The Dark Knight (2008): Cast, Plot, Ending and Where to Watch

The Dark Knight begins with a bank robbery in Gotham and ends up asking what a city will believe about its heroes. A gang of masked robbers hits a bank owned by the mob, and the man who planned the job, the Joker, has arranged for each accomplice to kill another, so that he alone leaves with the money.

Batman, District Attorney Harvey Dent and Lieutenant Jim Gordon then join forces to break the city's organized crime families. Bruce Wayne backs Dent in public, because a visible, honest hero in the district attorney's office could let Bruce retire as Batman and build a life with Rachel Dawes, who is now dating Dent. That is a neat plan, and it lasts until the mob bosses call a meeting. The Joker walks in and offers to kill Batman for half of the money their accountant, Lau, has hidden away.

The full plot of The Dark Knight follows a chain of bargains, each one forcing Batman and Dent to give up something. Lau has fled to Hong Kong, so Batman, with help from Lucius Fox, brings him back to Gotham, and Lau's testimony lets Dent prosecute the mobsters. The bosses respond by accepting the Joker's deal. He begins killing people tied to the trial and demands that Batman reveal his identity.

Dent claims to be Batman to draw the Joker out, and the Joker attacks the convoy carrying him. Batman and Gordon capture the Joker, and Gordon is promoted to commissioner. In custody, the Joker says that Rachel and Dent are held in two separate buildings rigged to explode, but he has swapped the locations. Rachel dies, and Dent is badly burned on one side of his face. The Joker escapes, burns the money and kills Lau.

The Joker then pushes the grieving Dent toward revenge. Dent uses a coin toss to choose his victims and kills the people he holds responsible. Meanwhile the Joker rigs two ferries, one carrying civilians and one carrying prisoners, so that each group can blow up the other. The passengers refuse to do it, and Batman captures the Joker without killing him. Dent then takes Gordon's family hostage, and in the struggle he falls to his death. Batman takes the blame for Dent's crimes so the city can keep believing in him, and Gordon goes along with it.

The world premiere of The Dark Knight was held in New York City on Monday, July 14, 2008. A block of Broadway was closed for the event, and the score was performed live.

The first European screening was a London premiere at the Odeon in Leicester Square, where a Batmobile was driven through the West End. The film then opened in Australia on July 16, 2008, in the United States on July 18 and in the United Kingdom on July 24.

It opened in 4,366 US theaters and took $158 million in its first weekend. Its US rating is PG-13, with a 12A in the UK and an M in Australia.

The ending of The Dark Knight is Batman choosing to be hated so that Gotham can keep believing in Harvey Dent. After the ferry plot fails, the Joker is captured and tells Batman that Dent's fall proves he has corrupted even Gotham's best man. That is the Joker's argument for the whole film: that anyone will break if the pressure is right.

Batman's answer is to carry the damage himself. Dent dies after taking Gordon's family hostage, Batman saves Gordon's son, and then Batman persuades Gordon to hide the truth, taking the blame for Dent's crimes. The city mourns Dent as a hero, and the police launch a manhunt for Batman.

Two small moments finish the argument: Alfred burns a letter from Rachel that said she had chosen Dent, and Fox destroys the surveillance network. Both are acts of mercy and restraint. Alfred spares Bruce one more loss, and Fox gives up the sonar tool Batman used to find the Joker, which Fox had only agreed to build for a single night.

In my opinion, this is what separates the film from the more playful entries in the series, and it is the reason the follow up works. Compare it with the earlier Jokers. In Batman (1989), Jack Nicholson's Joker is a rival with a personal grudge against Batman, so the ending is a duel. In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger's Joker never needs to win a fight. He wants Gotham's people to turn on each other, and the two ferries are where he loses that bet, because neither the civilians nor the prisoners press the button.

Dent's fall is also a correction of how the series had treated Two-Face. In Batman Forever, Tommy Lee Jones plays him as a loud, comic villain beside Jim Carrey's Riddler. Here Aaron Eckhart's Dent is a decent prosecutor first, so his coin toss, which decides who lives among the people he blames, lands as a tragedy rather than a gimmick.

The Dark Knight Rises opens eight years later with Gotham celebrating Dent's memory under a law named for him, Gordon privately holding the secret and Batman gone. It could be argued that the Joker does not lose the argument so much as postpone it, because the whole system now rests on a lie. That is a sharper ending than a clean win, and it is the one I would point newcomers to first.

The Dark Knight was filmed mainly in Chicago, with sets built in England and a final stretch in Hong Kong. Principal photography began in Chicago on April 18, 2007. Locations there included the Old Chicago Main Post Office, Wacker Drive, Navy Pier and Willis Tower.

In England, the production used Pinewood Studios and the Cardington Airfield sets, and Battersea Power Station also appears. The final nine days of production were shot in Hong Kong, which fits the story's detour to bring Lau back to Gotham.

The Dark Knight earned about $1 billion worldwide, and the figures below show how it compares with the rest of the trilogy.

• The production budget was $185 million.
• Box Office Mojo lists about $535 million domestic and $473 million international, for about $1.01 billion worldwide.
• Its opening weekend of about $158 million came from 4,366 US theaters.
• It was produced by Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures and Syncopy.
• The New York premiere closed a block of Broadway and included a live performance of the score.
• The London premiere at the Odeon in Leicester Square featured a Batmobile driven through the West End.
• The Dark Knight Rises later grossed more worldwide, at about $1.09 billion.

For the full series comparison, see batman box office.