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Originally Posted by MrGreen  Wow, another super hero movie? Not only that, a sequel to one of the most overrated films of all time?
I can imagine the mainstream disappointment in the film, unless two people die during its filming, which will inevitably cause it great success and universal acclaim.
Put me on the list of people who is disappointed at the lack of creativity in hollywood.
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The Dark Knight had a remarkably sophisticated set of subplots, most of which were about issues in modern political and social theory. One explores the issue of whether a vigilante leader or "dictator" in the Classical sense could ever be a legitimate response to a polis that is inveterately corrupt. Neo-Roman theories of Republicanism and self-mastery are illustrated, and with them the ideal is vindicated that the authentic citizen will sacrifice his freedom to serve the State, which guarantees all citizens' freedom.
Against that discourse, there is the entire development of the Joker's standpoint, which draws heavily upon Bakhtinian concepts of a carnivalesque topsy-turvey world. A kind of apotheosis of the anarchic id, or perhaps a distorted realization of the Nietzschean superman, The Joker is never interested in any of the classical liberal senses of rational self-interest (though his complete, destructive indulgence in individualism offers an epitome of the old construction of 'evil' and 'vice' within the framework of positive liberty). Most remarkably, the Joker character challenges all of the basic movie conventions--and our social assumptions--of retributive justice. He indulges in evil to realize his own radically individualistic whims, but none of his designs can be reduced to a rational utility or determinate profit (unless it is a simple zero-sum game with the Batman or the system of civic virtue that he exemplifies). Inasmuch as he is at large and unapprehended, he delights, rather, in inducing civilians to participate in experiments that challenge their ideals of selfless altruism by putting them in predicaments that strongly incline the individuals to seek their rational self-interests. So long as the prospect of punishment is removed, people who are tempted to act as the Joker suggests will permit themselves to act in ways that are inimical to civic justice and the precepts of innate humane morality. Working through a number of "game theory" models of calculated self-interest, he ultimately fails when his prisoners' dilemma trap with the two bombed ferries fails. Both the ferry filled with 'God-fearing' civilians and the boat containing convicted criminals resist the rational impulse to secure their short-term interests by preempting the explosion of the rival vessel. Consequently, we see that the prisoners agree implicitly to cooperate--the most adventitious but least secure accommodation of self-interest through voluntary submission to shared notions of common weal and unwillingness to take advantage of an opportunity for anonymous murder.
Just so, when in the climax District Attorney Dent succumbs to the alluring notion that order can only ever be a shallow pretense in a world determined by pure chaos, Batman's final sacrifices (and the corresponding sacrifices of Commissioner Gordon) in the final confrontation with Two-face, do not demonstrate that selfless devotion to others is the natural, likeliest response to adversity, but they model an aspirational moral-political ideal that the director suggests is heroically difficult but nonetheless achievable.
