| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [Source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| “ | Would you like to see my mask? I use it in my experiments. Probably not very scary to a guy like you, but these crazies, they can't stand it. They scream and they cry, much as you're doing now. | „ |
| ~ Crane as he tortures Carmine Falcone with fear toxin |
Dr. Jonathan Crane, also better known as Scarecrow, is a major antagonist of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy, appearing as t
he secondary antagonist of Batman Begins, and as a minor antagonisofin both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.
He was the first supervillain ever faced by Batman, and the chief administrator at Arkham Asylum who was secretly working with both Ra's al Ghul and mob boss Carmine Falcone, who brought shipments of drugs in for Crane to use to create his fear toxin. He would work again with the League of Shadows years later when Bane and Talia al Ghul go to Gotham City with the intentions to destroy it.
He was portrayed by Cillian Murphy, who also played Jackson Rippner in Red Eye.
Overview[]
Crane is a psychiatrist specializing in fear and phobias. He was once a professor at Gotham University, but was fired for performing unethical experiments on his students, using psychoactive drugs to make them hallucinate about their worst fears. He got a job as chief administrator of Arkham Asylum, where he used his patients as guinea pigs in his fear experiments, taking sadistic pleasure in making them scream and cry. He also began secretly working for mob boss Carmine Falcone, diagnosing his thugs as criminally insane so they can evade prison; he has them transferred to Arkham under his care, and pronounces them "cured" after a short stay.
He soon began working with Ra's al Ghul and his League of Shadows, smuggling a hallucinogenic, fear-inducing compound into Gotham City with the help of Falcone and his men. He assumed that Ra's planned to sell the drug, unaware of his true purpose: to use it to create a mass panic that will destroy Gotham. Crane used the drug himself in his experiments, dosing his helpless patients with a concentrated, vaporized form of the toxin while wearing a gas mask that resembled a grotesque scarecrow, so they would suffer terrifying hallucinations of him plaguing them with their worst fears.
In the Dark Knight Trilogy[]
Batman Begins[]
When Crane has Falcone's personal assassin Victor Zsasz institutionalized rather than imprisoned for several murders, Gotham's Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes accuses him of being in Falcone's pocket. He meets with Falcone and asks him to get rid of her.
Shortly afterward, the mysterious vigilante Batman appears in Gotham and begins interfering with Falcone's business, finally leaving Falcone himself trussed up for the police to arrest. Crane has him transferred to Arkham, and listens impatiently as the mobster demands to be let in on Ra's plan. He then doses Falcone with the fear toxin, literally frightening him out of his mind. He then has the catatonic Falcone permanently institutionalized.
Crane takes full control of the smuggling operation, and intercepts Batman as he looks through Crane's files, spraying him with the fear toxin and setting him on fire. Fortunately, Batman - who is really billionaire Bruce Wayne - is rescued by his butler Alfred Pennyworth and given an antidote by Wayne Enterprises' chief scientist, Lucius Fox.
Rachel starts asking questions about Falcone's institutionalization, so Crane gives her a concentrated dose of the fear toxin in an attempt to drive her into a psychotic break. Batman saves her, however, and sprays Crane with the toxin, causing him to hallucinate that Batman is an actual, monstrous bat. A terrified Crane tells Batman he is working with Ra's, whom Batman believes to be dead, and has to be restrained in a straitjacket in his own hospital.
When Ra's launches his plan to destroy Gotham, however, he has his men free Crane, who once again dons his mask and rides on a horse through a mass of terrified citizens who have been exposed to the fear toxin. When he tries to kill Rachel, however, she shoots him with a taser, causing him to fall over sideways on his horse as it gallops away. At the end of the film, after Ra's has been killed and the League of Shadows defeated, Lieutenant Jim Gordon tells Batman that Crane is still at large.
The Dark Knight[]
One year later, Crane has become a drug dealer, selling his fear toxin to unsuspecting customers who believe it is merely a hallucinogen. He goes into business with crime boss The Chechen, who complains that the toxin is driving away his customers. During a meeting between the two criminals, a group of Batman imposters show up and begin shooting at them, only for the real Batman to show up and subdue them, along with Crane. He leaves them tied up for the police to arrest.
The Dark Knight Rises[]
Eight years after Batman's disappearance from Gotham, crime has been all but eliminated in the city, and Crane is presumably still locked up in Blackgate Prison. When Bane takes over the city and institutes martial law, however, he releases all of Gotham's criminals from prison, including Crane, whom he employs as a judge in a kangaroo court for Gotham's rich and powerful, whom Bane and the League of Shadows considers corrupt. Crane gives the accused two choices: death, or exile. When they choose exile, however, Crane makes them walk across the thin ice of a frozen river; they inevitably fall through and drown, Crane declares it "death by exile".
By the end of the film, when Bane is defeated and order is restored in Gotham, Crane is presumably re-incarcerated along with the rest of the city's criminals.
See Also[]
- Scarecrow on the Batman Wiki.
- Scarecrow on the Villains wiki.
- Scarecrow on the Near Pure Evil wiki.
- Scarecrow's novel and video game versions on the Pure Evil wiki.
[]
 Villains
| ||
|
Movies See Also | ||