A Movie With a Great Opening Scene

November 2023 Movie Challenge-Day 1

From the very first images that begin with a blue tinged Warner Brothers logo, followed by the Legendary Picture logo and a DC Comics logo that fades into a roiling blue explosion with the Batman symbol careening out of it toward the viewer, you get the sense that The Dark Knight is going to be in your face.

Heath Ledger’s Joker is the stuff of legends and cemented his greatness as an actor despite his untimely death before the film was released.

What follows is one of the greatest opening scenes in film history, with Heath Ledger’s Joker leading a band of bank robbers (all decked out in clown masks for effect) as they steal millions of dollars from the Gotham City mob.

The character that we know to be The Joker doesn’t utter a word through the first several minutes of the heist, preferring to remain anonymous to his fellow thieves. He reveals himself by voice about five minutes in, before the second to last thief is killed by the bus slamming into the bank. He quickly dispatches the bus driver before getting accosted by the bank manager (William Fitchner).

When the bank manager tells him “criminals in this town used to believe in things: honor, respect” and then asks the crazed clown what he believes in. The classic response as The Joker shoves a grenade in the manager mouth and pulls off his clown mask is “I believe, whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you…stranger.” He flashes his creepy smile as we the audience get our first look at his makeup and scars that will figure prominently throughout the film before returning to the bus to complete his heist by driving into a convoy of other school busses just as the police come flying down the street to the bank.