The Shadow of a Dark Knight
Ten years on from Christopher Nolan’s behemoth that forever changed the landscape of blockbuster films
To them, you’re a freak. Like me.
For me, I find it difficult to land on any one shot or scene or moment or line of dialogue. The thoughts ran from the truck flip, to the opening heist, the bat-pod emerging, the hospital explosion, the cackling laugh, ‘everything burns’, the pencil, the ferry standoff, ‘some men just want to watch the world burn’, and so on. Eventually though, after shaking them all out, I’m hopelessly pulled into the orbit of that interrogation scene. In a film that has become the nexus point and high water mark of blockbuster superhero films, the interrogation of a criminal in clown makeup and a billionaire dressed as a bat became the nexus point of the nexus point. It should be all kinds of stupid and laughable and a tad batty (sorry) to have such an intense, powerful and compelling scene play out in such a way that it makes you understand the depth of character and theme at work. It doesn’t make you forget you’re watching a superhero film, it shows what a superhero film could and can be. A grand statement of intent in a film that’s filled with them, and the ghost that every subsequent superhero film would be chasing for years to come.
It may be a lazy consensus pick but it doesn’t make it any less true, just like Mike Trout in baseball, or Lebron James in the NBA. Greatness is obvious. The Dark Knight legitimised comic book films in a way that no one thought possible. It was a crime saga that explored escalation and terror, vigilantism and fear. The worth of a hero in the face of chaos. Watching it ten years on makes you realise how much lightning in a bottle Christopher Nolan and his team managed to capture. This wasn’t just people in costumes playing make believe, we had ventured into uncharted territory. It was exciting and scary. Internet people foolishly coined the term ‘grimdark’ in the wake of the movie’s brooding and serious nature, and there have been some laughably self-serious comic book films since that have missed the mark by A LOT.
But the darkness is gripping, paradoxically reflective. A relentless surge toward the blinding chaos that the Joker is forcing Batman and the city to the edge of. It doesn’t come as the gimmick, as the defining trait or a lazy way of transforming a movie into one that has ‘something to say’— it’s of a piece and a natural fit. The story calls for it. And it’s goddamn enthralling. But let’s get back to that interrogation scene and work our way out from both sides. It arrives at roughly the 90 minute mark, with the Joker’s labyrinthine plan having him caught.
There’s no going back.
Behind the eyes is something quite surprising — sanity. Watch it again. An equilibrium seems to have been reached within the Joker. He’s the only one working on that level, the masks ripped away, exposing the righteousness and the innate, subconscious agenda of the world as nothing but a bad joke. He doesn’t inhabit chaos, he giddily and explosively projects it. And on the other side, Batman. Holding himself up as the complete opposite of the Joker, who he believes is nothing but a callous murderer in it for the money, who can be understood. Who is outside the system and yet tethered to it because he still has rules.
Don’t talk like one of them, you’re not. Even if you’d like to be.
The Joker’s centerpiece monologue is an eviscerating fireball to the core of what Batman believes himself to be. It’s a statement that ripples backwards and forwards. Superheroes have been seen as dualities, both on the side and against the law. A menace and a saviour. The original Spider-Man trilogy had J. Jonah Jameson wage a publicity war against Spider-Man to hilarious effect. The X-Men films are defined by how the world views these mutants and if they are more a threat than anything else. The back half of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has basically been this treatise writ large with a lot more colour and endless quips. But it never feels as real, as visceral as it does in these four minutes (I know right, the memory had this scene going a lot longer). No explosions, no fist fights. In fact, the use of violence by Batman that bookends the scene is shown as futile to a creature such as the Joker.
Stretching out before this moment the film crackles along. The Joker is the shark from Jaws. Bruce Wayne sees Harvey Dent as his ticket out of the physical and emotional battering he takes trying to keep the city safe. To have a legitimate face as a beacon of hope. To make Batman simply a symbol — even though fake-Bats are roaming the streets with automatic weapons and hockey pads. It’s a vast crime epic in the vein of Michael Mann’s Heat. Go further back and the landscape was ripe for it. Marvel began their unprecedented journey with Iron Man (one could argue that it had just as much influence on blockbuster films but in essence it was a Hail Mary, and the seeds were more teasers than anything else).
The year before, the overstuffed Spider-Man 3 opened to massive numbers and underwhelming reaction and way more dancing than one would have thought to be in a Spider-Man film. In the decade previous, the X-Men and Spider-Man series had shown that the superhero film could be not just popular but a phenomena. Sure they had lacklustre third entries (a blight that so many franchises struggle to overcome) but they had done enough to show that it wouldn’t just be a flash in the pan. The box office was dominated by The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and only Rings really made any legitimate headway crossing over to award recognition.
It’s somewhat difficult to nail down exactly how to describe the decade leading up to The Dark Knight. In a way nothing’s really changed but there’s niggling sense at the back of the head that what had come before was disapparate and isolated. The decade hence has driven us all closer, the reactions more instantaneous with the expansion of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. The rise of Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services amid the era of peak TV. The comparing and contrast had become more widespread. And the superhero genre turned into the dominant force in the film industry.
It’s all part of the plan.
The Joker forces Batman to break his one rule. Blood on his hands. Dent is turned into a tortured monster, the Caped Crusader becomes the villain based on a lie. There is nothing he can threaten the Joker with. Chaos takes hold over the city in such a pulsating way that it almost seizes you up. The escalation so intense that there doesn’t seem to be a way to lessen the pressure valve. I find the scene with the Joker in the hospital with Dent to be, for all intents and purposes, one of a reasonable nature, yet delivered from the perspective of derangement and violence. There’s a fine line between order and chaos, and we’re blind to how close we are to falling into that maelstrom sometimes. The Joker does have a point even if he too is caught up in his own assumptions of what people are capable of.
What has become more and more clear as we look back on The Dark Knight is that it’s influence goes way beyond the whole stupid ‘grimdark’ notion or the self-serious nature of the myriad of failed ventures (Jesus I just remembered Jonah Hex and Fantastic Four…*shudders*), to show filmmakers that the genre was flexible. That layered and deep stories could be told, that it was ripe for experimentation. The ironic thing is that The Dark Knight remains so out there on it’s own. Despite the perceived dedication to realism the film is gloriously weird, filled with an abundance of hero shots that wouldn’t look out of place in the pages of a comic. It’s such a thrillingly fun film as well, infinitely rewatchable, from a mixture of brilliant set pieces to the brilliant performances and sheer confidence that bleeds out of every frame. You can tell it’s something special even after watching it for the hundredth time.
It wouldn’t be far-fetched to say that if The Dark Knight didn’t succeed like it did we would have a vastly different cinematic landscape. There would still probably be only five best picture nominees. We wouldn’t have had the barrage of darker superhero films that littered the cineplex in an exhaustive way, nor the ultimate course correction in uproarious splatterfest, Deadpool, or the beautiful, gritty and emotional Logan. Chances are the Marvel Cinematic Universe would be significantly different in form and stature. More of an island than it already is. Would there be a Man of Steel or a Wonder Woman in their current incarnations? It’s hard to see it happening. Nolan’s career would have gone in a vastly different direction. Possibly no Inception or Interstellar or Dunkirk. Most definitely no The Dark Knight Rises. It’s a salivating what-if scenario, the ripples shifting the next decade of blockbuster films.
And yet, apart from maybe Logan, no other superhero film so transcends the genre, while also celebrating and respecting it. No other has had a performance as searing and iconic as Heath Ledger’s Joker. It became the defining portrayal of villainy for the Youtube generation. We saw the temptation of chaos. Ledger’s death only heightened the combustive stature of what he did. But instead of the rest of the film flailing in his wake, it rises to his level. A cohesiveness and synchronicity that dares to have ambitions beyond a fist fight and nebulous vortex of debris in the sky. Indeed, the final act and climax of the film has the Joker once more a step ahead of Batman. It’s not a punch up at a construction site that is the finale, but a philosophical and emotional showdown between Batman, Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent that brings the saga to a shattering conclusion.
Every time a new superhero movie comes out it’s invariably followed by articles asking the question as to whether superhero fatigue has set in, or if the death of movies are upon us, as if the dominance of one genre has never happened before. It’s crass and basically there to drive up clicks and stoke arguments that have an abyss where a middle ground should be (Just check out every single battle that Netflix keeps stumbling into in regards to streaming and cinema). But the continued success of the genre has allowed for expansive and experimental works to be put up. Instead of fatigue, there’s a sense of shifting and a wider scope being championed. And a lot of that comes back to The Dark Knight.
‘You’ve changed things. Forever,’ the Joker utters to a stoic, unforgiving Batman, and upon that point for populist cinema, the two of them had.
