(10 minute read)
Every movie has their ace in a a hole. Well in Nolan and Goyer's world, some plotlines and scenes may have naturally been missed by the general audience. Luckily, I'm here to make sure you learned something new today. Watch this Trailer to get you hyped about reading this post.
After the last surviving robber is about to leave the bank, the employee with the shotgun scorns him and says that whoever he’s working for will double-cross him just like how Bozo double-crossed the other clowns. The employee recounts how criminals used to believe in honor and respect, and then asks the masked thief, “What do you believe, huh?!” Bozo takes off his mask, revealing himself as The Joker, and his reply is perfect: “I believe that what doesn’t kill you, simply makes you… stranger”, a play on the word stronger.
- “I'm not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”
- “Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.”
Also the fact that he’s wearing a female nurse’s outfit completes that hospital scene because here's a clown, murdering sociopath dressed as someone whose job is to take care of people. Looks and sounds like chaos.
1) Batman’s flip: Dirty side. Shot.
2) Harvey Dent’s flip on himself: Clean side. Spared.
3) Commissioner Jim Gordon’s flip: Clean side...but Batman is able to take Dent down before the characters can see the outcome. However, there's a 1-second shot that only the audience can see. It shows that the coin actually lands on the CLEAN side, so Gordon would have lived even if Batman hadn’t stopped Two-Face.
What does this mean? 3 things.
1) Tough luck for Batman, the main protagonist, who got the uglier side of the coin.
2) By luck, The Dark Knight is being unfairly shot and punished for crimes he did not commit. Batman becomes a scapegoat for all things bad – Two-Face’s murders, Jim Gordon’s corrupt officers, the Joker’s existence (some say), and Dent’s death.
3) The real grounded point of this movie is that Batman is not just a superhero that fights crime and has cool gadgets, but a symbol of strength and justice. Batman is able to make the hard choices that no one else can make. He can cross boundaries, make exceptions, and play by his own rules, including initiating the save on Gordon before that coin landed on Two-Face's hand.
“Just couldn't let me go, could you? I guess this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren't you?” ~ The Joker
When you think about it, this paradox doesn’t work because an unstoppable force cannot coexist with an immovable object. They are mutually exclusive. This paradox is also referenced in All-Star Superman #3 (May 2006), which I had to look up. In the comic, Superman must answer this unanswerable paradox in order to save Lois Lane, and he responds with, “They surrender”. The villain accepts this answer and spares Lane. Well, in our case, we know that’ll never happen, but we know both men will always be the most iconic comic book rivals of all time.
In that scene, Cinefix also does a great analysis of the suggested meaning behind the shot of the Joker dangling and how the camera slowly turns upside down, so it looks like he's right side up, in which we enter Joker's wicked, messed-up mindset.
Source: IMDB. All Credits to Warner Bros and DC Comics
1. The [Mob] Bank
Scene Synopsis:
This was an amazingly executed opener because of how perfectly it mixes action and suspense with character introduction. What appears to be a simple, straightforward robbery all of a sudden turns into an anarchist mayhem. (More on anarchy later.) Each of the thugs were instructed by “The Joker”, whom they’ve never met, to kill one of their own after each one finishes his part in the robbery. Every man believes that he will receive a larger share of the money by doing so, but only the audience knows in the end that one of them is The Joker, who kills the last remaining robber, the bus driver. Everyone involved in the crime ends up shot and killed except the clown prince that hired them. Surprise!
Source: IMDB. All Credits to Warner Bros and DC Comics
What you missed:
The bank they are robbing from is a Mob Bank, or simply a bank run by bad guys. This was explicitly stated by one of the robbers while he was opening the vault. The employee with the sawed-off shotgun on the right should also raise a flag because who brings that to work? But more importantly, why is Joker stealing from the mob? The short answer is that he’s crazy. The longer answer is told later in the film when he gradually takes control of the criminal underworld.After the last surviving robber is about to leave the bank, the employee with the shotgun scorns him and says that whoever he’s working for will double-cross him just like how Bozo double-crossed the other clowns. The employee recounts how criminals used to believe in honor and respect, and then asks the masked thief, “What do you believe, huh?!” Bozo takes off his mask, revealing himself as The Joker, and his reply is perfect: “I believe that what doesn’t kill you, simply makes you… stranger”, a play on the word stronger.
2. The Scar Stories. “Want to know how I got these scars?” ~ Joker
Scene Synopsis:
Joker gives two very dark stories for how he received his smile scars on his face. The first one he gives is about his abusive, lunatic father. The second story is about his wife. The Joker recalls his wife who told him that he worries too much and that he ought to smile more. His wife is apparently a gambler and one day gets in deep with the wrong people that they carve her face. So Joker allegedly carves his own face to show her that he doesn’t care about the scars, which horrifies his wife and she responds by leaving him. (yeah really dark…)
Source: IMDB. All Credits to Warner Bros and DC Comics
What you missed:
Joker’s second story is likely produced by one of the most widely-known origin stories of Joker in the comics, Alan Moore’s “The Killing Joke”. In that backstory, The Joker was a struggling comedian trying to provide for his wife. In the comic, his wife had also told him not to worry, though she was not a gambler and died early in this plot from an accident. In both the movie and the comic, Joker loses his wife. And similarly with his wife in the film, comic book Joker also ends up getting in deep with the wrong people, which gets him into an accident that bleaches his skin and eventually, makes him lose his sanity.3. Laughter/Slaughter is the best medicine
Scene Synopsis:
The image below is from the car chase scene, right before the truck’s sliding door is opened and Joker aims his bazooka at the car holding Harvey Dent.
Source: Screen Grab from The Dark Knight (2008) to illustrate shot
What you missed:
That ‘S’ spray-painted on a stolen truck from Hyams Amusements, probably a carnival company in Gotham. Now instead of reading “LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE”, you can see it now says “SLAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE”. Joker embodies both words, with and without the ‘S’.4. Anarchy. “The Joker, he’s got no rules” ~ Salvatore Maroni
Scene Synopsis:
There are many scenes that dance with this political ideal. Bruce’s butler Alfred wisely asserted that some men cannot be reasoned with – “Some men just want to watch the world burn”. During the famous interrogation scene, Joker taunts Batman: “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules. And tonight you're gonna break your one rule.” And don't forget the time Joker cross dressed as a female nurse and confronts an injured Harvey Dent in the Gotham hospital:- “I'm not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”
- “Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.”
What you missed:
I also missed the little sentence on the movie poster that says "Welcome to a world without rules", but the point is that a big motivating factor for the clown prince of crime is his incessant point of anarchy – absolute individual freedom and absence of authority. The Joker wants to show how inherently evil and primitive human begins can be and that there is no use in controlling anyone. He's a dog chasing cars!Also the fact that he’s wearing a female nurse’s outfit completes that hospital scene because here's a clown, murdering sociopath dressed as someone whose job is to take care of people. Looks and sounds like chaos.
5. Dent’s Double-Headed Coin. “And the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.” ~ Harvey Dent
Scene Synopsis:
Dent says he has a “lucky” coin in the movie, but we later realize that this coin is double-headed, so during his good days he never left things up to chance. At the end of the film, Batman explains to “Two-Face” how the Joker corrupted him, and he tells him to point the gun at the people responsible for not saving Rachel in which the villain flips a coin to decide the fate of his victims. If it lands on the clean side of the coin, the person lives, and if it lands on the dirty side, Dent shoots that person. A 50/50 chance as opposed to the 100/0 chance Harvey gave himself earlier in the movie.
Source: IMDB. All Credits to Warner Bros and DC Comics
What you missed:
The outcomes of the flips were as follows in the order of Dent’s targets:
1) Batman’s flip: Dirty side. Shot.
2) Harvey Dent’s flip on himself: Clean side. Spared.
3) Commissioner Jim Gordon’s flip: Clean side...but Batman is able to take Dent down before the characters can see the outcome. However, there's a 1-second shot that only the audience can see. It shows that the coin actually lands on the CLEAN side, so Gordon would have lived even if Batman hadn’t stopped Two-Face.
What does this mean? 3 things.
1) Tough luck for Batman, the main protagonist, who got the uglier side of the coin.
2) By luck, The Dark Knight is being unfairly shot and punished for crimes he did not commit. Batman becomes a scapegoat for all things bad – Two-Face’s murders, Jim Gordon’s corrupt officers, the Joker’s existence (some say), and Dent’s death.
3) The real grounded point of this movie is that Batman is not just a superhero that fights crime and has cool gadgets, but a symbol of strength and justice. Batman is able to make the hard choices that no one else can make. He can cross boundaries, make exceptions, and play by his own rules, including initiating the save on Gordon before that coin landed on Two-Face's hand.
6. The Irresistible Force Paradox
Scene Synopsis:
Batman saves Joker from falling to his death. They have a talk.
“Just couldn't let me go, could you? I guess this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren't you?” ~ The Joker
Source: IMDB. All Credits to Warner Bros and DC Comics
What you missed:
Evidently The Joker is referring to himself and The Dark Knight, as an unstoppable force and an immovable object, respectively. The Joker is an all-out lunatic who won’t kill the other because he’s “too much fun” while Batman is an incorruptible, self-righteous, and stubborn hero that will not kill. A comparison of the two makes up the irresistible force paradox.When you think about it, this paradox doesn’t work because an unstoppable force cannot coexist with an immovable object. They are mutually exclusive. This paradox is also referenced in All-Star Superman #3 (May 2006), which I had to look up. In the comic, Superman must answer this unanswerable paradox in order to save Lois Lane, and he responds with, “They surrender”. The villain accepts this answer and spares Lane. Well, in our case, we know that’ll never happen, but we know both men will always be the most iconic comic book rivals of all time.
In that scene, Cinefix also does a great analysis of the suggested meaning behind the shot of the Joker dangling and how the camera slowly turns upside down, so it looks like he's right side up, in which we enter Joker's wicked, messed-up mindset.