The Dark Knight Opening Scene - Bank Robbery Analysis

The Dark Knight starts with an establishing shot of a City in which the opening scene takes place, of a bank robbery. In this scene, we expect to see conventions of an action film for example violence and weapons, which is portrayed by the criminals in masks. We can obviously depict the protagonist from scene when he decides to combat the criminals single handedly and shows no fear when they first enter the bank.

From how the criminals enter the bank, ziplining from another building shows that they have put alot of thought into this and are experienced in organised crime. This tells us that this scene is important in the film as there has been a lot of preparation, and the protagonist is introduced. Also, the fact that the scene is set in a busy city in daytime also shows that the bank robbers are confident and experienced enough so that they can pull it off.

The lack of music in the scene shows it is dramatic enough not to need any build up and shows the importance of the whole bank robbery. This could also be due to the speech during the scene being important, meaning having music would make the dialogue less effective.