Dark Knight Car Chase Analysis

Dark Knight Car Chase Analysis

Film Studies
Car Chase Scene Analysis
The scene I have decided to write about is from the new batman film “The Dark Knight”. After about 1 hour and ten minutes into the film, we find district attorney Harvey Dent being transported to safe accommodation after pretending to be batman to help catch the joker. This makes the audience wonder why this man is willing to risk his life for batman and I believe it is his first step of madness. When the S.W.A.T van comes onto the main road through Gotham, we see a flaming fire truck, symbolising danger, blocking their path that makes them turn onto the roads underground. We see all of this from a helicopters point of view so that the audience feels more superior to the characters and also gives the sense of vulnerability.
As they pull onto the lower fifth, the director uses a low angle camera angle from the point of view of the car ahead. The lighting in this scene part of the scene is quite dark only lit by the lights of other cars, which keeps the dark batman theme of the film going. We get the diegesis of the rubbish truck hitting the police cars. As the van full of S.W.A.T officers get ready to start the camera angle changes to the chase view again where we see a lorry smash into the S.W.A.T van and then change angles again to an overhead view of the van crashing into the water. The slogan “SLaughter is the best kind of medicine” is on the side of the lorry, which opens, and you see the joker and some of his cronies, which gives the audience the sense of fear as they have already seen what the joker is capable of. As the joker starts shooting the van, Harvey Dent says “these things are built for that, right?”, where you hear the fear in his voice and then the S.W.A.T officer in the van with him says “he’s gonna need something a lot bigger to get through this” but you can tell that Harvey Dent is still in fear. The Joker brings out the RPG and this is where I think the tension is at its highest
The Joker fires the...

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