With Batman Begins
having raised the bar so high for Batman films, and comic book films
in general, the next film would be a crucial one. The last movie
ended with a bit of a teaser, with a Joker card handed to Batman.
This promised a lot as The Joker is a long time favourite villain for
a lot of fans. I'm one of them. The Joker in the 1990's animated
series, as voiced by Mark Hamill, is one of my favourite characters
from any sort of Batman show. He is just the right mix of hilarious
and evil, which is a fun combination. I remember that when it was
announced that Heath Ledger would be cast to play The Joker there was
some instant backlash, which I always felt was unfairly placed. You
see, I knew that Ledger was a great actor and I knew that he wouldn't
have been given this coveted role without having done something to
earn it. And as images of the character and a voice in the teaser
trailer came out, backlash became excitement as people were suddenly
enticed by Ledger's mostly unseen portrayal of the iconic mad man. It
was clear we were getting a much more gritty incarnation of the
character than any before, as true to this new vision of Batman.
With the Batman on
watch, the crime lords are hiding scared. The Gotham police are
unofficially working with Batman (Christian Bale) and there is a hot
new district attorney in town named Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) who
is publicly fronting the war on crime. However, The Joker (Heath
Ledger) is on the loose and he's been stealing from mob banks to
gather some attention. He approaches the crime lords and presents
them with a solution to their woes; he proposes to kill the Batman
for half their money. They decline at first because they think he's
insane, but after many of them are put behind bars after Batman, Jim
Gordon (Gary Oldman), and Dent capture an informant who had been
keeping the mob's money, the mob resort to bringing in The Joker, who
publicly promises to kill people until Batman reveals his true
identity.
Where Batman Begins'
theme was fear, The Dark Knight focuses on chaos and the corruption of order. Gotham
City is no longer a place controlled by fear as it used to be and as
such, The Joker's mission is to corrupt it. There are two scenes in
particular where he tries to bring the people of Gotham to do evil
things; one is where he does the 'social experiment' on the two
ferries and the other is where he threatens to blow up a hospital
unless someone kills Reese, a man who knows the identity of Batman.
The Joker just wants to see good people do bad things. He agrees to
work with the mob, but really his intentions are his own and he has
no sense of loyalty to anyone. He doesn't even really feel loyalty to
himself as there are two crucial scenes where he is willing to give
his life for this objective. The first key scene is when Batman is
driving the Bat-Pod after flipping the truck that The Joker was
driving. He stands there literally wanting Batman to do the
unthinkable and murder him in either rage or desperation. There is a
parallel scene where The Joker visits Dent in the hospital and gives
Dent the opportunity to blow a hole in his head with a gun. That is
the deciding moment of Harvey and whether or not he would get
corrupted into a villain and the public face of order gets thrown into chaos.
The Dark Knight
is a very different kind of movie than Batman Begins. Their
atmosphere is very different and even borrow from a different colour
pallet. The last movie was lit with shades of brown, where this one
has a very dark blue look to it. This was a good choice to separate
the film on a visual level. Their mood is different in that this one
no longer has that sense of mystery as we've learned all about Batman
and what makes him spin. But that sense of awe over Batman and his
abilities and the sense of control that comes with that is challenged
by the new villain. It's escalation, just as Jim Gordon predicted at
the end of the last movie. And it really seems like this movie is
more about The Joker and his plan rather than Batman, after all, he
is the one moving the plot forward the whole time.
Because of this, it was
necessary for the portrayal of The Joker to be a powerful and
psychotic character. And they made the right choice of having him
shrouded in mystery. While we get some brief monologues about his
past, they directly contradict one another so we know he's lying.
Smart choice. I don't know what sort of back story could be given to
him that would justify his actions or seem like a plausible motive.
Heath Ledger took an iconic character and reinvented him in such a
way that would influence any future renditions of The Joker. It is
such a curious balance, watching The Joker in this film; he is such
an entertaining entity to watch, even though he is pure evil and does
horrible things. That's always been the appeal behind The Joker, I
think. His humour is an amusing shield over the complex, sinister
character. He's a chaotic element in an orderly world. But most of
all, under all of the make up and lunacy, we see that he is a genius
with an intrinsic understanding of the worst parts of human nature.
This is why he is able to manipulate the mob as well as he does.
What is remarkable is
how well Christopher Nolan took these iconic comic characters and
sculpted a complex crime thriller out of them. While not always true
to the origins of the characters, he is at least true to their
essence. We understand what makes them tick and what their motives
are and sometimes that is lacking in movies. We often get a shallow
villain who wants to take over the world or is just plain crazy and
we don't often get much more motivation than that. Even Loki in The
Avengers doesn't get a real in depth treatment as far as
understanding his full motives, but with The Joker, we accept it,
even if we don't fully understand it. As for Two-Face, we get to know
his motives all too well.
The movie isn't
perfect, but as I've said before, I don't believe a perfect movie
exists. I don't fully know how The Joker is able to infiltrate as
many levels of Gotham as he does or how he's able to predict
basically every move that anyone can make. I understand that he's
brilliant, but even then it feels like a stretch. That would be my
main complaint of the film. I'm not interested in griping about
Batman's voice or how over-hyped the movie may or may not have been.
I'm not much of a nitpicker.
I'm more interested in
the story and characters and how seamlessly it plays out.
Fortunately, The Dark Knight is just as deeply considered as
Batman Begins was. It plays like something bigger though. It
feels like a struggle between an even greater evil than before.
Where the villains in the last film were cold and calculated, this
feels more personal and impassioned. That is why the film works as
well as it does; The Joker hit where it hurts and made it personal.
And thanks to Nolan allowing us to feel the emotional resonance of
the events, we are along for the ride, for better or for worse.
5 Stars
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