wide recognized as one of the best superhero movies of the past decade , Christopher Nolan ’s The Dark Knight is also much more than an military action film . It ’s a brooding apologue about exponent , personal responsibility , and the government of urban life .
Here are ten ways you may look at The Dark Knight .
1 . Vigilante DoJ is not justice . One of the recurring head in Dark Knight is whether Batman can truly mete out justice to a metropolis of jillion , based entirely on his personal idea of right and wrong . Bruce Wayne constantly interrogate whether he should be playing the role of Batman , especially when he ’s not playact on behalf of the people he ’s test to save .
2 . Sometimes we ask to believe in a lie .
Dark Knight stop with Batman taking responsibility for the crimes Harvey Dent consecrate when he became Two - aspect . Batman decides that Gotham City needs a “ hero with a face ” more than the truth . It needs Harvey Dent to persist pure , and for Batman to become a tarnished hero . Partly , he reasons , the city need this because vigilante justice is not justice ( see 1 ) . But part it ’s because people need hope more than verity . Whether or not you agree with his assertion , it makes for an interesting philosophic debate .
3 . A wedge who has not been chosen by the people , no matter how honorable , can function exactly like a villain .
Joker frequent Batman because , as he might say , freaks attract monstrosity . Dark Knight teases the mind that Joker is in some good sense Batman ’s dark double : Joker is n’t dishonest ( he has goals eminent than draw deep , or even taking control ) , and he ’s fighting back against the same criminal elements that Batman targets . Joker ’s a vigilante for chaos , while Batman is a vigilante for law and order . Joker tells Batman that they need each other , and that Batman ca n’t live without Joker – and it ’s strongly implied that Batman agrees . Power that ’s wield secretly , like Batman ’s , always seems to breed a shape of uncontrollable anti - power represented by Joker .
4 . How do you fight back against a system without justice ? you may create enough chaos to demolish the system . you may become a criminal . Or you’re able to make every determination haphazardly , base on the somersaulting of a coin .
Possibly one of the most disturbing and heart - wrick messages of Dark Knight is that , in a world without justice , there is no way to fight the organization without fall into putridness , apathy , or worse . We see Gotham City ’s three pathways to business leader quite starkly in Dark Knight . The mob choose to make organized system of power found on crime and exploitation . Harvey Dent finally becomes Two - Face , who embraces the randomness of the coin toss . And Joker just wants to destroy every system , whether criminal or justness . Batman , of course , has a solution that ’s no better . . .
5 . Surveillance is the darkest tycoon .
In the climatic moment of Dark Knight , Bruce Wayne does a hack writer on every mobile sound in Gotham that turn the mobiles into surveillance equipment . Everybody in the city has become a surveillance camera . Batman knows he ’s function too far , and he leaves dominance of his total info awareness organisation in the script of genius discoverer Lucius Fox , who destroy it after Batman catches Joker and Two - side . This is also the minute when Batman bring in that he has become the risky hombre , and takes on the curtain of Dark Knight . He has take on the power of Big Brother . He has let out the latent authoritarianism in Batman .
6 . criminal offence and anarchy are not allies .
Joker , congresswoman of chaos and lawlessness , picks Gotham ’s criminal overlords as his first quarry . He kills them gleefully , burns their money , and derides them for cling to an organized system . But Joker will never defeat Batman , because he image in Batman the same disorganised topsy-turvyness that ’s inside Joker . Batman has no rule . He destroys the criminal organization , but when it come to build up up a good , just system for Gotham he has to rely on public handmaid like Harvey Dent . Batman is the chaos of good . Joker is the pandemonium of wickedness .
7 . The route to fascism is paved with safe intentions .
Dark Knight is about Batman ’s transformation from vigilante good guy to proto - fascist surveillance warrior . Perhaps more chillingly , this was n’t so much a transformation as it was a Book of Revelation of the two sides of Batman that Bruce Wayne always cognize were there . Batman represents the jerk - of - state of war between a desire for societal judge , and a desire to assume unquestioned control of a beau monde .
8 . Idealism is easier to crooked than rapacity . Harvey Dent ’s journey is from idealism to condemnable apathy . He manage too much about Gotham , and then he does n’t give care at all . He fall much severely than the criminal overlords of Gotham do , losing his saneness as well as his social position , because idealism seduce mass more vulnerable than avaritia does .
9 . Megacities are more important political entities than nation - land . Gotham City , a megalopolis whose bridge and skyscraper are borrowed from dozens of citiscapes , is a symbolization for megacities all over the world . It ’s no accident that Batman seems only to exist within city — when he go to China , it ’s as if he ’s never left Gotham , because Hong Kong is just an extension of Gotham ’s massive buildings and minute street . The relationships between megacities are becoming more important than those between nation - states . Political living is hold in within megacities . The battle for power and justice are urban struggle .
10 . Every hoagy has two face .
The tale of every hoagy ( and every villain ) in Dark Knight blossom forth in the tragedy of Harvey Dent ’s tale . There is no goodness without degeneracy , no decree without chaos , and no Justice Department without crime . We can only hope for fictitious stories of pure , stainless good to sustain us through the dark , equivocal times .
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