Film Theory: The Joker Actually Saved Gotham From Itself
2. The Joker’s Plan
Think about Gotham for a moment. Even with Batman operating in the sequel (and some copycats), the city is overrun by organised crime, the police force is riddled with corruption and Gotham is in dire need of a hero. But not just any hero, they need the RIGHT kind of hero willing to do more than simply clean up the low-level thugs.
In that respect, he’s in conflict with even golden boy Harvey Dent’s agenda. He believes that clearing up the street and leaving the top level of the ladder of corruption alone is the best way to clean Gotham up. The Joker recognises this as wrong. He knows both Dent and Batman need to be more willing to be extreme, so he sets about making it happen.
From the very first moment he appears, The Joker is set on destroying Gotham’s corrupt life-blood. As well as drawing Lau out and destroying the mob money, he takes out key officials and criminals, systematically destroying the criminal world and unpicking the web of corruption at the same time.
Sure, his methods are extreme and there are victims, but it’s very much a means to an end as well as it serving his more colourful tastes. Because yes, while his plan is essentially worthwhile, he’s still a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath. But that doesn’t mean that psychopaths can’t be forces of good.
Even the boat scene can be used to show that The Joker wanted to save Gotham from itself. No matter what the outcome there, the Joker won: if the criminals killed the citizens, they would have become martyrs and the criminals would have been wiped out. If the citizens had killed the criminals, a significant slice of Gotham’s criminal community would have gone in one fell swoop. But in neither pressing their kill-switch Gotham’s citizens did something even more valuable, they learned a valuable moral lesson. And they proved that they were worthy of being saved.
On his path to save Gotham from itself, the Joker encounters Batman and Harvey Dent, two men also battling for the city’s soul, in his own words. And they each present a problem for him to deal with, so he sets about moulding them to suit his own goals. He seeks to make Batman more like him - by forcing him to surrender some of his more restrained principles - and to make Dent far more valuable than his white knight-style assault on low level Gotham crime.
He seeks to make himself a martyr and a monster.