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Dark Knight - dumb? SPOILERS

A beaker full of death

A beaker full of death

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So I'm watching the movie for the first time, and there's Batman pounding on the Joker, shouting "Where is he??"
And pounding on Joker again.
And again.
And the thought that was nascent when Q - sorry, Fox - gave Bruce his new toys crystallized: This isn't Batman. This is a thug in kevlar.

Just as Bats makes his own toys, Batman doesn't just beat the snot out of the Joker to get information. He matches wits with him.
That pretty much pulled me out of the movie and kept me out. This Batman is a sadistic college jock, not one of the sharpest minds in the world.
I don't care for the Dark Knight. I'd love the see the Darknight Detective.
 
Well that was so early on in Batman getting to know the Joker it makes sense that he didn't know Joker wouldn't just crack. I did get too much of a young Batman feel in parts of BB, and especially when Lucius was giving him the toys & when he talked to Rachel in TDK.
 
I agree Nolan probably went a little overboard in the interrogation scene. It was compelling stuff, but I still don't like seeing Batman fly off the handle to that degree.
 
davejames said:
I agree Nolan probably went a little overboard in the interrogation scene. It was compelling stuff, but I still don't like seeing Batman fly off the handle to that degree.
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It showed a vulnerable Batman frustrated and at the end of his rope. He's a human being after all, faced with a sadistic serial killer who was calling the shots to that point. I thought it fit rather well.

A beaker full of death said:
So I'm watching the movie for the first time, and there's Batman pounding on the Joker, shouting "Where is he??"
And pounding on Joker again.
And again.
And the thought that was nascent when Q - sorry, Fox - gave Bruce his new toys crystallized: This isn't Batman. This is a thug in kevlar.
Click to expand...

Batman is many things. A traumatized man-child, a soldier, a brother, a son, a detective and a human being. There's a little bit of all that in there. You just wanted to see the character portrayed exactly the way you envisioned it. Sorry you didn't get what you wanted.

Batman didn't smack around the Joker because he's a "thug". He did it as the last resort of a man desperate to save lives.

A beaker full of death said:
Just as Bats makes his own toys, Batman doesn't just beat the snot out of the Joker to get information. He matches wits with him.
That pretty much pulled me out of the movie and kept me out. This Batman is a sadistic college jock, not one of the sharpest minds in the world.
I don't care for the Dark Knight. I'd love the see the Darknight Detective.
Click to expand...

Batman is a scary persona designed to make villains pee their pants and think they're about to die. Is that sadistic? Maybe, but that's the nature of the character.Maybe you're confusing with some other superhero. He isn't concerned about playing patty cake with villains. The Batman I know is smart enough to be an astrophysicist, but has no problem beating up a bad guy because he detests bad guys.
 
A beaker full of death said:
So I'm watching the movie for the first time, and there's Batman pounding on the Joker, shouting "Where is he??"
And pounding on Joker again.
And again.
And the thought that was nascent when Q - sorry, Fox - gave Bruce his new toys crystallized: This isn't Batman. This is a thug in kevlar.
Click to expand...

When hasn't Batman been a thug?

The entire idea of a vigilante is "I'm going to go out there and break rules to enforce justice - my idea of justice. And I'm going to beat people up to do it."

All superheroes are thugs. Their worlds boil down to the simplicity of Might makes Right, and fisticuffs are the way to solve problems. It's quaint, but it rarely suffices for stories any more.

Just as Bats makes his own toys, Batman doesn't just beat the snot out of the Joker to get information. He matches wits with him.
That pretty much pulled me out of the movie and kept me out. This Batman is a sadistic college jock, not one of the sharpest minds in the world.
Click to expand...

While there is often a childlike assumption behind superhero stories that the protagonist is understood to be Inherently Right and Good, The Dark Knight is purposefully questioning the very morality of what Bruce Wayne does as Batman. The point of that scene is just what Joker says, "You have nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all that strength." In other words, "Your simplistic solution to the world's ills has very strict limits."

The beating is also symbolic. Not only does Wayne have nothing to do with his physical strength, his financial strength and intelligence are effectively neutered by the Joker's ability to sow chaos, both in Gotham and in Wayne's own soul. Up until that point Wayne has been matching wits with the Joker - and this is the point at which it starts to become clear that he really isn't any match. What is so relentlessly difficult about this movie, and what makes it so different from most superhero stories is that a Pyrrhic victory is the most Batman can be said to win. Because mostly, he loses to the villain.

I don't care for the Dark Knight. I'd love the see the Darknight Detective.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like you'd love to see a character who is super-smart, super-moral, and apparently owns a super time machine in order to have the hours of the day that would be required to invent major technologies, build them by hand, investigate crimes that baffle the police and physically apprehend criminals. Characters with the magical ability to do everything - are boring.
 
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You could easily compare Batman to an average Police Ossifer. They try to control everyone they come in contact with and when you dont do as they say they'll start beating on you. They'll grab your arm and twist it in a direction it wasnt supposed to go and if you try and move it back so it doesnt break they'll shout," Stop resisting!"
Or they'll order you out of your car and one Cop will say," On the ground!" while the one right next to him will say "Walk backwards toward me!" Then when you stand there not knowing what to do cause you cant get on the ground and walk backwards towards them at the same time, they pull out their big old Tazers. Which doubles as a phallic symbol for their tiny penis and use it on you.
Thats the point you can take away from that interrogation scene...
 
I seem to recall reading Batman comics where he was a detective, not a vigilante. Charles Bronson in Deathwish was a vigilante. And when we think of real vigilantes, we think of mob injustice, which has never had anything to do with comic book heroes. They tend to have the quaint idea that Right Makes Might.

Personally I found Dark Knight more watchable than Batman Begins, because there was less Batman and more Harvey Dent and more Joker. This Joker was a peculiar mixture of terrorist and supercool badass. But at least when Ledger was doing supercool badass there was kind of anarchic glee at seeing someone really act out but not looks like a fool doing it. The movie sort of lurched from one sequence to another but at least they weren't all boringly conceived and executed action scenes. By the time of the big climax with Gordon it was getting kind of funny (as in laugh at, not with) but then the movie was over.
 
DontFeedPhil said:
You could easily compare Batman to an average Police Ossifer. They try to control everyone they come in contact with and when you dont do as they say they'll start beating on you. They'll grab your arm and twist it in a direction it wasnt supposed to go and if you try and move it back so it doesnt break they'll shout," Stop resisting!"
Or they'll order you out of your car and one Cop will say," On the ground!" while the one right next to him will say "Walk backwards toward me!" Then when you stand there not knowing what to do cause you cant get on the ground and walk backwards towards them at the same time, they pull out their big old Tazers. Which doubles as a phallic symbol for their tiny penis and use it on you.
Thats the point you can take away from that interrogation scene...
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I guess we should get rid of the police. yes that makes sense :lol:
 
Posted by The Borg Fairy
He's the Dark Knight.
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Heh. That he is.

To reiterate what others have said thus far, the interrogation scene was to show Batman at the end of his rope. "You want me, here I am". There was a back and forth going on between Batman and The Joker up to this point because he was trying to understand The Joker and his motives (the whole "Sometimes people just want to watch the world burn" scene). And he was trying to match wits with him before -- by having Dent "announce" himself as Batman, and trying to trick The Joker, he was sort of playing fire with fire. That obviously didn't work out.

Lives were at stake, and Batman was fed up. How many times in the comics has Batman reached his limit? I mean the whole concept of Batman is that he is there to instill fear. His physicality is a big part of that.
 
I think Batman being a brute was the point. Batman, as the interrogator, was supposed to be in command and wasn't. In the end, even attacking the Joker didn't do anything because it's what Joker wanted all along.
 
Yeah, I think the brutality was justified in Batman's mind, thereby showing the Joker winning the psychological war at that point. Before that, we always saw Batman use just enough force to subdue someone.

This Batman, for all the complaints that he's getting over the interrogation scene, is still pretty lite compared to Keaton Batman, in that he didn't hesitate to kill if the situation called for it, and had a Bat-jet full of missiles and machine guns. Bale Batman went overboard just once, and it was in interrogation scene.
 
Especially since the events of The Dark Knight occur early in Batman's career, it's nice to see him do things that he probably won't do again (like loose it). I actually liked seeing that. The whole journey for Bruce as Batman in this movie is deciding whether or not he is doing more harm than good, and throughout the movie he's questioning it, reaching that balance, and I liked seeing him cross it just once.

Also, I thought Bale handled the scene perfectly.

"WHERE ARE THEY?!??!"

"It's about choice -- "

"WHERE ARE THEY?!?!"

Say what you will about Bale's voice as Batman, but he implements it rather well in some cases, like how he automatically becomes Batman when Joker crashes the party at the penthouse ("They're coming for him") or when he shifts from Batman to Bruce after he saves Rachel ("He's safe"). Those little subtle moments that I thought showed a true distinction between Bruce Wayne and Batman.
 
Lapis Exilis said:
When hasn't Batman been a thug?
Click to expand...

1942-1986.

The entire idea of a vigilante is "I'm going to go out there and break rules to enforce justice - my idea of justice. And I'm going to beat people up to do it."
All superheroes are thugs. Their worlds boil down to the simplicity of Might makes Right, and fisticuffs are the way to solve problems. It's quaint, but it rarely suffices for stories any more.
Click to expand...

I don't buy it. Before anti-heroes were cool, superheroes adhered to a strict moral code and were rarely considered t be vigilantes - including Batman, who was a de facto deputy under Commissioner Gordon for decades. What made them heroes was that they didn't use the same tactics as the villains.

While there is often a childlike assumption behind superhero stories that the protagonist is understood to be Inherently Right and Good, The Dark Knight is purposefully questioning the very morality of what Bruce Wayne does as Batman. The point of that scene is just what Joker says, "You have nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all that strength." In other words, "Your simplistic solution to the world's ills has very strict limits."
The beating is also symbolic. Not only does Wayne have nothing to do with his physical strength, his financial strength and intelligence are effectively neutered by the Joker's ability to sow chaos, both in Gotham and in Wayne's own soul. Up until that point Wayne has been matching wits with the Joker - and this is the point at which it starts to become clear that he really isn't any match. What is so relentlessly difficult about this movie, and what makes it so different from most superhero stories is that a Pyrrhic victory is the most Batman can be said to win. Because mostly, he loses to the villain.
Click to expand...

That's an excellent and interesting analysis I shall mull over for a while. At first glance I agree. But that's a rather ill use of the character by Nolan, since that's really not what Batman is about.

Sounds to me like you'd love to see a character who is super-smart, super-moral, and apparently owns a super time machine in order to have the hours of the day that would be required to invent major technologies, build them by hand, investigate crimes that baffle the police and physically apprehend criminals. Characters with the magical ability to do everything - are boring.
Click to expand...

Nothing magic about it, any more than it was magical for Sherlock Holmes to have an encylopedaic knowledge about absolutely everything. Superheroes are supposed to be bigger than life, both in their moral rectitude and their abilities. It's no more unbelievable that Batman would be able to make his own toys than that the police would capture Joker but let him keep his makeup on.
And it's truer to the character, who despite his myriad abilities prior to this film series, has kept the popular interest for 70 years.

stj said:
I seem to recall reading Batman comics where he was a detective, not a vigilante.
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Indeed.

Quantum of Xmas said:
Joker Interrogation Scene
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That's hysterical. The blooper reel (which really isn't one) is even funnier - and bears some relevance to this conversation.
 
^^^

That was hilarious! :D

Christian Bale really should have experimented and opted for a different Bat-voice than try to emulate the one created by Michael Keaton.
 
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