Fair Value of The Dark Knight: $15. Hate it or love it, but this is an essential and definitive film of the superhero genre, and one that speaks more to the zeitgeist of the 00s which have enabled our present dystopia.
Capitalism needs no greater mass myth than for the sheep to believe that the wolves are the sheepdogs. Batman is an essential part of American propaganda- the myth that it is possible for rich people to be good people. It’s brother and rival from the same year, Iron Man, is another example; as is Daddy Warbucks in Little Orphan Annie, as is George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life, as is Donald Trump in The Apprentice (the most direct factor in making him the dictator of America).
Bruce Wayne is just a less honest Patrick Bateman; he sublimates his urges for violence and domination into vigilantism and terrorism against the lower classes. And he is held up as the ideal superhero for this. By all means, let the tech billionaire use your phone for surveillance; he’s only going to go after the bad guys, and when the bad guy is caught, they will delete the panopticon. These myths are essential for the American economy, which is fundamentally about cultivating and exploiting a delusional population.
The Doom of the DCEU: The Dark Knight was the blockbuster that made Christopher Nolan into a new juggernaut, in many ways the next Spielberg, balancing between populist appeal and his niche interests. Success can be more problematic for the industry than failure, for success is the father of feckless imitation. By 2025, there are few clichés as shopworn as ‘Villain pretends to be captured so as to advance his schemes’; in 2008, it was relatively novel. It was the success of The Dark Knight which lead so such dreary exercises as Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, and the first Suicide Squad. Ever since the 1960s, DC Comics has had a problem: it is not Marvel Comics, but it tries too hard to be. DC superheroes are fundamentally simple, straightforward, they are stories that are meant to be consumed by young children.
Marvel Comics began stealing business by having stories that are more angsty, conflicted, and psychologically appealing to teenagers and young men. At times, DC has caught up with such offerings as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s “Whatever happened to the Man of Steel?”. But all too often, DC Comics characters reach this fundamental incongruity of having a four-color character behave in an attempt at gray-scale noir. With the upcoming James Gunn Superman, we will learn whether Warner Brothers had turned a corner on this bad habit.
The Drug Theory of Jokers: The Joker, as played by Heather Ledger, does not chew the scenery so much as he inhales the scenery like he was Joey Chestnut defending his title as world hot dog gargling champion. This is not a bad thing. The Joker is a murder clown; it’s not really possible to do a subtle or a restrained murder clown. The Dark Knight posits the idea that one BDSM gimp has managed to be so much more effective than RICO or FISA or inter-agency taskforces that the mafia decides to hire a party clown to entertain and distract the gimp.
Basically, I think that every Joker in cinema has derived from a different drug, with a possible exception for Mark Hamill’s performance. Cesar Romero was liquor and weed; he was really more about being the clown and less about the criminal. Jack Nicholson was the cocaine Joker: big, megalomaniac, always mugging for the audience. Jared Leto would be the Ketamine and crack joker. But Heath Ledger? That’s methamphetamines. The relentless energy, the chewing, the twitching, the inability to stay still. “I’m like a dog chasing a car, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one.”. And in a very real way, he doesn’t. What gave Ledger’s performance so much power is that it was perhaps the first murder clown that seemed even vaguely plausible for existing, a terrible homicidal Renaissance faire street busker with way too many knives and stories.
The Police State needs supervillains to justify it’s maximalism; the inherent paradox of fascism is that it is perpetually and simultaneously both invincible and also on the brink of annihilation by overwhelming opposition. What is important is for people to believe that boogeymen like Hannibal Lecter and the Joker are actually possible; with such phantasms emplaced, the masses gladly accede to the gulags.
Want to Know How I Got these Strings? The real star that made The Dark Knight work so effectively was Hans Zimmer. Instead of soaring bombastic brass, he used minimalistic, string-heavy music to create a steadily building pulse of unease and discomfort, occasionally punctuated by triumphant returns to the more operatic ‘Batman’ themes. On it’s own, the music can be uncomfortable; but in the context of the film, it really helps to build a sense of steadily escalating and excessive breakdown.
Beyond that, Nolan broke away from the CGI of Batman Begins to implement a number of set pieces that were more reliant on practical effects. It’s really the first film where Nolan is hitting his stride at depicting mass destruction (a niche on which he’s really become the cinematic master). Real semi trucks flip, actual hospitals explode.
The Patriot Act Movie: Along with Black Hawk Down and The Hurt Locker, Nolan’s The Dark Knight really lays out the central themes, palettes, and topics of 00s cinema. Terrorism is omnipresent, inexplicable, and implacable; the colors of the world are concrete and brown, eschewing any brighter coloration or intensity; protagonists are cynical and snarky, yet resolute. An absolute surveillance state, watched over by oligarchs of loving grace, is the only means by which it is possible for civilization to exist; any moderation or restriction upon the archon of the state is doom.
The thesis of The Dark Knight is that attempts at oversight on the oligarch’s privilege are evil; the lesser antagonists of the film are the accountant/auditor Coleman Reese, and the District Attorney Harvey Dent, both of whom are ultimately exposed as venal and corrupt. Ultimately even the faithful butler Alfred (Michael Caine) must lie to Bruce Wayne, in order to keep his insanity well honed and preserve him on his crusade as the pugilistic latex gimp of Gotham City. I deeply enjoy The Dark Knight as a piece of entertaining fiction, but I loathe the concept of Batman as a character. Batman enables Donald Trump; Batman is the harbinger which allows Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerburg to operate with impunity. If there is one icon that needs to be destroyed for our society to evolve beyond the ancient regime of crony capitalism, it is the terrible fiction of The Batman.
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