Batman Symbolism In The Dark Knight

“As a man, I 'm flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed; but as a symbol ... as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting” (Batman Begins). Batman is one of the most popular superheroes of all time. Although he has no superpowers, his willpower and intelligence combined with his physical prowess, and ingenuity make him an incredibly dangerous opponent. In his secret identity he puts on the mask of Bruce Wayne, billionaire, playboy. In Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, Batman combats crime and faces several villains and their plots to wreak havoc and cause chaos. The villains that he faces, eventually come back again trying to cause a great deal of turmoil for Gotham city. Batman’s moral code on not killing is pointless,

In The Dark Knight, Batman faces his evil counterpart, the Joker. “The plot involves nothing more or less than the Joker’s attempts to humiliate the forces for good and expose Batman’s secret identity, showing him to be a poser and a fraud” (Ebert, 2008). The Joker plans out different schemes to kill people in wicked and vile ways. “In one diabolical scheme near the end of the film, he invites two ferry-loads of passengers to blow up the other before they are blown up themselves” (Ebert, 2008). This scene in the film is a perfect example of how truly evil the Joker is. His twisted situations are designed to show that these so called good natured people 's “morals, [and] their code, [is] a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. [That] when the chips are down, … these civilized people, [will] eat each other” (The Dark Knight). He wants to prove that everyone is just as psychotic and evil as he is on the inside. Christopher Nolan believed that “truly threatening villains are the ones who have a coherent ideology behind what they’re saying. The challenge in applying that to The Joker was to have part of the ideology be anarchic and a lack of ideology in a sense. But it’s a very specific, laid-out lack of ideology, so it becomes, paradoxically, an ideology in itself” (Foundas, Scott). Ideology can be loosely defined as “socially shared set of ideas that shape behavior” (May 2336). The Joker’s has a mission to try and break people’s shared set of ideas and change their behavior to one similar or close to his. A behaviour which allows citizens to be able to go around murdering people without a care for anyone 's life, and “personifies our greatest fears of a world gone horribly wrong” (Porterfield, John). He is also influencing other villains to rise up and do the same as him, which creates more threats for not only Batman, but