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Sure. The whole movie hinges on the themes of chaos and that people aren’t inherently good when push comes to shove. Yet everything the Joker does from the opening bank robbery to the finale is elaborately planned and could fall apart if just one little thing doesn’t go according to these ridiculously overwrought plans, making the Joker the least chaotic character in the movie. Everything that happens seems to happen because it is scripted and nothing feels organic.
Joker isn’t actively trying to be chaotic himself, he lies and manipulates and makes himself seem chaotic, but of course he plans. His goal is to bring down order and establishment, and yet he, hypocritically, plans everything very orderly and particularly. Maybe he realizes this, maybe he doesn’t, but I think that is one of the many reasons he’s such an interesting villain. I think what’s important here is that Batman here isn’t a perfect encapsulation of order either, and that’s what Joker tries to prove, that all the ideals that Batman, Harvey Dent, Gordon, etc. try to uphold are inherently flawed. So it matters less that he himself isn’t completely chaotic, in fact I think it deepens the conversation.
Harvey Dent and his prosecutor girlfriend pursuing organized crime yet have zero protection. Not one but two ferries are loaded with barrels of explosives and no one notices. A billionaire hosts a party with all the elite of Gotham and there’s no security. And why was the Joker there? Just to look for Dent and throw Rachel off the balcony? Did he just go home after that? The cell phone bomb in the dude’s stomach goes off and everyone but the Joker is incapacitated. And even stupid stuff like Dent only realizing the nurse is Joker when he removes the mask!? Fake/fake out deaths. The dude who knows who Batman is never says anything!? Even after Batman is a wanted fugitive!? In short, it’s a poorly written movie.
I don’t know Moe, I feel you can break down the plot holes of every movie like this if you want to, and it’s fun to poke holes on that but I hesitate to call anything poorly written just for that because there are far more important things in a movie than “perfect logic”. Of course I know you know this though and I understand your greater issues lie with the themes, and that these plot holes are more noticable to you because the greater themes don’t work for you very well either.
The themes don’t ring true as many many of the people on the ferries seemed okay with sacrificing the other ferry full of people even if they wanted someone else to pull the trigger.
Batman may say that the city wants to believe in good as a whole, but in my opinion Nolan isn’t trying to say a definitive answer that people are believing in good, if he did then A) he wouldn’t have shown people ready to sacrifice the other ferry (although the man’s hesitation to go through with it says a lot), and B) he wouldn’t make the final conflict be about someone who lost the good they had in Dent. I think he’s just trying to say there are people that still want to believe in good and that’s what’s important, that people aren’t just impulse and survival vs morals and ethics that Joker is trying to prove.
And the dangers of tech surveillance but only if someone bad is using it!? Batman is as willing to break his own rules as the Joker thinks he is. It’s a movie that thinks it is smart but instead is both underwritten and overwritten at the same time. It’s hard to feel any emotion when things are so obviously structured to happen in order to advance the plot. And if Ledger wasn’t so compelling I think the film would receive far more scrutiny.
The tech surveillance subplot is exactly the point, especially with Lucius Fox resigning after Batman uses it. Batman is authoritarian, he uses tools of, for lack of a better word, the “enemy” to gain an advantage, follows his own jurisdiction (like traveling to Hong Kong and breaking a ton of laws to capture and bring a mob boss), and is not a hero. And Wayne realizes this because he wants to retire when Dent uses hope and diplomacy to restore order in the city instead of how he does things.
I think the film is a brilliant conversation about these themes and wants you to think about them, not to give you one definitive answer or moral statement. And I think Rises would have been far more interesting if they took the opportunity to explore these themes further, but we all know what a thematic mess of a movie that is (as much as I like the main throughline of the story).