Batman: Arkham Knight

***Batman: Arkham Knight*** is a 2015 action/thriller/science fiction film developed by Rocksteady studios and distributed by Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment, based on the DC Character Batman and his supporting cast. It is the sequel to the 2011 film *Batman: Arkham City* and is the fourth and final installment in the *Batman: Arkham* series. Written by Sefton Hill, Ian Ball, and Martin Lancaster, as well as being directed by Hill, the film follows Bruce Wayne/Batman as he confronts Scarecrow, who has launched an attack on Gotham City forcing a city-wide evacuation, leaving only Batman, his allies, the GCPD, and the criminals, both super and non super.

## *Batman: Arkham Knight*

### Genre

ActionThriller

Crime

Science Fiction

### Written by

Martin LancasterSefton Hill

Ian Ball

### Box Office

$774 billion

As Batman progresses into finding Scarecrow, he encounters the mysterious "Arkham Knight", who is working with Scarecrow and has a personal vendetta against the Caped Crusader. The two of them, along with the rest of the rogues gallery, plan to finally destroy Batman once and for all.

The film's production took place in Chicago and New York City, but also in London to bring Gotham City to life. Development on *Batman: Arkham Knight* began immediately after *Batman: Arkham City* was released, and took place over four years. Along with using their own writers, Rocksteady also collaborated with comic book writer Geoff Johns, who replaced Paul Dini, a writer who had worked on the previous two films.

*Arkham Knight* premiered on June 23, 2015 worldwide, and was a massive box office success. Most criticism of the film was directed at the storytelling, portrayal of the Arkham Knight character, and length of the run time. Aside from the criticism, *Batman: Arkham Knight* was an overall success, and won several awards, such as a Golden Globe award for Best Action Film. Sefton Hill also won a Golden Globe for Best Director of an Action-Thriller movie. It was also nominated for an accolade at the Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor, with Kevin Conroy winning Best Actor. The film also grossed $774 billion and more.

## **SYNOPSIS**

In the thrilling finale to the *Arkham* saga, Scarecrow threatens the entire city which causes a mass evacuation of Gotham, with only Batman, his allies, and Jim Gordon remaining. While tracking Scarecrow, Batman encounters the vengeful Arkham Knight. As the night unfolds, Bruce realizes he may be forced to change his ways forever.

## **Cast**

* Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne/Batman
* Mark Hamill as Joker
* Ashley Greene as Barbara Gordon/Oracle
* Matthew Mercer as Tim Drake/Robin
* Martin Jarvis as Alfred Pennyworth
* Jonathan Banks as Jim Gordon
* Scott Porter as Dick Grayson/Nightwing
* Grey DeLisle as Catwoman and Vicki Vale
* John Noble as Scarecrow
* Tara Strong as Harley Quinn
* Troy Baker as Jason Todd/The Arkham Knight
* Nolan North as Penguin
* Wally Wingert as Riddler
* Tasia Valenza as Poison Ivy
* Duane R. Shepard Sr. as Aaron Cash
* Dave Fennoy as Lucius Fox
* Phil Proctor as Simon Stagg
* Jules De Jongh as Christina Bell
* Isaac C. Singleton Jr. as Albert King
* Michael Rosenbaum as Johnny Charisma
* Garrick Hagen as Henry Adams

## **PLOT**

On the night before Halloween, Scarecrow finally unleashes his master plan, releasing his new Fear Toxin in a diner, then threatening to release it on the entire city. Nearly the entire city of Gotham evacuates overnight, leaving only the criminals, super and not-so-super behind, to enjoy the chaos. Naturally, Batman and Commissioner Gordon stay behind to deal with the new threat and meet together to speak about it. Gordon gets off the phone with Barbara, who tells him she has evacuated the city safely. Gordon has no leads on Scarecrow, however, so Batman heads off to begin his night of investigation. He starts by calling Oracle, revealing she had lied to her father about leaving the city. He soon finds Poison Ivy, being held by one of Scarecrow’s henchmen in an isolated cell. Scarecrow releases his Fear Toxin into the cell and Ivy reveals her immunity to it.

As the henchmen gets overwhelmed by fear, Ivy slams his head into the glass, knocking him out. She then leaves the cell and fills Batman in on what she knows about Scarecrow’s plan. Scarecrow called a meeting with all the supervillains in Gotham to form a shaky alliance to take down Batman to gain control of Gotham for themselves. Ivy didn’t agree with the plan, and as such, she was locked up by Scarecrow. Batman then takes her into custody, but as he goes to leave, he is met by the privatized Military Force, equipped with their cobra tanks. Batman uses the new Batmobile to neutralize the threats, and places Ivy inside the Batmobile before taking her to the Gotham City Police Department lockup. Afterwards, Batman meets with Oracle to try to track down where Scarecrow is producing the Fear Toxin. This leads him to Ace Chemicals, where a group of Scarecrow’s crew is still operating.

When he gets there, The Armored Figure finally arrives to face Batman in a helicopter. However before he can shoot missiles at the detective to kill him, Scarecrow disables his weaponry, telling him to be patient. The figure flies off, leaving Batman to instead deal with the privatized Militia. Oracle researches the Militia and discovers their leader is an armored figure, the same Batman had just seen, who goes by the name ‘The Arkham Knight’. Batman fights the Militia and finds some captured employees of the facility, who reveal that Scarecrow is manufacturing a massive bomb to cover the entire East Coast with the Fear Toxin. As he goes to leave, he is stopped by the Arkham Knight, who reveals that he knows intimate details about Batman and his new armor. He then delivers a warning that he intends to kill Batman that night before leaving. Batman is able to rescue the workers and make his way to Scarecrow.

There, Scarecrow initially surrenders, but threatens that if Batman doesn’t let him go, he’ll kill Barbara Gordon, who the Arkham Knight has just kidnapped. Scarecrow then escapes during this distraction and Batman is forced to try to reduce the blast radius of the Fear Bomb. However, during his attempts, he is exposed to the Fear Gas, causing it to mix with the remains of The Joker’s mutated blood pumping through him, awakening Joker within him, causing him to have hallucinogenic visions of his former rival, making his worst nightmare come true.

When Batman blacks out, a flashback comes over. At some point, Batman calls Gordon to his hideout inside the abandoned Panessa Studios Movie Studio. There, Batman reveals to Gordon that when Joker sent his infected blood to the hospitals of Gotham, 4 patients were treated with it before they were able to retrieve it, and those patients have begun to develop Joker-like traits as the blood mutates them. Batman has gathered those patients and is holding them until he can find a cure to reverse the blood’s effects. One patient, Henry Adams, has been infected the longest, but is symptomless, seemingly immune to Joker’s blood, leading Batman and Robin to use his blood to try to develop the cure. Batman then reveals a fifth cell, intending on using it for himself if The Joker’s blood in his own veins starts to take over.

The movie then comes back to present day. Batman is able to escape Ace Chemicals as it explodes, successfully reducing the blast radius to prevent the toxin from escaping the facility. Batman then meets with Gordon to reveal that Barbara had been taken by Scarecrow, much to the Commissioner’s surprise. The pair head to the Clocktower to find that her capture was true, and Gordon begins to blame himself for Scarecrow targeting Barbara. However, Batman reveals to Jim that Barbara was working for him all along, and he blames Batman, regretting ever trusting him in the first place before leaving. Batman then finds Catwoman who is being held captive by Riddler with an explosive collar, forcing The Bat to solve his trademark riddles once again throughout the city to save her, using his robotic mechanical guardians to distract them.

Afterwards, Batman finds a site where Barbara’s kidnappers had crashed their vehicle, where he locates a flash card, she hid for him to find. He then calls Lucius Fox to help him decrypt the data in the drive to use to pinpoint the Arkham Knight’s position. He follows this lead to an underground tunnel where he is ambushed by the Arkham Knight, who again shows his knowledge of Batman’s armor by finding his weak point and shooting a bullet directly into it. He then leaves, again warning Batman that he’ll kill him before the night is over. Growing desperate, Batman hunts down one of Arkham Knight’s men and starts crushing his head under the Batmobile’s tire before he gives up his boss’s current whereabouts, The Penguin’s hideout.

As Batman heads there, he is met by Nightwing, who arrived in Gotham after hearing about Barbara’s capture. The pair interrogate Penguin to learn that Scarecrow and Arkham Knight have gone to an airship to meet with CEO of Stagg Enterprises, Simon Stagg. Batman sends Nightwing to search for Penguin’s caches throughout the city while he heads to the airship to search for Stagg. Batman eventually finds the CEO and learns that he worked with Scarecrow to create something called ‘The Cloudburst’. Before Batman can learn what it is, Stagg is doused with Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin and is unable to reveal any more information.

Batman is then ambushed by Scarecrow, who sprays Batman with the toxin as well, and he’s forced to fight within his own mind. Scarecrow escapes with this Cloudburst and afterwards Batman learns that Barbara is in the safehouse where he previously found Poison Ivy. He quickly heads there to find her, also affected by the Fear Toxin. She then grabs a nearby gun and tries to shoot Batman but finds she can’t harm him through the bulletproof glass. Panicked, and her last resort, she shoots herself to escape her fears. Batman blames himself for Barbara’s death, informing Alfred, who surmises that the Cloudburst is some kind of device that can disburse the Fear Toxin across the entire city of Gotham.

Batman then heads to Poison Ivy, hoping to use her immunity to Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin to create a spore they can use to protect the city against the Cloudburst. He takes her to find a large, extremely old tree, then helps her clear its roots so he can use it to create and disburse the spores when Scarecrow releases his toxin. Batman goes to the Movie Studio to check on Robin’s progress developing a cure for The Joker infection, deciding to forgo telling Tim about Barbara’s death so he can focus on the issue at hand. Batman then leaves to take out some of the Arkham Knight’s security forces, but when he returns, he finds that Harley Quinn has learned of The Joker’s victims, and has taken over the studio, releasing the victims throughout the various sets so the remnants of The Joker can live free.

Batman rounds up The Joker victims, bringing them back to their cells. During this event, he begins to have visions of The Joker beating and killing Jason Todd, fighting his guilt for both his second Robin and Oracle’s deaths through his inaction. When Batman and Robin return with the final victim, as well as a captured Harley Quinn, they surprisingly find all the other patients they returned dead in their cells. The only survivor is Henry Adams, finally showing symptoms of Joker’s blood. Henry reveals that he killed the other Jokers to ‘purify the gene pool’, so only the strongest Joker survived.

He then looks to Batman and realizes he would be the strongest one, before shooting himself in the head, leaving Batman as the sole survivor with Joker’s blood. Robin decides that with Batman potentially becoming The Joker at any minute, they must lock him in the cell and let Robin handle Scarecrow. Remembering his last Robin’s death, however, Batman instead locks up Robin and heads back out into Gotham to continue his hunt for Scarecrow and Arkham Knight. Batman goes to Ivy, but when he gets to her, the Arkham Knight releases the Cloudburst, filling the entire city with Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin.

The gas disables the Batmobile, forcing Batman to go back to Stagg’s airship to acquire a power cell to power it. When he installs the power cell in the Batmobile, Batman is forced to expose himself to the Fear Toxin again, allowing The Joker to awaken more and more inside of him. Using the Batmobile, Batman is able to unblock another tree’s roots, allowing Ivy to use it to fight the toxin. He then heads off to destroy the Cloudburst, which he is successfully able to do, rescuing the Arkham Knight from the blast, who escapes shortly after when Batman is distracted by another vision of Joker.

Batman calls Ivy but receives no response. He goes to her and finds that she was successfully able to reduce the toxin clearing spores to save the city, but is overwhelmed by the effort, leaving her to die and disintegrate within Batman’s arms. Her spores then fill Gotham, replacing the Fear Toxin entirely. Later, Batman learns that Gordon has found Scarecrow and is going to murder him as revenge for his daughter’s death. Batman goes to follow him, but he is chased by the Arkham Knight in a giant excavator, who destroys the Batmobile, forcing Batman to escape on foot to find Gordon, who is captured and tied to a chair. The Arkham Knight arrives once again and finally reveals who he is, Jason Todd, Batman’s former partner and protégé, who had survived Joker’s gunshot and was later rescued by Deathstroke.

Jason spent the years growing more and more hateful for Batman giving up on searching for him, and instead leaving him for dead. He aims his pistol at Batman, but he punches his former friend before escaping into the shadows. Jason then throws his Arkham Knight helmet aside, revealing the helmet underneath resembling a metallic Red Hood. After the ensuing battle, Batman is able to incapacitate Jason and tries to appeal to him once more. When Batman calls Alfred to tell him that he found Jason, the young man escapes without a trace. Batman then goes to Gordon and the pair share their apologies. Gordon reveals that Jason revealed Batman’s identity, and Gordon tells him that he never forgot consoling a young Bruce Wayne the night his parents died.

The pair make their way to the roof of the building where they find Scarecrow. Suddenly, Jim points his gun at Batman, and it’s revealed that Barbara was alive the whole time, her death merely being a Fear Toxin induced hallucination, and Gordon makes a deal with Scarecrow to turn over Batman in exchange for Barbara. Jim then shoots Batman, who falls off the building. Scarecrow goes back on his deal, capturing Gordon and pushing Barbara off the building. Batman swoops in and catches her, calling in a prototype Batmobile to take her to GCPD for safety. Batman is then forced to fight the Arkham Knight’s Militia, now working for Scarecrow, at the GCPD, and after a very arduous battle, Batman learns that Gordon’s voice had unlocked the hideout at the Movie Studios. He rushes there to find Robin missing and receives a call from Scarecrow revealing he has him captive. He then tells atman to go to a nearby storage facility where he will be forced to unmask himself publicly, or else Scarecrow will kill Gordon and Robin.

Batman enters a storage truck and is pumped with more Fear Toxin, suffering another hallucination, reliving his parents’ death one more time before killing The Joker. The truck drives to the abandoned remains of Arkham Asylum, and Batman is wheeled inside on a standing stretcher. Scarecrow then forces Gordon to remove Batman’s mask in front of a live camera broadcasting to all of the news stations in Gotham. Jim removes his mask, and the world learns that Batman is none other than billionaire Bruce Wayne, taking even Scarecrow by surprise. Scarecrow then injects Bruce directly with his most powerful Fear Toxin to break him in front of the public, but this only causes Joker to fully awaken and take over inside of Bruce’s mind.

As Scarecrow tries to break Bruce, he grows frustrated when The Joker personality instead taunts him. He delivers another heavy dose of the toxin, and we then see that inside Bruce’s mind, Batman forces The Joker to face his own greatest fear: being gone and forgotten. Batman then regains control, and locks Joker in his Arkham cell deep in his mind for good. Back in the real world, Scarecrow continues to try to break Bruce down, but he shows an extreme resilience to fear.

Scarecrow then claims that, without fear, life is meaningless, before pulling a pistol on Bruce. Before he can fire, however, Jason arrives and shoots the gun out of his hand. He then frees Bruce, who turns Scarecrow’s own Fear Toxin on him, causing him to go mad before Gordon knocks him out. Batman then leaves, taking Scarecrow to GCPD for lockup. He then calls Alfred to tell him to prepare The Knightfall Protocol, activating it with the code phrase ‘Martha’. Batman heads to the Bat Signal Gordon used to call him and removes his cowl, leaving it there to begin the Knightfall Protocol. He heads home to Wayne Manor and enters with Alfred, in front of all the TV news crews. As they enter however, the entire mansion explodes into flames, presumably killing them both, as well as The Batman, for good.

Sometime later, Gordon is elected Mayor of Gotham, and Tim and Barbara get engaged. In an alley behind a theatre, a family is being mugged by a pair of criminals. On a rooftop nearby, a caped figure stands and watches. The thugs aren’t scared, knowing Batman is long gone. However, the figure erupts into a fiery display of a bat, the fear still keeping the criminals in check in Gotham.