SSC Film Studies

Batman Trilogy post 9/11 films.

The Dark Knight trilogy, which consists of Batman Begins, The Dark Knight And The Dark Knight Rises, provides an interesting case study for its portrayal of terrorists. Especially in The Dark Knight Rises, the terrorists want to create a new society where the dispossessed can finally have some power.

The Joker is diagnosed as paranoid-schizophrenic and has actually been interned twice in Arkham Asylum. The police forces actually use the term terrorist when describing him, and the film revolves around the dilemma of complying with his demands or not.

The Joker has no political goal; he only wants to disrupt order.

Particularly, professor John Ip tackles the idea of the film as a 9/11 allegory in his paper “The Dark Knight ’s War on Terror.” Ip claims that The Dark Knight, far from celebrating acts of counterterrorism, is an extremely ambivalent portrayal of the ways we react to violence; moreover, Ip argues, the film is a larger critique on the limitations of vigilantism.