The Dark Knight: Darkest Before The Dawn

In The Dark Knight, we enter a world without rules courtesy of The Joker. 

We all know that Batman Begins single-handedly brought the Caped Crusader back from the land of dead film franchises, but it was the The Dark Knight which irrevocably changed the way we view "comic book" films, dragging a genre largely considered to be kid's stuff through the gutters of Gotham to a new level of gritty maturity.  After re-envisioning Batman as a serious and believable creature of the night, Chris Nolan set out to push his Dark Knight and the audience into darker and grittier territory where the line between right and wrong is incredibly hazy.  Nolan's mission was to base these iconic characters in a real world that would feel familiar and relevant.  If Begins didn't achieve this, then Dark Knight obliterated every last shred of doubt that a comic book inspired story could feel like it was actually happening.  Never before had the threat felt so real and visceral, never had the stakes seemed so high or the outcome so dire and all this was due to one unstoppable tornado of chaos who, out of nowhere and without any powers or master plan, plunged Gotham into a dark night of anarchy and terror that pushed Batman closer than ever to the razor thin line between hero and vigilante.
Of course I'm talking about Heath Ledger's already legendary take on Batman's (if not comic book's) greatest villain, The Joker.  Nolan cleverly saved The Joker for the second film, unleashing his one man reign of terror on the city just as it's starting to get its act together thanks to The Batman.  At the film's start, Batman with help from his ally Lt. Gordon, have severely crippled organized crime in the city, striking terror in the heart's of Gotham's criminals.  Much of the film's inspiration comes from Jeph Loeb's epic masterpiece The Long Halloween, in which Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent form an uneasy alliance to take down the mob.  Batman's war on crime has left a sudden void in Gotham's underworld.  Exploding out of this chasm like a rogue comet comes the Joker.  More than any other portrayal, Ledger captured the true essence of this most notorious of Batman rogues: utter chaos and destruction for the sheer thrill of it.  Inspired by the challenge presented by Batman, the Joker steps in to prove that order, fairness and justice are merely illusions to which people desperately cling and that all it takes is one bad day to make anyone as crazy as he (or Batman) is.  In their desperation, the mob turns to the Joker hoping that he can kill Batman, but they soon learn, as does Bats, that this is a man who can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with; he simply wants to watch the world burn and once he's let off the leash, he begins a campaign of urban terror that pushes Batman to his breaking point.  Joining Bats and Gordon in their fight is newly elected D.A. Harvey Dent, who becomes the face of Gotham's resilience in the midst of the mayhem wrought by the Joker.  Soon public officials are dropping left and right and people like Dent are being targeted by the Joker.  But that's just the start of his fun.  If he has any plan, it's to push the Batman to his limits to see if he will break his golden rule not to ever take a life.  As Joker's campaign of chaos grows like wildfire, Batman must step up his game and risk crossing moral lines to stop the mad dog.
Unlike Nicholson's Joker, Ledger's version didn't take a plunge into a vat of chemicals, which not only bleached his skin but drove him mad. This Joker simply chooses to paint his face white, smear red lipstick on the creepy scars that curl his mouth into a permanent grin and tint his long greasy hair green.  There's no specific incident that sent him off the deep end; instead it's as if he simply chose to be this crazy, which is even more frightening.  Adding to his scariness is the fact that his origin is never truly explained; he constantly changes the story of how he got those scars, proving that it's all bullshit.  The fact that you can't sympathize with a tragic origin story makes him all the more terrifying.  Like the shark in Jaws, he comes out of nowhere and is nothing but a force of unrelenting destruction.  Where Nicholson's Joker considered himself a homicidal artist, employing classic Joker pranks like acid squirting flowers and electric hand buzzers, Ledger's Clown Prince of Crime is an urban terrorist who uses knives, guns and the occasional bazooka to hold the city in the grip of fear.  Nicholson's Joker was creepy; Ledger's is down right terrifying.  He's what the Joker would be like if he existed in our modern world.  The key to the Joker's effectiveness is that he simply has no fear.  There's nothing anyone, including Batman, can do to frighten him; he's a man who sees death as the greatest joke.  Therefore he can't be threatened because he has nothing to lose; he can't be predicted because he's totally unpredictable; he has no end game and no set goal.  He's also got a Zen-like ability to adapt to any situation that arises because he lives wholly in the moment.  Ledger conveyed this with frightening efficiency, comparing himself to a dog chasing cars who wouldn't know what to do if he caught one.



The legendary foes not quite facing off.

The Dark Knight conveys what makes Batman and Joker perhaps the greatest of hero/villain duos.  As Joker continually points out, he and Batman are insane men who've made insane choices, but they're on opposite sides of the same coin.  Both can not be bought, bullied or negotiated with and both are fiercely (or insanely) dedicated to their principles or lack thereof in the Joker's case.  Joker sees a worthy opponent in Batman, one he continually tries to coerce into breaking his rule, most notably by daring Batman to run him down with his Bat-pod.  That epic scene in which Ledger doesn't even flinch as Batman speeds towards him only to swerve at the last second, defines their legendary relationship.  Neither can bring himself to kill the other, but for different reasons.  It's as if they're dependent on each other for a worthy challenge to give them purpose.  As the chaos escalates, it becomes a game of one-upmanship with each guy trying to outdo the other.  When Joker hijacks an eighteen wheeler and wrecks highway havoc, Batman flips the truck completely over in what is one of the coolest, live action shots in any film.  Although he can't corrupt Batman, the Joker's toxic influence manages to corrupt Gotham's white knight, Harvey Dent.  It might've been the mob's plan to kidnap Dent and his girlfriend Rachael, but it was the Joker who knew their locations and knowing Batman would go for Rachael, switched the addresses so he'd inadvertently save Dent.  Batman saves Dent from the explosion, but can't save half of Dent's face from being burned.  That coupled with news that his beloved Rachael is dead pushes Dent over the edge and he becomes Two-Face, vowing revenge on the mobsters and cops who set him up.  In The Long Halloween, it's acid to the face that transforms Dent into Two Face, but the result's ultimately the same.  Dent's descent in madness mirrors the tragic nature of the character in the comics.  Rather than being a one-dimensional crazy killer, it easy to understand what led Harvey down his dark path.  Joker used Dent to prove to Batman that even good, infallible people can be corrupted.  Although "Two-Face" only appears towards the film's end, his tragic downfall proves to Batman how easy it is to become the very "evil" you swear to combat. 
Though devastated by Rachael's death, Batman musters every last ounce of strength, both physical and mental to confront the Joker one last time as he continues trying to prove that deep down all people are capable of terrible things if their lives are in danger.  For a mass murdering psychopath, you gotta admit that the Joker makes some good points about our capacity for evil.  Even so, Batman continues to believe that people are also capable of tremendous good.  After leaving the Joker hanging upside down from a building, Bats goes to confront Harvey who's taken Gordon's family hostage out of a desire for revenge.  Dent admits that The Joker was right, that the only true fairness is random chance, represented by his famous scarred coin.  He uses the coin to determine if he should kill Gordon's family.  Luckily, before he can carry out these verdicts, Batman knocks him off the building and saves Gordon's young son.  Ironically, the fall or the landing rather, broke Dent's neck, meaning that Batman killed him.  The Joker did far worse stuff, but Batman let him live to prove he wouldn't cross that line.  In this case, Batman did what he had to do to save Gordon's son but it just goes to show that right and wrong are not black and white concepts.  More than any other comic book movie, The Dark Knight explores complex moral issues without giving clear cut answers.  The world of the film feels eerily familiar to our own, one in which we have our own share of Jokers who simply want to watch the world burn.