Lingering Questions from 'The Dark Knight'...

I think your last sentence answers your first question. The effect (if not point) in making the audience think he's dead is to give Batman's sacrifice meaning. What was the effect of making us think SPOCK was dead at the end of TWOK? It gave Kirk's farewell speech, and the whole Kobiashi Maru device, meaning. Didn't matter that it was reversed in the next movie, for the time being, it served the story.

 

True, but it was reversed in the next movie by the actions of the characters, actions that had consequences. Actions which cost Kirk his admiralty, the destruction of the Enterprise, and the death of his son David.

Most of all, at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Spock is dead. Kirk's actions only make sense if he is dead.

At the end of The Dark Knight, Batman's actions only make sense if Harvey Dent is dead. And, unlike Star Trek, this isn't a universe where a character can get a reprieve from death in the next movie.

 

You mean it wasn't just a big ploy by Spock to get some vacation time on Vulcan?

 

I don't think so.

Batman's actions - taking responsibility for the death of the five - work only if the general public believe that Harvey Dent died a hero. Dent doesn't have to be dead, or a hero, or have died while being heroic. The public just has to believe it. And part of that which makes Dent believable as a hero is the public believing that Batman killed the five, rather than believing that Dent killed the five.

House of Cards and Wheels within Wheels.

 

^^
If Harvey turns out to be alive, and the public finds out, the whole scheme to preserve his image falls apart. That might work as the premise of a third movie, but there's no indication from Gordon or Batman at the end of The Dark Knight that Harvey is still alive. I just don't buy it.

 

Maybe they could put Dent in Bruce Wayne's mind so he can have his own Harvey.

Sorry with your avatar I couldn't resist that one.

 

Well played, sir, well played.

 

Actually, if Dent were still alive, Gordon has more to lose than Batman. If it comes out that he was part of a cover up of that nature it would not bode well for his career as a police commissioner.

 

Definitely says in the making of the Dark Knight, including script that they wrote out Harvey Dent broke his neck. Dead.

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Knight-F...bs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217453898&sr=8-3

Find it at Barnes and Noble as well!

 

I think people are looking at this too much like it's actually a comic book. In the comics, Two-Face would be alive for some reason because that's the nature of the things but that's not what Nolan is doing. He's told Dent's story - there is no narrative thrust for him to return, his arc was wrapped up.

 

With all the instance that a clearly and quite dead Dent could be alive, I feel like I'm in the Monty Python parrot sketch.

 

I was wondering which story of Jokers Origin might be the real one?

 

^ In the Joker's mind perhaps all of them are.

 

"This is an EX-D.A.!"

 

They're basically both lies-or exaggerations- but I believed the second one more, it makes sense that someone already abnormal acts as he thinks is correct & loving, then gets rejected and that makes him more bitter. His father could have given him the initial emotional scars (I'd rather not think of a little boy being given them, an adult self-injuring is less troubling, more ironic).

 

I wonder if The Joker himself even knows. If he does, it probably happened in an extremely mundane accident, which is why he keeps inventing shocking backstories for himself. Perhaps he created them himself, in a period in his madness when he was less cogent, or maybe receiving them was one of the things that tipped him over the edge. I strongly doubt either of his stories was the truth.

 

Exactly true... it's a common theme in the books (and part of what defines who the guy is). Even HE doesn't know when what he's saying is truth or when it's delusion.

The best version of his origin was given in "The Killing Joke" (IMHO). They tried to to a riff on that during the Burton "Batman" but they totally screwed it up, AFAIC.

The short form... the guy is a chemical engineer with a young wife and a newborn baby. He's always been a fairly funny guy, even done a little on-stage "standup." He loses his job, though... and can't make ends meet. He tries to get a standup job to bring in a little money but (due to his depression) isn't funny at all ... nobody "gets" his jokes, nobody laughs. However, there are a couple of thieves at the club who see his desperation and decide to take advantage of it.

They bring him in to help them rob the very chemical company where he previously worked. These two guys have a scam... they dress up their "Patsy" in a costume, the "Red Hood," and if they get arrested, they claim to be minor players in the "Red Hood Gang" but in reality they kill the guy they'd brought in as the "Hood" after each caper so they get to keep everything.

He's desperate... so he agrees (not knowing the "rest of the story" regarding their scam obviously). But just before, he gets cold feet, and tries to back out. And at that point he discovers that an accident with a baby bottle warmer... his house burnt to the ground and his wife and infant child both died. He's then threatened with death if he backs out...

During the break in, the (as yet still new to the city and "mythological") Batman shows up. The guy freaks out, seeing a demonic figure... and flees. But he falls into a vat of chemicals (which, naturally, are being dumped into the river... remember, it's a comic, not reality!)

So, he comes to on the edge of the river, chemically altered (both in mind and body) and psychologically fractured... and the Joker is born.

The character is filled with delusions, hundreds or thousands of "origins," he remembers... all different... but all with the basic idea that "life has a perverted sense of humor" that matches his own. As far as he's concerned... he is who he is because that's what LIFE is like... and he's the only one who actually GETS THE JOKE.

It's less a matter of him being mean and vicious, and more a matter of him seeing this as how the universe really is, and all our ideas of morality and social consciousness and so forth are the REAL delusions.

Of course, he fixates on the Batman. Over his career, he kills thousands, and one of the issues that weighs most heavily on the Batman character is the idea that had he KILLED the Joker rather than just capturing him and incarcerating him over and over, all those who had died would still be alive. But, and this is KEY to the Batman's character... THE BATMAN DOES NOT KILL.

They got this right in the Nolan movies... and that's not by accident. They know that he doesn't kill, and they've honored that (this was my biggest complain re: Burton's take on the character!)

And THAT is the main reason that I think that the ending of "The Dark Knight" is a setup for another sequel. They know this about the character and honor it... and I don't believe that they'd have done this... and created such a MASSIVE conflict for the character... unless they had a REASON for doing so.

 

Well Aaron Eckhart's obviously read the script and said he'd be interested in returning, so what does that tell you? Maybe he'll play Riddler in the next movie, then Mad Hatter in the movie after that!

 

one of the producers on the film also hinted that Dent could be alive. Sure he looked dead in this movie but it's a perfect twist for a future movie.

 

What the script and book says are vs. what is on screen are two different things.

Nothing ON SCREEN definitively tells us he is dead, despite the memorial. If there's room for him to be alive, and there is, then they can bring him back.