Film Theory: Joker Is The Hero of Gotham (Batman The Dark Knight)

well the rest of the world is busy talking about Joaquin Phoenix's new Joker well we've already done that one twice so instead I'm going back to revisit the Dark Knight and you know what it is a miracle that nobody in Gotham figures out the Bruce Wayne Batman connection I mean think about it Coleman Reese aka Bruce Wayne's accountant goes on live TV saying that he's gonna reveal Batman's identity I mean who else is he exposing here people the Wayne Enterprises HRF looks like Gotham's greatest villain isn't the Joker it's basic critical thinking hello internet welcome to film theory the show that at this point deserves its own place and how it should have ended x'v Ilyn pub because of how frequently we step up to defend history's most iconic bad guys Thanos scar Light Yagami dr. Doofenshmirtz but today we're actually tackling one of the biggest most iconic bad guys of them all Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight now I know I'm not the first one to suggest that the Joker might be the good guy in this movie in fact one reddit theory went viral about this exact topic a few years ago which then got him hired by us as a researcher sub Zack but a lot of time has passed since that original theory and so with a very different take on the Joker currently now in theaters our newly combined theorist forces wanted to revisit that post one final time and at this point we're both convinced the world has been watching this movie completely backwards the Joker is the hero in the Dark Knight he's the hero that Gotham deserves this isn't just us overthinking things either it's clearly an intentional decision on the part of the creative team working on this movie so suit up and prepare to watch your world burn along with everything you thought you knew about this movie first let's set the stage by talking a little about Gotham the primary setting for the Nolan trilogy of Batman movies starting with Batman Begins and ending with the Dark Knight Rises now these films are as much about Gotham as they are about Bruce Wayne when the series first begins were presented with a Gotham that's completely corrupt overrun with crime mafia bosses and paid off police officers in fact the villains plot in Batman Begins is all about correcting Gotham by purging it founders time ask city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice it is beyond saving and must be allowed to die and if fake Ra's al Ghul here sounds a bit harsh well that's because he is but he's also speaking from past experience he was a go through before of course in fact if you rewatch Batman Begins and only focus on the League of Shadows and Ra's al Ghul's motivation its hammered over our heads repeatedly that their only goal is to hit reset on Gotham a city that they consider to have become so rotten that they can no longer save it forest grows too wild a purging fire is inevitable a natural movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time or at least it would have been unstoppable if it hadn't been for that meddling bat despite Roz pumping fear gas into the city Gotham is eventually saved by its greatest hero Batman or is it you see movie 2 the Dark Knight picks up about a year later and things are looking much better for Gotham than when we last left him oh sure Batman is cleaning up petty criminals here and there on a case-by-case basis he's been powerless to do anything about the true institutional corruption that pervades the city the Mafia is still running wild corruption is still everywhere in the police station heck we're even starting to see the negative effects of Batman himself in the city despite trying to clean up crime Batman's vigilante justice has only resulted in one major thing escalation of the criminals the looming threat of Batman being out there threatening to foil any underhanded behavior has forced the criminals to get more extreme in their behaviors they now use bigger guns and have themselves more protection it was actually something the soon-to-be Commissioner Gordon worried about in the first movie of the trilogy what about escalation this collision we start Eric's my automatics they buy automatics we start wearing Kevlar they buy armor-piercing rounds and what do we have at the beginning of Dark Knight a lowly drug dealer traveling heavily armed with multiple guard dogs Gordon's fears have become fully realized escalation is happening and it's all the result of Batman enter the Joker who describes himself as an agent of chaos I'm a dog chasing cars I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught him he Rob's banks blows up Hospital sets up impossible game theory esque scenarios where lives are constantly being threatened wait a minute game theory I love that show any way you slice it he is a villain in every sense of the word or at least he is until you actually look at his actions because by the end of the Dark Knight Gotham that city that was so corrupted had to be destroyed in Batman Begins yeah by the end of the second movie it's cured it's saved and it's saved by one man not Bruce Wayne but by the Joker you see it's easy to walk away from this movie just reciting the catchphrases I don't know what got these scars it's time for Gotham to get the hero it needs not the hero it thinks it deserves but if you pay attention to the plot The Joker's ability to understand human behavior and set up dominoes to fall in just the right way is practically ingenious when the movie begins we watch as the Joker robs a bank not for the money but to alert the mafia to the fact that their money is being actively tracked this causes their accountant loud to run away with all the gang money to Hong Kong Joker uses this to convince the combined gangs of Gotham that Lau's gonna reveal everything to Batman unless the gangs give him half their money to kill the Batman first Batman has no jurisdiction he'll find him and make him squeal when Batman does in fact do exactly what the Joker predicted and extradite Lau forcibly Lau starts singing like a bird and the gangs give in to the Joker's demands but Joker isn't content with just half the money at this point he allows himself to get caught by the police in order to kidnap Lau and get himself all of the gangs money money which he then promptly burns in this series of moves the Joker has now bankrupted the Mafia the gangs of Gotham are now broken and penniless something that no one has been able to accomplish yet so with that out of the way the Joker then turns his attention towards the final evil that's plaguing Gotham that lunatic jumping off of rooftops in a ninja costume that the police refuse to do anything about Batman but his plan isn't to kill him oh no killing the Batman would just encourage more of the Jalan T's to take up his mantle just like the random dudes that we see at the beginning of the movie who are woefully underprepared for the world of hurt that they're getting themselves into the only way to end the Batman problem is to get him to quit to retire to disappear and instead have the city recognize a more wholesome brand safe traditional hero to do this joker lures Batman to a construction site using hostages while his real works its magic in the background you see by manipulating Gotham's golden boy Harvey Dent into becoming a homicidal monster Joker leaves Batman with little choice but to kill him Batman is forced to break his one rule and in the process he realizes that he has to retire to salvage Harvey's reputation and give Gotham the hero he can believe in he tells Gordon to blame all of Harvey's murders on himself and Batman just gives up that's it game over he retires for the next eight years up until the events of Dark Knight Rises Batman stays retired so at the end of Dark Knight we have ourselves three key things one a destabilized mafia that's penniless to most of that mafia and corrupted officials in jail thanks in part to the passing of the dent Act which honored the supposed hero of Gotham by denying appeals to criminals found guilty in those corruption cases and three no more lawless vigilantes roaming the streets that means that for eight years after the events of the Dark Knight Gotham was the paradise that Bruce Wayne and Ra's al Ghul never thought would come the Mafia defeated dozens of corrupt cops either discovered or kill the ineffective alcoholic Commissioner replaced by the incorruptible Jim Gordon and no need for heavily armed vigilantes and that dear theorists was Joker's intent the entire time he saved a city that everyone thought was beyond saving no the first thing that a lot of fans are probably thinking is no Joker's an agent of chaos you played that exact clip earlier in this episode you know what I am I'm a dog chasing cars I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it but can we really believe what the Joker's saying here of course not it's the Joker we're talking about just think about the logistics of his plan in the first place Joker had to think about the actions and reactions of the Mafia the police and Batman to manipulate them all for one undeniable example just think about his final battle against Batman he sets up a situation where the alleged hostages are actually his goons and vice versa but the SWAT team and Batman that's coming in doesn't know that so Joker is effectively pitting Batman against the SWAT team who's supposedly on his side he's even prepared for this final showdown using dogs which were effective against Batman up until recent improvements to his suit as well as setting up the floor with deployable nets that entangled a bat this is clearly not somebody just doing things for the heck of it and seeing what happens this is someone who makes and flawlessly executed very elaborate very sophisticated plans plans mind you that involves specifically eliminating the most dangerous and corrupt people in Gotham don't get me wrong Joker absolutely harms innocents but think of it like cracking a few eggs to make an omelet Harvey Dent was willing to let the top Mafia dons walk Batman was only ever thinking about how to solve a single crime or fight a small group of villains at any given moment Joker meanwhile was playing the long game the big picture trying to fight the corruption underlying all of Gotham's problems Joker specifically tells Batman about his plan as he dangles off the side of the construction site in a fistfight with you you need an ace in the hole if Joker really wanted Harvey Dent to kill Gordon's family and become a monster for all of Gotham to see why would he give Batman a chance to stop him at all why not let Batman realize the colossal mistake that he made the next day when he reads it in the papers that's because the Joker doesn't really want Harvey to become that monster he just needs Batman to think Harvey will become that monster so that Batman will make the sacrifice that he ultimately does Joker as he himself admits is fighting a battle for Gotham's soul not to corrupt it but to save it in a way that only he is capable of no I'm not saying that the Joker's a good person or that anything he's doing is worthy of replication in fact I do believe that Joker's rather sick so completely driven by consequentialist philosophy that he completely ignores the pain that he creates along the way my only argument here is that Joker's intent was not to watch the world burn as some memorable quotes would have you believe but instead to cure Gotham of its pervasive corruption I mean consider that dinner party scene in the middle of the movie he takes a party filled with rich socialites hostage and does what nothing I mean he scares them with his little scar story and he gets Batman to jump out a window and that's it no one else is harmed no one else is robbed no one's targeted or killed he focuses on Batman and then he leaves and it does seem like the movie intends for this to be the case the entire time Alfred in the middle of the movie has a story that he used to try and explain the erratic behavior of the Joker super famous scene from The Dark Knight but when you actually stop and look at his story it doesn't really seem to mean what he thinks it means to refresh you on the contents of that story a thief was stealing precious gems from a local government but rather than selling him he was just handing them out to the children because as Alfred put it because he thought it was good spoil the only problem is that Alfred is totally and completely wrong about the thief's intent let's listen to Alfred set up this story a long time ago I was in Burma my friends and I were working for government they were trying to find a loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones that's right these weren't just random shipments of valuables between companies these stones were specifically being used to bribe tribal leaders into submission the locals had every reason to try and intercept those caravans to try and protect their own sovereignty the British controlled Burma from 1824 to 1948 and just like well pretty much everywhere the English invaded the Burmese people weren't particularly keen on this foreign power impressing their values and way of life on to the indigenous people half a world away alfrid thought that the thief just wanted to watch the world burn because he believed in chaos but in the end it's Alfred and his friends that were doing all of the burning abandon the forest in Burma did you catch him yes we burned a forest down if the thief truly wanted to burn the world down well it wouldn't be hard to set the forest ablaze as Joker points out himself I enjoy dynamite and gunpowder and gasoline it's ultimately the men who think they're protecting justice who wind up burning the forest down and they blamed the man who just wants to save their home that's true of Alfred's story and it's a direct parallel with Joker's role in the Dark Knight you can't see yourself as the villain when you think you're the hero and that my friends is the twist it also happens to be the cruelest joke of them all but hey that's just a theory ah film theory and sure dynomite gunpowder and gasoline may be cheap but they could be even cheaper thanks to the sponsor for today's episode honey you ever buy something online and then find out you could have gotten it for Less enough to drive a person crazy and while Batman may be the hero that Gotham deserves honey is the hero the Internet deserves honey is a browser extension that scans the internet for coupon codes and other discounts and then like magic it automatically applies the one with the biggest savings to your cart at checkout it knows about every coupon code sale or discounted over 20,000 sites like Amazon eBay Best Buy Target or 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Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 9,178,579

Keywords: joker, batman, the joker, the dark night, batman the dark knight, dark knight, heath ledger joker, heath ledger, nolan, christopher nolan, joker trailer, trailer joker, joker 2019, joker ending, joker ending explained, joker explained, joker movie, ending explained joker, joker theory, batman theory, tdk, joker is the hero, joker the hero, gotham, dc, film theorists, film theory, matpat, matpat joker, film theory joker

Id: JZ8YU5GcK-s

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Atma-Stand]

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