Was the Joker the Hero of 'The Dark Knight'?

By Genevieve Burgess | Social Media | August 29, 2015 |

By Genevieve Burgess | Social Media | August 29, 2015 |

One of the things the internet loves to do is put forth theories that cast new light on different movies and TV shows. Some of them are pretty interesting, some of them are complete and utter crap, but they are frequently entertaining and help pass the time between new great movies or TV shows. I think Game of Thrones and Harry Potter are currently the leaders of this hobby but every so often someone creates a new one that makes you think.

Today, that would be Reddit’s Generalzee with their theory that the real hero of The Dark Knight was the Joker. That his plan was to clean up Gotham all along, and by the end of the movie he had succeeded. The full post can be found here but the highlights are:

- The bank the Joker robs in the beginning is a mob-run bank, and in the process he kills his entire team of expert bank robbers, keeping them from robbing any other banks.

- Batman’s capture of Lau puts him right where the Joker can get him, and most of the Joker’s targets are corrupt politicians or criminals.

- The Joker manages to discourage the copy-cat vigilantes who were trying to do what Batman did, but poorly.

- His attack on Harvey Dent and Rachel leads Harvey to killing more criminals and corrupt politicians, before he himself is martyred by Batman.

- The Joker’s actions lead to the promotion of Jim Gordon, who helped keep the city safe for the eight years between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.

It’s a very interesting theory, although like most of these “new takes” on older movies I feel like there’s some significant plot points that are just sort of shoved in a corner to keep them from being inconvenient. But what do you think?

h/t Uproxx