(2008) Heroes who don't die become villains. Director/producer/ writer Christopher Nolan's previous movie featuring the caped crusader confronted New Testament salvation of Gotham City against Old Testament damnation and hellfire; this time (again based on Bob Kane's DC Comics creation with story co-written with by David S. Goyer) Nolan contrasts deontology (an ethics of idealism in which certain absolutes exist in the moral universe) with teleology (the ends justify the means) in dealing with absolute evil.

The new district attorney, Harvey Dent (Araon Eckhart), determined to redeem his image as "Two-Faced" from his days with the police department's internal affairs and win the love of the incredibly idealistic Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, taking over the role from Katie Holmes), who owes her life to Batman/Bruce Wayne, cannot afford to veer off the path of the American way of truth and justice, if he wants to keep the approval of his public and the affection of his girlfriend. Dent, dedicated to cleaning up the crime-ridden metropolis, with the cooperation of his police lieutenant, James Gordon (Gary Oldman) - rounding up 549 mobsters and petty crooks at once - and surreptitious help from Batman (Christian Bale), who's technically an outlaw, may be the hoped-for white knight Bruce Wayne needs in order to retire from his lonely mission to save his city.

While Batman acts with Gordon's tacit approval, as Bruce Wayne he raises money and support for Dent, who has become his romantic rival in a relationship with Rachel, who refuses to become the soulmate of her childhood chum and rescuer unless he discards his alter ego. But Dent's valiant vision is exceedingly complicated by an irrational, psychotic malevolence, which refuses to play by (scoffs at) any rules.

From the picture's outset of a bank robbery with all of the villains wearing clown masks, the lanky-haired Joker (Heath Ledger) - raccoon-blackened eyes and a wide crimson-crescent smirk applied to his pasty-white face-paint - demonstrates his monstrous monomania by killing off all the clowning competition and getting away with all the loot in a yellow school bus. Copycat Batmen appear throughout Gotham, not especially complimentary to the authentic image. As an outsider in his disguise, Batman, speaking in a harsh, raspy, synthetic-sounding voice, becomes an avenger, ignoring the polite niceties of Bruce Wayne's society and ordinary laws (like Jack Bauer of the popular tv program 24) in his vengeful pursuit of the Joker, whose laughter signals slaughter.

Money isn't the Joker's motivation, needing no one other than himself - his gruesome grin, scarring beneath the smeary scarlet make-up, an invention or extrapolation of the cruelty visited upon him by his father's slitting open his cheeks into a smile onto a spouse and eventually the entire human race - rather it's chaos. A psychotic killer with a highly-honed perception of other people's vulnerabilities, the Joker, for whom humanity is an abomination, lacking any appreciation for anyone else's life, knows how to get under people's skin, up their spine, and into their head. He's an inhuman monster representing incarnate evil.

After assassinating a judge, the police commissioner, and nearly the mayor - he also eliminates some of the mobsters, led by the Mob boss (Eric Roberts), who opposed him - the Joker threatens more murder and mayhem unless Batman reveals his identity. When Batman resists, the Joker raises the ante by challenging two ferries on the lake - one carrying prisoners, the other ordinary passengers, both rigged with explosives and a detonator capable of demolishing the other - as well as kidnapping Harvey and Rachel, both held in separate locations with a simultaneous timer set to ignite the rooms filled with barrels of petroleum. (Similar to Neo's predicament in the latter two episodes of The Matrix trilogy, Batman, who can't be in two places at once, has to decide whom he will save.)

Unable to apply reason or other leverage to the Joker's nefarious disregard for human life, Batman resorts to whatever means necessary - torture and using the advanced technology of Wayne Enterprises with the expertise of Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), who in disagreement with the tactics later resigns from heading the company, to eavesdrop on 30 million Americans in order to trace one terrorist. In doing so, Batman becomes the dark knight to Dent's earlier quixotic insistence on his newfound by-the-rules, moral code.

In relating an analogous situation of a ruby thief who cared nothing for the rubies themselves, just in stealing them, Bruce's butler Arthur (Michael Caine) says the rogue was finally defeated by burning down the entire forest in which he operated. Raging ruthlessness pitted against absolute insensitivity - destroy the city to save it - would lead back to Ducard and his League of Shadow's solution from Batman Begins; besides, the Joker wins if he can transform a hero into a villain.

The Dark Knight is just another fantasy about the conflict between good and evil, using imperfect, though extremely powerful and appealing, heroic characters (such as Bruce Wayne, who is mentally, physically, and financially well-endowed). If Batman or Spiderman or Superman were a demigod without an Achilles's heel, we could not identify with him. Even though we know he'll always win in the end, the hero (or heroine) must overcome obstacles that are analogous to our own difficulties.

No one can identify with the Joker. The only thing the Joker needs is Batman to make life interesting, challenging, because no one else could stop him from destroying civilization and ultimately himself. Batman prevents this vicious virus from infecting everything and killing his host without being able (Batman's weak spot) to eliminate the Joker's existence. Batman fails to realize that the Joker isn't really a human being; killing him would not be a desecration of a sacred law. (Thus, after all, he does observe a modified form of deontology in his value system.)

At the conclusion, by allowing the Joker to survive, Batman permits the possibility of more murder and mayhem, which flies in the face of teleology's demand that the outcome redeem all that has gone before. Of course, that might put an end to further sequels, though someone else will have to replace Heath Ledger next time.

My quarrel with Nolan's The Dark Knight really begins with the yellow school bus as it leaves the bank, containing all the loot with the Joker at the wheel, smoothly pulling into a space with a line of other school buses. This kind of timing isn't plausible. Nor is what happens on the two ferries, each having the means to extinguish the other.

While one honorable man such as Lucius Fox is believable as a singular actor in a drama, an entire load of passengers without at least one person acting impulsively to save his/her life isn't. The source of morality doesn't belong to only a few extraordinary human beings. However, from my own experience, I know that the vast majority of ordinary people will choose expediency over principled behavior. An estimated 15% of Americans believe Senator Obama is a Muslim who will swear on the Qur'an if he takes the oath of office. At least a score of these fanatics would have been on the ferry with the ordinary passengers.

Batman's optimism, his faith in the innate goodness of most people, struck me as almost laughable in this otherwise humorless, though morally relevant movie. At one point (before resolution of the dilemma on the ferries) I was hoping that Batman, after realizing just how corrupt and undeserving of his efforts were most of the authorities and people of Gotham, would team up with the Joker, in a perverse reversal of roles, proving himself (the Joker) more capable than anyone else at discerning reality and worthy of being a hero, to lay waste to this godless, graceless, befouled Babylon. I think the late George Carlin would have agreed with me.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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