Clockwork Orange for kids:
"We have to work in the shadows. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective." – Dick Cheney
Politically, some critics believe "Dark Knight" to be advocating the suspension of democracy in a time of terror. Others see it as endorsing a liberal scepticism of a leader's claims to free reign during a "state of emergency" (which is often the leader's own creation).
The truth is, the film presents the usual two-party choices present year after election year.
Batman and Dent represent the opposite poles of so-called democratic politics. Batman, operating outside the law to protect the defenseless people, represents a kind of Bush/Cheney figure, doing what he has to do for the good of the homeland. Dent, in contrast, along with Rachel Dawes, is an idealistic but by-the-books type who is nevertheless pragmatic enough to collaborate with a vigilante like Batman if it helps get the bad guys.
The film really tips its ideological hand in the Greek-tragedy arc during the final hour. Dawes, the most liberal of all the "good guys", dies at the hands of the Joker, whilst the liberal pragmatist Dent, scarred in war, abandons his ideals and embraces the Joker's ethos of chaos. In other words, we are left in the cold embrace of Batman (Bush) if we want to be secure. Dent's law abiding idealism doesn't work. It's two faced and is merely a mask for chaos and disorder.
The Joker, with his Al-Qaeda like video recordings, his constant attacks on "women and children" and his advocacy of terrorism and chaos, is a figure who stands propagandistically for "America's enemies". IE- America's enemies are not an oppressed and exploited, diverse and divided group trying to resist its enemies in various ways (some more defensible or ethical than others) but rather, they are a fundamentally irrational, chaotic and lawless cult of death. Thus, the Joker offers only the wild, amoral, killing life beyond the protective (and expansionist) borders of "democracy" (aka corporatist imperialism).
The moral is as old, and as conservative, as Hobbes. The film says we can live in a wild, murderous wasteland OR a lawless, authoritarian police state. It doesn't matter which of these options the film presents as more appealing or fun, all that matters is that no other options present themselves.
Note: see "Hellboy 2", where the heroes retire once they realise that the government for which they've been working, ultimately opposes the difference and diversity they represent. Compared to The Dark Knight, this is genuine radicalism.
Late in the film, the Joker places a massive bet on the assumption that most people are as viciously indifferent to other human beings as he is.
The Batman's counter-bet is that people are devoted to order and authority. Batman wins. Essentially, Gotham's population is inherently moral but weak. The bad guys themselves are an assortment of freaks and ethnic minorities. The good guys are, with the exception of slave boy Morgan Freeman, uptight bourgeois white Americans. The most virtuous of them is the "
Great White Hope", Harvey Dent. Harvey, though his crusade against crime is on the legal side, secretly loves Batman's underground campaign of terror. He loves the fact that Batman has "free reign". In fact, the Gotham police force relies on Batman to break legs, smash faces, interrogate and torture on their behalf. And Batman, with enormous resources at his disposal, doesn't shrink from breaking international law to abduct a Chinese dude or from erecting a colossal surveillance machine which makes Bush's extensive illegal wiretapping look lame. Batman is bad simply because the state can't afford to be seen being bad. What's nasty is that Batman's struggle is not a collective one. The few members of the public who do try to "copycat" Batman's antics end up being butchered.
At the end of the film, to protect the population, Batman and the police create serial lies and myths for public consumption. It's the "noble lie" which the masses need to sustain their morale. In other words, puppet figures like Bush are willing to be seen as immoral yokels because they understands that our hatred is necessary. They get the job done. They protect us from Joker. But this is all propaganda. The truth is, in the real world, Batman enhances his own material power by way of the Joker's shocks to Gotham's system.
The real hero of the film is actually the Joker, but the film's PG13 rating and blockbuster pretensions prevent it from dealing with darkness seriously. I'll take the Joker's anarchistic chaos over Batman's archaic commitment to corrupt systems of law and order any day. Not only that, Joker's exploding hospitals and burning towers of cash are infinitely more entertaining than Batman's Multi-million Dollar Extreme Warfare Batmobile.
7.5/10 - Visually, Nolan is a very weak director. He relies on his brother's scripts, which are very literary and so differ from most Hollywood screenplays. Aside from the bank heist, there were no great action scenes in "Dark Knight", no set pieces, nothing we haven't seen before. The film has 2 great scenes, both involving Joker. The first is a short shot in which Joker sticks his head out a window and savours the wind (free will). The second is a sequence in which Joker wears a nurse's uniform and blows up a hospital. Otherwise, the film lacks a sense of true anarchy and chaos. As a crime epic it suffers when compared to "Heat" and as a superhero movie, the final hour is too convoluted and gimmicky.
Like "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" the film is doing financially well because all the twists and turns during the last hour make it seem unconventional to mainstream audiences. They don't know what's going on and so spend all their time in a state of surprise and anticipation.
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Originally Posted by Batboy
) TDK is what it is, why can't people just leave it at that?
But for some of the instances, Ledger just acts so darn quirky during his sinister schemes that he really does make it funny. It's just not funny in the normal Joker way, and people are going to respond to that 
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