Film Opening Analysis - The Dark Knight

Film Opening Analysis:
The Dark Knight






One of the films I analysed was the Batman film 'The Dark Knight'. I analysed the opening of this film as an example of a stereotypical action movie intro.

The film begins with a series of titles, it begins with Warner Brothers and then Legendary Pictures and then, finally, DC Comics. All of the titles feature the same colour scheme consisting of dark blues, black and a little bit of white. These dark colours set the feel for the film before it has even begun and help determine that the film is going to be a dark, action film that maybe is not suitable for younger audiences. This matches the target audience as a lighter colour scheme would have been more suitable for children so they have avoided this in order to attract only the correct audience.

The film begins with an establishing shot, it appears to show the city of Gotham at peace, there is nothing going on and it is simply setting the scene. I feel like this establishing shot has a similar effect to the establishing shots of my short film, luring the audience into a false sense of security as everything appears normal at first.

The first character we see immediately throws us into the action/thriller genre. He is holding a weapon of some kind which he has used to blow out the window and is wearing a mask which seems to be inspired by horror films. He appears intimidating through his masked identity, weapon and his actions. We can identify him as an enemy or bad guy because of his scary mask.

Within the first two minutes of the film, we are thrown into the action with a bank robbery, a gang of people wearing the same masks as the first character shown storm the bank, stopping any guards and threatening everyone in order to stop them moving. This fits the generic conventions as often action movies are associated with crime and gangs, similarly to Die Hard.