I had an idea of what the Joker would be in the world we created of Batman
Begins and to me it was creating a sort of psychologically credible anarchist,
a force of anarchy, a force of chaos, a purposeless criminal, a psychopath.
To me, that is the most frightening form of evil: the enemy who
has no rules, the enemy who's not out for anything, who can't be understood
can only be fought.
With all of the major story movements of The
Dark Knight we've tried to imbue them with a sense of inevitability you really
want kind of in the first reel to set up a set of expectations and feelings about
the type of story that you're gonna see in the way in which these things are
gonna play out for these characters but hopefully we're trying you know surprise
people in terms of how those things come to pass okay fine you either die a hero
or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain Batman is not a
simple heroic figure and that's the reason I was interested in him of all
superheroes because he has no superpowers he is the most human of
superheroes therefore and I think he's very very flawed and I think that the
more that those flaws are allowed to just bubble under the surface you know
underneath this sort of triumphalism I think that makes things I
think it makes it more like real-life Franklin one of the story elements I'm
continually drawn to is that the protagonist who who suffers I think if
that comes from inside themselves somehow if they are somehow responsible
for their own predicament I find that very evocative a fund that very very
much more moving than if it's as simple as well here's a bad guy and he's doing
bad things not to get too pretentious but from
Shakespeare and all the rest do that's something that has struck a chord in me
it's this idea that if the seeds of your own destruction really are internal they
really are coming from inside yourself it heightens everything and heightens
the the sense of tragedy to do with everything in the case of Batman and
this story it's a question of finding them the positivity and it's question of
saying here is a character like the protagonists of my other films I think
who is driven by extraordinarily negative things but what makes him a
heroic figure and it's something we had to constantly bear in mind is the fact
that he's able to channel these negative impulses into something positive into
something altruistic something relating to helping other people rather than just
the notion of personal vengeance the interesting thing about Batman as a as a
figure is that he's driven by very very dark things there's a lot of rage a lot
of anger that really really motivates him but he's trying to channel it into
something good but he's really playing with fire you know he's working outside
the law he's doing all kinds of very questionable things but in the service
of good that really is playing with fire that really is riding this this knife
edge so what what we do in the Dark Knight is we just sort of test that
using the character of the Joker who's this extraordinary force of of anarchy
somebody who just lives and delights in taking people's rulesets and and turning
them you know against themselves in sort of the ideal way to get to the core of
Batman and the paradox of Batman because he's somebody who's essentially doing
bad things for for good reason he's using you know force and vigilantism and
intimidation but he's trying to do it the service of good and I think it's a
it's an interesting place to have you you
you know I think the Joker understands Batman or feels he understands Batman
possibly in a way that Bruce Wayne doesn't entirely understand himself and
I think in them the interrogation scene it's interesting to see how the Joker is
able to get under his skin we like to think of them are our heroes or heroic
figures as being immune to those kind of mind games but of course we all know
that Batman is the most tortured psychologically unbalanced and in a way
of of these heroes and so he's very vulnerable to the threat that the Joker
poses and we try and continually remind the audience of that during the course
of the film some men just want to watch the world
burn
You reach a point where you really don't know what's possible what's not possible
what allowed in this story what's not allowed in this story and I think that
makes the Joker become a very very unpredictable character I think at times
you really do feel he's prepared to do absolutely anything and so that the
physicality of the story is all geared towards getting to a point near the end
of the movie where you're actually concerned the whole city will go down
you're actually concerned that this guy is going to completely destabilize that
society I think you feel that the Joker has a drive to tear the world down the
line we gave Alfred to sort of summon up really is you know this idea that some
men just want to watch the world burn that to us
was the most frightening way of approaching the character that he isn't
someone who can be in any way negotiated within him in a material sense or a
legal sense or a political sense he is just somebody who wants to tear
everything down around him and really it's it's sort of you know comes back to
very elemental things like societies sort of fear of of youth and teenagers
and rebellion and punk and all of these things and these are all things we
talked about a lot in putting the character together at the very beginning
my brother Jonah who co-wrote the screenplay with me and David Gore and
myself come up with a story but for us you know one of I think society's most
palpable fears is the fear of the collapse to anarchy the the idea of
people in society who will not in any way be bound by any kind of convention
whether that of society or even the convention of criminal society within
within the larger society very much what drives
both the filament and the novel is this the terrifying idea of the the
absolutely lawless and yet somehow attractive Anarchy that teenage
rebellion can could present taken to its absolutely most appalling extreme we
really wanted to get a little bit of that into this this idea of who the
Joker is we wanted a very youthful sense to the Joker very as I say punk
sensibility to the Joker the force of the Joker the character I like to say
sort of cuts through the story like the shark in Jaws he's a force to be reacted
to well because he's not acting from a sense of logic he's effectively a
monster and the film is very human monster as the Joker does things in the
story it tests the characters it forces them to confront things about themselves
I very much like that in terms of its approach to villainy because I think
that it puts it on to the characters that we already know particularly the
characters you know from the first film and from from the comics and everything
so you're seeing characters that you've come to know forced into very
uncomfortable decisions and very paradoxical situations and it tells you
something about those characters it reveals them and instead of new and
interesting ways
Well I think for me it comes from
my interest in in film noir and what what it defines that not for me being so
much the visual style but the form of characterization that you get in those
great stories the idea that characters define through
action very often these films are centered around a protagonist who's
either an unreliable narrator which is what we played with very much in in
memento or simply someone who has some flaw in them some tragic flaw that you
know early on there's an indicator in the story that this is going to snowball
into something catastrophic and in the Dark Knight I found a lot of interest in
the character of Harvey Dent for myself he's a very heroic figure at the
beginning he's the guy that Bruce Wayne sees as being able to take over for him
he's a hero without a mask he's a positive a figure for Gotham to rally
behind who can take over for Batman but in the way that aaron eckhart plays him
there's something right from the beginning you see in him
that's questionable you see a sort of a vaulting ambition you see a germ of
darkness there that can and of course therefore will in this kind of story
rise up and turn into something ugly
particularly in in the Dark knight which we felt that you know if Batman now you
know rules the night in in Gotham daytime is going to be the more
threatening aspect because the Joker rules the day essentially you know we in
in our telling of this story we we've never felt that Bruce Wayne could ever
go out as Batman in daylight that we know the costume would appear ridiculous
to the other characters it wouldn't be threatening without the cover of
darkness so we've always treated him a bit like Dracula or something you know
that the actual Batman himself could only come out after dark for that reason
a lot of our most threatening scenes in the Dark Knight we chose to have in
broad daylight and so when you turn the lights on and in the interrogation scene
for example we tried to really invert expectations and begin very very dark
and have people think that's how the scene will play out but then we actually
went incredibly bright with the whole scene because when you're in broad
daylight when the Sun is out when the lights are on
I think it's cinematic terms you're not pushing the audience one way or the
other you're not cluing them into where the scene is going to go and there's an
interestingly unpredictable sense that that helps and there's also at times a
certain bleakness that that evokes that I think can get under the skin a little
more effectively if you're good at something never do it for free I think
really the only useful advice I ever got in terms of you know trying to figure
out your way in to the film business of film industry is to a gaze of a script
and hang on to it it's that idea of that screenplay that
that concept you know whatever that's going to be that's so important and you
have to stick to your guns you have to find something that you can do that
maybe other people couldn't do and even if that seems different or doesn't fit
into people's expectations that's what's going to distinguish it if you can do it
successfully
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