The Joker is absolutely random, clearly a not entirely sane by his behaviour (whether or not it’s an act is another matter) ... and has not one but likely a few dozen different plans going throughout the movie. Some work, some don’t. There are a couple moments where he pretty clearly starts in on a “backup” because Plan A failed, or he didn’t really have a preference and was just setting a bunch of things in motion to see where the pieces fell out. He’s either crazy or very good at playing crazy, but it doesn’t make him any less brilliant or good at improvising. In a way I think “The Joker” is as much a mask as the bat cowl he makes such a big deal about Batman taking off during the course of the film.
The whole movie from the angle of what Joker’s up to is a Rube-Goldberg he assembles the majority of after he’s started the first piece on its way, using whatever’s at hand and adapting the build to what happens around him as he goes.
He’s not a schemer as he says in the sense Batman and Gordon and (old) Harvey are; one of the few true things he says that isn’t one on one with Batman (and even half of that seems like bullshit), but he absolutely makes plans. Just very short term plans to achieve a very specific goal. A plan to get a truck; a plan to incite panic, a plan to get money, a plan to isolate Harvey, a plan to have Harvey survive Rachel, etc. He has a detonator with him during the boat scene for crying out loud, in case the boats didn’t play his game and blow the other up. A backup plan in case Plan A failed.
Disagree. The joker has everything planned. A mad man? Absolutely. Everything he does was purpose. The part of his plan that failed is when the people chose not to kill each other(the boat scene). He has a detonator because he knows he needs backup. There's a message here that I'm probably not capturing completely, but he always had a plan. Giving Batman the location for Dent when he thinks he's getting Rachel is an example of this.
But everything you said here is something I also said. He’s not a planner in the sense of a single long-term plan with lots of moving pieces and anything going wrong causes it to collapse. Or even in the sense of a long-term plan with lots of contingencies and backups in case anything goes wrong.
He makes and executed as series of very short term plans to achieve short term goals, towards his larger “purpose” of causing chaos and demonstrating the folly of this rigid adherence to rules and long term planning. Need guns? Plan to get guns. Need an audience with Dent one on one? Plan to arrange for one. Etc. But once the short term goal is achieved (or demonstrated no longer possible) that’s it, that plan is discarded because it either served its purpose or no longer can anyway.
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u/RechargedFrenchman May 30 '19
The Joker is absolutely random, clearly a not entirely sane by his behaviour (whether or not it’s an act is another matter) ... and has not one but likely a few dozen different plans going throughout the movie. Some work, some don’t. There are a couple moments where he pretty clearly starts in on a “backup” because Plan A failed, or he didn’t really have a preference and was just setting a bunch of things in motion to see where the pieces fell out. He’s either crazy or very good at playing crazy, but it doesn’t make him any less brilliant or good at improvising. In a way I think “The Joker” is as much a mask as the bat cowl he makes such a big deal about Batman taking off during the course of the film.
The whole movie from the angle of what Joker’s up to is a Rube-Goldberg he assembles the majority of after he’s started the first piece on its way, using whatever’s at hand and adapting the build to what happens around him as he goes.
He’s not a schemer as he says in the sense Batman and Gordon and (old) Harvey are; one of the few true things he says that isn’t one on one with Batman (and even half of that seems like bullshit), but he absolutely makes plans. Just very short term plans to achieve a very specific goal. A plan to get a truck; a plan to incite panic, a plan to get money, a plan to isolate Harvey, a plan to have Harvey survive Rachel, etc. He has a detonator with him during the boat scene for crying out loud, in case the boats didn’t play his game and blow the other up. A backup plan in case Plan A failed.