The movie moves so fast, I thought that he chooses to save the person he believes to be the best hope for Gotham.
Batman tells Gordon he is going to save Rachel, but ends up with Dent. What happened?
It was only between the 2nd and 3rd times I saw the movie that it hit me: the Joker lied about the addresses so that not only did Batman have to make an ugly choice but he lost his first choice anyway. The Joker is so breathtakingly evil and deceitful it is hard to comprehend in a single viewing.
That’s what I got, right away. You can see it coming by the way the scene is edited. That the Joker swapped the addresses was so perfectly in line with the character that I expected the same kind of hidden switcheroo during the Prisoner’s Dilemma sequence. And there’s no evidence that he didn’t switch those, too.
~Q
I’m going to sound totally gay by saying this but, I think Christian Bale is extremely good looking too.
Yeah, I didn’t like the ending, but after musing on it for awhile I’ve come to realize it’s more of a trajedy and one that might be resolved later, like if Harvey Dent comes back.
Yeah, I laughed like that too. Like the “Holy crap, you’re friggin crazy!” laugh. Like the pencil scene, instead of just stabbing the guy, he made a “magic trick” out of it. And the scene in the hospital when he mets Two-Face, the awkwardness is what made it funny.
Everyone seems to agree on a third installment… so who do you guys think is going to be in it? I’m thinking since Nolan is using the more believable characters we might see Black Mask, Hush, The Riddler, and Catwoman.
I am hoping for Black Mask, as he fits the crime-noir style Nolan has put in place, and I’d like to see a good interpretation of a new villain, not just a repeat, though Catwoman could fit in as Bruce’s new love interest. I just hope it isn’t something ridiculous like Clay Face or Killer Croc.
As for the ongoing argument about the sadistic humor of the Joker, it is not funny from The Joker’s perspective. No one is taking it from there. No one here wants to shove a pencil through someone’s eye and call it magic. Laughter is evoked from more than humor, just as tears come out at more times than when you are sad or hurt.
And the hospital scene is more humorous, because of the situation. Joker in drag, looking kind of irked that all of a sudden his bombs aren’t working and acting as if it were just something like your computer not turning on automatically. You laugh because you’re shocked by such a portrayal of apathy at human death. Even suicide bombers hesitate before pulling the chord. Joker doesn’t think twice, and it makes you chuckle because it’s so absurd. We are laughing at evil.
That’s exactly why it isn’t funny.
Why so serious?
Lemeul,
You bring up an interesting issue which I also have been thinking about. In reading your discussion of, I think I have found my answer. In the theatre I was in, people also laughed when
the Joker impaled that man’s eye on the pencil. They also laughed when he nonchalantly walked out the hospital he had just set to explode.
My initial reaction to this laughter was terror, but I forced myself to believe that these fellow viewers, as you said, just missed the point. That they don’t understand the true nature of evil on a philosophical level and I do, and so to them an exposition of it is so ridiculous, so impossible, that they laugh at it.
But then I realized that my explanation is exactly what I thought they were doing by laughing! I thought that my conceptual explanation was equivalent to their emotional reaction. I felt terror from their laughter, and so I immediately said “no, it couldn’t be that I’m sitting here in a theatre full of nihilists” and so I decided that they had decided “no, it couldn’t be that the joker refers to anything in reality” and that that was why they laughed.
But your words made something click in my mind just now. I realized that the Joker DOES refer to something in reality. I realized that these people WERE laughing, just as the Joker laughs when he does something evil. I realized that there was no thinking underlying their laughter, in order to make the act of laughing their defense against the Joker. I realize now that that laughter I heard was REAL. It was the Joker inside them which was coming out. They hadn’t missed the point, they had been awakened to it. Unlike myself, who was revolted by the Joker’s actions automatically - they laughed.
No, these people are not philosophically committed to the destruction of that which is valuable, but neither are they committed to it’s preservation. If they were, they would have bothered to learn the true nature of evil and their revulsion to it automatized. It would have been a byproduct of their passion to understand the nature of good. True, they also clapped at the end when Bat Man proved victorious. True, that is just as real. But make no mistake about it: Just as the Joker cannot FULLY practice nihilism lest he would just kill himself and that would be it, no real-life nihilist can be utterly devoid of some short-term semblance of reason, purpose, structure, and value.
Or it could be that, instead of these people all being nihilists, they could have seen the absurdity of the situation. Here is a man, with green hair and makeup on his face, wearing a female nurse’s outfit, trying to blow up a hospital, and the bomb isn’t working and he reacts like a normal man with a wonky cell-phone. The image is so ridicules its laughable. Not to mention that no one was in the hospital. When you take away the danger to the people inside, the image becomes just silly. Don’t go asserting that everyone in the theater with you was a butt-load of half-baked nihilists because they find the absurd amusing. Because the absurd IS amusing. The scene with a pencil was also absurd, but I’ll give you that it was also so sudden and terrifying that there was little time to laugh.
I’d be careful of what kind of philosophical labels you toss at people because your one interpretation of a single reaction to a single scene of a single movie.
]I notice no laughter when he was preparing to cut Rachel’s face up. No cheers when he guts the mobster or shoots Gordon. No one clapped as Harvey went around gunning down people. I didn’t hear an encore when they all realized that there was a bomb inside the prisoner or when Rachel died.
I honestly think your way, way, off base and your original conclusion, that they saw the absurdity, the lack of reality, in the Joker’s actions and laughed at them, was far closer to being correct.
I am hoping for Black Mask, as he fits the crime-noir style Nolan has put in place, and I’d like to see a good interpretation of a new villain, not just a repeat, though Catwoman could fit in as Bruce’s new love interest. I just hope it isn’t something ridiculous like Clay Face or Killer Croc.
Yeah, in the comics Catwoman and Batman were on-again-off-again allies and enemies. But, Bruce and Selina were an item. I think that would make it interesting. Also, they did Killer Croc in the anime prequel, he was done well I think, but I don’t think he’d be good for the movie.
Penguin might be good too. He’s just a mobster and arms dealer who happens to kind of look like a Penguin, so they call him Penguin to make fun of him.
Nyronus,
I ask you then, what is nihilism? Does it exist? Or is it just some comical absurdity?
Does art have a point in human affairs? Is it supposed to teach us something about ourselves? Or is it just a pointless exercise in meaningless emotional titilation? How is that attitude itself not nihilistic?
Also, remember the nature of nihilism (or any bad philosophical attitude for that matter): it isn’t teneable. It cannot be practiced consistently.
Your post offered very little in the way of new points which hadn’t already been made. It was full of assertions and quite hostile in tone.
… I am saying that ALL humor is essentially light-hearted. That the object of the laughter - be it a competent man’s moment of incompetence, or a petty criminal’s petty pretentions - is light-hearted because it is not important. All humor mocks the unimportant. …
Well, I disagree somewhat. This thread is about the Dark Knight, so I won’t pursue this subject further here.
As for your point about emotional seduction: I don’t see how “a man who shakes off the spell only after the rally is over” describes anything in reality. How would this happen?
It would happen when the presence of the crowd was a factor in creating your emotions. Emotions can be ‘contagious’, if everyone around you is smiling, happy and cheering it can be hard not to feel the same way. Exit the crowd and inappropriate emotions will dissipate, making it easier to think clearly.
Why so serious?
Now thats funny.
Yeah, in the comics Catwoman and Batman were on-again-off-again allies and enemies. But, Bruce and Selina were an item. I think that would make it interesting. Also, they did Killer Croc in the anime prequel, he was done well I think, but I don’t think he’d be good for the movie.
Penguin might be good too. He’s just a mobster and arms dealer who happens to kind of look like a Penguin, so they call him Penguin to make fun of him.
I’m more apt to like Killer Croc and other more ridiculous characters in stuff like The Gotham Knight, since it’s animated. It seems silly to have it in a film, especially one with such a serious tone as the Nolan series.
Penguin would be good perhaps, but once again, I would like to see a new villain on film. DeVito did a bang up job as the Penguin, and he literally fit the roll because of his stature. Burton’s interpretation was great as the more Victorian/Gothic style Penguin.
I would like to see a powerful enemy like Joker again, not just a short mobster with an array of menacing umbrellas.
Nyronus,
I ask you then, what is nihilism? Does it exist? Or is it just some comical absurdity?
I have no idea what this challenge relates to. Can you clarify for me?
Does art have a point in human affairs? Is it supposed to teach us something about ourselves? Or is it just a pointless exercise in meaningless emotional titilation? How is that attitude itself not nihilistic?
I don’t understand this either. I understand the Objectivist view of art. I have no idea what you mean by this unless you are trying to imply that I am a nihilist, or at least am when it comes to art.
Also, remember the nature of nihilism (or any bad philosophical attitude for that matter): it isn’t teneable. It cannot be practiced consistently.
Your post offered very little in the way of new points which hadn’t already been made. It was full of assertions and quite hostile in tone.
It was hostile in tone because I do not like the idea that you have judged the totality of the morality of the audience in such a black category because they found a scene which was most likely engineered to be funny… funny. You are the one here who has something to demonstrate, that the “Joker” “inside” these people were coming out when they laughed. You are making the assertions, and I simply came along and attempted to demonstrate the your assertion was untenable via the evidence you presented in that one post, thus rendering your aforementioned assertions bare. I did not realize that the debate about this had stretched so far back. I only popped in and found your post and made all arguments independent of everything but the evidence you presented and my own experiences. If people keep finding the same problems with your arguments, why do you keep repeating them?
Nyronus,
There is much factually wrong with your version of the arguments I have put forth. You clearly display a lack of understanding of my use of the term “nihilism” from your failure to address it directly. Curiosly, you irresponsibly decided not to read the discussion which my original comment provoked and to compensate for it you used a laughably specious argument to “prove” to me that my argument is flawed. With this evidence in hand, I must ask: what is your purpose in attacking my claim - even as you misunderstand it? What, specifically, are you trying to defend?
You "do not like the idea that have judged the totality of the morality of the audience in such a black category." Fine. Point to where I did that. It is an idea you conjured in your head. You think that the only way for a person to be a nihilist is to lack any desire for values in any and all contexts (which, you yourself, define and laugh at as impossible and absurd), so what is it about me which made you hostile? Clearly, it was not a sense that I wished to call into question the good nature of the people in the audience - that would be nihilistic and thus, by your standards, impossible. Furthermore, the obvious implication is that there was nothing good about these people which deserves defense - that would be heroism and thus, by your standards, impossible aswell. They certainly do not deserve philosophical enlightenment, let alone a suggestion that they engage in introspection.
So I ask again: what, specifically - in art or in life - are you trying to defend? Once you have given me a satisfactory answer, I will explain to you what I am attempting to preserve by pointing out what I have thusfar.
Nyronus,
There is much factually wrong with your version of the arguments I have put forth. You clearly display a lack of understanding of my use of the term “nihilism” from your failure to address it directly. Curiosly, you irresponsibly decided not to read the discussion which my original comment provoked and to compensate for it you used a laughably specious argument to “prove” to me that my argument is flawed. With this evidence in hand, I must ask: what is your purpose in attacking my claim - even as you misunderstand it? What, specifically, are you trying to defend?
For a while I was trying to decide if you really were trying to put words in my mouth and imply a sort of moral depravity on my part. I’ve decided that, yes, yes it is. My refusal to define nihilism is not a moral failing on my part, or one of ignorance. If I failed to understand what you mean by nilhilism, that is your fault. I actually did go back and read everything you said. I still do not understand why you keep accusing me of not knowing nihilism is. I know what it is, but if it will satisfy you;
“Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.” From The Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy
This is what you have called these people. Hundreds of people whom you do not know. Where did you do this you ask? Well, remember this?
I realized that these people WERE laughing, just as the Joker laughs when he does something evil. I realized that there was no thinking underlying their laughter, in order to make the act of laughing their defense against the Joker. I realize now that that laughter I heard was REAL. It was the Joker inside them which was coming out. They hadn’t missed the point, they had been awakened to it. Unlike myself, who was revolted by the Joker’s actions automatically - they laughed.
That seems like a pretty barefaced moral condemnation of the entire audience, and anyone else who laughed. You talk of the Joker “inside” these people coming out. You are, implicitly, stating that the audience is really, deep down, nihilistic, and that they were reacting with, it seems if I judge your words correctly, pleasure at seeing one of their own. They may not be committed to destruction, but that doesn’t change the fact that you have, with one fell swipe, declared them all so morally bankrupt that they no longer even believe in the term.
Who and what am I defending? Not people, at least not directly. I can’t defend what I don’t know. I am defend the sanctity of moral judgment against what appears to be your rash psychologizing and rush to condemnation. I am defending morality against those who would give credence to nihilism by wielding morality as a club.
Clearly, it was not a sense that I wished to call into question the good nature of the people in the audience - that would be nihilistic and thus, by your standards, impossible. Furthermore, the obvious implication is that there was nothing good about these people which deserves defense - that would be heroism and thus, by your standards, impossible aswell. They certainly do not deserve philosophical enlightenment, let alone a suggestion that they engage in introspection.
I have no idea what your logically saying here. I believe I understand the emotional message underlying your words, but not what twisted channels of logic used to reach it. Correct me if I am wrong, but this is the exact spot where you are putting words in my mouth and accusing me of, at least, subconscious, nihilism. I have no idea what has lead you to this conclusion, but, if I am reading the implications of the sentence correctly, I am to be very, very insulted. I ask that you not make statements like this again, unless you are prepared to actually come out and say what you mean and demonstrate exactly where I said nihilism is impossible or where I said heroism is impossible.
Everyone seems to agree on a third installment… so who do you guys think is going to be in it? I’m thinking since Nolan is using the more believable characters we might see Black Mask, Hush, The Riddler, and Catwoman.
I’d like to see Catwoman (played by Angelina Jolie) or Talia al Ghul (played by Monica Bellucci). Heck, even Poison Ivey (Jennifer Love Hewitt) or Harley Quinn (Keira Knightley). Any ass-kicking hot chick villain basically. It is time that Bruce Wayne meet a more attractive love interest than Rachel.
Aside from those guys, I’d like to see Bane (Vin Diesel) and the Croc (Clive Owen + CGI & Makeup).
Yeah, in the comics Catwoman and Batman were on-again-off-again allies and enemies. But, Bruce and Selina were an item. I think that would make it interesting. Also, they did Killer Croc in the anime prequel, he was done well I think, but I don’t think he’d be good for the movie.
Penguin might be good too. He’s just a mobster and arms dealer who happens to kind of look like a Penguin, so they call him Penguin to make fun of him.
Wow someone other than me actually likes Killer Croc. He was an awesome character in the anime – a very interesting, tragic, and complex character that is equal parts villain and victim struggling to come to grip with the duality of both his body and his soul. If anybody can make him work on film, I believe that Nolan could.
Penguin would work well with the tone of the series. I have trouble coming up with who would play him though.
Penguin would work well with the tone of the series. I have trouble coming up with who would play him though.
Phillip Seymore Hoffman ala Truman Capote?
Ha ha ha! That would be good!
I’d like to see Catwoman (played by Angelina Jolie) or Talia al Ghul (played by Monica Bellucci). Heck, even Poison Ivey (Jennifer Love Hewitt) or Harley Quinn (Keira Knightley). Any ass-kicking hot chick villain basically. It is time that Bruce Wayne meet a more attractive love interest than Rachel.
Aside from those guys, I’d like to see Bane (Vin Diesel) and the Croc (Clive Owen + CGI & Makeup).
Harley doesn’t work without The Joker, and there should not be another Joker in this series after Ledger’s performance.
Phillip Seymore Hoffman ala Truman Capote?
Good call!
Harley doesn’t work without The Joker, and there should not be another Joker in this series after Ledger’s performance.
Sad but true…
… there should not be another Joker in this series after Ledger’s performance.
I’m not convinced either way on whether to have another Joker in this series. On the one hand, how can that performance be equaled? My roommate says, and I agree, that the man with the best chance at it is Johnny Depp. The point on the other hand is who, upon being asked who they thought could give an all-time performance in the role of the Joker, would have said Heath Ledger??? Perhaps there is another hidden gem out there somewhere.
I don’t yet have an opinion on this point. There’s something for your consideration.