The biggest problem with Batman

[chrisvenus]

This is spoilerish. Don't read if you don't want to be spoilered, etc.

Its not necessarily *the* biggest problem but it is the thing that at the time seemed most out of sorts and I thought I'd share...

The joker, towards the end of the film, gives a speech about how he is trying to highlight how pointless plans are and that he just does stuff and he implies he doesn't make plans. [1] This is a really awesome thing... except the evidence doesn't back it up to me...

I might have misunderstood the point of the speech but the joker has loads of quite detailed plans. They are often crazy but they are complex plans none-the-less. Eg opening crime - he has a team of half a dozen people who are all playing particular roles in the robbery - he's found an alarms man, a safe cracker, a few bits of muscle and he's found somebody to get him a school bus so that it can blend in perfectly with the other buses as he pulls out[2].

Or later on when he plans to get captured in his attempt to kill batman so that he is in the same police station as the Chinese guy he wants to deal with while having a small enough window of opportunity that the other man he's got arrested with the explosives in him is still there and not, for example, dead or in hospital or whatever else. The timing necessary for that was quite immaculate (especially because he needed to get batman out of there too, etc.).

I love the idea that the joker works on whatever he feels like at the time and that this is part of what makes him so unpredictable and a great sign of his madness. But the fact is he doesn't. His plans are crazy but they are vast and complicated.

There are a few bits that I think really probably fits with this "no plans" is his dealing with Harvey Dent. The hospital scene where he basically taunts him and helps push him to become two face is a great scene and feels much more like the kind of creating chaos that the joker felt like he was about. Or the moment where he phones the TV station and says "Kill this random bloke in the next 60 minutes or I'll blow up a hospital". Its chaos and anarchy and bringing the city to its knees. The problem is how on earth did he manage to rig that hospital with that much explosives without anybody noticing at any point? He sure didn't go in with his clown face on and a truck load of explosives.

So yeah, its just a minor thing that just felt a bit weird to me. Not enough to deter my from the film whcih I thoroughly enjoyed, just enough to jar a little in the middle there.


[1] I unfortunately have forgotten where he says this. I've a feeling that it might be when he's in the police cell.

[2] I remain less than convinced that this would work. Who waits in line for a bus to pull out of the whole it made into a bank to get in front of them without reporting it? That's not important right now though.

Comments

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

I saw it more that he ddn't have long term plans. He'd decide "I'm gonna job the Bat's girlfriend" and come up with a mini plan to do it. Then he'd move on to the next thing.

Batman and Harvey have big plans for the future, they want tro changethe world and make it better. the joker just hacks around the edges of that.

[chrisvenus]

Actually that is a much better way of looking at it and does fit a lot better. Can I blame being tired while watching on not getting that? On the other hand I will have to pay attention while rewatching it to see if I did miss something or if it is a bit unclear/ambiguous.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Yup. He's basically saying he has no guiding principles beyond a general love of chaos, anarchy and things going bang.

Some have seen in this an attempt to merge with the Neo-con stereotype of Al Quaeda terrorists - evil for the sake of it - and some have said 'It's just a sodding film, shut up and enjoy it' :-)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

and some have said 'It's just a sodding film, shut up and enjoy it'

Thereby saving the rest of us the effort!

[kaz-pixie.livejournal.com]

You're not the only person i've heard who has said that they've watched it when tired and it hasn't made as much sense as it could have done.

It's a fair comment.

[chrisvenus]

I have to say I didn't even feel that tired but I know I hadn't had huge amounts of sleep so I probably was tired. I'm glad I'm not the only thickie though. ;-)

[her-welshness.livejournal.com]

I agree with this - he decides what he will do and does it with some form of organization and much aplomb. His plans are just creating anarchy, but theres nothing to say that he doesn't consider the merits in the whole logistical side to things.

[chaosdeathfish.livejournal.com]

I think it's slightly more complex than that. Considering how many drums of explosives (petrol?) he has in the various warehouses etc, it looks like he's spent a long time setting them up beforehand. Although it's also quite possible that he had a plan to blow up large parts of the city at random and then got distracted..

Personally I like the idea that he's got a load of situations like this set up around the city, ready to be activated quickly and so making him even more scary when he seems to be able to organise these things with virtually no notice.

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

Much like how he changes the story of how he gets his scars to suit his mood/whoever he's about to slice up (which I loved), I figured that the "I make no plans" speech was just another joke/misdirection on his part. He clearly thinks things through way in advance, including how every person who's likely to get involved will react, however turning around and saying "meh, I made it all up on the spot" makes him look extra smart and psychotic, which is all to his benefit.

The bit of the film that bugged me was how Batman never bothered to tell Harvey that he actually had been trying to rescue Rachel like Harvey wanted, it was the Joker lying to Batman about which address she was at that created the whole problem. That might just have helped keep Harvey focused on going after the Joker over Batman and Gordon. Such is life.

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kept wondering when he was going to mention that.

[chrisvenus]

Ah, I thought I just got confused abotu which one Bats was heading off to and that I'd got the addresses confused. So Joker actually gave Batman the addresses the wrong way around? That's cool. ;-)

That reminds me of what somebody else asked the other day - the two boats with the detonators. Did they actually have detonators for each others boats or did they have detonators for their own?

The mix up there might imply that the joker likes deceiving people on the subject of who is actually goign to live and die (and that seems perfectly in keeping).

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was totally expecting one of them to press the detonator, only to find it blew their own ship up. But in the end moral optimism won out, sigh.

[cardinalsin.livejournal.com]

PS I too got confused by the address switch. I kinda noticed it, but wrote it off as me getting confused. *shrug*

[almostalady.livejournal.com]

I completely missed that! Thank you for the clarification :)

[almostalady.livejournal.com]

"That" being the addresses.