Intro Scene Analyses The Dark Knight

The Movie starts with a slow zoom in on a skyscraper and the glass smashing out and cutting to a mid shot of a bank robber in a clown mask with a grappling gun and another robber also in a mask. This is very effective in setting up the tension for the movie as the audience does not know what he is going to do. The music used in this scene is effective as it creates tension the longer it goes on. The camera then slowly zooms in from the back of the robber towards the mask he is holding, with the music becoming more intense. He then quickly puts his mask on, being very careful to keep his face hidden from the robbers and the audience. This is done to get the audience to question who this robber is and why he is being so secretive. The camera then cuts to the robbers in the building, going down the zip line, which then shows an over-head view of them shooting down the line across the street. This is done to show that the robbers are prepared to risk their lives to rob the bank.  The director uses fast-paced cross-cutting in the first minute of the sequence, cutting between ten different scenes.  The effect of this is to dramatically build up tension, convey to the audience a real sense of danger about what is going to happen in the film.




The camera then cuts multiple times to both groups of robbers, both talking about the character The Joker. The camera cuts just as the first group is about to reveal information about the Joker to the second group that reveals the information. However, the feeling that the audience gets, is that neither group seems to know very much about The Joker, mostly rumours and myths and no one in the group has met the character face to face. The heist begins and the group on the roof kills the silent alarm. However, the hacker who killed the silent alarm is soon betrayed and killed by his team mate. This is a shock to the audience as we are not expecting this to happen. We then see the robber who killed his team mate make his way down to the vault with a panning shot being used to show the vault door and he starts drilling. As this is happening upstairs, the group downstairs have taken the staff hostage and have given them live grenades to hold. This makes the audience feel like the hostages are in terrible danger. However, the scene suddenly changes as we see one of the office workers has a shotgun and kills one of the robbers, which makes the plan the robbers had, go into chaos as the robber who was drilling the vault, is shocked and thrown back.