10 Movies That Influenced Audiences In Awful Ways
7. The Dark Knight's Joker Became A Murderous Symbol
As she took her seat in the Century Aurora 16 Movie Theater in Aurora, Denver, Jessica Gwahi sent out a few tweets.
"Movie doesn't start for 20 minutes!"
"Never thought I'd have to coerce a guy into seeing the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises with me."
Less than an hour later, mentally-ill neurophysicist James Holmes arrived at the theatre and set off a couple of tear gas grenades. The crowd, many of them in superhero or villain cosplay, thought it was a stunt to tie into the movie at first, and then Holmes began firing a shotgun into the crowd. When he ran out of ammunition, he moved to an assault rifle, and then a handgun. When the audience tried to flee, he followed them out into the street, firing after them.
In total, 12 people, including Jessica Gwahi, were killed, and 58 more were injured. Holmes, his hair dyed orange for the attack, claimed to police that he was the Joker when they apprehended him. Holmes was sentenced to life without parole, but he's far from the last person to be inspired by the clown prince of crime.
Most recently, in 2016, a 14-year-old girl in the UK put together a kill list of 60 students at her high school that she was planning to gun down in her own mass shooting, and planned the murder of her best friend over Snapchat with another friend.
She lured her friend behind the science block of her school, told her to close her eyes as she had a present for her, then attacked her with the kitchen knife she'd brought to school with her. Luckily her friend had no patience and peeked to see what the present was, allowing her to escape with only minor wounds to the chest.
But it was in the girl's decided defence that she found inspiration in The Dark Knight. She'd arrived to school that day wearing a bandana over her face, somehow managing to keep it in place until her attack went ahead. Underneath the bandana she had cut her face to give her the same scars that Heath Ledger wore in the 2008 film, as part of the plan she'd made in those Snapchat messages.
"I'm doing the insanity plea just for the fun of it. I don't care if they blame it on The Joker or Columbine, they didn't inspire me, they just motivated me."