When ‘The Dark Knight’ came out, I confess that I did not have tremendously high hopes. Not because of Heath Ledger as the Joker or anything I’d heard about the production, but simply because I had yet to see a live-action Batman movie I actually liked after six tries (I liked the ’89 Batman when it came out, but it hasn’t aged well for me.) Even ‘Batman Begins’ holds the distinction of being the one Christopher Nolan movie I haven’t been able to really get behind (its messages about violence strike me as extremely confused. “I won’t kill this man because Killing Is Wrong! And to save him, I’m going to blow up the building with the entire League of Shadows still inside it!”)
But ‘The Dark Knight’ worked. It was, finally, the Batman movie I had been looking for. A brilliant Joker story that made the character convincing, terrifying, and absolutely riveting to watch. A deep, heartfelt exploration of human morality as the Joker works on Gotham City in an effort to prove that given the right circumstances, with the proper motivation, anyone and everyone will become a killer…and fails. Or does he? Seeing Harvey Dent finally snap and prove that at least for him, the Joker was right is a cruel, twisted, but ultimately honest exploration of both characters. It’s a great movie from beginning to almost-end.
Because that’s the one problem with ‘The Dark Knight’. The ending makes no goddamn sense. (I’ll explain why after the cut. Spoilers, sweetie!)
Okay, so we get the idea that Harvey Dent died a raving madman, and there’s no way that this can ever get out because Gotham City needs him as an inspirational figure and not just one more politician chewed up and spit out by the brutality all around him. Batman heroically volunteers to take the fall for this, letting Commissioner Gordon paint him as the murderer who pushed Dent to his death (which is, um, more or less the truth, because Christian Bale’s Batman really isn’t that good at the whole “not killing his enemies accidentally-on-purpose” thing.)
But this is a Really Bad Idea. For one thing, it gives the Joker the victory he was craving just as surely as if they’d let the truth slip out. The Joker’s endgame was to break Gotham’s spirits by proving that its inspirational figures could become vicious murderers under the right circumstances, and Batman was (in his own way) just as inspirational as Harvey Dent. (Maybe moreso…I don’t think Harvey Dent inspired people to run around the city dressed in suits prosecuting people.)
If Batman is seen to be a cold-blooded, irrational killer, it works to serve the Joker’s ends just as surely as if Dent was. It also has the additional problem of being difficult to believe; despite the fact that Bale’s Batman actually has a pretty good bodycount, Maroni is fully confident that he doesn’t have the guts to kill him when push comes to shove. (Actually, push did come to shove. It was after that when Maroni decided Batman didn’t have the guts to kill him.)
And finally, it’s just plain stupid. If you’re going to lie about what really happened, why sit there arguing about who’s going to take the blame when there’s a ready-made homicidal maniac who killed someone in that very building just a couple of days ago? One who already made an attempt or two on the life of Harvey Dent, to boot.
Just blame the Joker. Tell everyone that the Joker had one more plan, that his goons kidnapped Gordon’s family, and that Harvey Dent heroically trailed them from the hospital despite his horrific injuries. While Batman was across town capturing the Joker and bringing him to justice, Dent saved Gordon’s family, but at the cost of his own life. The Joker’s thugs fled when Batman arrived, sneaking past a police cordon and escaping into Gotham, but they’re now leaderless with the Joker behind bars.
Honestly, why wouldn’t this work? The story’s entirely believable, and nobody involved is really going to be interested in exposing Dent’s mania anyway. The Joker might insist it isn’t true, but it’s not like he’s really got a whole lot of credibility here. “Well, yes, I did kidnap thirty or forty people, plant bombs all over Gotham, murder a bunch of cops by slicing Glasgow smiles into their faces, blow up a hospital, and disfigure Harvey Dent…but this kind of thing is really beneath me!”
I suppose that what happened on the screen is what I’ve got to accept for now, since it’s clearly setting up the grand finale to Nolan’s vision. (And I love that Bane is the villain. Bane is a much better villain than he gets credit for, a much better villain than he was frequently written post-Knightfall, and I am really looking forward to seeing what a hellishly talented writer/director does with the character.) And I suppose that you could claim that both Batman and Gordon were traumatized and not thinking clearly, and that Batman has displayed just enough of a martyr complex in the first two movies that it’s plausible he’d come up with a solution that screws himself over. But I still have to squint pretty hard to buy it.
Related Articles
39 users responded in this post
One of my many problems with the film was that Nolan seemed to have a perfectly logical and workable philosophical framework for the relationship of Batman and the Joker, and then managed to faceplant on the execution, including but not limited to the problems cited in this post. I just think it’s emblematic of a larger muddiness (not complexity; muddiness) in Nolan’s articulation of whatever he thought was going on, philosophically.
I think that you have an excellent point, and agree with almost all of your arguments.
“The Joker’s endgame was to break Gotham’s spirits by proving that its inspirational figures could become vicious murderers under the right circumstances”
I posit that his endgame was to prove that “good people” could break their own rules and become vicious murderers. This, done publicly, would then break Gotham’s spirit. In the end, Batman didn’t “murder” anyone, including The Joker. (Let’s leave out the accidentallyonpurposekillings, yes?) He didn’t break, despite the chaos around him.
Joker wanted Batman (and Dent) to break. This was his primary goal. Everyone else is an audience, rather than Batman being the audience to Joker’s toying with the city. Therefore, while it may not serve Gotham to have Batman take the fall (except to set up the Batman-context that we’re familiar with), it still proves the Joker wrong. At least about Batman.
Batman becoming a deranged killer is more likely in the eyes of the Gotham citizenry than Dent doing so. They won’t miss out on too much.
@clodia_risa: I agree that his masterpiece was going to be the breaking of Batman (even Dent was a secondary goal to that, I think, although Dent is his triumph…)
But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that everyone else was just an audience. The Joker is a brilliant performance artist. Everyone becomes a participant as well as the audience. The people who think they’re watching the Joker work, be they mobsters or cops or Reese or the people on the ferry, all of them wind up drawn into the drama and forced to decide whether they will kill to survive.
It’s truly brilliant the way the Joker’s little plans are microcosms of his grand plan even as they advance it. “If the Batman doesn’t reveal himself, I’ll kill an innocent person every night.” “If the people of Gotham don’t kill Reese, I’ll blow up a hospital.” The cops are being maneuvered into killing hostages, the people on the ferry are offered the choice to kill each other. Everything is about making someone else become the Joker.
This Joker doesn’t want money. He wants validation. And whether it’s Batman who kills Dent or Dent who kills Gordon, he ultimately gets it.
This is an excellent Watsonian take on how TDK, an otherwise excellent movie, faceplants at the end, John. Might I offer up a Doylist critique as well?
Playing out Dent’s endgame as they did, with the really stupid lies surrounding it and Gordon’s somewhat incoherent rant at the end, was a big narrative blunder, I feel. TDK is a crowded movie as it is; Harvey Dent works as an integral part of that.
But Two-Face DOESN’T. Harvey is Two-Face for what, like a day? That does a disservice to the mythology surrounding the character and to Harvey’s entire character arc. They had to seriously rush and compress his ‘career’ as Two-Face to make it fit in the running time, and then they KILLED him. That’s contrary to the logical narrative flow and not in a good way. You want Harvey to stick around. Ideally, he’s used in the next movie, replacing the Joker as the heavy. But even if he ISN’T you want to end with him inside Arkham, an ever-present reminder to Batman and Gordon that yeah, Joker kind of won. Loeb and Sale work a variation of that angle, not Joker-specific but the same type of thing, in “Long Halloween” (and in the transition into “Dark Victory”) and it works wonderfully.
(Yes, I know I just praised Jeph Loeb. I feel duly ashamed. I also know that Long Halloween is deeply fucked narratively in its own right in many ways. It also did a ton of things right.)
Anyway. I also agree with you in-universe critique of why the ending fails. “Makes no goddamn sense” is a pretty good distillation.
I think you’re missing an important point, John, and that’s that Dent and Batman are not equivalently inspiring. Dent is (within the context of the film) a symbol of the idea that civilization can work; Batman is a symbol of the idea that it cannot. He doesn’t want to be that symbol, he thinks that civilization CAN work, but at present it’s having some implementation problems.
Batman is a lawless vigilante who wears a mask and beats the shit out of people. He is not under the delusion that this is a healthy or a long-term solution to the problems facing Gotham, but he feels like he has to do it anyway. He is adamant, however, that this is not a categorical imperative. If everyone did what he did, that would NOT be a net improvement for anyone. He is furious both at the weekend warrior Batmen at the beginning, and at Harvey in the middle, when he’s torturing that poor crazy henchman. He does not think that what he does is healthy or admirable, and does not want other people adopting his methods.
The Joker, OTOH, thinks that civilization doesn’t work, and DOES consider that a categorical imperative. He believes that everyone should cease the pretense that humans are anything other than animals who kill each other for whatever reason happens to cross our minds.
So yes, Batman is inspirational to Gothamites, but he is inspirational in a way that actively serves the Joker’s agenda. Batman does not want people to be inspired by him, he wants them to be inspired by Harvey Dent and all the other people who demonstrate that even in the world’s most fucked-up city, civilization can work.
To put it another way, he knows damn well that he can hunt down and beat up all the murderers and madmen in the world, but no number of Batmen could ever build a world where people’s parents don’t get murdered in the first place.
Or, to put it in terms this blog’s preprogrammed for, Batman’s Chaotic Good, but thinks that the world in general should be Lawful Good. The Joker is Chaotic Evil, and wants the world to be like himself. If Batman comes out as the hero at the end, that tips the scale toward Good but not toward Lawful. If Harvey comes out as the hero, that is a greater good for society.
You are, however, totally right that they could have just blamed the Joker and called it a day. Would’ve left the film without much of a moral structure, though.
I think one more key element in Batman’s accepting the blame is to restore fear to Batman’s name.
The underworld, as personified by Maroni, discovered Batman’s limits; that he couldn’t kill. Compared to Joker, he’s just not as terrifying, and Batman, I think, craves the fear of criminals.
It also fits the theme of escalation – Joker upped the ante on what Gotham found terrifying, and Batman had to raise or fold.
Yeah, the point of blaming Dent’s death on Batman is to give Batman back his credibility in the face of Gotham’s criminal community.
I disagree with what Murc said–this was the best way to handle Two-Face. All of Two-Face’s good, interesting story beats come before his fall or during it. None of them come after. It’s why he keeps getting cured and reformed in the comics–it’s so they can tell the story of his fall again. Without that story to tell, he’s just a two-bit thug with a coin-flipping gimmick and a propensity for themed crimes, and there’s not really room for that in Nolan’s Batman movies. Scarecrow and Joker and the like fill the super-crime niche, while Moroni and the rest of the gangsters fill the old crime niche; there’s no space for Two-Face there because once you strip away the goofy getup you’re left with yet another old crime guy.
The real problem with the Dark Knight isn’t at the end, it’s at the middle. And it’s so big you could drive a truck through it–and Jim Gordon did. That whole plan makes zero sense. Gordon fakes his death so he can drive the truck that takes Harvey to jail, except it was supposed to be Bruce and Harvey jumped in at the last minute, and the convoy is supposed to draw out the Joker but Batman was going to be a prisoner in it so the convoy would basically be defenseless and get picked apart at the end, and the big dramatic “gotcha” moment at the end is Jim Gordon–who could easily have been killed several times over at this point–taking out Joker when Joker gets sloppy *after KOing Batman.* It’s portrayed as a brilliant triumph for the good guys made possible by their plans and gambits, but it’s only due to coincidence and dumb luck that the Joker didn’t manage to kill everyone.
I chalk the ending up to the trauma of all that’s just happened and Batman and Gordon not wanting to give the Joker one more victory; he already killed so many including the prominent public officials.
However, how do they explain Dent’s death?
I think they key, as mentioned, and you sorta mention at the end of your post, is Batman’s psychology. He doesn’t WANT people to be inspired by him. The entire film is about him wanting to retire, and let Dent look after the city, and the corruption of Dent is devestating to him. He blames himself, and thus takes the blame on his shoulders. Its not a sensible solution, but its the one he wants.
My problem with Nolan’s The Dark Knight isn’t an entirely fair criticism, in the sense that it amounts to “they should have made the movie I wanted to see, not the one they wanted to make”. But it’s the same problem I have with much of what had become conventional wisdom in pre-reboot DC mythology…
…namely, that the film entirely misunderstands what makes the Joker interesting.
I will admit here to perhaps being unduly influenced by the Adam West Bat-series, which was my introduction to all things Gotham. But it seems to me that making the Joker a consciously evil, consciously murderous sociopath — in effect, emphasizing the darkness of the Joker’s psyche — is exactly wrong, and a good way to make the Batverse entirely too angst-ridden for its own good.
The most effective Joker, IMO, is a Joker who is light to Batman’s dark, cheery to Batman’s grim, silly to Batman’s serious. It is, in short, a Joker who jokes. Is he amoral? Absolutely. Is he nuttier than the proverbial fruitcake? No doubt about it. But to me, the Joker works best when his particular idée fixe is that he will do anything to get people to laugh…and most especially to get Batman to laugh.
Cesar Romero had that Joker down. Mark Hamill in the early parts of B:TAS had that Joker down. And there’s a short story in one of the paperback anthologies of Batfiction that came out during the Tim Burton Bat-cycle called “Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard” that nails the concept.
But Nolan’s and Ledger’s Joker, for all that he’s a brilliantly executed character, falls into the Dark Joker trap. And that, I think, is a fundamental misconception of the Joker.
I would assume that Batman took the blame for two reasons.
One, to break the Joker’s hold on the populace. Even after taking him in, this is someone who basically brought the city to its knees in fear. So putting the blame on the Joker for one more act just builds up his legend even more. And as someone who is fully engaged in making his own legend already, Batman’s not going to let a competing vision gain more power than it already has.
Two, to act as a vent for the city’s rage about Harvey Dent. He’s dead regardless, but letting them foam at the mouth about Batman killing him would lead to less concrete action than blaming it on the Joker, who’s already at high risk of “suicide by cop” at the end of the movie. And let’s remember that if the police murder the Joker in his cell, that’s another form of validation for the guy.
@John C
I actually happen to agree with that, to an extent. While I have no problem with the Joker being consciously evil, that performance artist/comedian drive to make people laugh is a part of the character that I agree got seriously neglected in TDK (and one that Nicholson’s Joker nailed perfectly, perhaps a little too perfectly; to the point that the Joker is the real protagonist of Burton’s Batman). Ledger’s Joker’s biggest flaw was the he just wasn’t funny (barring the delayed explosion of the hospital scene).
Come to that, this whole “Joker as force of nature” kick that both the comics and TDK have been on has really started to wear on me. The occasional story here and there that uses that for dramatic effect is all well and good, but the fact is that, much like Batman, the Joker is for all his bluster and creepy affectations still Just A Guy. This is something BTAS understood and emphasized; Hamill’s Joker was jealous, got angry, got scared, and generally had other motivations or facets to his personality other than LOL EVUL. Yes, the Joker can be scary and inscrutable, but if he’s always one step ahead it just gets dull (looking at you Grant Morrison).
I thought the Joker was pretty funny in The Dark Knight. Just… more Andy Kaufman funny than Bob Hope funny.
Maybe even Chuck Palahunik funny.
Personally, I think the Joker is large enough to encompass all sorts of aspects, from the ‘force of nature’ to the more clownish stuff. Similarly, Batman can carry shark repellent and make biff and pow noises, or he can be dark and grim and filled with manpain. The mythology is big enough for any reading, really.
(Apologies if I’m incoherent here, typing should not happen before coffee does. I just had to chime in.)
I disagree with the notion that Joker wanted to break Batman at that point. I took it that he was no longer interested in that really…he had found his eternal playmate. He expected for the other people to break..for Harvey, for Gordan, for the people on the ferry. HE expected for Batman to never break.
I would say the fact that it took John three years to post this brilliant idea might itself explain why Batman and Gordon didn’t think of it in the heat of the moment.
=koff-koff= L.A. Confidential =koff-koff=
You said it yourself: “(Maybe moreso…I don’t think Harvey Dent inspired people to run around the city dressed in suits prosecuting people.)”
Batman did NOT want to be that kind of inspiration. He wanted that to stop. As well as the “restoring fear” thing (that was also brought up in the movie)
My only problem with the movie was a single Gary Oldman line read at the end.
Two Face is ranting about Rachael being dead and says she exploded and Oldman says “I know I was there”. Not “I know, I was there.” Or “I know: I was there” but “I know I was there” in a way that indicates that he was aware that he was at that place. A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE read that absolutely THROWS me out of the movie ever damn time.
I now hate Gary Oldman for that alone. /rant
@awa64 “The real problem with the Dark Knight isn’t at the end, it’s at the middle. And it’s so big you could drive a truck through it–and Jim Gordon did…It’s portrayed as a brilliant triumph for the good guys made possible by their plans and gambits…”
Actually the whole plan was just to have a driver they knew they can trust since, as was displayed several times, no one couldn’t be gotten to. For all they knew the driver would turn out to be a Joker goon and poof, the end. This way Gordon knew who was driving and that he could be trusted and, as was said in the movie, without the Joker going after “the driver’s” family. It WAS just luck he was able to stop Joker and I don’t think the movie really tried to portray it any other way (except, of course, as a heroic moment)
Whose plan? At the time Gordon faked his death, he didn’t know that Batman would have Harvey call a turn-himself-in press conference, and neither Gordon nor Batman knew that Harvey would hijack said conference and claim to be the Batman. Neither Batman nor Harvey knew that Gordon had faked his death. The closest thing to a plan in any of this would be Gordon going underground and hoping everything lines up just right for him to pop back up and catch the Joker, and that’s not so much a plan as reliance on narrative coincidence.
(I’d recommend Part 3 of Comics Alliance’s TDK recap for more on this, BTW. That whole sequence had always bothered me, but they fully coalesced what the problem was.)
I’ve always been fine with Batman taking the blame through a combination of personal guilt, a desire to stop the the bat-imitators, and make himself more terrifying to the criminal underworld. It might not have been the right choice, but I absolutely can understand why the characters made it in the moment.
I was far more bothered by Harvey being dead. After the repudiation of the Burton Killer Batman a little earlier (watch Batman saving Joker after throwing him off the building in TDK and compare it to how Nicholson’s Joker dies) and the idea that the Joker was just the first in a wave of insane super-criminals that were going to hit Gotham, killing the first supervillain created/inspired by the Joker just seems off. Especially given how an incarcerated Two Face acts as a reminder of failure to both Gordon and Batman. Even if Nolan didn’t want to use Two Face for a third film, imprisoned in Arkham or even in a coma leaves that future threat and reminder there.
He was the head of the “super criminal” division of the cops so obviously he’d be a target of the Joker so his plan was to protect himself and his family. After the press conference he put himself into the driver position in order to have a driver they KNEW could be trusted since the Joker couldn’t get to him or his family.
His plan? Be the driver. That’s it. It’s not complicated. His plan was to protect his family. It just happened to work out that he captured the Joker. Harvey Dent even basically says his plan is to hope Batman *grumble grumble magic* and everything’s ok.
Nothing magic, nothing complicated, “I plan to try to survive without my family being tortured” People make the mistake of assuming everything that happened was part of some “plan”. It’s a major theme of the movie: the best laid plans of mice and men ect”
You want a pretty big plot hole to complain about? Eric Roberts gets in his car with his driver (you see a henchman get snatched as the scene begins) and Two-Face and neither one notices Two-Face. Not the driver who has to glance into the rear view mirror, not Eric Roberts himself who is sitting right next to him in the back of a car.
As for “plans”? Forget that. The only person for whom plans actually work is the Joker and that’s because of his nature. Another theme of the movie is how following the rules restricts you. And the Joker’s plans work out because he has no rules.
The Dark Knight actually has a lot more than one problem. Sorry you had to find out this way.
I really hated the bit with Gordon’s son at the end. Why in the name of Heaven is Barbara not the one being inspired?
Seconding the love for Romero. It’s a shame he never got a crack at the homicidal Joker——his clownishness combined with a few cold-blooded murders would be seriously creepy.
I thought the point of Batman taking the fall for Harvey was mainly because the hundreds of mob guys he put away would be allowed free, since a case can be made that the prosecutor wasn’t in a sound state of mind. That’s what I remember, anyway.
You do make a good point though, John. Blaming the Joker probably would have been a better idea. Though wouldn’t the police be able to determine Harvey’s time of death, and that it was after the Joker was taken down?
I mean, they could blame a henchman, but that’s hard to prove and even if they did fabricate it right, they’re still letting some mentally ill dude take the fall.
You’re forgetting that Gotham hates Batman BEFORE he takes the rap for Dent’s killings.
Gotham is already pissed off at Batman for not turning himself in when the Joker threatens to blow up a hospital. That and Batman, despite people finding him heroic (and some emulating him), was still considered scary and possibly not a good thing by Gotham.
So Gotham was never really in love with Batman, and him taking the blame was something Gotham would believe and wouldn’t hurt them as much as Dent turning out to be Two-Face.
As for framing the Joker for the deaths, I’m not sure that really works as the Joker’s actions are very public after the hospital (which was the point as it was meant to distract Batman and the rest from Dent’s vendetta) and so I suppose you could blame his flunkies, but then you’d have to say they escaped, and you’d have to worry about whether the people of Gotham would actually BELIEVE that tale.
I think the Batman frame job is probably more believable to the people of Gotham and works to Batman’s advantage as he can become more intimidating to the criminals of Gotham as they’d think he might actually kill them.
I agree it’s a bit confusing, but the mileage as to how aggravating it is, is subjective. It doesn’t really annoy me. I’m sure it’ll make more sense in a “crossing the t’s” way in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.
And yes, I’m with you 100% on Bane being a much better villain than people think. It’s a great choice by Nolan et al.
Andrew St above nailed it: Batman takes the blame because his mission isn’t to inspire the good citizens of Gotham City and make them feel that the system can work and corruption can be eliminated. That’s what Harvey Dent can do that Batman never could, and that’s why Harvey Dent can’t be revealed as a psycho killer.
Batman’s mission is to terrorize the criminals of Gotham City and make them feel that they can never win, and his experience with Maroni taught him that he cannot do that when everyone knows Batman Doesn’t Kill People. Taking the blame serves Batman’s mission while protecting Dent’s legacy as an inspirational figure.
Well Two-Face had more impact , as short his screen-time was, than Ledger’s Joker. Srsly Eckhart’s Dent was far more frightening than the Joker in the entire movie. He looked Scary yet fascinating & his dialogue is powerful.
The thing with DK Joker is that when you look at him ( & I loved Ledger’s performance) is kinda predictable. You look at a guy with a glasgow smile & knives, you know that something bad is gonna happen. Nicholson on the other hand is PURELY UNPREDICTABLE! You look at the guy with that surreal smile & you don’t know what his next move will be. I’m more impressed by that face than a mere glasgow smile.& the fact that he can make you laugh while comitting horrible deeds IS why The Joker is an awesome character! The 2 Burton movies for me are ageless ( even though ther’s no perfectg movie, only perfect scenes in a good movie) for giving us Keaton Batman ( only 2nd to The Conroy one) & the Nicholson version . The Romero one is awesome because he’s too damn funny, & Joker is exactly the kind of guy that would found a clown college & commit a fishnapping because ” a smile a day takes the gloom away!”.
The Hamill version doesn’t need to be mentioned since it is THE Joker.
http://devilkais.deviantart.com/art/The-JOKER-TROOP-259478632
I’m also looking forward to see Bane, I may be one of the few guys that loved the entire saga & Azbats from start to finish & also convinced that he’ll be awesome in a movie.
Alas; it’s actually the whole plot of the movie that didn’t make sense. As awa64 & Slarti point out above, the scheme to have Gordon pretend to die doesn’t work; the idea that Gordon being a secret driver of a convoy will somehow result in capturing the Joker (who knows the convoy route how?) is a crazy plan. Further problems abound: how does the Joker have time/opportunity to rig a hospital with bombs, and how does he pick the right hospital ahead of time? How does he know he’s going to be captured, setting up the plan to kidnap Rachel & Harvey to blow them up? When, given everything else happening, does he have time to rig boats with bombs? Why don’t the police dispatch cars to rescue Rachel/Harvey by *radios* instead of driving from HQ? When the Joker invades Bruce Wayne’s party, the scene ends with Batman rescuing Rachel outside the building – presumably leaving the Joker to kill everyone inside? If the Joker’s minions are all crazy, how are they so ultra-competent at distributing bombs & invading building & kidnapping people to schedule?
The movie has some nice stunts, a lot of suspense, good performances (except Bale’s Batman ‘growl’), and high production values. The composition is good. But the plot is close to incoherent: it only works because we’re sped through things too quickly to catch that nothing really makes sense. This relates to the other flaws, namely, that the editing is very choppy and the shots very frenetic/chaotic; a problem, but one that follows if you’re trying to cover up a hole where the story should be.
No, the ending idea that Batman will take the blame doesn’t make sense either, but by that point in the movie I felt so bludgeoned by things happening without a reason that I didn’t much care.
When I first watched the movie – about half way through – I thought I had the story line pegged. In murdering the gangster chiefs, Joker and Two-Face would simply replace the old crime syndicates with new crime syndicates. Everything old would be new again, and Gotham would have come full circle. Maybe you’d get to see Penguin or Riddler or Bane pop up in the third movie as the chief of a new crime syndicate.
But when Two-Face was killed, it actually left Nolan’s Batverse very out-of-wack. At the end of Batman Begins, criminals had flooded the streets of Gotham through Scarecrow’s prison break. At the end of Dark Knight, organized crime has been virtually extinguished in the back-and-forth between Batman and Joker. Now you’ve got a practically crime-free Gotham in your wake.
I’m not entirely clear where Bane and Catwoman are supposed to enter in after that.
I would honestly say that The Dark Knight is the best movie I’ve ever seen that doesn’t make any damn sense. Thematically it’s perfect. The acting is great, the dialogue decent, the action exciting, the tone consistent, but the story…just doesn’t make sense! How can it be that people who clearly put so much skill and craft into their screenplay and subsequent film have not realized that? How could they not realize that Gordon’s plan to fake his own death relies on an insane number of coincidences? How could they not realize that the Joker’s superpower isn’t the ability to read ahead in the script and know exactly what ferries people would take out of the city and who would be on them? How did he know exactly what bottle Commissioner Loeb would drink from and when? Why does Batman steadfastly refuse to kill the Joker, but end Harvey Dent’s life without so much as a second thought? Why does he take the blame for Dent’s crimes when the Joker is the perfect patsy who no one would ever believe? Why does Lucius Fox go from condoning and even abetting Batman’s deeds to condemning him when he uses a device that he clearly isn’t going to keep using? Was the Joker’s superpower the ability to teleport explosives into buildings? If not, how was he doing it so easily all the time?
And yet…I still enjoy it. Does that say something bad about me? I like stories that are logical, and this one isn’t. I get that it’s a story about how Batman loses everything, and we’re meant to see what’s left of him, who he truly is, without all the public support and cool gadgets and allies in high places, and how he’s still a hero even then. And that the Joker, while persuasive and often right about people, is wrong about Batman. Even absolute nihilism can’t destroy Batman’s character. I get that and I like it. But damn, the story is just so illogical.
Clearly, I am conflicted about this.
You remember how for a while in the comics Batman was considered an urban legend? DC had an editorial edict about him not showing up in public, nor even other members of the “Bat-family”. The thing is, that really can’t work in an ongoing comic book shared universe, especially not with a character as popular and overly-exposed as Batman, with such a big family of sidekicks and team members and stuff. It becomes ridiculous, and Peter David mocked it pretty well in Young Justice. (Robin keeping secrets from his teammates even as they’re being totally open with him, him adopting a third or fourth or fifth identity with varying degrees of success, a level of concealment that’s ridiculous even in a comic book, etc.)
It looks like Nolan’s doing his best to make that work in the movies, though. Batman really, seriously works hard at what he does. He really is a loner. He successfully avoids the spotlight or even witnesses. (Not completely, of course, or there would be no innocent bystanders to up the stakes, but a lot more than in the comic books, let alone the Keaton/Schumacher movies.)
I remember watching Batman Begins and being blown away by how scary Batman was. A film scholar analyzes it pretty well here. He never comes out in daylight at all, he doesn’t give you a chance to surrender like Superman, and he’s not even like Wolverine or Spider-Man in that the audience follows his perspective a lot less. When he goes into a fight, the audience doesn’t even get a chance to get inside his head.
Well, obviously, as movie-watchers we know that Batman is really a good guy, or at least we’re meant to see him that way. But Nolan is trying very hard to show that nobody in Gotham knows anything about him. We can argue about details but overall I’d say he succeeded, and keeping him an ambiguous figure for Gotham is part of that.
The fatal flaw in the film (and this is not my idea) is that ended in the wrong place.
The moment when the Joker has won, riding away in a police car? End it. Solves most the worst problems of the film, which have already been mentioned, and turns this movie from a bloated really good film with major problems, to a near-masterpiece with some logic issues.
Two-Face becomes the logical villain for Rises, perhaps with Bane or Catwoman if you like, and the moral of the film becomes way dark… Joker won. That chaos can not be defeated, only contained.
Seriously: Gordon’s plan was NOT an ultra-complicated 47 step plan that begins with faking his death and ends with capturing the Joker. NOT. You people who keep thinking this are driving me nuts.
Gordon’s “plan” was to jump in front of the mayor. That’s it. End of plan. How could he know he’d survive, or that he’d be able to stop the bullet? You people are attributing magic powers to him and then complaining that he has magic powers.
Later, after being shot, possibly in the ambulance, he made the plan to fake his death to protect his family. The end. He was making it up as he went along.
It’s not spelled out explicitly in the film because, and this is important: if you can come up with a non-magic answer to a plot hole, which I just did, it trumps the magic plot hole solvers (like a 47 step plan involving psychic powers and such)
It’s a major theme in the movie for Christ’s sake: The good guys plans do not work because they have RULES, the Joker is the only one who’s plans do actually work out because he does NOT have rules. The ONLY time the good guys plans work out is when they break the rules. Batman hurts a man, steals evidence, spies on the entire city, Bruce Wayne has to crash his car because he HAS TO IN ORDER TO WIN. But he can only bend so far so he’s ALWAYS at a disadvantage. They pretty much say this out loud in the movie. IT IS A MAJOR THEME OF THE MOVIE. Joker plan ultimately fails because Batman is unwilling to fall to his level when the ONLY way to achieve a lasting victory is by doing so.
And, again, the reason Batman takes the fall for the murders is so that the bad guys will fear him again. THIS IS ALSO PRETTY MUCH SAID OUT LOUD IN THE MOVIE. And the two themes tie together.
Batman has to bend the rules to beat the Joker because the Joker has no rules but, since Batman is good, he does not WANT to break the rules so he has to make the city THINK he is willing to.
Of course no one will read this and the next post will be “How could Gordon have known his magic 47 step plan would work?????” and I’ll sigh and punch the screen.
Seriously: any other very easily solved “plot holes” I can help with because I only really count one.
I think Eric has it correct as far as Gordon goes. I don’t think he has a plan. He tries to save the Mayor, and then takes advantage of the fact that everyone thinks he’s dead to keep his family safe.
When the ‘Harvey as Batman’ transfer happens he takes the place of the driver (now, the how of this is never spelled out, but he knows GCPD procedure, so it couldn’t be that difficult) to ensure that it wasn’t a cop who was already on the Joker’s payroll, or someone who could be compromised through his or her family. To protect Batman if he surrendered (or Harvey, as it turned out).
That’s it. No greater plan. But it put him in the right place at the right time to save Batman and capture the Joker.
The first time I saw the Dark Knight I wondered why they didn’t save Two-Face for another movie, but after rewatching it, it’s clear that Harvey is the only one in the movie with an actual character arc in the film. Batman and Joker are more-or-less the same at the start and end of the film (Joker’s so extreme, I’m not sure you’d recognize a change, and Bruce has admittedly lost his one tether to a ‘normal’ life with Rachel’s death) but Harvey is standing in for Gotham City. He starts off hopeful, and ends up broken, disfigured and dead. His story is absolutely necessary thematically for the ‘escalation’ theme presented at the end of Begins to work.
The ending is a bit wonky, true, but I think it’s based on the fact that all those cops saw Batman enter the building or flee the scene, and saw Harvey fall out the other end. The improvised cover-up was necessary to keep the myth of Harvey alive, so he could still be a symbol for Gotham, even in death.
For quite a while now, the default fanboy interpretation of Batman is that Batman is the real character and that Bruce Wayne is just a mask he puts on sometimes. In this interpretation, Batman is just as much of a psychopath as the villain he fights; the difference is that he preys on the villains rather than the innocent. Essentially, this version of Batman — which has become more and more even the default interpretation of the character in the comics — is the character as he appears in the Twitter feed God_Damn_Batman (check it out — occasionally laugh-out-loud funny).
Something a lot of fanboys have missed, however, is that this interpretation of Batman is not Christopher Nolan’s version. In the Nolan movies, it’s very clear that Bruce Wayne is the character, and that Batman is simply a weapon he feels compelled to wield.
It’s also pretty clear that Bruce Wayne hates Batman. He hates that he has to use this weapon he has created, and wishes that people like Harvey Dent would be successful and make the world a better place.
Most of all, Bruce hates himself. He hates himself because the only way he can think to combat the brutality of Gotham City is to simply be more brutal than anyone else.
Ultimately, that is why Bruce decides that Batman should take the blame for Harvey’s death, because in his mind, he is responsible. The Joker is simply an escalation of a conflict that he created, to some degree. If Batman has to be more brutal than the criminals in order to be effective, then the criminals will have to create someone more brutal than Batman in order to win, and that’s the Joker.
My 2 cents, for what it’s worth.
Forget the ending. Forget the truck.
The thing that frosts my shorts is the bullet-in-the-wall.
Because, apparently, the Joker knew that Batman would be able to track down one of his thugs by lifting a fingerprint off of the reconstructed fragments of a bullet that had been fired into a concrete wall.