Point of View

Point of View

Third-Person Omniscient

Christopher Nolan cut his teeth on experimenting with new types of narrative, most notably with Memento, which jumps backwards in time scene by scene until we find the answer to the mystery within its protagonist's past. This was not the project to do that however: a $200 million sequel to a massive blockbuster that rescued an iconic character from being tossed out of movies altogether. The boys at Warners just weren't interested in getting too cute.

Hence, our narrative technique stays pretty meat and potatoes. We start out tidying up some of the loose plot threads from Batman Begins, then move forward in a leaner fashion from beginning to end. Nolan spends the bulk of the movie with the Caped Crusader as the focus, but he's not afraid to shift over to Harvey, the Joker, and even Alfred and Lucius if it's important to the story. The ending comes a little abruptly—quasi-cliffhangers will do that—but otherwise, The Dark Knight leaves the hairpin turns to its super-scary protagonist rather than the narrative technique.