The Dark Knight prologue

The Dark Knight

Seeing the first six or so minutes of The Dark Knight some seven months before the full film’s release is a mixed blessing. It definitely makes the wait harder, but there was no way I could avoid the theater knowing there was a whole sequence out there that I wasn’t viewing. So yeah, I ended up spending a whopping $20 to catch this along with something called I Am Legend…

The Dark Knight is going to open with a bang, and there’s no beating around the bush in regards to the Joker’s homicidal nature and all around insanity. The so-called prologue gives us a bank heist planned by the Joker and executed by a small number of thugs who have no idea what they’ve gotten themselves into. As soon as the heist begins there are fatal betrayals as ordered by the clown prince. One down, then another. Enter William Fichtner in a little cameo as the bank manager who busts out a loaded shotgun to personally defend the vault while shouting about the thieves not knowing whose money they were messing with (read: the mob’s). By this point, the audience should have picked up on some clues that the Joker is in fact secretly one of the clown masked thugs present. During a break of shotgun blasts, a second thug asks the Joker if the shotgun was empty; Joker nods yes. The thug leaps out of hiding to retaliate only to take a blast to the chest. There was no mistake made though. This Joker has no regard for even his own henchmen, and no qualms about being personally involved in their demise. After taking down Fichtner, the last thug arrives with the cash in duffel bags and asks about the escape. Joker says something cryptic about a bus, which receives a puzzled response, just before a school bus slams backwards through the bank wall and runs over the last thug. Joker offs the masked driver, removes his rubber clown mask to reveal his painted face in full IMAX glory to the bleeding bank manager and plants what appears to be a grenade in the manager’s mouth, with the pin connected to a string that the Joker holds onto. With the cash loaded in the bus, Joker drives off into the Gotham streets, an escape perfectly timed to let his bus mix in with a slew of other school buses. And that grenade? Fichtner’s bank manager gets to breathe a sigh of relief when it turns out to just be gas…

“What doesn’t kill you… makes you stranger.”

It’s what we’ve all been expecting, but seeing Ledger’s homicidal maniac for real is a treat. This Joker’s not fucking around. Anarchy and blood excite him on a deeply sick level. The body count in the full film is sure to be staggering. And between this sequence and the new trailer, Ledger’s performance should be the talk of next summer. He absolutely disappears into the role, barely recognizable beyond the makeup, mannerisms and psychotic voice. It’s not Heath Ledger playing the Joker, he is the Joker. Fortunately, there’s 140 minutes of the Joker’s rampage coming next July. It can’t come soon enough.