The Dark Knight "You've changed things... Forever"

[MrWayne]

After watching both BB & TDK many many times i have some thoughts and questions... is it safe to assume that the presence of Batman in Gotham City has somehow affected ppl to become freaks? At the ending of BB on the roof of the MCU we here Gordons telling Batman "you know you really started something" and goes on to tell him how hes running around dressed like a bat, and then tells him about the Joker bank robbery and how he "has a thing for the theatrics, like you". Then in TDK, when Joker is talking to the wannabe dressed up as Batman thats tied up and says "See, this is how crazzzzyyyy Batmans made Gotham City" while pointing the camera to show his painted on face.. Also, at the end of TDK when Batman has the Joker hanging upside down and tells him hes gonna be in a padded cell forever Joker replies "Maybe we can share one, you know theyll be doubling up the way this cities inhabitants are losing their mind".. Do you think Joker was affected by Batmans presence in Gotham, do you think he would be wearing make up? Also, do you think those above mentioned comments was to prepare the audience for a Gotham City we are more familair with? A city filled with freaks? What are your thoughts on this? Let the discussions begins...

 

[The Joker]

The fact that regular citizens are dressing up as Batman and going out with guns to fight crime proves that Batman's presence has affected people.

 

[Doc Samson]

I think thats always been the point of the modern Batman, his presence is exactly why those villains exist. The Joker was right, Batman completes him just like he completes Batman, and the same goes for all the supervillains. Without them, Batman would be unnecessary, the mob wouldn't stand a chance, and in TDK, they were pretty much on their way out after only about a year of Batman's appearance in Gotham.

That being said, one thing I do kind of wish for is Gotham, and in turn Batman himself, becoming much more evolved to the point of the comics, it seems like the natural progression, and another reason why I think they should name the 3rd film Gotham City (but that's another discussion ) The freaks should be in full force now, dominating the underworld and running the mob off. With Batman on the run, the city should fall into despair and decay, making Batman the protector that we all know and love from the comics. Accepted as the true defender of Gotham, because at that point, the citizens and police won't have much of a choice anymore, they'll need him....

 

[The ?]

Yep, I concur with Joker, it's a major aspect of TDK.

,

?

 

[MrWayne]

I wonder if Joker would be wearing make up if not for Batmans theatrics, or would he just have a scarred up face..

 

[MrWayne]

I think thats always been the point of the modern Batman, his presence is exactly why those villains exist. The Joker was right, Batman completes him just like he completes Batman, and the same goes for all the supervillains. Without them, Batman would be unnecessary, the mob wouldn't stand a chance, and in TDK, they were pretty much on their way out after only about a year of Batman's appearance in Gotham.

That being said, one thing I do kind of wish for is Gotham, and in turn Batman himself, becoming much more evolved to the point of the comics, it seems like the natural progression, and another reason why I think they should name the 3rd film Gotham City (but that's another discussion ) The freaks should be in full force now, dominating the underworld and running the mob off. With Batman on the run, the city should fall into despair and decay, making Batman the protector that we all know and love from the comics. Accepted as the true defender of Gotham, because at that point, the citizens and police won't have much of a choice anymore, they'll need him....

makes me wonder how theyll fit all that into a 3rd movie... it will be alot to fit in if they decide to do anouther 2:30 min run lol

 

[MrWayne]

But i cant see Batman waiting to a point that Gotham has been overcome by freaks to re-appear.. im sure he will still be out and about fighting crime but just be overwelmed at the amount of freaks he will be encountering...

 

[mavsmaniac21]

why would he have to reappear? are you refering to because he is an accused murderer now?

 

[Doc Samson]

But i cant see Batman waiting to a point that Gotham has been overcome by freaks to re-appear.. im sure he will still be out and about fighting crime but just be overwelmed at the amount of freaks he will be encountering...

I don't mean him disappearing, but he's gonna have to be a true outlaw now, fighting crime won't be as easy, and if Gordon is to keep his new position, he's gonna have to at least give the impression that he's trying to catch him. What I meant was Gotham realizing that Batman is their only hope, not the reason for the madness like they do now. His stature will have to be rebuilt, and his reputation, but no, I didn't mean he would be literally out of action

 

[MrWayne]

why would he have to reappear? are you refering to because he is an accused murderer now?

i only say re-appear due to ALL the other threads ive read concerning the 3rd movie and how it would play out... ppl are under the impression that Batman will be in hiding due to him being hunted by the GCPD...

 

[Punk&ComicBooks]

Ya know aside from the joker, the batman wannabes, and the scarecrow (who appears before Batman anyway at least in this franchise), I cant really see who else can be considered `freakish`. The only other realistic villain I can think of for the next movie that can be classified as a freak is catwoman but we dont even know, and all the rest of the villains that can pass for the realistic Nolan world and the ones I didnt mention dont seem strange enough to be seen as a freak like two-face (might be debatable) and Ras...so would Gotham really be convinced about the new freaks in town being Batmans fault? I mean the whole batman wanna be thing just seemed lyk it would be just a quick thing thatll pass soon

 

[MrWayne]

well lets get back to my original point of Batman being the reason for the rise of the Freaks in Gotham... I wonder wat was Jokers inspiration for wearing the clown make up..
to me its not so much of the crime element in Gothamm.. to me i wonder what is it that causes them to dress the part and have a m.o. with a name to coincide with their persona...

 

[scifiwolf]

A taste for the theatrical, escalation - it's all circular. Batman leads by example, and the criminals follow. We're starting to see the mob get taken over by the more flamboyant criminals, like Joker, because the old bosses can't seem to grasp what's going on around them. Falcone, Maroni, the Russian - they're all eliminated because the only way they've been able to compensate is by operating in broad daylight and using carbon fiber weapons. They totally lack insanity, or at the very least, a little imagination.

 

[MrWayne]

hmmm interesting insight... i like that...
and then just what did Joker mean when he said "these mobsters want you gone so they cant go back to way things were... but i know the truth.. theres no going back, youve changed things... forever"
Did he know something??

 

[agentzelda]

Well, it begs the question of what the Joker was up to before he started showing up on security cameras in his makeup and leaving calling cards at the scenes of his crimes. Presumably he was already a criminal but reading in the paper about this dude in a cape busting thugs by night appealed to his warped mind and he decided to recreate himself as the Joker. The mob wants to return to the status quo of the days when Falcone ran Gotham's underworld (and much of Gotham itself via corrupt cops and civic officials). But the Joker knows that if it's not him, it'll be someone else adopting a persona and an image and wreaking havoc and challenging Batman and Gotham, that even if the Joker ends up incarcerated or dead, the issue isn't resolved.

 

[November Rain]

The way i personally see it is like this.

Gotham city is a heavily surpressed mob state, an entirely flawed western culture run by the underground but looks fantastic to outsiders.

batman showed he was no longer going to be surpressed by the mob and ultimately inspires people on both sides of the line to no longer be surpressed either. however since the mob is gone now, there is a power vacuum waiting to be filled and it is this vacuum that is going to cause the sudden rise of so called freaks who believe being a 'symbol' is the way to go to make a quick impact OR it will allow the heavily surpressed a means of breaking free completely and acting out on those who came before them.

so batman is kinda their inspiration but it is the fall of the mob which is the true catalyst based on the power vacuum left in gotham.

 

[agentzelda]

I was going to say he probably wore make-up all the time, but I'm inclined to think he just intentionally did small time crimes before he came to Gotham and without make-up.

That also depends on how long he's had the scarred up face; my guess would be for some time but not for years and years, that it's more likely the result of a mob reprisal than anything like those sad domestic stories he tells his prospective victims. Maybe this is how he got into orchestrating other people to commit crimes, like his bank robbery gang. Maybe he stayed out of range of security cameras. He has great criminal intelligence so I doubt that seeing Batman inspired him to take up a life of crime (he'd probably been a career criminal for years, though he's probably not that old, around Batman's age), just to invent the Joker.

 

[agentzelda]

I base the age thing on something I read about Nolan wanting to go with an actor who would be roughly the same age as Christian Bale (in fact, Heath Ledger must have been 5-6 years younger).

I think he's had the scars for several years of his adult life, but don't think they "drove him mad", that he was more the type of guy who was going to end up in situations like that anyway. He's obviously led a far less sheltered life than young Bruce Wayne, so probably has accumulated loads more experience in the same amount of time. (Falcone was really being quite perceptive when he tells Bruce in BB that just because his parents have been killed doesn't mean he knows everything.)

 

[Arkhams_Prank]

hmmm interesting insight... i like that...
and then just what did Joker mean when he said "these mobsters want you gone so they cant go back to way things were... but i know the truth.. theres no going back, youve changed things... forever"
Did he know something??

oO( thinks that he did know something .. ) just like Alfred knew that Batman had pushed the mob to desperation and in their desperation they turned to a man that they didnt fully understand .. oO( the joker - whom played on their desperation for the money ) .. yet even as Alfred had also said that its not about money sometimes they just wanna watch the world burn.
oO( have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight ? )

 

[agentzelda]

He probably didn't want someone much older than Bale in the role, but the Joker definitely seems older than Bale.

I think it could be entirely possible that the Joker never even had a bad childhood, and that whether he did or not, he'd end up the same. He's Satin incarnate.

It brings up another interesting question: Could Harley Quinn last long with Heath's Joker?

I don't think this Joker would be at all susceptible to HQ.

He seems more decrepit, but not necessarily older.

A shrink might say that perhaps the fact that his stories tend to deal with the betrayal of loved ones might indicate some family trauma, but I think he tells them because they push the buttons of his victims: they challenge their taboos. His motives in not going for cosmetic surgery might be quite different from Harvey's, or they might not be all that different.

 

[Arsh]

I never saw The Joker as being older than Bruce Wayne... I actually consider him to be a little younger than Wayne. The only difference between Wayne and The Joker is that The Joker has probably continually suffered for the last 20+ years, and all of that sort of horror has caused him to become a unique sort of madness. You know, they say at you're most horrifying moments, you can either laugh or cry, and I assume The Joker chose to laugh. We won't know the exact event which caused him to go completely over the edge, but my belief is that it was a series of things that all sort of built up until he went completely insane.

As for the rise of the freaks...

Well, they were already there... Scarecrow was running experiments on his patients while wearing a burlap sack for a while.

But yeah, I think Batman started it. Sure, he fixed all of Gotham's old problems, the mob, Russians, Italians, whatever, petty street crime and so on, but he created worse new ones with his presence. Now all the lunatics are gonna start coming out of the woodwork. We don't know how many people from Arkham were recovered, and some were probably in the Narrows when the entire region was doused in the fear toxin, who knows what that stuff did to people (though I don't think it would have any effect on Joker, though he wasn't there).

 

[agentzelda]

Very true: Crane demonstrated that you really don't even need Batman to take a new approach to criminal behaviour... UNLESS R'as traded on his weak personality and suggested this sort of theatrical behaviour, KNOWING Bruce had returned to Gotham determined to save the city.

Fear toxin wouldn't work on the Joker, he's not afraid of anything.

 

[Arsh]

True, though I got the impression that Crane had been dressing up and experimenting for a while, and also that Ducard was planning on dosing Gotham for a while... having Bruce on his side just would have made it easier, but he was gonna go through with it anyway.

 

[[A]]

The fact that regular citizens are dressing up as Batman and going out with guns to fight crime proves that Batman's presence has affected people.

Hey, I got a question about that one fact: was it known before the movie was out..? You know, like a rumor or something like that. But, more than a rumor, a fact.

 

[Grommers]

There's a really good Batman : TAS where they get captured and they put him on trial.

The villains created Batman, not vice versa.