How to Create a Great Action Sequence: 'The Dark Knight'
A beat-by-beat breakdown of the deceptively original police convoy ambush from Christopher Nolan's second Batman film
So many screenwriters I know are terrified of writing action sequences. Everyone intuitively understands at this point what a great one is, but the prospect of conceiving one, crafting it, and executing one on the page proves daunting for many. What I’m going to do today is take a look at a single key action sequence in The Dark Knight (2008), and offer some thoughts on both why it is a masterful example of what we’re talking about and what can be learned from it when setting out to dream up your own action sequences.
Some of you might recall I did this last year with another film, Clear and Present Danger (1994), where I broke down the ambush sequence.
For context, I have developed, written, and sold many action scripts at this point in my career. In fact, the first third of my career was built entirely on doing this for film and television. This isn’t to say I’m a master on the subject myself, but I’ve been around the block.
As for this film…
…The Dark Knight is a sequel to Batman Begins (2005). It was written by brothers Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan from a story by Chris and David S. Goyer. Chris Nolan, hereafter the only Nolan I’ll reference, directed it. Its success, just over a billion dollars at the global box office, ensured Nolan would be able to make whatever films he wanted to for the rest of his life — which, thankfully, he’s done.
In The Dark Knight, our hero, the masked vigilante Batman, finds himself pitted against the agent of chaos known only as the Joker. In many ways, this is a love affair between the two of them. They complete each other, as the Joker eventually says. One is law and order, the other is anarchy. The more Batman tries to control the fate of his city, the more the Joker shows him such a feat is impossible.
Here’s the trailer to refamiliarize yourself with the film:
The action sequence we’re going to look at comes right after The Dark Knight’s midpoint, halfway through the film’s considerable 2h32m running time. The Joker has demanded Batman unmask himself or more people will die — just as Captain Jim Gordon, Batman’s friend, recently did. Rather than let Batman do this, his ally District Attorney Harvey Dent — Gotham’s “white knight” — announces that he’s Batman instead. Dent is arrested and loaded into a prison transport. He trusts that the real Batman will come to his rescue and, in doing so, finally catch the Joker. His faith is not misplaced, but neither he nor Batman understand how this ultimately plays into the Joker’s hands.
Watch the sequence below in these two YouTube clips. It’s 8m25s in length, which I’ll reference as we talk more below.
From my perspective, this action sequence is so successful because it follows a three-act narrative structure. Specifically, a typical three-act Hollywood structure — including every emotional beat included in it.
The definition of this structure varies, usually just semantically, but here’s how I see it in terms so intentionally reductive I apologize in advance:
Act 1: Set-up…then Inciting Incident…and, eventually, after some typically internal conflict, the Act 1 Turn (which propels us into the real story of the narrative by giving our protagonist/s a mission.
Act 2: This typically involves a First Reversal (something that shakes up the action, escalating the stakes). Then, a Midpoint in-between the first act and second act turns; this midpoint flips the protagonist/s’ goal on its head in some way or otherwise redefines the plot in an unexpected way that propels us into the second half of the film. Then, a Second Reversal. This is shortly followed by a Low Point, bringing the protagonist/s to his/their darkest point in the story. How do they get out of this? At the Act 2 Turn, the protagonist/s set/s about find their way out of the dark to, essentially, “save the day”.
Act 3: The protagonist/s “save/s the day”, or whatever amounts to that in the story. This is typically followed by some sort of Resolution Beat.
Next, let’s rewatch The Dark Knight convoy ambush through the lens of the three-act cinematic structure, trying to spot all these beats yourself. Here it is again, so you don’t have to scroll backward As you do, keep geography in mind, as well. Observe how well Christopher Nolan establishes every detail the audience needs to keep track of, which any screenwriter would be expected to also do on the page. Action means nothing if the reader/viewer can’t understand what’s going on.
I warn you now, you might have more trouble than you expect tracking Batman’s beats in the structure as I’ve just laid them out. If you do, there’s a reason for that. I’ll explain more in a moment.
Now, I’ll break down the action sequence for you, beat by beat, so you see what I see.
Before I do this, it’s important to explain what I meant about how messy it is to track Batman’s beats through it. The reason for this is…and this blew my mind, when I finally identified what was going on…Batman is not the protagonist of the sequence.
No, the sequence belongs entirely to his arch-nemesis. Because the Joker is the real protagonist here.
As you discover in the scenes that follow it, the whole sequence is, in fact, a great big set-up. While the Joker’s primary objective is to force Batman to break his one rule – don’t kill – his back-up plan is to get caught and put Batman in such a moral pickle that he’ll have to choose between saving the life of cherished friend Asst. D.A. Rachel Dawes or heroic ally D.A Harvey Dent.
It's an audacious narrative trick that helps transform this potentially straight-forward action sequence into one for the ages. Let’s dig in now…
