Source for Video: The Dark Knight — Creating the Ultimate Antagonist (2016). The Dark Knight — Creating the Ultimate Antagonist. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/pFUKeD3FJm8.

Summary:

• The reason the antagonist of The Dark Knight is so effective, is primarily because Batman and the Joker are both working towards the same goal; to win the battle for the soul of Gotham. However, they have different interpretations of what that soul should be. One fights for order, one fights for chaos. John Truby states that this is the best way to create true conflict, and a conflict that will arise until the end of time, or one of their lives.
• The Joker turns Batman’s strength into a weakness, because he doesn’t fear death. He knows that Batman’s morality is intrinsically tied to his one rule, he will not kill, and, since he doesn’t care about death, turns it into a weakness. The only way for Batman to stop the Joker is to kill him, but that is exactly what he wants, because if he breaks Batman’s morality, he knows he will have broken him as a person.
• The Joker exploits this to pressure Batman into difficult choices. For example, the more people the Joker kills, the heavier Batman’s own inaction will weigh his conscience, and Batman is forced to constantly ask himself whether it would be better for Gotham if he just broke his rule, just once. He also makes Batman decide whether his identity is worth the lives that Joker has promised to end if he doesn’t give it up.
• Through his presentation of difficult choices, the Joker reveals what Batman is not willing to give up to save Gotham when he has him choose between Rachel Dawes, his love interest, and Harvey Dent,  a figure that could potentially save the city. He chooses Rachel, thus revealing one of the deepest parts of his character. We only know this about him because of the Joker.
• Finally, he teaches the protagonist a lesson. Batman begins the film thinking that criminals are all able to be understood, that they have a clear motivation, usually for money or some other sort of personal gain. And at first, he tries to put the Joker into this box. However, the Joker has no motivation other than chaos, to ‘upset the established order’. He is a different type of enemy for the dark knight, and Batman has to evolve to fight him.

The Dark Knight subverts the hero’s journey in a number of ways. While it can be crudely fitted into the generic narrative beats of the journey, one would have to ignore significant, meaningful portions of the film. For example, Joseph Campbell stated that the hero begins in equilibrium, that equilibrium is disrupted, and then eventually it is restored, the status quo having changed for the better. However, in The Dark Knight, Gotham’s equilibrium is disequilibrium, it is a city overrun with crime, despite Batman’s one man crusade for justice. The Joker enters Batman’s narrative and tips the tide of the city even further into chaos, but when he is defeated, Gotham is still a hive of crime and chaos; the disequilibrium is still intact, and the Joker has corrupted their one hope for a positive, legal, and just change. In essence, Batman’s hero’s journey is never completed, whereas the generic superhero’s always is.

In our class we paired up and discussed the narrative of Pan’s Labyrinth to see how it compared to a more traditional narrative. We then created a slideshow in our groups to explore the similarities and differences.

In Summary – How Narrative Study was Useful in Understanding the Film :

• The film doesn’t follow the traditional three act narrative structure. It begins not with equilibrium but with the end of the movie, and in the opening the main plot of the film is told through narration. However, this is not initially clear, so it heightens the emotion at the climax of the film when Ofelia dies, and also reminds the audience that, although dark and twisted, Pan’s Labyrinth is still a fairy tale.
• The unique structure also draws attention to the film’s dual narrative, highlighting the plight of both Mercedes and Ofelia. Their stories also compliment and contrast with each other, with some scenes, such as Vidal’s feast and the Pale Man’s feast, create direct comparisons between characters that offer a deeper insight into the characters of the film.
• The narrative purposes assigned to each of the characters of the story also help the audience to understand how Pan’s Labyrinth twists the convention of the generic fantasy film. For example, having the faun act as the dispatcher, a role traditionally filled by a kind old man, creates an uncomfortable, sinister relationship between Ofelia and her mentor, in place of the traditionally warm, helpful one.
• Additionally, the fairy tale narrative of the film helps to establish the theme of good v.s. evil. Ofelia, the film’s protagonist, signifies goodness and innocence, while Vidal, the antagonist, symbolises evil, as well as war and rage. As they clash throughout the film, so does morality and wickedness.
• Studying Pan’s Labyrinth narrative also helps us to empathise with Ofelia’s character, as we learn that the major conflict of the film is not a direct confrontation, but instead the prolonged abuse and pain that Ofelia has to endure throughout the movie’s run time.

As class we learnt about and discussed narrative structures, the narrative purposes of characters, themes, the significance of setting to a story and the role of the narrator in highlighting key themes. My partner and I chose to explore this topic through the Pixar film WALL-E, and situated below is, in order of right to left: A poster outlining the narrative structure of WALL-E, a summarisation of the key themes of the film, and an analysis of the characters and their narrative purpose.

In Summary – The Narrative Structure:

• The film follows the traditional three act narrative structure.
• It begins with Wall-E in his ‘ordinary world’, or equilibrium, which in the film is a future version of Earth that has been overrun by waste and junk, and is no longer inhabitable to humans or plants, just robots.
• The living seedling that Wall-E finds acts a disruption to his known world, as he sees a glimpse of both what the Earth used to be, and what it could be again if he takes action. This prompts Wall-E to travel with his new companion EVE to the spaceship in hopes of getting the plant to the captain, which acts as his quest.
• After causing disruption on the ship and driving EVE away, WALL-E faces his narrative realisation, or epiphany, in the ‘dance in space’ celebration sequence, as he simultaneously comes to the two conclusions that 1) he truly loves EVE and 2) that there is more to life than being a rubbish-collecting robot.
• After his realisation he faces many struggles, such as: having his circuits fried; being thrown down the garbage chute; and, at the climax of the film, ultimately sacrificing his life to help the Captain McCrea defeat the mutinying robots and put the plant in the Holo-Detector.
• His sacrifice could also be interpreted as his WALL-E goes through both a narrative restoration, as he returns to Earth, and a literal restoration when he is repaired by EVE and has his memory restored by her kiss. Earth was WALL-E’s ordinary world from the start of the film, but it is now transformed into a paradise by the humans inspired by WALL-E and EVE’s actions, thus also showing the transformation of him as a character.

In Summary – The Characters:

• WALL-E is unique, in that it doesn’t actually focus on a large cast of characters. Instead, it offers the narrative purpose often associated to archetypal characters to objects and settings, or has one character fulfil multiple narrative purposes.
• It is clear that WALL-E is the protagonist, as both the hero and the titular character.
• The antagonists of the film could be GO-4, AUTO or BnL as a company, or all three, as they all act as opposing forces to the antagonist.
• EVE is interesting, because it could be argued that she is: a helper, as she is WALL-E’s companion throughout the film; the girl, as she acts as WALL-E’s love interest; or as a donor, because she aids WALL-E, offering him advice, love and support.
• The role of the donor could also belong to Captain McCrea, as he helps WALL-E throughout the narrative but ascends past the role of the standard helper by ultimately winning the final fight against the antagonistic AUTO.
• We said that the ship that the humans have devolved on could act as a false hero narratively, as WALL-E initially sees it as a grand new world, but eventually realises it is the ships overbearing catering and complete automation that has doomed the human race. This could be an example of WALL-E assigning narrative traits to inanimate objects and settings.
• Another example of the film doing this that we discussed would be the role of the dispatcher, which we said could be assigned to either the plant or planet Earth. The argument for the plant was weaker, as it is clearly meant to be the disruption in the narrative rather than the dispatcher, but it is what sends WALL-E on his quest to the new world. Contrastingly, we said that the Earth itself might have been the real dispatcher, as it produced the plant,  and therefore the disruption that sets the later narrative in motion.
• Finally, we thought it that BURN-E’s purpose was to be a helper,  as he is the closest thing the protagonist has to a clear sidekick. He doesn’t contribute much to driving the narrative forward, but is along for the journey nonetheless.

In Summary – The Themes:

• I believe that the three most significant themes in WALL-E are the battles between: the past and the future, civilisation and isolation, and entrapment and freedom. WALL-E, as the last functioning robot on Earth, is the last bastion of the old world, and ultimately the past. Therefore, all of his conflict against the pacified humans and mutinying robots is a direct conflict against the future,  and in the end of the film the characters use the fruits of the old world, in this case the plant, to build a better, new world for the future: the new paradise on Earth.
• However, during this main thematic clash, other important themes are explored, such as the aforementioned two. Our protagonist is fighting to free the humans from their entrapment at the hands of technology, and while doing this leaves his isolated world to enter civilisation and in the end restore it on Earth,