The Dark Knight Did the Joker lie?

[LarBrd33]

Man I feel stupid. I watched the movie again for a 2nd time yesterday and caught a couple little things that I must have missed the first time around. The movie has a lot of things going on... I guess that's possible.

One thing that I completely missed (and believe it or not I'm typically a very attentive movie-watcher) was the scene where the Joker tells Batman the locations of Rachel and Harvey. Joker tells Batman he must "choose" which one lives. As Batman runs out, Gordon asks him, "Which one are you going for?!" and Batman shouts, "Rachel!". Since Gordon showed up at Rachel's funeral and Batman showed up to save Harvey... the Joker obviously lied to Batman and forced him to save the one he didn't care about as much. I felt like an idiot for missing that bit. When I watched it the first time, I just assumed he was saving Harvey, because he realized that Harvey mattered more to the city than Rachel and that it was a terribly hard decision he HAD to make. In reality, Batman was mislead. (Unless you want to imagine that Batman was one step ahead and anticipated that the Joker would switch the addresses in an attempt to purposely mislead Batman... but I wouldn't go there)

So that makes me wonder about the Ferry scene. This probably has already been brought up before... but he told the passengers that their detonators would cause the "rival" ferry to blow up. Joker is a pretty twisted dude. I'm assuming he lied. Had either ship flipped the switch, they probably would have just been blowing themselves up. And maybe that unspoken possibility was enough to make each ferry hesitant to do the deed. You can't trust a psychopathic madman... In fact, when I first watched the movie I thought that was going to happen. I though when the big black prisoner flipped the switch, we'd see that entire ferry explode.

 

[StillTheKing]

I actually think he told the truth about the ferries, because it is pretty messed up to have to blow another boat up with hundreds of humans on it.

 

[TNC9852002]

Well, the first is definitely a subtle touch and I'm positive that many people were confused, but yes, the Joker definitely lied and I'm sure they could've added in a line somewhere that dealt with that, but ya know.

and for the ferry deal, it's never revealed, but I'm sure that he lied about that too.

-TNC

 

[Dr. Crane]

like joker said.... and it was funny to hear him imitate batman in saying it.."you're gonna break you're one rule".. i think joker was talking about batman's choice... can't save both.. so the one you don't choose to save.. you choose to let die.. even with gordon in the gave and going after the other person.. in jokers eyes..batman will be responsible for rachels death... thus breaking his rule...

 

[Magneto29]

My thought was that the switches would blow up their own boats. He seemed to have a thing for switching everything : the locations, and hostages/clowns, and the boats.

 

[Rishi]

I was thinking the ferrie switches would just blow them both up, to really **** them over.

as far as the rachel/dent thing... it was explicit already. if they went back and said anything about it i would have been offended by them bashing it over our heads.

 

[jackjack924]

I don't think he lied because the joke was on Batman. He wanted to show that "when the chips are down, these civilized people, they'll eat eachother." Why would you want all those people who decided to blow up the other ferry dead? The Joker wants people like that in his world, why would he leave the boat who didn't act alive?

 

[AMDodson]

THATS WHAT I THOUGHT!

I honestly thought the prisoners would explode, then I saw him throw the detonator out the window and realized its so much more powerful that they didn't die, but stood for something instead, and accepted their fates.

It goes to show that the people of Gotham, fallen or not, are ready to believe in good.

 

[LarBrd33]

Yeah the fact that he thought he was saving Rachel totally went over my head. I thought he was just saving Harvey intentionally, because Harvey mattered so much to the future of Gotham City. But in reality he thought he was about to save Rachel. Which makes Rachel's last moments pretty rough... she was sitting there thinking to herself, "Wow, Bruce... really?... you let me die? Really?"...

 

[Paradyme]

Yes he lied to Batman and he also lied to Harvey about not having a plan. Of course the latter should've been pretty obvious.

 

[weezerspider]

Yeah the fact that he thought he was saving Rachel totally went over my head. I thought he was just saving Harvey intentionally, because Harvey mattered so much to the future of Gotham City. But in reality he thought he was about to save Rachel. Which makes Rachel's last moments pretty rough... she was sitting there thinking to herself, "Wow, Bruce... really?... you let me die? Really?"...

Imagine what Bruce was thinking. "Yes I'm gonna save Rachel, Harvey will be dead, so I can get some tonight! WHAT THE F***?" Harvey. God**** you Harvey!"

 

[TheDarkVictory]

i think he told the truth about the ferry, because like it was stated, its much more messed up to have to live with knowing you blew up an entire boat full of people than just blowing up yourself. also, he was going to blow both of them up at midnight anyways, so it didn't really matter.

 

[Mrs.J]

Yea, he lied dilberately to Batsy about which location harv/rachael where at. he did this because like he mentioned during the interrogation----he thought for a minute that harv really was batman becuase of the way he looked at rachael at the party. SO the joker figured that batman would go after rachael.


and thats why he told batman the wrong address. He wanted batman to save dent---because like the joker said at the ending---he wanted to turn gotham's White Knight into a laughing stock---and hinder the people of Gothams hope for salvation.


The only way that Dent would turn in Joker's opinion was if his allies (batman and gordon) let him down and let his family (rachael) die over him.
So this was all planned out from the get go.


The ferry deal--i am so wiht you! I figured that the detenator would set off the explosives on the one boat that triggered it---not the other boat that it was intended to like the Joker had advised lol
It reminded me of Saw at this point lol. A "social experiememt"

 

[Microchip]

Poor Batman though. Shows up, sees Harvey.. "Wow, you're BOTH here?! Nice! Wait. Where's Rach-Damn."

I don't think Joker would have the detonators blow up both ships though. I think he'd want to see who it was that decided to kill the other people first.

 

[storyteller]

They didnt need to say joker was lying in the first part because the editing made it clear that Batman and gordan were lied to by the Joker. Its very doubtful he would have gordon go after dent and then change his mind. And really what gave the other less odds with Batman doing the saving. He could have just as easily been "late". No Joker lied.

Now on the boat situation, it would be twisted for Joker to have the boats blow themselves up, but at the same time you kill the ones who turned the switch. And then yeah left with the group that didnt follow the Jokers idea. What message does that send? When the shots are down there will still be good people? I think it would be in Jokers best interest for the guilty party to be alive at the end.

 

[SuperDaniel]

I didnt get that the Joker switched the locations first. After somebody mentioned here, i thought "OH MY GOD. Thats AWESOME. How come i didnt get that?"

 

[LarBrd33]

Poor Batman though. Shows up, sees Harvey.. "Wow, you're BOTH here?! Nice! Wait. Where's Rach-Damn."

I don't think Joker would have the detonators blow up both ships though. I think he'd want to see who it was that decided to kill the other people first.

I understand the logic behind wanting them to live with all that guilt... but what would be funnier to The Joker than a ferry blowing themselves up?

 

[Microchip]

I think he'd want to see it for his own enjoyment though, just to see who killed who. He could just blow up the other ferry right after anyways. Bake his cake and eat it too, or something??

 

[storyteller]

Also if you take the hospital scene, the Joker let people leave with that time limit. The joker doesnt want to kill people(yeah its fun for him) but how do leave a city in chaos if you simply kill everyone. He cant send a message if he kills everybody.

 

[Jokerluv]

His whole theme throughout this movie is to prove that man is not good at heart, so with that in mind, and the fact that he called this whole Ferry Boat ordeal a "social experiment", I take it that he was telling the truth, thus once again trying to prove that man isn't good at heart and can be pushed to kill.

 

[Raiden]

Imagine what Bruce was thinking. "Yes I'm gonna save Rachel, Harvey will be dead, so I can get some tonight! WHAT THE F***?" Harvey. God**** you Harvey!"

I think it makes Batman's decision to use the grappling gun to save Joker at the end more noble, since Joker "killed" Rachel and he tricked Batman to be the one who pulled the trigger, indirectly.

 

[3eyes]

he's a man of his word

 

[BruceWayne]

I was waiting for someone to turn the key and have their own boat blow up. That would have been the joke. I feel like Joker always had some type of joke associated with his crime...no matter how twisted, it would be funny to him somehow. So I think he lied about the boats...and it's a no brainer he switched the addresses on purpose.

 

[bgates87]

OK I'm going to try and jump inside The Joker's head for a minute to answer this one. I really think this may be the one thing The Joker didn't lie about. Like he said, it was a "social experiment." If one group actually chose to kill the others it would prove what he said in the interrogation scene; "When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other." That's the theme of all of his crimes; to turn people against each other. Getting the goons to kill each other during the bank robbery, holding the "tryouts" for his organization, sending the citizens of Gotham after Mr. Reese, turning Harvey against Gordon and Batman, almost tricking SWAT into slaughtering the hostages, these are all his ways of "introducing a little anarchy" and "upsetting the established order."

If both ferries blew up or if the detonators were switched to blow up their own ferry then the experiment would prove nothing. What the Joker would want is for the people on the guilty boat to survive, at least for a while. He had the detonator for both ferries so maybe after one ferry blew up the other he would call it in to a news station or something to show the people of Gotham what they were capable of, then after everyone knew what went down he would blow up the other ferry. Or better yet, maybe he would have the ferry turn back towards Gotham to dock and then let the people of Gotham- the people whose loved ones had just been killed- deal with the "winners." We saw that people were willing to kill Reese so imagine what the scene would have been like when the ferry docked. That would have been true anarchy.

 

[MMoralN10Tion]

I think he was trying to prove the point he made to Two-Face about how humans put a price on other people depending on who we perceive them to be, thus, thinking one person is not worth as much as another. For example, if we hear a gangbanger died or soilders died, it would be like "eh..." but once a mayor, or even a doctor/lawyer is threatened, well because we perceive them as being more important then we don't care. I think that's the point he was trying to prove, about how society will judge others, which is exactly what the "innocent" citizens on the ferri said: "They had their chance already!"