The Dark Knight Essay

Commissionaire Jim Gordon’s ending speech in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark knight.

This is the closing scene in the critically acclaimed movie The Dark knight. Commissionaire Jim Gordon is announcing Harvey Dent’s death, the city’s district attorney. The speech is being broadcasted to all of Gotham and people all over the city are mourning. In his closing statements, Gordon refers to batman as the cause of Dent’s death. For Batman, this accusation meant as the end of his career as Gotham’s vigilante. All of Batman’s work and sacrifice had perished with this blame. However, as the viewer, we are shown the real turn of events. Batman did in fact kill Dent, but only for the safety of the city. Gordon’s audience is not told that the Joker had succeeded in creating a monster out of their DA. Dent had lost all reasoning and had to be stopped. Batman murdered Dent and took the blame for his unlawful acts in order to reunite the people of Gotham. He restored hope at the cost of his own reputation. “A hero, not the one we deserved but the one we needed”. Dent was known as Gotham’s “white knight” for his commitment to justice and his bravery. The citizens of Gotham viewed him as the only uncorrupted official in the city. Throughout his career as the cities DA, he put major criminals behind bars including Falconi. Dent represented loyalty, morality and logic. While batman fought for justice through violence in the darkness, Dent fought for justice in court in the light of day. Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne were not only linked in their commitment to restore justice, but in their love for the same woman, Rachel Dawes. She was Dent’s () and the force behind his heroic deeds. Throughout the movie Dent was challenged to change his faith, by the (villain) known as the Joker. The Joker’s objective in the film is to install anarchy and to prove that even the truest/uncorruptable/straight/just/great and most loyal citizen can turn rotten and evil with a little “push”. The masked clown succeeded in doing so when he arranged the murder of Rachel and led Dent to lose all faith in people and become the villain known as two-face. You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villan. Commissionaire Gordon was one of the few officials trusted by the white knight. Once the Dent discovered that a corrupted cop in Gordon’s unit assisted the joker in his plan to execute Rachel, (he lost all hope). The joker pushed him to the understanding that no one can be trusted. Dent later formulated his own approach to decision-making; results should be left to chance. Chance represented an unbiased and fair measurement for decisions. After Rachel’s death, Dent went after the people responsible for his loss. He killed five people, two of them cops. In the final scene of the movie Dent is holding his last target, Gordon’s son, with a gun pointed to his head. As he flips his coin to decide the kid’s faith, batman throws him off the building and kills him. The disturbed and (distraught) commissionaire approaches Dents body and say’s “The Joker won. All of Harvey's prosecutions, everything he fought for is undone. People will lose hope.” The joker targeted Dent because he was the symbol of hope and unlike batman; he was someone that everyone could relate to. If Dent fell anyone could fall. That is when batman understood that Dent was more influential to the people of Gotham than he ever was. Dent was a common citizen who was able to accomplish just as much as Batman without having to wear a mask. He replies to Gordon “But the Joker cannot win, Gotham needs its true hero, They must never know what he did”. Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Rachel played an important role in Bruce Wayne’s life. She was his first and only lover, and one of the two people that knew of his double identity. However, the more responsibilities Bruce had as Batman, the less Rachel could be in his life. She promised him that they would get back together

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