Batman's True Insanity In The Dark Knight

In most superhero or action movies, the good guys are always the ones who are in the right with everything that they do, and the bad guys are always in the wrong, but that is not always how it goes. In 2008, director Christopher Nolan released the second installment in the Dark Knight trilogy, The Dark Knight. This blockbuster hit pits the “Caped Crusader” Batman, against his insane nemesis, the Joker as well as the once great Harvey Dent, in order to save the city of Gotham from complete chaos and destruction. However, when the movie comes to its conclusion, Gotham has not changed almost at all, and in fact some things are actually worse than they were before, and the Joker is not entirely responsible. The reason for this is that both Batman

In order to truly understand the things that Batman does, one must know how he came to be. Batman’s true identity is that of the multi-billionaire owner of Wayne Enterprises, Bruce Wayne. The first movie in the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman Begins, tells the story of how Bruce came to don the cape and the mask of Batman, from the perspective of the director, Christopher Nolan. When Bruce was a boy, he was leaving a theatre with his parents Martha and Thomas. As they started walking down the alley to get home, his parents were shot and killed by a mugger. This traumatic event happens right in front of Bruce without him doing anything to stop it as he is stricken by fear and powerless. Years later, Bruce starts training with the League of Shadows, a group of assassins that live the mountains. Under the tutelage of their leader Ra’s al Ghul, Bruce it taught that to “conquer fear, you must become fear, you must bask in the fear of other men,

An insane, criminal mastermind with a white face, red lips, green hair, and a permanent smile. The Jokers back story is usually along the lines of him falling into a vat of chemical waste, causing him to take on his iconic appearance; but, Christopher Nolan's version purposefully has no back story. Ashley Cocksworth, a tutor in systematic theology at The Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education, discusses and attempts to explain and define the evil of the Joker in his article “The Dark Knight and the Evilness of Evil.” In his piece, he writes that “[Nolan] refused to satisfy the fanboy’s call for description because without an explanation, the Joker appears ever more irrational and menacing” (Cocksworth 452). Nolan's choice to not give the Joker a back story was to make him seem even crazier, as the audience has nothing with which to base his madness off of. Without any knowledge of his past or why he is who he is, the audience is kept guessing as to what he is going to do next. Just because it is nearly impossible to tell what the Joker is going to do next, does not mean that he is insane. In fact, the Joker himself even says that he is not, when he is accused of being crazy by one of the underlings in the mob meeting scene. Not being crazy does not necessarily mean that you are fine though, and this incarnation of the Joker, like all the others, is most certainly not fine. No, instead of being insane