The Dark Knight: Chaos Rebooted

As one of the writers for our film department here at Geek Asylum, I get the distinct honor of getting to write about one of the things I love most outside of my job here, going to the movies.  In some instances, I get to write about movies that are absolute hogwash, and though I hate it, I throw myself on the proverbial hand grenade for you, the reader. You can thank me later.  Other times I get to write about movies I've seen that just stick with me, in a good way. A movie that for about 2 hours or so takes me out of my everyday mundane life and brings me into an amazing adventure. The Dark Knight was something I did not expect. I mean, I loved Batman Begins, and had seen the trailers of The Dark Knight to know that my place was at my nearest multiplex for the midnight show. I expected the line outside the theater, I expected people dressed up as Batman or the Joker, even thought I saw a Morgan Freeman cosplay, but that may have been a Nelson Mandela lookalike. I'm not sure. But what I didn't expect was how damn good this movie was.

At the conclusion to Batman Begins, they set up the anticipation to the next villain on Batman's radar: the infamous Joker.  The internet swarmed to find out who would play the Clown Prince of Crime. The mantle fell upon the late Heath Ledger. Who knew? Who knew that he would take this character and performance and knock it out of the park. Now, I'm the first to say that The Academy doesn't know good cinema if it slapped them in the face, since they sure as hell can't pick decent hosts for the damn show. But sometimes they give credit where credit is due, and Heath's award for Best Supporting Actor was well deserved.

After delving into the beginnings of Batman, the sophomore installment now expands upon what it actually takes to be a hero in the face of true chaos. Batman stands as a bastion of justice in Gotham, using the fear that the criminals and mobsters used to subjugate its inhabitants against them. But while their battle with the Caped Crusader and the Gotham PD rages, up comes a man with a very distinctive smile, one who doesn't play by the rules. Batman/Bruce Wayne sees the light at the end of the tunnel with the emergence of Gotham's new DA: Harvey Dent. The board is set and the pieces are moving, everything is set for this powder keg to erupt in Gotham.

Hero movies have several key ingredients: the hero, the villain, and those caught in-between.  The repercussions of those who end up as collateral damage are seldom felt in film, easily getting overshadowed by the final showdown between the protagonist and antagonist. But Nolan really expanded on this aspect. Seeing the supporting characters like Dent and Lt. Gordon begin to become unhinged in the face of Joker's onslaught. Even the stoic Dark Knight begins to question whether or not he truly knew how to combat injustice and retain honor in the process. Too easily does the solution come to the hero in comic movies. Let's just rotate the earth counterclockwise to save the damsel or lets use this spell or this miracle drug to wash away the backwash from the fallen. Not in Nolan's Batman universe. People died. They don't come back. Scars end up being souvenirs you never lose. And the seemingly incorruptible become fallible. In real life there isn't always an easy way out.

The underlying theme in this film was chaos. Harvey Dent's final monologue had one of the best lines in the film and summed it all up: "We tried to be decent men, in an indecent time." The Joker was a madman but he had a method to his madness. He aimed to inspire chaos, madness, and death. How can one hold true to their convictions in this case? There are two sides to every coin.