Batman – Boat scene

Lucy Brownnutt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4GAQtGtd_0

The scene starts off looking down in birds eye view on two boats that appear to have just left the dock. The fact the camera angle is looking down on the boats shows a weakness of the boats/the people on board.It is a dark night and the music playing is quite sad/creepy. The music and scenery create a mysterious and spooky mis en scene and gives us the idea that something bad is about to happen. We then see who is on the boats; on the first boat is ‘normal’ citizens, families and individuals that have had to be evacuated from home. On the other boat is loads of criminals. We know they are criminals as they are dressed in orange jumpsuits and a member of the ‘D.O.T’ on the other boat calls them “scumbags”. We again know something bad is going to happen when the lights on the boats start to flicker and the ‘D.O.T’s’ communication devices to outside the boat stops working.

We see a shot of one particular criminal, this a medium close shot. The criminal watches the ‘D.O.T’ officer as he walks past but looks at him suspiciously as if he (the criminal) is up to something and as we already know he is a criminal, this gives us the impression that he has something planned and is up to no good.This is a stereotypical criminal in film as he is very tall, muscly and his ethnicity is Black.

Later on we see the criminal do a good deed by making the decision to not blow up the other boat and this contradicts a stereotype.

We automatically feel sorry for the ‘normal’ citizens as they are innocent individuals and families. When we see the parents holding their kids in reassurance that everything is going to be okay it automatically makes us feel sympathetic and want to help.When we hear the Joker’s experiment it really makes us think what we would do. Would you blow the other boat up? Or would you wait until midnight?