The Dark Knight (2008) Opening Scene Analysis
The Dark Knight (2008) Opening Scene Analysis
‘The Dark Knight’ is most renowned for its dark vigilance and award winning script, ‘The Dark Knight’ is a successor to the other award winning ‘Batman Begins’, which introduced the entirely new dark theme to the batman series created in Christopher Nolan’s deep minded head. ‘The Dark Knight’ was voted the best movie of 2008 and the opening scene sets out one of the most economic and effective character introductions ever, that will also explain the main genre, characterisation and narrative in the movie.
The opening scene starts off with a wide establishing shot to establish the location and setting of the movie, in this case the shot establishes that The Dark Knight is going to be set in the city of Gotham, due to all of the skyscrapers present in the shot, as the wide shot starts to zoom in, a low to high violin note sets in to create tension and anticipation of an event that is about to occur.
Once zoomed in, a window bursts and shows a person with a clown mask, this indicates that the clown mask is to hide the persons face and that a robbery is going to be set, which introduces him as a criminal and antagonist into the movie. The music also changes into a dark ticking tune with drums added that also specify that a robbery of some sort is going to take place.
The scene quickly cuts to a low angle long shot of the back of a criminal that is holding his iconic clown mask; this indicates that it is not a one person robbery and that the shown antagonist is a powerful being within the robbery group. This shows it is a team robbery that has been planned and thought out carefully.
As one of the criminals say ‘let’s do this’ this initiates the team to begin the robbery and the camera cuts between the 2 groups in the team. When showing what the criminals are doing, the camera is carefully positioned to show all the members of the robbery, with a two shot on the roof and a slightly to the right over the shoulder shot from the back of the vehicle. A conversation bestows the criminals and they begin to talk about the man operating the robbery called ‘The Joker’. The shots cut from one group to the other through a chain conversation. When one group starts a sentence and the other finishes it even though the groups are separated. This shows that the team does not know ‘The Joker’ due to both groups having the same conversation.
As the robbers get out the car, they load their guns and head towards a building on foot, which is shown by a panning shot. Once they’ve entered the building it is established that it is a bank due to the lines of pedestrians and the typical montage of robbers robbing banks.
The movie quickly establishes itself as a crime, thriller and action movie once the antagonists start to burst off their weapons and initiate the actual robbing. When the group on the ground floor start to rob the bank, the shot switches to the 2 antagonists on the roof, one of the antagonists finish their job and the other executes the antagonist (who has finished) with a shot to the back of the head. This quickly establishes that the actual team does not know each other enough to not shoot each other when ordered to.
As the movie proceeds, so do the robbers with their roles, one robber takes control of the civilians and the other grabs his gear shown by a tilt shot and heads to open up the bank, both roles are also shown by long shots and mid shots. The antagonist that is taking control of the civilians, states that the civilians must ‘hold on to their dear life’ and there is a close up of the hand of a civilian holding a grenade that sets off when let go of, which shows that the criminals are serious and ready to kill civilians if anything is to go wrong.
In the middle of a robbery, a manager of the bank is in his office and unseen. There is a medium mid shot to his face that shows an expression, that tells us that he is about to do something to try to prevent the robbery from happening and give the idea that he is the protagonist of the movie. As we are drawn to his face a sudden burst of a shotgun is set off and a criminal is killed. With a backwards over the shoulder shot which shows the criminal get shot, once the criminal falls, the manager is shown with a shotgun in his hands. To the sudden surprise of the other criminals they all hide behind the counters with quick cuts to show each of them hide. In the middle of the action a cutaway is used to show the other criminal get shocked by the bank itself when trying to open it up. The shot cuts back to the action and the manager gets shot due to his heroic actions that show him as a protagonist.
When the other criminal has finished opening up the bank his role is finished and he is also executed by another member of his team which shows that the criminals have no loyalty and are ruthless. As the criminal takes the money within the bank there is a short follow shot that follows the criminal into the bank and a close up of him taking the money as he rushes. Great Mise en Scène is present as it shows that it is an authentic bank that looks so real that people could believe that the bank was maybe rented out for the movie to give it the most realistic feel as possible.
As the opening scene comes to its finish the last 2 criminals have a conversation with close up shots, they talk about killing each other, as one of them thinks that they are going to also get executed. And of a sudden surprise a bus comes smashing through a wall and kills one of the criminals. One more criminal exits the bus, once he has finished putting the bags into the bus he also gets killed and one criminal is left.
The last criminal is shouted at by the dying manager. As the last criminal approaches the manager, he puts a grenade into the managers mouth and takes off his mask, he reveals his identity to the manager and talks to the manager with an over the shoulder shot and a dramatic tune. His identity is that he is ‘The Joker’. ‘The Joker’ has face paint to scare his enemies, it is now realised that he had planned all of this from the start. The Joker is the main antagonist of the movie, who is seen to be a physco who kills just to test people. The Joker drives off in the bus which detonates the sleep grenade and sends the manager to sleep which is shown by a long shot.
The actual basis of the opening scene of ‘The Dark Knight’ is to introduce the movie and a new antagonist character that would kill even his own men. The movie itself establishes itself as a thriller through the opening scene and that many more people will be shot in the movie due to the narrative. Even though we know what will happen at the end of the movie, ‘The Joker’ sets off a very interesting and iconic character that grabs the audience’s attention towards the movie.
The movie is said to be Heath Ledgers epitaph that won him an Oscar after his death and his performance as The Joker really creates a physco feel to the movie, that provides a dramatic and a very effective opening scene to ‘The Dark Knight’.
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