While I enjoyed The Dark Knight, I thought it reeked of a conservative defense of the Bush administration and its war on terror. Which made me wonder if Christopher Nolan is of a conservative bent.
First hint of a conservative message at 0:30 : Police chief Gordon is about to be dumped by the Mayor.
“But he’s a hero!”
“A war hero. This is peace time.”
Hmm. Nothing to do with the Occupy stuff, but Hmm. Our noble “war hero” is getting dumped.
*
Hmm.*
Then at 0:40 we see Selina Kyle at a fancy party, saying to Bruce Wayne, “You think this can last? There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches. Because when it hits you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”
Ah, so that is the mindset of our villain. I see.
At 0:50 we see a rabble apparently ransacking stately Wayne Manor. Subtle.
For those who doubted that there was a conservative message in The Dark Knight, the follow-up is looking like the clincher.
Now, let me be clear. There’s nothing wrong with a movie having a political message. I’m just pointing it out for discussion.
There probably is a fanfic out there with Batman pitted against V (as in V for Vendetta). Depending on how it falls on the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism, Batman is either completely and irrecovably in the pocket of TPTP, or, conversely, joins V in the end.
I don’t understand this at all. In all likelihood, the story was sketched out from the begining. But even if it wasn’t, this one was written and filming before the Occupy protests even began. How could it possibly be in response?
Defending anything Nolan’s done makes me feel slightly dirty, but people probably ought to wait till the movie comes out before assuming things like this.
It could be that the advertising wasn’t under Nolan’s control, and someone else cut together a commercial or two to look like the film is taking a shot at the Occupy protesters. Final cut privilege for directors isn’t that common in Hollywood, and I don’t even know if it typically extends to publicity.
I had to say that on the whole, it does not; sure, there are scenes that show Bats going for solutions Dubya liked, but torture was an spectacular failure, both for Bats and Dubya. (Torture gave us false leads to justify the war in Iraq, The Joker told just what he wanted to Bats all along, the lesson was in the end that torture sure can give information, but it can be misleading and someone could had poisoned the info before hand.)
The final sequence on the ferry boats calls for bravery in the face of deadly threats and has two crowds of diverse people (felons and citizens) refusing to kill each other and even Batman wants the privacy invasion invention destroyed.
I thought the movie was very much about terrorism, and was a rejection of it. But they might just be because I wanted to see it that way.
