Villainy in the Dark Knight Trilogy Draft `1

7/30/2019 Villainy in the Dark Knight Trilogy Draft `1

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Villainy in The Dark Knight Trilogy

Superhero movies comprise one of the largest, and most profitable, genres of

movies. From classic 1989 Batman by Tim Burton to 2012’s superhero extravaganza

The Avengers, movie makers have long taken from the pages of comic books to tell

their stories. Often these movies, and the series of movies which often result from

their success, have many similarities about them. An initially cocky hero is bogged

down by the trials of heroism, but finally overcomes his doubt to defeat the villain in

an epic final battle. Often, the heroes in various superhero movies are similar;

comparing heroes from different movie franchises yields little insight. Where

superhero movies most often diverge from one another is in their portrayal of

villains. Villainy is an expansive and controversial subject matter. Villains in

superhero franchises are unique, because due to the nature of the stories, villains

must change from movie to movie. To maintain a consistent message about villainy

while keeping each new villain fresh and different is an immensely difficult task, and

it is often this very task which causes movie franchises to weaken as they add more

and more sequels to the story. One franchise which both gave a clear message about

villainy (and as a result, heroism) is director Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” series,

The Dark Knight trilogy. Although the villains in these movies are different and often

unrelated to one another, each in his or her own way carries the movie he’s featured

in and makes the franchises’ theme easily apparent. A thorough study of these

villains and themes renders a much greater understanding of the message and

meaning of the franchise as a whole.`



The first movie in the series, Batman Begins, has two main villains: Bruce

Wayne’s mentor Ra’s Al Ghul, who’s villainy is a twist shown at the end of the movie,

and the psychological terrorist Scarecrow, who uses a gas-form medicine to torture

his victims into powerful and terrifying hallucinations. The villains in this movie

have one goal: the destruction of Gotham. As the leader of an ancient society called

the League of Shadows, Ra’s Al Ghul is dedicated to the destruction of societies he

judges have become too decadent: in other words, he is a high-minded terrorist.

Batman Begins does not enter deeply into a discussion of the ethics behind what

Ra’s Al Ghul does. Much of the movie goes on without him in it. But having a villain

bent solely on the destruction of a city was an interesting twist. While this plan

certainly seems to be typical villainy, it is important to note that Ra’s Al Ghul does

not try to gain anything in particular through his destructive plan. He is not

destroying Gotham for money or power, or even for revenge. He tries to destroy

Gotham because he actually believes it is the right thing to do. This ideology mirrors

the ideology of the jihadists who have preformed acts of terrorism around the

world. Jihadists do not terrorize for personal gain. Often, their acts of terrorism

involve their own death, such as a suicide bombing. They terrorize people because

they actually believe it is the right thing to do. The goals and philosophy of Ra’s Al

Ghul mirror this attitude. He is an allegory for the terrorism which afflicts the

modern world.

The best movie in the series, one of the best movies of all time, featured one

of the most iconic villains of all time. Just months before The Dark Knight hit

theatres, lead actor Heath Ledger tragically died of a prescription drug overdose.



The attention surrounding his death led to intense anticipation for his role as the

Joker in The Dark Knight . Despite the anticipation, Ledger’s performance blew

audiences away and he won a posthumous academy award for his performance. The

Joker took the terroristic tendencies of Batman Begins’ Ra’s Al Ghul and intensified

them to ridiculous new levels. The Joker explains his philosophy in one stirring

scene with Gotham hero district attorney Harvey Dent (insert link to scene here).

“All I do is show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really

are.” The joker is an anarchist, someone who wants nothing out of life except to see

the order around him break down. As Bruce Wayne’s butler says, he is a man who

“just wants to watch the world burn.” The point of his villainy is not to destroy a

society he sees as too elegant, it is not to make people suffer and it is not to find

revenge. His point is to destroy everything, to turn the world in on itself and watch it

display the madness which he holds inside himself. A poignant final scene involves

the joker attempting to convince yachts full of people to blow each other up. As

Batman says, he was trying to show that deep down, everyone is like him. This

appears to be the Joker’s motivation: to remove the strictures and comforts of

society from the worldly sphere so that he can prove that everyone is as depraved as

him. The message the movie sends is a much dark er one than the message Ra’s Al

Ghul sent in Batman Begins. The movie posits that terrorists operate not out of a

misplaced sense of morality but out of a complete lack of any morality. Some

terrorists do not proscribe to any code, but only want to witness the destruction of

the world. These types of people require a certain form of heroism to be combated, a

heroism which requires courage and moral conviction.



The final movie in the trilogy features its most intimidating villain. Straying

from the franchises’ previous strategy of utilizing well-known “classic” Batman

villains, The Dark Knight Rises decided to make its own icon in the form of Bane, a

lesser known villain who’s monstrous physical size and background in the League of

Shadows makes him the rare physical and mental match to Batman. Bane is, like the

other villains, a terrorist seeking to destroy Gotham. Unlike the other villains in the

series, Bane has a more human motivation for his actions: revenge for the death of

his former mentor Ra’s Al Ghul and his love for Bruce Wayne’s business partner

Talia, the daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul. Despite the apparent humanity of Bane’s

motivations, his plot for destruction is the incredibly vicious and destructive. Using

a technology developed by a nuclear physicist, Bane creates an atomic bomb strong

enough to destroy the entire city of Gotham. Instead of setting the bomb off

immediately, though, Bane decides to wait and let Gotham destroy itself from the

inside. Playing on the rising tensions inside the city, Bane incites a French-

Revolution type riot, sending the city into a perpetual state of chaos. Hanging over

this chaos is the nuclear bomb, which Bane turns into a ticking time bomb. The point

of Bane’s plan is not just to destroy Gotham, but to show the world that its greatest

city was actually a den of vice and destruction. Bane wanted to destroy not only

Gotham, but everything Gotham stood for.

These three villains cover all ends of the spectrum: from the pure insanity of

the Joker, to the cold calculating plots of Bane, they represent a diverse group, but

still provide a unified message about the nature of evil. The evil which our world

faces today is of one main form: terrorism. From the middle east to inside our very



borders, terrorists are constantly plotting attacks on our peace and security.

Khandelwal discusses the nature of terrorism in his article “Debunking Myths About

Terrorism.” The power of terrorism, Khandelwal argues, is not that terrorists can

inflict extraordinary violence, which they clearly can, but that terrorists can instill in

a large and diverse group of people fear of the same thing. This reality about

terrorism is evident in all three Dark Knight movies. In Batman Begins, Ra’s Al Ghul

uses a chemical hallucinogen to send the entire city of Gotham into a panic. In The

Dark Knight, the Joker uses highly public assassinations and high profile terrorist

attacks to scare the do-gooders in Gotham off the mob’s tail. In The Dark Knight

Rises, Bane the fear of being cut off from the outside world to encourage Gothamites

to attack each other to fend for themselves. In each of these cases, the villain is not

attempting to destroy the city of Gotham through the use of sheer force; the closest

we come to that is Bane’s ticking nuclear bomb. Rather, each villain is using terror as

a weapon to encourage Gotham to destroy itself. This mirrors the intentions of

terrorists today: although immensely powerful, they will never be able to destroy

entire countries through the use of sheer force. Rather, they use attacks such as

9/11 or the subway bombing in London to encourage Western countries to destroy

themselves. The negative effects of terrorism on the countries which fall victim to it

are explored in Alex Bellamy’s article "Torture, Terrorism, and the Moral

Prohibition on Killing Non-combatants." Bellamy argues that terrorism often leads

victim countries to torturing enemies to combat it, which in turn leads their enemies

to more terrorism. The moral degradation of a country is just as serious as the



physical or economic degradation. If a country no longer acts on what it stands for, it

will crumble from the inside.

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Villainy in the Dark Knight Trilogy Draft `1