Every guy gets a share.
Five shares is plenty.
Six shares.
Don't forget the guy who planned the job.
He thinks he can sit it out and still take a slice.
I know why they call him the Joker.
The Dark Knight has cemented itself
as one of the foundational pieces of media
in the modern superhero landscape.
This intricately plotted, deeply character-driven story
propelled the genre to never-before-seen heights.
Director Christopher Nolan's masterful filmmaking
is perfectly shown across every frame of the film's
4 minute and 47 second opening scene,
a sequence so well choreographed that it
might be called perfect.
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And here we go.
One word defines the ambition behind Nolan's superhero magnum
opus--
scope.
Coming off the back of the franchise-resurrecting Batman
Begins, Nolan and company had the grandest of ambitions
for their sophomore effort.
They wanted to take the canvas that they established
with Begins and extrapolate it out to be a crime epic worthy
of the likes of Heat, Once Upon a Time in America,
or The Godfather.
And against all odds, they succeeded.
And this is nowhere more on display
than in the opening shot of the film.
Nolan spared no expense in bringing an epic scale
to the project by attempting something that
had never been done before--
shoot full sequences on 35-millimeter IMAX cameras.
For those that don't know, this is
what the IMAX ratio of 1.43 to 1 looks like.
And this is what the rest of The Dark Knight
in traditional widescreen ratio of 2.39 to 1 looks like.
The IMAX aspect ratio has more room
for compositional elements on the top of and bottom
of the screen.
When Nolan decided to shoot 28 minutes of the film in IMAX,
there were only four cameras that could even shoot the IMAX
format in the world.
But he believed it would be absolutely necessary to capture
the sense of scope and visual spectacle
he was looking for in order to propel
the film into being an epic.
The scene opens with two criminals
in clown masks breaking a window out of a high rise and firing
a zip line at a nearby building.
The tension-filled soundtrack and illicit activity
immediately sets up a dramatic tension that hearkens back
to classic crime capers.
The city of Gotham is nothing if not synonymous with crime.
And this film cements that idea right out of the gate.
We quickly move to a wide shot of another criminal
waiting on a street corner, holding a duffel bag,
and carrying a clown mask.
We next intercut between the criminals
on the roof zip-lining across a cavernous expanse
onto the roof of the adjacent building and the three
criminals in the truck discussing how many men
are involved in the heist.
We also learn that this project has
been set up by a mastermind named the Joker.
Unlike many superhero and comic book movies
today, who cram the running time to the gills with cameos,
Easter eggs, and setups for future projects,
this opening's mention of the Joker
services the character in a distinctly different way.
It immediately sets up the Joker as someone
bigger than street-level.
Nolan directs this sequence superbly.
The audience understands the geography
of what's happening, how many people are involved,
and what they are doing.
This is doubly impressive when considering
that all the characters are basically
wearing the same mask.
Normally, you just give close-ups
on the faces of the actors to help
an audience track who's who.
But with everyone wearing ostensibly the same clown face,
that's a tall order to accomplish quickly.
Nolan relies on the voices of the actors and the staging
within the frame to communicate importance to the audience.
As the criminals exit the truck and enter the bank,
we focus on the final clown holding the duffel bag.
Without giving the man any additional identifying markers
or dialogue, Nolan is reaffirming
that the man and the bag are important.
When the criminals storm into the bank,
we follow them with multiple sweeping Steadicam shots,
giving the scene movement and excitement
from a visual standpoint.
It puts us with them, storming the facility.
Next, the duffel-bag clown opens his bag,
revealing that it's filled with grenades and explosives.
As a bank teller triggers a silent alarm
and the criminals on the roof notice
that it wasn't attempting to call
the cops but a private line, that
can only mean one thing-- organized crime.
We get a quick insert of iconic character actor
William Fichtner's bank manager looking apprehensive.
And then we follow the duffel-bag criminal
as he hands out grenades to the bank hostages and employees.
William Fichtner pulls out a sawed-off shotgun,
stalks towards the bank robbers, and starts screaming--
You have any idea who you're stealing from?
You and your friends are dead!
This serves two purposes.
It serves as a payoff to the setup of the phone call line,
and it cements that this institution
isn't owned by a corporation.
It's backed by criminals.
It also firmly distinguishes that the criminals
we've been following aren't a part of organized crime.
They're an outside element coming into an already corrupt
ecosystem.
The truck driver and the duffel-bag clown
dive behind a desk.
And when the driver asks--
He's out, right?
The duffel-bag clown thinks for a split second, then nods, yes.
As the driver stands up, he's hit it with a shotgun blast,
sending the duffel-bag criminal into action.
It's apparent that the additional focus and emphasis
placed on this clown in the opening shots
were for a good reason.
Him falsely identifying the number of shotgun shells
the bank manager had left was a tactic.
He wanted the driver to be shot, but why?
Is he working with an ulterior motive supplied by the Joker?
We cut to the vault room, where the driver and the rooftop
criminal have a small exchange.
The rooftop criminal confesses that he killed his fellow
zip-liner and that the Joker told him to do it,
to which the driver retorts--
Funny.
He told me something similar.
We jump cut to moments later, when
they've loaded millions of dollars into nine duffel bags.
The truck driver says--
I'm betting the Joker told you to kill me
as soon as we loaded the cash.
To which the other criminal responds--
No, no, no, no, I kill the bus driver.
Acting as a setup for the highly unexpected and perfectly staged
shot where a bus careens through the front of the building
and kills the truck driver.
This is a tonally perfect adaptation
of the Joker's goofy antics from the Silver Age appearances
but evolved to put into Christopher Nolan's grounded
and more realistic world.
The static camera serves to accentuate the absurdity
of this violent act.
After loading the bus, killing the driver,
and having an interaction with the bank manager,
the duffel-bag clown unmasks, revealing
himself to be the Joker.
This opening serves as both an introduction
to the character of the Joker, the world of Gotham,
and how those two puzzle pieces fit together.
And just to make sure the audience can track what's
happening, the Joker is introduced three times
in the scene-- visually twice and verbally once.
This goes back to the idea of the scope
that Nolan is working at.
He's not going to just give his villain one hero shot.
He's going to construct a whole scene that
acts as both a character introduction, world
introduction, and film introduction.
This prologue sets up the narrative emphasis
on choreography, action, and the unreliable narrator
that is the Joker.
It's a marker that, as the film progresses,
the Joker is going to be orchestrating
events and pulling the strings of multiple factions of people.
It also brilliantly illustrates that the Joker
isn't some aloof criminal watching
these events from a penthouse.
He's a man with his boots on the ground,
carrying out the dirty work just as diligently as he planned it.
Can't rely on anyone these days.
You gotta do everything yourself, don't we?
The Dark Knight uses this opening
to create a sense of scale and scope
that no other modern superhero film rivals.
One of the primary reasons for its narrative success
is because of the fact that the film actually
has an opening scene, a bite-sized chunk of narrative
to pull the viewer in.
It has an opening shot that's significant.
It has a style and a point of view
that so many superhero films just
can't afford to because they're attempting
to squeeze themselves into an overarching narrative
of multiple films.
It's action-oriented and filmed on a scale
literally never attempted before in the history of cinema.
The Dark Knight has stood the test of time,
regardless of the fact that there are literally
tens of superhero films released a year.
The prestige and narrative propulsion
that people connect to from this film
flow directly from this opening.
Well, that's all we have for this episode.
What do you think?
Are there more perfect openings to films that often go
overlooked--
X2, Drive, The Matrix?
Let us know in the comments below.
And as always, like, comment, and subscribe
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