The purpose of a film opening – Batman: The Dark Knight

Thriller openings are meant to create enigma's so that the viewer wants to continue watching so they can see what happens. Batman: The Dark Knight creates many enigma's in the opening scene which makes the others want to keep watching. Thrillers also have something happen that is realistic and sometimes action packed with a glimpse of the storyline.

The Dark Knight starts with an establishing shot of zooming through a city towards a building. We know that something is about to happen by the lack of sound in the clip. A window smashes and there is a cut to an over the shoulder, two shot of unidentified men in clown masks with a harpoon gun. Throughout the shots we only hear diagetic ambient sounds made by the smashing glass and the firing of the harpoon gun. This shows us that they are well prepared for the job they are doing and that the need to be secretive. The clown masks that we see here create the question of whom they are and why they are wearing clown masks. We also see another man with a clown mask standing in the street. The camera slowly zooms towards the mask to make sure we noticed this and make us keep asking ourselves who they are, what they are doing and why they are wearing clown the masks.

Dialogue in a clip of three clown masked men in a car and two on the roof we get told about The Joker and about a split between money they are going to make. Through the camera shot and the dialogue we can tell they are middle-aged men and that they don't quite know who The Joker is but they are doing something he has planned which will gain them lots of money. By now we realise from the large cash income opportunity they are talking about and the masks to hide their faces that they are probably about to commit an organised crime.

In the next few cuts we see that they are robbing a bank and a slow zoom of a man, unseen to the robbers, who, by the way he looks, seems to be high-class and has quite a high job status at the bank. The cut between the bank floor scene and the roof scene shows us they are happening simultaneously. The roof scene and then confuses us when one of the men kills the other after he has done his job. This makes us wonder why they would kill each other and if it is part of a different plan or if something has just gone wrong. On the floor instead of tying them up we can see close-ups of a robber, still masked, making the hostages hold bombs. This seems like a weird, expensive and unpredictable way of stopping people from doing anything as anyone could let go and destroy part of the bank ruining the heist in the progress.

There is a short part of the scene where the bank fight back against the threats it is faced with. A long shot shows us the high-class man shoot one of the masked bank robbers through some glass with a shot gun. At the same time as this the man trying to break into the vault is electrocuted by default security measures. Back in the bank lobby area a tracking shot follows a robber as he runs, ducking for cover, to where another robber is hiding.

Later in the scene one of the robbers asks another robber what happened to the hacker. The robber replies by saying The Joker told him to kill him before getting killed himself by the robber. This tells us that each robber has only been told what they are doing and to kill each man after their job has been completed so that they can gain more money for themselves.

This opening scene creates many enigmas, a few that it answers later in the scene. Most of the puzzles remain unsolved, like who is The Joker and why the robbers were made to kill each other only to get killed themselves. This is the job of the opening scene and makes us want to watch so we know what will happen and why what happened did happen.