There are many themes that are prevalent in The Dark Knight and one of them is the way that evil overcomes good. The Dark Knight has a bittersweet ending because The Joker "won" at the end of the film.
One of the quotes that Harvey Dent says at the start of the film is "you either die as a hero, or live long enough to become the villain". This is what we call foreshadowing because Dent eventually becomes the "bad guy" at the end of the film when he comes Two Face. The Joker's motive in the this film is to show that there's no such thing as a 100% good guy. He wants to show that the human race is corrupt and we all have a dark side hidden beneath us. He shows this in various ways. He pays off some of the police force in Commissioner Gordon's unit to kidnap both Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes. In the interrogation scene, Joker says to Batman that he wants him to break his "one rule" in order to find out the location of both Dent and Dawes.
Quotes you can use:
You can look at a lot of quotes by clicking here for IMDB. I have isolated quotes that might be good for your essay. Bracketed sentences give you explanations.
Harvey Dent: "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." (foreshadows his eventual downfall)The Joker: "All you care about is money. This city deserves a better class of criminal. And I'm gonna give it to them!" (shows that Joker has no motivation. Just wants to create chaos)
Alfred Pennyworth: "Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with". Some men just want to watch the world burn. (same as above)
Batman: "Because you were the best of us! He wanted to prove that even someone as good as you could fall." (Proof the Joker won. He took the best "good guy" character and turned him evil)
The Joker: "I took Gotham's white knight and I brought him down to our level. It wasn't hard. You see, madness, as you know, is like gravity. All it takes is a little push!"
[the Joker laughs hysterically as Batman races off and the cops come to take the Joker into custody] (Joker shows that he was able to make a good guy turn turn into a criminal).
The Joker: "You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all your
The Joker: "You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all your
The Joker: And tonight you're gonna break your one rule. (that one rule is not killing people)
Batman: I'm considering it.
The Ending:
Some people may not understand the ending of the film and why Batman is labelled as a criminal.
Well basically Gotham City is a corrupt city full of criminals and crooked cops. If you watched Batman Begins, the cops failed to do their job properly because they would be paid off by the mob boss (Falcone). In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent (a lawyer) has managed to clean up the streets and put most of the city's biggest criminals behind bars. The citizens feel safe again knowing that one of the city's most powerful men is on "their side".
The Joker's main motivation in this film is to break the "status quo" so to speak. He wants to show us that Good Guys can become Bad Guys and that everyone is "corruptible". He has three targets in mind, Harvey Dent, Batman and Commissioner Gordon. Joker failed to corrupt the latter two, but Dent becomes psycho after Rachel dies and he kills the people responsible for her death.
In order for the city's people to not lose any hope, Batman frames himself as the person that killed Harvey Dent and the other cops. Since Batman is a just a vigilante and a symbol, he doesn't want the people of Gotham to feel unsafe. Batman chose to take the fall which is why the police are chasing him at the end. He wants Dent's reputation and goodwill to live on to prove that Joker did not win.
Memorable Scenes To Watch
If you need to watch some of the more memorable scenes again. I have picked the ones that might be the most important.
Visual/Oral Techniques
Some of the questions in your essay might ask you for visual and oral techniques as evidence to support your answer. I think the music composed by Han Zimmer in this film greatly portrays Joker's character. His theme is called "Why So Serious?" and sound that you may hear is one string played by a Cello. At the start, it's just one string and it sounds like "nails on a chalkboard" so to speak. It helps to tell the audience that danger is near. You can hear the music below.
In terms of visual techniques, there are two scenes that spring to mind for me. There are lots of "establishing camera shots" during the scene where Joker and his men are trying to assassinate the Mayor. The camera is trying to show to the audience how big the city is and let us know that Joker and his men could be hiding anywhere. It also teases us in a way as it keeps telling us that the Joker is hiding in one of the high rise building windows to use a sniper rifle on the Mayor. The movie gives us a big surprise when he is actually on the ground posing as one of the soldiers. You can see the scene of this part of the movie below.
Another great visual scene you can look at is the handheld camera Joker uses to torture a Batman impersonator. The actor that played Joker (Heath Ledger) directed this scene himself. The use of a handheld camera mirrors the same footage that terrorists like ISIS use to threaten the world. They too use footage like this to show to the world that the Western World should listen to their demands. You can see this scene below.
What you might need for Merit or Excellence
When it comes to NCEA English essays, you may need to commentate on outside factors to let the marker know you understand the text FULLY. If you just talk about what is happening inside the text itself, you may not get a higher mark.
You usually have to talk about why this film was made and what impact is has made on society or something along those lines. You have to think about when the movie was made (Dark Knight was made in 2008) and what was happening in the world at that time.
I read quite a few things about the movie over the years and movie critics loved the realism and social commentary of it at the time. To my knowledge, American popular culture started to become more "PG" after real-life Terrorist Events that happened on September 11th, 2001.
When I was growing up before 9/11, you would see a lot of action movies about terrorists. Die Hard for example are about German Terrorists while many Arnold Schwarzenegger movies also have lots of the same thing.
After 9/11 however, I think America started to become more family friendly and those types of movies weren't being made. I remember things like "High School Musical" and those other Disney shows being popular. Violent cartoons weren't being made. Not to mention more fantasy type movies were popular between 2001 - 2008 with franchises like Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings being on top.
When The Dark Knight came out in 2008, I feel it was a commentary that the world is still corrupt and that we shouldn't pretend that evil doesn't exist. You can read a good article of what I am talking about by clicking here. They explain it better than I can. But Dark Knight could be called a post 9/11 movie. You may need to talk about something like this to get better marks in your English essay during NCEA exams.
*Note: This is just a study guide to help you out. You should talk with your teacher in order to get more guidance on how you write your essay. This guide is to just give you some tips and inspiration on what you could write about.
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