Escalation, Failed States and The Dark Knight

Watching Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s The Dark Knight is very much like stalking Bigfoot or the Abominable Snowman : you spend a long time twiddling your thumbs and looking at the (undeniably pretty) scenery and then, suddenly through the bracken, you see a shape... something you recognise... something interesting... something you want to see a lot more of and then it turns its shoulder and shambles off into the foliage  leaving behind it only a few broken twigs and a whiff of musk in the air.

Roughly forty five minutes into this record-breaking sequel to Batman Begins, I genuinely considered walking out.  Yes, Heath Ledger acts everyone else off the screen (hardly difficult as nobody else has much to work with leaving Bale as an absurd wrestler or an earnest plank of wood while Gary Oldman’s days of effort and creativity are long behind him) but aside from the first scene featuring the Joker, it really does feel like every single Bond-film rip off you have ever seen.  There’s gadgets, there’s fighting and there’s stunts but frankly I really struggled to bring myself to care.  If there’s a point to watching a man jump off of a building seventeen times then I must admit that it was utterly lost on me.  But then, an idea.

The idea was first suggested at the end of the first film and that is that the appearance of Batman had an effect upon the type of villain who is able to make his way in Gotham City’s underworld.  The underworld is presented as very stereotypical of what you would expect from a large city; there are Russians, Italians and African Americans.  So far, so GTA.  But each of these old criminal groups is struggling to operate in a city where the police no longer need to build a case against you.  It’s all very well being cunning and discrete like Marlo Stansfield in The Wire, but when Batman turns up in a tank and leaves your battered and bleeding body on the steps of the police station then those skills are not going to be of much help to you.  The Joker is presented not just as a psychopath but as an organism who is better suited to the new environment than traditional criminals.  Without Batman, there would be no Joker as there would be no evolutionary niche for him to fill.  This idea was intriguing enough to prevent me from walking out but as soon as it was glimpsed it turned, sniffed the air and scampered off into the undergrowth leaving me to sit through the mess that is this film’s second act.

Where Batman Begins mused about Bruce Wayne’s sanity and suggested there was no difference between Batman and Bruce Wayne, The Dark Knight’s main argument is a moral quandary.  The issue at stake is whether Gotham City needs someone who confronts criminals outside of the law or whether the city should rely exclusively upon upon the institutions of government and law enforcement to capture and prosecute criminals (or, in Weberian terms, whether or not America is a failed state).  The problem is that the Nolans seem genuinely unsure as to how to go about solving a moral quandary.

Initially, the film tries to take the psychological route.  Bruce Wayne meets up with Harvey Dent who seems to be the kind of District Attorney who might be up to cleaning up Gotham, thereby allowing Wayne to hang up his cowl.  Unfortunately, the writers decide to re-introduce Rachel Dawes, Batman’s under-written love interest from Batman Begins.  So the film sets about trying to solve the moral quandary by offering Wayne a way out of his vigilante life-style but seeing as Dawes is under-written (as well as lacking any form of agency) and both Dent and Wayne are cardboard cut-outs, there is no traction for this love triangle to play out.  So they kill off Dawes.  The film then tries to solve the film in purely moral terms but unwilling to commit to any particular political vision, they resort to using euphemisms such as “dark knight”, “white knight”, “the hero this town deserves” and “the hero this town needs”.  None of these terms are explained so the film kicks them around for a while unconvincingly before wrapping everything up by having Batman take Christ-like responsibility for Harvey ‘Two-Face’ Dent’s sins, thereby preserving Dent as a figure of hope (it is no accident that Dent's campaign slogan was 'I Believe in Harvey Dent').

The point of a moral fable is that it presents us with a clear (though not necessarily unsophisticated) point that we can take home with us.  Unfortunately, The Dark Knight has no single point.  Not only are the waters surrounding the film’s central quandary hopelessly muddied, but the writers then decided to add some truncated discussion of surveillance technology and a squandered manifestation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma played out using two booby-trapped ferries.  And if this were not enough, the film also explores the Joker’s motivations, which seem to be entirely amoral but are supposed to intersect meaningfully with Batman’s moral problem.  The result, frankly, is a sloppy, incoherent and massively over-written mess.  Moral frameworks, principles and ideas fly back and forth at an incredible rate with the film makers categorically refusing to commit to any of them for more than a single scene.  Indeed, so incoherent is this film’s script that I suspect that it has been through so many re-writes that the producers have allowed themselves to lose track of any particular thread that might have run through the whole film.  For proof of this, look no further than the Joker’s entry scene.  This is funny, dark and inventive and it stands out like a sore thumb compared to the earnest, dull and functional dialogue that comprises the rest of the film.

Clearly, part of the problem with this film is the need to fit in lots and lots of expensive effects shots.  So, we have a sub-plot involving a Chinese accountant that serves absolutely no purpose other than as an excuse to show Batman jumping off a building.  Then we have another sub-plot about Lucius Fox and the moral responsibility involved in using a certain kind of surveillance technology.  This is utterly useless too, but it does allow the writers to feature some shots of Batman navigating a tactical path through an entire building full of bad guys using a form of visual echo-location.  Similarly, there are lots of weird plot cul-de-sacs such as Dent’s fundraiser and the Joker’s decision to try and blow up a truck from another truck that exist only in order to set up lots of tiresome fighting and chasing.  All of these scenes require justification in the script and they serve only to bog down what is already a bloated and overly-complex story.  Especially when the later scenes allow us to glimpse another good idea.

One of the problems with American comics, from my perspective, is that they are traditionally wedded to a rather unpleasantly authoritarian mode of problem resolution.  In the world of comics, evil exists and evil cannot be reasoned with or dealt with through traditional democratic modes of problem solving that allow the state to maintain a monopoly on the use of force.  Because evil exists, it is necessary for heroes to exist in order to cut through bullshit such as human rights, due process or diplomatic negotiation.  Much like Wanted (2008) and Beowulf (2007), The Dark Knight accepts that this is a tension between the ethics of heroic story-telling and the modern world and it argues something quite interesting.

As the Joker suggests, all the criminals wanted to do is to cream some money off of society by catering to certain socially unacceptable desires.  By paying off cops, not pushing too hard and staying away from anything likely to overly provoke a massive police response, the criminals were able to operate safely with only a few side effects (such as the needless death of Batman’s parents).  However, unhappy with these side-effects, Batman and the forces of order start to brutalise and ruin the criminals.  This escalation in the conflict which, in heroic story-telling is generally enough to ensure victory for the goodies (as in Beowulf or The Lord of The Rings), tears up the social contract that keeps the criminals discrete and relatively civilised and invites them to raise the stakes by “letting the clown out of the box”.  The result is total anarchy as normal citizens take to vigilantism and then start trying to murder people in order to protect their loved ones.  When the Joker says “you complete me” to Batman, he is not saying anything trite about the relationship between good and evil, he is saying that, by raising the stakes, Batman has created an evolutionary niche for a new kind of criminal who has no interest in, as Tony Soprano once put it, “not shitting where they eat”.  In a sane world such as ours, such dangerous killers would not be allowed to gain a toe-hold in the underworld as they endanger the status quo.  Batman does not have a place in our world and nor does the jokes.  This fact is wonderfully reflected in the fact that Gotham City is no longer the gothic castle of Batman Begins and the Tim Burton Batman films.  It is a normal city and when Batman appears with his gruff voice and ears he looks utterly ridiculous and out of place.

Indeed, this opening of new evolutionary niches through escalation reminded me of something that occurred to me when watching Spielberg’s Munich (2005).  As ever with Spielberg’s films, Munich paints an emotional picture rather than an intellectual one and Spielberg suggests that Mossad’s use of terrorist tactics in responding to Black September’s actions somehow resulted in the high-stakes terrorism that gave us 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan.  As the film is primarily emotional, Spielberg does not spell out the link between Mossad in the 1970s and Al Qaeda and Hamas in the 00s but one link that particularly struck me was the difference in the face of Islamic terrorism.  In Munich, the terrorist plotters are sophisticated, cosmopolitan political operatives who speak French and live comfortable lives integrated into diplomatic society.  By contrast, the public faces of Hamas and Al Qaeda are either cave-dwelling warlords (in the case of the younger generation) or aging priests and political extremists whose interest in speaking seems limited to fund raising.  What Munich hinted at was that the moderates with whom the West might have negotiated, are either all dead or politically isolated.  The same is true in America where it is simply unheard of for a politician to criticise Israeli foreign policy.  Escalation not only creates space for more violent and extreme agents, it also makes life harder for moderates with a vested interest in peace.

The film's problem is that it refuses to completely commit to the logical conclusion of this train of thought, and that is that, far from being a hero, Batman is actually far more dangerous and toxic to society than the criminals he is committed to fighting.  Beneath the misfiring moral dilemmas and the stupid effects shots, The Dark Knight pits works such as Hobbes' Leviathan and Weber's Politics as a Vocation against the simple-minded authoritarian wish-fulfillment of the comics (and American foreign policy for that matter) by arguing that the last thing that anyone needs is a hero.  Had this film been made for a tenth of its budget then it would have been a masterpiece, but instead it is a sad example of the reality of genre film-making. The Dark Knight is a film with some genuinely challenging ideas in it but, because of the need to reach huge audiences and justify vast budgets, the good ideas get trampled over by explosions, fights and the need to pay lip service to romantic sub-plots and the simple morality of the summer blockbuster.

Comments

[ShaunCG]

Superb review, thanks Jonathan. Makes me want to see the film a lot more than anything else I've read, too!

[Jonathan M]

Hey Shaun :-) I'm glad you liked the piece. Yes, the film is definitely worth checking out but it is flawed.

[Nick]

I agree with most of your analysis, although I enjoyed the film a lot more than you seem to have, chiefly on the grounds of spectacle, explodey etc. This point - "One of the problems with American comics, from my perspective, is that they are traditionally wedded to a rather unpleasantly authoritarian mode of problem resolution" - jumped out at me though. It's rather a sweeping (and obviously incorrect) statement to make about American comics, and to be honest I'm not sure you can even make it about American superhero comics. You'd be on much safer ground claiming this about Batman comics specifically, although I can certainly think of many exceptions even within this narrow confine. You suggest the film is being in some way more sophisticated than this by acknowledging the tension between the ethics of heroic story-telling and the modern world, however it's been a central theme running through American superhero comics since the early eighties. The particular theme you mention - that Batman himself may be a more toxic influence on society than the villains he fights - is lifted directly from The Dark Knight Returns, which came out in 1986, in which it is presented, explored and actually resolved in a fashion the film, as part of a summer blockbuster franchise simply can't.

Strongly recommend reading Watchmen before the film comes out.

[Jonathan M]

Hi Nick :-)

Thanks for dropping by.

I'm familiar with The Dark Knight Returns, as well as Watchmen and History of Violence, all of which explore the relationship between violence and the modern world but it's one thing to say that they explore it and quite another to say that they don't use it.

Watchmen's big reveal is that actually, using big violent heroic forms of problem solving can work, same is true of the two Dark Knight series.

I'd say that that was equivocation rather than sophistication :-)

[James]

I agree about the stupid sonar gadget, but I liked the action, that's what I want from a summer blockbuster: action + intelligence.

I also felt that the film made it clear that the only reason that the Joker existed was because Batman existed, therefore, at that moment in time, Gotham would have been better off without the Batman.

[Jonathan M]

Hi James :-)

I find action increasingly tiresome in films. It's so utterly ludicrous that unless it's properly built into the plot or is part of a kind of wider point (as in History of Violence for example) then I just can't be doing with it.

Why is it always necessary to hit people? no wonder America is nuts deep in two foreign wars if all its script writers can think about as a form of conflict resolution is hitting people.

I agree that the point about Batman is in there but then they do end the film with some line about Batman being the hero they need. So I think they flirt with the idea of Batman being a negative force but, as is usual in comic-based stuff, they decide that someone in a costume enforcing his ideal of what society is like is ultimately in some way positive or necessary as opposed to absolutely horrifying.

[Nick]

> Thanks for dropping by.

No problem. Good to have you back blogging regularly, BTW.

> but it's one thing to say that they explore it and quite another to say that they don't use it.

Well yes, but I didn't say that. Whilst violence is often a feature of superhero comics (as well as action movies, thrillers, quite a lot of SF etc.), you were making specific claims about how it's portrayed and the general ubiquitousness of that portrayal. I can name plenty of American comics that don't feature violence in the way you describe, and indeed many which don't feature violence at all (Ghost World, American Splendour...).

Off the top of my head regarding mainstream superhero comics I'd point to the X-Men, where the superheroics are supposed to be a big PR/outreach exercise to try and counter the real evil, human prejudice against mutants. When the X-Men do employ violence against the agents of human prejudice, it's usually as an entirely defensive last resort (of course, this is mainstream superhero comics so that happens a lot).

> Watchmen's big reveal is that actually, using big violent heroic forms of problem solving can work

Well, I'd argue the reveal you're referring to was that big violent villainous forms of problem solving can work, and then that the actual climax of the book suggests that no, they don't (Doc Manhattan's cryptic comment, Roscharch's journal etc). And crucially, the only two characters in an even vaguely healthy psychological state by the end of the book do actually conclude that violence is futile and their lives as superheroes have essentially been pointless.

> same is true of the two Dark Knight series.

You're certainly on safer ground here, but in my original comment I was referring specifically to the theme of Batman as catalyst for the emergence of supervillains you mentioned in your review, pointing out it is resolved in a way that it's not in the film.

Mind you, I'd argue that whilst Bruce Wayne is certainly still out to circumvent authority in order to accomplish something, it's not entirely clear what methods he's going to use to accomplish it. Certainly the suggestion is he's not going to be as directly confrontational as he has been.

The less said about DK2 the better methinks.

[Jonathan M]

Hi Nick :-)

Yes, I thought six months off was enough of a break. Also having now met a load more bloggers, I feel better integrated.

You are quite correct about non-violent comics. That was sloppy of me, I was referring to superhero comics specifically rather than to anything else.

I agree about the Xmen too, but as with DKR and Watchmen, I don't think that being aware of the futility of violence but then being forced into it does not really constitute the ringing endorsement of pacifism that I'd feel more comfortable with. Besides, these are all exceptions to the rule, far more comics wind up featuring gigantic smackdowns month in and month out.

Which bit are you referring to in Watchmen? I don't have a copy anymore and I just remember the book ending with New York's "sacrifice" being a light unto the world.

For me, the theme of The Dark Knight is that the state has a monopoly on violence for a reason and that runs very much counter to the logic of heroic story-telling and superhero comics as a whole (though the Civil War series has kind of confronted that issue whilst camouflaging it as something else). I'd argue that if you buy into "real world" sociology as TDK does, then the logical conclusion is that Batman is as big a problem as The Joker. I'm not sure that you can have "real world" sociology and a traditional hero. So I don't see how Batman can move on from this.

[Nick]

> Which bit are you referring to in Watchmen?

In short: The pirate comic that runs parallel to the main narrative is a story about a man who goes to extreme lengths to protect his family and village, but in the end discovers they are not actually under threat and he has succeeded only in damning himself. In the last few pages Veidt confesses to having dreams that recall imagery from the comic. In conversation with Doc Manhattan he asks him if he did the right thing, given that things worked out all right in the end. Doc Manhattan remarks that nothing ever ends and then vanishes. The final page shows the offices of the right wing newspaper Rorschach has previously corresponded with. They're running to deadline and short of a piece, so decide to run with something from 'the crank file' - the last panel is the assistant reaching towards Rorschach's journal, which contains the details of Veidt's plot and evidence implicating Veidt himself.

[Jonathan M]

Hmmm...

I had never linked those things up to be honest and I had completely forgotten about Rorschach's journal. So yes... I shall muse on that but I praise your comic-reading-fu for it is more mighty than mine.

[Philip Palmer]

I also loved this long critique, even though I basked in pleasure watching the film because, what the hell, it's been a tough week and watching a film beats working for a living.

But I was niggled throughout by a great anxiety that there was something missing from the movie, and this review clarifies what that something is; quality. Quality is when the ideas all cohere; quality is when the deadwood is cut away (Chinese accountant stuff, totally not needed!) Quality is when the emotions matter more than the spectacle. (But we'll still have the spectacle.) Quality is when everyone wants to make it the best it can possibly be; and tough choices are made. But in Dark Knight, no tough choices are made; they have their cake, and eat it, and follow it up with cookies. And it's too much.

Quality is about quality of script, first and lastly I'd say (for the script is where the ideas lurk.) Christopher Nolan is a damned fine director; but are he and his brother great writers? Maybe they are, but in that case they needed a script editor to coax and encourage and say 'Cut that bit!'

A screenwriter friend of mine once said that a movie script is like a haiku, it's all about compression. The Dark Knight is more like a movie written by a bunch of guys in a room saying, 'Let's have that! Let's have that too!' It's adding without sieving.

A different version of the story would have had an urgent erotic exchange between Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes early on - not a sex scene, a scene in which we discover they are soul mates forced apart and we think - No! You should be together! Without that scene, there's nothing at stake in the love story.

The different version would also have a better 'Mob money' story (this particular story made no sense - the Chinese guy borrows the Mob's money? Huh?) Maybe the Joker could have GIVEN THE MONEY BACK, and then hired himself out as the hitman who will kill Batman. (Before double crossing the Mob.) And then, in two or three beats, we'd be into the Joker's actual dastardly plan; to undermine the values of society. For if you steal from a gangster and give the money back, you undermine te gangster's code. He is ****ed. He can't fight you, he can't hate you; his gangsterness is undermined. Similarly, if Batman discovers that he is CAUSING MORE CRIME by existing, it undermines his raison d'etre. He would have to have a long dark night (!) of the soul He would have to give up crimefighting.

And -

I should shut up now. It's a dangerous slippery slope, to start script editing movies which I didn't make, and which no one asked me to make.

WANTED, I felt, suffered from the same problems. It's a really good action movie; but it has no hidden guile, no subversive anarchy, and it doesn't shock the soul as the graphic novel did. But if you make a multiplex action movie, you have no room for manoeuvre, in creative terms. (Though Jon Favreau managed to give Iron Man some special qualities.)

But, big sucker as I am, I do like the action stuff and forgive a lot.

Just discovered this site. Very impressed. Love the Alternative movie Hugos, and will seek out the films I haven't seen yet.

[Jonathan M]

Hi Philip :-)

"Quality" is definitely the right word for it. There are some lovely ideas in The Dark Knight but there's a real failure to make the whole thing cohere into a single piece. I suspect that there must have been re-writes as it feels like an early draft rather than a finished product.

I also agree that the Joker's relationship with the gangsters was poorly thought out. Initially it feels like an American Gangster/The Wire-style new, more violent criminal emerging and taking over but then later he kind of flirts with them and there's that bit with the Chinese accountant that makes no sense. So I suspect that it was a larger plot-line in a previous version of the script.

I haven't read the Wanted graphic novel but the film is very much by the numbers. The "Big Reveal" of the weavers being evil was entirely predictable, in this day and age you couldn't have a film which revolves around the good guys unaccountably murdering people who happen to be in the way and taking instructions from a loom?

Glad you liked the site and thanks for the comments. Nice to have input from an actual script-writer :-)