Reply #5: Hmm, if the Nolans were trying to say anything about terrorism, it was that... [View All]

[colinmom71]

We are not in control. Yes, the boats did not blow each other up, but that overlooks the fact that the Joker was going to blow them up at midnight anyway. Remember, when Batman confronts him, the Joker has only one detonator device. And that likely means that had just one boat armed their detonator, BOTH boats were going to be blown up no matter what. Both boats were rigged to the same signal to fire, hence the Joker's one detonator for the midnight deadline.

The outcome was pre-determined according to the Joker's plan. He knew that the more urbane citizenry (who represent order and morality) would be reluctant at first to fire the device and would habitually turn to the public order they know, and that the prisoners (who represent chaos and evil) would panic but would be restrained by the armed jail officers. What the Joker counted on was some having enough moral qualms to not go through with setting off the bomb until the absolute last minute, thereby allowing him to either have them blow each other up by one of them hitting the button or getting the chance to show their moral qualms were irrelevant because he controlled their fates all along.

And Batman figured that out. That's why he went directly to the Joker, to make sure he was disabled from enacting his scheme. Trying to save either individual boat would have been a waste of time and effort.

Of course that said, it was an interesting juxtaposition between chaos reigning on the citizen's boat (multi-voiced cries to blow 'em up then deciding on a "mob rule" vote that was ruled by fear) and the prisoner's boat being relatively calm and restrained despite their fear. And still, it would come down to two individual voices, a prisoner who does the right thing which should have been done all along and a regular guy whose fear leads him to want to blow up the prison boat and yet in the end, he cannot let himself kill because doing so would have killed his soul (and himself literally, though he didn't know that)...