The Dark Knight Breakdown

So it took me a little longer to post this than I thought it would. I got caught up in the 58th New York Film Festival virtual screenings, which were a ton of fun. But now that's over, so I'm trying to get back to sharing regular breakdowns.

As I mentioned previously, I've been doing narrative breakdowns of films on a regular basis with the hosts of Podcast 241 (now called Reel Therapy) Donavon Thompson and Daniel Wingfield. I've posted my breakdowns for our previous discussions of Atomic Blonde and Batman Begins, so here's the belated breakdown to accompany our podcast of The Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight is a complicated movie. Probably too complicated. It's certainly one of the groundbreaking comic book movies of the past 50 years Were there comic book movies before that? Yes, but on an entirely different order. The Dark Knight is a superhero movie on a prestige scale. Not just the budget, but the all-star cast, the top-notch crew, the realistic setting, and the serious and dark themes all added up to something new. The result was eight Academy Award nominations, with two wins, including of course the posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger's iconic Joker role. And just in case we're taking it too seriously, it's a roller coaster ride of action with incredible stunts, cool cars, and great gadgets.

However, it's also what I call an over-plotted movie. The cause and effect chain that drives the movie is so complicated that even diehard fans of the movie seem to have a hard time explaining it all (just watch the podcast). Some of this is due the incredibly fast moving plot, which barely slows down to explain the reasons for many of the events of the movie. At times the movie seems to take advantage of this to simply not explain things or to feature events or coincidences that can't be explained, with the thought that viewers simply won't have time to ask the question (how did The Joker manage to wire an entire hospital with explosives and NO ONE NOTICED). Many of these issues are built around The Joker, and his ability to have predicted events that couldn't possibly be predicted.

I'm more interested in the narrative structuring of goals. I think what's especially interesting about The Dark Knight's structure is how many goal climaxes are either mixed or not what they seem. The sequence climaxes of Act 1 are basically what they seem. Success is success and failure is failure. But once The Joker enters the pictures nothing is what it seems. For example, in Sequence 5 the goal of saving the mayor is successful, but because Gordon dies, the results feel mixed and unhappy. But, of course, Gordon is not dead, so in retrospect the results are successful. Afterward, however, most of the twists and reveals favor The Joker. In Sequence 7, Gordon and Batman capture The Joker, which was their goal, but since that is what The Joker wanted the results are less victorious. Likewise the Sequence 8 goal of discovering the plan is less successful than it first appears since The Joker has lied about the locations of Rachel and Harvey. Even in Sequence 10, where the goal is to save Coleman Reese, the results are mixed. While the goal of saving Coleman is 100% successful, The Joker still manages to turn Harvey into Two-Face and blow-up Gotham General (though everyone seems to have escaped). Even Sequences 12 and 13 are mixed, as in Sequence 12 The Joker is captured, but he has created Two-Face as a sort of Plan B. And to stop Two-Face in Sequence 13, Batman must become the villain and go on the run.

The continual mixed results, twists, and reversals are part of what makes the movie exciting and constantly in flux. It's also what creates many of the plot problems. Reviewing the list above:

• Gordon dies, but then is alive. But why did he need to fake his own death?

• The Joker wanted to be captured. But how did he know Batman would rescue Harvey when he seemed to think Harvey was Batman? What would have happened if he hadn't been captured?

• The Joker lies about the locations of Harvey and Rachel. How did he know Batman was in love with Rachel? Saving her from falling off of a skyscraper hardly seems like proof of undying love.

• How did Joker know he could turn Harvey into Two-Face? How did he think so far ahead to know Harvey becoming Two-Face would destroy justice in Gotham? And, of course, how did he wire a hospital to explode with no one noticing?

This is not say that anytime reversals, twists, and mixed climaxes are employed the result is problematic. But I think we can trace many of these plot issues back to the desire to have goal climaxes be more complicated than they seem. The result complicates the entire narrative.

To hear more on these topics, listen to the Reel Therapy podcasts (formerly Podcast 241) with my friends and colleagues Daniel and Donavon, where we discuss the structure of The Dark Knight in more depth along with our general feelings of the movie. And, yes, we talked for so long, they had to divide the podcast into two parts:

As always, these breakdowns contain SPOILERS, and are only recommended if you've already seen the movie. You can check my introduction to these breakdowns, to get an overview of my process and philosophy to these breakdowns.

Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments below!

Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Bob Kane (characters), David S. Goyer (story), Christopher Nolan (story and screenplay) & Jonathan Nolan (story and screenplay)
Release Date: 2008
Runtime: 152 minutes
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372784/

Goals

Protagonist: Bruce Wayne
External Goal: Save Gotham
SUCCESS | FAILURE
Internal Goal: Embrace being the Batman that Gotham needs (i.e. a villain)
SUCCESS | FAILURE

Like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight has an interesting structure. In my analysis there are both act and sequence level goals. There are four acts, which makes sense for a movie that is 152 minutes. But it also has 13 sequences, with the following structure:

Act 1: Sequences 1-3
Act 2: Sequences 4-7
Act 3: Sequence 8-10
Act 4: Sequence 11-13

The movie starts in a similar fashion to Act 2 of Batman Begins, with the goal of stopping the Mob. However, that victory, in part leads to the rise of The Joker which consumes most of the rest of the goals of the movie.

Structure

I've broken Batman Begins down into 11 sequences: