Ryan Lynch - Elements of chaos in The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight is known as one of the best comic book movies of all time, and just movies in general for that matter.  The central antagonist in the film is the Joker, played brilliantly by the late Heath Ledger.  The Joker's main goal in this film is clear, to cause chaos, and that's it.  He has no other ulterior motives like money or power.  This is proven as he burns the entirety of his share of the mob money.  Batman struggles to fully understand the Joker and how to bring him to justice.  He says to Alfred that "criminals are simple, you just have to find what they're after", to which Alfred responds with a story from his past that points out that "some people just want to watch the world burn."  The Joker's goal is to upset the societal order and force people to turn on each other and thus create chaos.  He believes what he is doing will reveal the true nature of humanity, as we are all under the umbrella of society and its rules, and without that humanity would turn against each other in an every man for himself fashion.  In this film the Joker can be seen as a representation of the devil.  The devil's purpose is to sway people away from good.  His intentions are simple and clear.  The devil is just pure evil, there's no other baggage or objective other than to spread evil and chaos.  This is the exact same situation that Gotham finds itself in with the emergence of the Joker.  Both of them playing the advocate of evil and both of them just want to watch the world burn just for the fun of it.

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