The Dark Knight - Does Batman taking the fall hold up?

[Sketcher]

I watched The Dark Knight the other day, and I'm not sure if I'm missing something, or if Batman taking the blame for Harvey Dent's murders doesn't really make sense.

For one, while Dent was committing them Batman was primarily dealing with rescuing the Joker's hostages and the Joker himself, where he had a platoon of cops, hostages, and henchmen as eyewitness. Then there's the Anna Ramirez. Dent spared her life. Did Gordon get to her before anyone else and tell her the story to go with, possibly threatening to expose her role in Rachel's death if she didn't? Also, what reason would Batman have for killing? The criminals seem to know murder isn't his MO, so I would assume so would the public.

There had to be someone in Gotham who pieced together that the people Batman "killed" just happened to be the same ones involved with the kidnapping and murder of Dent and Rachel, all around the time the emotionally unstable and half-burnt person disappeared from a hospital. Batman taking the blame to keep Dent's reputation clean is noble, but I feel there might be too many holes in his and Gordon's plan for it to hold up until Bane decides to read a random letter on TV.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I could go on for lengths about why that movie is overrated but I like that particular part.

When people unite behind a vigilante, bad things happen.

 

[Anwar]

It never made any sense, they could've just covered up the murders or blamed someone else. The whole Dent arc was rushed at the end.

And it made even less sense that years later people would just believe Bane at face value and break down because they found out Dent may have killed some people after sustaining what they could easily believe was brain damage.

 

[Oddish]

The people who tried to put forward the truth were probably denounced as conspiracy theorist whackos.

 

[theenglish]

The ending of that movie never held up.

 

[Reverend]

I'm always reticent to use terms like "overrated" or "underrated" as by and large they're nonsense terms that are at best more about subjective perception than anything else, and at worse a thinly veiled excuse to axe grind.

That said, I think it's fair to say that in the case of 'The Dark Knight', Ledger's performance elevates the whole piece to such a degree a lot of the fairly major flaws in the script get overlooked. And yes, the ending is among them.
I rather think the movie suffers from the same flaws that beset the third in the series; the writers/director had more story to tell than they had movie to make. As such both TDK & DKR each have two movies worth of plot squished down into one. Indeed the logical way to go had they been prepared to go the distance would have been to hold off on the two-face reveal until the coda, have him be the antagonist of the 3rd movie (maybe with Bane or Selina in the mix too?) and have the 4th and final movie be the Talia one.
This version of Bruce never felt like her earned his retirement (either one of them!) I mean he was Batman for what, a year? 18 months?

 

[STEPhon IT]

Why couldn't Batman and Gordon say that The Joker was responsible?

 

[Claudia]

But wasn't Batman's taking Dent's crimes upon himself in order to keep all the criminals Dent got convictions for in jail? So that Dent's later actions don't reflect negatively on the convictions and offer the criminals a way to appeal their sentences?

As for myself: I *love* the ending, Gordon's voice-over, the music... what didn't quite hold up for me was "The Dark Knight Rises"...

 

[Anwar]

But wasn't Batman's taking Dent's crimes upon himself in order to keep all the criminals Dent got convictions for in jail? So that Dent's later actions don't reflect negatively on the convictions and offer the criminals a way to appeal their sentences?

As for myself: I *love* the ending, Gordon's voice-over, the music... what didn't quite hold up for me was "The Dark Knight Rises"...

That was Batman's fail logic take, but it wasn't necessary. All they had to do was cover up the murders, blame the Joker or someone else, or say Dent was left brain damaged and was just another victim of Gotham's corruption and this doesn't reflect on his prior actions before he was brain damaged.

The movie was trying to frame it as some "Epic Sacrifice" thing, but it was ill-conceived.

 

[USS Firefly]

Why couldn't Batman and Gordon say that The Joker was responsible?

I had the same thought after I saw the movie

 

[ichab]

The ending of that movie never held up.

I never liked it either because it's basically saying "people can't handle truth, therefore the hero should take the bad rap because he can handle it." That's a bad message to send in my book. People should learn to handle truth no matter how unsettling it is.

Personally I felt that they should have waited until the next movie to turn Dent into Two face so that the relationship between Dent, Gordon and Batman was better established. IMO, addding the Two Face storyline bogged the movie down and made it longer than it needed to be. The focus should have remained on the Joker.

For those that want to watch the Dent story done better, I recommend The Long Halloween.

 

[theenglish]

I completely agree about Dent. The final scene with Dent should have been the hospital scene, with a brief scene of him at the end showing that he survived the bombs. Two-Face is an important enough villain that he should have been the main opponent for the third movie. I was checking my watch for the final half hour of The Dark Knight waiting for it to end.

 

[Kor]

As much as Nolan's films go for this gritty, straight-faced realism, there always seems to be this aspect of absurdity just beneath the surface, that we are meant to overlook because in-universe it's all treated so seriously (why so serious? ). With TDK, it was the contrivance that the scheme to have Batman take the blame would hold up under scrutiny. And also Harvey Dent still being able to function in any way at all with the injury the way it was depicted there.

Kor

 

[Starkers]

I rather think the movie suffers from the same flaws that beset the third in the series; the writers/director had more story to tell than they had movie to make. As such both TDK & DKR each have two movies worth of plot squished down into one. Indeed the logical way to go had they been prepared to go the distance would have been to hold off on the two-face reveal until the coda, have him be the antagonist of the 3rd movie (maybe with Bane or Selina in the mix too?) and have the 4th and final movie be the Talia one.

Completely agree and I wish Two Face had just been revealed at the end and then had him be the villain in 3. The Dark Knight Rises felt even more like two films squashed into one though (The Last Jedi is another film with way too much plot for a single film). I guess it's the curse of a trilogy and someone like Nolan having lots of ideas but only wanting to do three films (and I guess Bale might have balked at doing more than three as well).

Shame as a third film could have had Bats fight Two Face but also had Bane bubbling up in the background, Bane snapping Batman's back at the end would have been a hell of a cliff-hanger leading into a fourth film!

Do we know if Nolan had originally planned for Ledger to return as Joker in DKR?

 

[Reverend]

The Dark Knight Rises felt even more like two films squashed into one though

It literally was two movie plots smoothed together. It even went over the same beats twice, with Bruce having to struggle to overcome a physical impairment and become Batman again . . . twice, in the same move.
There's a reason I've never felt inclined to rewatch DKR.

(The Last Jedi is another film with way too much plot for a single film).

Not quite the same issue. Actually, it's quite the opposite since TLJ's main problem wasn't that it had too much story to tell; it didn't have enough to fill up a whole movie and the story they actually wanted to tell (Rey's) didn't meet the demands of the kind of action adventure that was expected of a Star Wars, so the rest of the cast were split up and assigned the narrative equivalent of busy work. A lot of things may have been happening, but it doesn't really add up to much. Hell, Finn & Rose's subplot could be cut out and you miss *nothing*. Not a knock against the actors or anything since, as I said it's a plotting issue.

Do we know if Nolan had originally planned for Ledger to return as Joker in DKR?

IIRC yes, but not like one might have hoped. Basically his scenes were given to Crane instead. Just a glorified cameo really.

 

[Phil123]

I love the Nolan Batman movies but it does have to be said that they have not held up as well as I thought they might. Mainly due to reasons like this. No it doesn't make sense, it just "seemed cool."

It does hold up better than Batman giving up for 7/8 years because Racheal died. That should have motivated him further.

 

[Phily B]

People thought this, but there are problems with that thought once you delve deep into it. First of all, Two Face went on a killing spree that ended with the kidnapping of Gordon's family after the Joker's incarceration and during a time Joker couldn't have done it. Meanwhile, Batman is there, right now, at the crime scene and has clear motivations. If your only options are to have the Joker take the fall or have Batman do it, then Batman is your best choice. He is already a controversial figure amongst the police ad public, he has a strong motive when it came to the crime bosses killed, he is heavily linked to Dent in the public eye and on top of it all, he's spotted at the scene of the crime by other officers. If you turn around and blame Joker, how the fuck do you work that out? He was in prison when Dent was killed. Should Gordon take the blame on that?

Their other option would have been to just tell the truth instead. But we see in TDKR that Dent's death and the subsequent lie about his death led to a period of peace in Gotham and we already established that a lot of convictions would be quashed if Dent's character was smeared as badly as it would have been.

I love the Nolan Batman movies but it does have to be said that they have not held up as well as I thought they might. Mainly due to reasons like this. No it doesn't make sense, it just "seemed cool."

It does hold up better than Batman giving up for 7/8 years because Racheal died. That should have motivated him further.

I think the implication was that Gotham was going through a period of peace because everyone had been killed or arrested, the Nolan Batman was an attempt at being more realistic and didn't seem to be all in on Batman just beating up drug dealers. We see in TDK he is more chasing the heads of organised crime organisations rather than street level stuff. Also different interpretations of Batman are always gonna have different mentalities, especially if he was so badly injured from his Joker encounter, physically and mentally.

I never liked it either because it's basically saying "people can't handle truth, therefore the hero should take the bad rap because he can handle it." That's a bad message to send in my book. People should learn to handle truth no matter how unsettling it is.

Batman in general doesn't send a good message, in this case, it was about the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. It's not about handling the truth, it was about the legal consequences and destroying the hero that was helping rid Gotham of corrupt elements and had gone a long way in doing so already.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I’ll defend the ending just because I think if the vigilante got credit for a victory over the evil law enforcement it would encourage more vigilanteism and chaos. Lots of wannabe Batmans with lots of different personal definitions of Justice. Hundreds of Kyle Rittenhouses.

My issue with the movie as a whole is that it fronts more philosophical depth than it offers. The whole thing with the two ships and buttons was clumsy and not nearly as insightful as it thinks it is. It’s a solid gritty action flick, which thinks it is super insightful about human nature and just plain isn’t.

 

[Ovation]

It’s a solid gritty action flick, which thinks it is super insightful about human nature and just plain isn’t.

I disagree. The film (and its makers) do not think itself/themselves cleverer than they are--a subset of fans of the film do (and the filmmakers have been unfairly tarnished by this conflation). I'm a huge fan of the Nolan films (Batman and others) but far too often I've seen/read criticism of his films that presume an air of superiority for which there is little, if any, evidence. Some (many?) fervent fans, however, often make such insufferable assumptions.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I disagree. The film (and its makers) do not think itself/themselves cleverer than they are--a subset of fans of the film do (and the filmmakers have been unfairly tarnished by this conflation). I'm a huge fan of the Nolan films (Batman and others) but far too often I've seen/read criticism of his films that presume an air of superiority for which there is little, if any, evidence. Some (many?) fervent fans, however, often make such insufferable assumptions.

You really think the ship/button experiment wasn't intended to exposit philosophy of human behavior?