Image by AliceLinWonderland Flickr.Com Creative Commons

So, what makes a great movie?

I saw the new Batman movie recently “The Dark Knight” and I must say that Heath Ledger did an amazing job of portraying the Joker, even better than Jack Nicholson back in 1989 in my honest opinion.

Afterwards I started to think about what makes a great movie – is it the special effects? Maybe, although there are many movies with great special effects that have not been as successful. Is it the big name stars? Not necessarily, big name stars make bad movies all of the time.

No, I think the reason why I liked this movie so much is because of the characters, the conflict and drama – the universal drama, the inter character drama and the intra character drama. If Batman was just fighting a crazy guy in a clown costume it would not have been as interesting. Let me explain what I mean…

1. Universal Drama

• The people of Gotham city were not sure if Batman was friend or foe, sometimes Batman was the good guy and sometimes Batman was the bad guy.
• The police force were not sure if Batman was with them or against them, sometimes Batman was helping them and sometimes it seemed like Batman was hindering them.
• To top it all off Batman was also at war with the entire criminal underworld, who had all been pushed against the wall and had no other option but to fight back.

2. Interpersonal Drama

• The love triangle between Bruce Wayne, Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent – would the relationship that both men had with Rachel prevent them from doing the right thing?
• The work relationship between Bruce Wayne, Alfred the butler and Lucious the CEO of Bruce’s public company – Wayne Enterprises – would fighting crime and playing the role of Batman have a negative affect on Batman’s personal and public life as Bruce Wayne?
• The ultimate battle between Batman and the Joker who was manipulating all of these relationships to make matters worse and worse and worse – the Joker was making things difficult by putting the lives of the people that Bruce Wayne cared about in jeopardy.

3. Intrapersonal Drama

• Batman’s dilemma of being the hero who was supposed to fight crime whilst also always having to do the right thing – was being seen as a hero having a negative affect on the public by encouraging others to dress up like Batman, fighting crime and putting their own lives in jeopardy?
• Harvey Dent’s dilemma of being the public attorney who was supposed to lock up all of the criminals whilst behaving in an ethical manner, having lost his loved ones – was he going to continue to be “The White Knight” of the city or was he going to turn evil and take matters into his own hands?
• The Joker’s disturbing past and his need to prove that people are not as nice and wonderful as they pretend to be – the Joker constantly created situations where people were tempted to do the wrong thing.

Example

In one scene there is a boat full of convicted criminals and another boat full of civilians, the joker has rigged up both boats with explosives and has threatened to blow up both boats at midnight. However, he has also left a detonator on each boat, the detonator if activated would blow up the opposing boat e.g. if the people in the boat full of convicts were to flip the detonator switch the boat full of civilians would blow up and vice versa. Now if one boat were to blow up before midnight, then the Joker has promised that the surviving boat would be left alone but if both boats are still afloat then he would blow up both boats.

So, Batman has to hunt down the Joker and prevent him from blowing up the boats whilst at the same time trusting the people on each boat to not blow each other up.

The problem is that Batman has no idea where the Joker is, so he creates a huge supercomputer that is able to connect to every mobile phone in the city and essentially use that network to track down the Joker, which raises the issue of privacy.

So, in this situation, the universal conflict is the dilemma between the convicts and the civilians – who will blow up the other boat first? The interpersonal conflict is the ultimate battle between Batman and the Joker – who will win good or evil? The intrapersonal conflict is the ethical and moral dilemma of fighting crime versus breaching people’s privacy – Is it right to break a crime in order to catch a criminal?

This is just on screen, off the screen there have been a number of dramas surrounding the movie which has generated even more publicity including the sudden death of Heath Ledger due to an overdose of prescription drugs, the arrest of Christian Bale due to a confrontation with his mother and sister as well as the serious injury of Morgan Freeman who was involved in an accident in Mississippi.

Conclusion

Watching the Dark Knight has taught me a lot about character development specifically what I learned is that if you want to write great stories it’s important to create strong characters with strongly opposing perspectives and amplify those opposing perspectives with universal conflicts, interpersonal conflicts and intrapersonal conflicts.