Unseen Kidnappings
Harvey & Rachel get kidnapped. Harvey is shown kidnapping Gordon’s family, Harvey is shown kidnapping Joker’s henchman. So clearly when secondary characters are kidnapped it’s important to show their kidnappings. However, apparently, when major characters are kidnapped, it’s not important to show it because the audience is supposed to presume that The Joker is omnipotent, all-powerful, and kidnaps by osmosis. Therefore, the audience must presume he can do anything at any time, at will, with little money, endless henchmen (after constantly killing those who he has working for him), and the ability to control the reality of everyone around him as if playing chess with mentally challenged children.
Filed under: Editing/Sound, Writing/Direction Tags: editing issues, kidnap, kidnapping, The Joker
Actually, this point is inaccurate. You may not see the actual kidnappings, but the audience doesn’t need to imagine how the Joker kidnapped Harvey and Rachel. Here’s why.
When Harvey is being loaded onto the armored vehicle just before he’s transferred to a different police station, he flips his coin to Rachel. You see the policewoman, Ramirez, in the background.
Later, when Harvey has been saved by Batman and Gordon, you see him get into a car with Wuertz (a policeman under Gordon’s employ) and Ramirez closes the door.
Now for the reveal.
After Harvey/Two-Face escapes from the hospital, he goes to the bar where Wuertz is drinking. He confronts Wuertz, who admits that he was paid by the Joker to deliver Harvey, but that he didn’t know what was going to happen.
Two-Face then finds Maroni, who reveals that Ramirez was the one who kidnapped Rachel. Two-Face kills the driver, the car crashes, and he sets out to find Ramirez. When he finds her, he forces her to call Gordon’s wife in order to get his revenge, then interrogates Ramirez about Rachel. She admits that she kidnapped Rachel because the Joker knew that Ramirez’s (grand?)mother was in the hospital.
The reason why Nolan chose not to show the kidnappings, I think, was to give the viewer a break from the action for a moment and get off the “emotional high.” After all, just before the “kidnappings,” Harvey had been arrested, transported in an armored vehicle while being shot at by the Joker, and been saved by Batman after a high-speed chase full of explosions. The audience simply needed a breather and a sense of relief before the other shoe dropped.
the corrupt male cop( the one dent kills in the bar) can clearly be seen driving dent’s car after the female corrupt cop helps him into the backseat. Thats the same cop who admits to kidnapping rachel. Also rachels abduction was suppoased to be a surprise to batman and the audience.
If they had shown the kiddnapings then the Joker interagation scene wouldn’t have had as much impact on the audience. The audience was just as suprised/scared as Batman was, therefore creating a bond between hero and audience.
That sounds like dang good film making if you ask me, as opposed to the message of this site….
I agree with Youknowwhatsurpirseis? on this one. First of all, you don’t need to show the kidnapping. Its easy to kidnap, especially for lunatics with guns and knives against helpless DA’s and ADA’s. Also, it would ruin the interrogation scene. This is called clever fimmaking, and I’m sorry if you don’t enjoy that.
It’s not called clever filmmaking. It’s called, “Whoops! Oh well just explain it with some exposition dialogue”..
If they had shown the kidnappings, then wouldn’t you have said, “Why did they make Joker’s reveal of the kidnappings so dramatic when we already knew about it??? LAME!!!”
Your explantion avantsweater pretty much sums up how this site is nothing more then a pissed off fanboy of some other superhero, or a pissed off Godfather/GWTW/Psycho/Citizen Kane fanboy
They actually do show Harvey’s kidnapping. After the batpod reveal chase scene Officer Ramirez suggest Harvey to take a ride home and Officer Weurtz drives the car. The same guy he shoots in the bar later on. And Rachael’s kidnapping was off screen on purpose to get a reaction from the audience. If you can’t give proper attention to movies I suggest watching saturday morning cartoons.
They clearly and explicitly explain how both Rachel and Harvey are kidnapped and by whom.
This is a ridiculous criticism, when simple inference could of been made, and is actually preferred in a movie like this.
Like I posted in the ‘From Dent to Bent” article a few minutes ago, read about sociopaths and borderline sufferers (as Joker was certainly portrayed). These people are so clever and manipulative: those sorts of events occur all the time when they rise to power. It’s simply because they can convince anyone to follow them with their devious charm. I mean, people around these types who know better always wonder where they get their plans, resources, and henchmen – so your disbelief is really understandable, but I didn’t find it hard to believe simply because it happens all the time in reality (read the historical accounts of some of history’s most vicious dictators and you’ll see similar events).
I’m personally glad the movie didn’t show it. The pacing was pretty much perfect, adding these sorts of details would have bogged it down, and it’s not that hard to imagine how it could have happened. Actually, as Sarge states, they imply how it occurred later on. Plus kidnapping isn’t all that hard to do.
Talk about nit-picky!!! How many movies have you been where every little thing is shown? They have it explained later on, it was a corrupt cop, and the way they did it make the story more exciting.
Try pointing out REAL flaws! geez!
I guess it’s age but I watched Dent shoot the guy in the bar in complete and utter puzzlement. I had NO idea who he was or why Dent was pissed at him.
I guess I just lack the anal to be watching all the background characters closely for every 5 seconds on screen
Tosh, I don’t think anyone can reasonably answer that, but in the off-chance a fanboy replies with “Yeah, don’t you have the brains to pay attention” type quip:
1) It was explained purely in dialogue, as if that is enough. “Hi, the audience hasn’t seen you before, but you did XYZ and I don’t like it! [bang] [bang]”
2) If such a mediocre scene like that was added taking up a whole 30-40 seconds on-screen, why not add a 10 second scene of The Joker walking out of the party they crash so people aren’t left wondering what happened after Batman crashed out a window saving Rachel.
It’s my beliefe that what made the movie crap wasn’t completely Chris Nolan (since he’s directed intelligent movies that I thought were beautifully woven together, like “The Prestige”), but possibly due to the fact it may have had to be cut from 3 or 3.5 hours down to 2.5 (the reason being that studios can make more money on sold-out showings on premier weekends if they can be shown more times on more screens). HOWEVER, there was plenty that could have been cut out that had very little value in the storline (like the fingerprint on bullet crap), so the fact they chose to take out stuff that would have helped with the more important elements of the story indicates a lot of people messed up, not just Nolan and the editors.
^ The fact that you regard this movie as “crap” is clearly all we need to know about you. I can understand people not particularly liking it, but to say The Dark Knight is bad is almost laugh-out-loud funny.
95% of critics disagree with you, as does a probably higher percentage of the movie-going public.
“95% of critics disagree with you, as does a probably higher percentage of the movie-going public.”
…and Bush got voted in twice. Truly speaks wonders for “the majority”.
Quite different – although I’m also in bewilderment with that situation.
The example I pointed was both critics AND the public.
Now if political experts and the public both voted for Bush you’d have a point – but the situation in and of itself is quite different either way.
You sugest they cut `the finger print on the bullet’ crap- the major criticism Batman fans had of Batman Begins was the lack of any detective work on Batman’s part, I considered that scene vital from the perspective of characterisation. Batman is a great detective. (And re-structuring bullets by analising the average spread of bullets fried from the same weapon is an existing recognsied forensics technique, just in case you’re trying to say it was unrealistic).
“Buh got voted in twice. Truly speaks wonders for “the majority””
tdksucks, do try to understand that Americans aren’t the only ppl who post on this site. and even then, it’s not like the same ppl who voted for bush are the same ppl who liked TDK. you cant compare two totally separate groups of ppl. And its not as though bush got in on an overwhelming majority. as opposed to the movie, which a thoughroughly overwhelming majority of ppl like.
and why wouldn’t they show the kidnapping. hmmm. lemme think. presumably the same reason they dont show the joker using the toilet. i mean that has to have happened to right? so why dont they show it?
they dont have to explicitly show every little bit of detail, especially not when a reasonably intelligent movie goer can make their own inferences. we see harvey get into a car with a cop. we have already heard conversations about corrupt cops in gordons unit. so when the joker drops that particular bombshell, we can infer that obviously the cops took harvey. they dont need to show rachels kidnapping because the joker explicitly reveals that he has them both, and so that the audience and batman is surprised. and it also ensures that the audience is surprised when harvey and rahels predicament is revealed.
the reason the kidnappings commited by Harvey are shown are a) in the case of the first kidnapping it shows harvey’s willing to take the law into his own hands (important bit of character building for later events) and b) the movie never explicitly shows the kidnap of gordons family, much for the reasons harvey and rachels abductions wasnt shown.
to TDKsucks user I am sorry you just don’t make sense. “Bush got voted in twice” hmmmmm if i could remeber correct George Bush lost the popular vote when he ran against Al Gore didn’t he? yeah i think you need to look into politics maybe the electoral college you know study up on how makes those type of decsions. As for movies thats not only a completely different subject but yeah im sketchy and i dont go by normal reviews i need certain people (who i trust their judgement because they like really really good movies) to tell me that its worth seing and everyone of those people i have talked to has said TDK is a great movie. Now let me show you a magic trick =)
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Well said, Frormaqaq.
Now thats something I thinkw e can all agree on.