reclaim the normal life he lost when his parents were killed. But the more he goes around as the Batman, the more he can feel this slipping away from him. So, he actually thinks of Rachel (his childhood love interest) as his out, his hope to escape from this life and go back to living a normal life. And when Harvey Dent comes along, he sees an opportunity to hang up the suit, as with Harvey Dent being a hero that the people can look up to, who is cleaning up Gotham, Gotham will have no more need for Batman. And the Joker has this uncanny ability to make Batman come so very, very close to breaking his one rule.

When the Joker plans the kidnapping of Harvey and Rachel, and has this plan to make Batman choose between saving one of them, Batman comes very close to killing the Joker. Batman almost loses control over his anger and rage bubbling inside him. And when the Joker finally gives Batman the choice to save either, he is finally issuing his challenge to Batman’s heroism. Saving Harvey is the heroic choice, as he is the supposed hope of Gotham, the one that Batman and Commissioner Gordon have been working together to clean up Gotham. But will he choose to save Harvey, at the cost of Rachel, and his hope of a normal life?

Batman chooses to save Rachel. Of course, it isn’t the end of the Jokers game (he swapped the locations of Rachel and Harvey, so Batman ends up saving Harvey while Rachel gets blown to smithereens), but that isn’t the main point. The point is that Batman, rather than choosing the heroic option, chooses the selfish option. Maybe what separates the difference between Batman and the Joker isn’t Batman’s one rule and his supposed heroism. Maybe it’s actually due to Batman still clinging on to the hope to live a normal life that stops him from becoming like the Joker, who obviously has no hope of living a normal life. Batman isn’t all that he sets out to be, apparently. And Batman realises that he failed the challenge. He apologises to an unconscious Harvey in the hospital, he feels that he, instead of inspiring good, has inspired “madness and death”, and he feels that the Joker has “won”.

Meanwhile, while Batman is reflecting, the Joker is completing his plans to unleash chaos on the city of Gotham. He start to play games with the rest of the city, by threatening to kill innocent people at hospitals until a random civilian murders Mr Reese (who actually is threatening to reveal the identity of Batman), and which eventually cumulates in his ferry game, which he puts explosives on 2 ferries, one pack full of criminals and the other with innocent civilians, gives each other the remote to the other ferry’s explosives, and threatens that if nobody blows the other ship by a certain time, he will blow both of them up. And its undeniable that Gotham is feeling the pressure. Remember, his goal isn’t to avoid capture and take control of Gotham, indeed its quite implausible that he will be able to. Rather, he is trying to turn Gotham’s ideas of good and evil on its head. To make an everyday civilian into a murderer. To make innocent civilians blow up a ship of criminals because “they had their chance”. To make cops kill civilians when they were trying to capture the joker by disguising civilians as the Jokers partners in crime. He wants to destroy Gotham’s ideas of heroism.

And this is where you see Batman/Bruce Wayne’s evolution as a hero. He finally learns what he must do to become a hero in the last act of a movie. He finds the location of the Joker and fights his way through the abandoned building where he set up shop, all the while preventing innocent lives from being taken by cops who have been tricked by the Joker. And it cumulates in their fistfight at the top of the building, where they have a perfect view of the 2 ferries that have been sabotaged by the Joker. And at the climax, where the clock literally strikes 12 which is the deadline for the ferries to blow each other up, the Joker momentarily gets the upper hand over Batman, and asks him to watch the fireworks…which don’t come. Both ferries ultimately choose not to save themselves by blowing the other ferry up.

And for once, the Joker actually looks upset. He is visibly angry and disappointed. While he is fumbling with the remote to blow up both ferries, Batman uses the opportunity to throw the Joker off the edge of the building, who is laughing all the way down…until Batman saves him from death too. Note that this is very different from the ending in Batman Begins, where he essentially lets Ra’s al Ghul die by not saving him. In this case he chooses to directly save the Joker. And while he pulls the Joker up, the Joker finally concedes that Batman is “immovable”, that when he says he will not take a life, he means it, and won’t give it up under any circumstance. Batman has finally passed the Jokers test. Maybe he really is a hero now.

But the game isn’t over. While Batman and the Joker have been doing their thing, Harvey has been going around Gotham shooting people by flipping a coin to decide if they live or die, as he feels that that is the only fair thing to do. And he eventually is confronted by Gordon and Batman, who see him threatening Gordon’s son with a gun pointed to his head. The Joker broke the shining light, the hope, that Commissioner Gordon and Batman were pinning their hopes on, to be a hero that Gotham can look up to. And both of them + the Joker realise that if the people of Gotham see the face of their “true hero”, they are going to descend into anarchy, to lose all hope in good (after all, if the greatest of them can fall to the Jokers level, what chance do they all have?).

But the amazing thing is, just as he tosses the coin to determine if he will shoot Gordon’s son, Batman tackles him down, as the coin falls on the ground, symbolising Batman finally triumphing against the forces of Chaos/ the Joker. No matter what the coin (which symbolises chaos by demonstrating how the taking of lives is pure chance) falls on, Batman “saves the day”, and is able to save a life. Through the entire movie the Joker keeps telling Batman that “Killing is making a choice”, demonstrating that in the test he gives him (If he chooses to save Rachel, he kills Harvey, and vice versa). But Batman finally overcomes this, and no matter what choice he makes (or in this case, the coin is making), Gordon’s son does not die, due to Batman’s heroism. And in the last scene of the movie, Batman decides to pin the sins of Harvey on himself. He asks Gordon to blame it all on him, to let the cops chase him instead, so that Harvey can continue being a “role model” for the people of Gotham, while he being the outcast can be demonised, as he finally realises that being a hero is being “whatever Gotham needs me to be”.

And that is Batman’s final evolution as a hero. The movie essentially answers the question it set out with, “What makes a hero different?”, with 3 main ideas. 1) A Hero is one that is able to give up everything (Batman gave up his chance to live a normal life). 2) A Hero will not bend under any circumstance (Batman doesn’t break his rule to not kill). 3) A Hero can be hated (By the end of the movie, the reputation of Batman is essentially gone as he is being portrayed as a killer). And while you might agree or disagree with these 3 statements, its undeniable that no superhero movie has even managed to come close to discussing these themes with the gravitas that is in this movie.

And if this might make you depressed, since these 3 ideal seem so hard, maybe impossible to achieve, which brings into question whether heroism even exists, maybe I should end off with this observation: Both ferries ultimately choose not to blow each other up without any intervention from Batman. They both choose to put the other above themselves. Granted, they don’t know the full truth, but just maybe, it tells us that as long as we put our hope in a Hero as an example (Harvey Dent), it is possible for us to overcome our human nature, and be heroic too.