# The Dark Knight Rises: Is Christopher Nolan taking a shot at the Occupy protestors? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 20, 2011, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789 "2011-12-20T00:30:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/61 "2011-12-21T01:27:06Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Fair point. I forgot about that. Of course, the rendition only brings bigger reprisals. Is that pro-rendition? The rendition succeeds insofar as it allows the authorities to round up all the mob leaders, which was the point of the rendition. So yes, it is pro-rendition. > [@](#): > > That’s the scene I was describing. The “torture” fails: the Joker provokes Batman into beating him, then lies to him even after the beating. Is that pro-torture? If Batman hadn’t tortured Joker, he’d have had no shot of saving either Dent or his girlfriend. Both would have simply died. You think the movie is condemning torture? To me it seems pretty clearly to be saying rules be damned, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. > [@](#): > > He’s referred to as all kinds of things. I don’t think it’s convincing. You’re not convinced that the Joker is cast as a terrorist in this movie? Really? Let me be clear on your position: do you mean to say that you don’t think Christopher Nolan intended any parallels to the War on Terror? If that’s your view, it’s just astonishing. And yeah, I think conservatives (or neo-cons at least) would be quite happy with America as an empire, so the comparison to Britain in Burma wouldn’t bother them at all. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/62 "2011-12-21T01:33:56Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > And then blowing [the surveillance system] up after using it one time. As I said before, that is not inconsistent with conservative principles. Indeed, the Patriot Act is a sticking point for a lot of conservatives. (Represented by Lucius perhaps.) I’m sure plenty of conservatives told themselves, well we’ll only use surveillance until the threat is over. (Which of course it never will be.) The Dark Knight presents an idealized outcome from the conservative perspective. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/63 "2011-12-21T02:07:34Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > If Batman hadn’t tortured Joker, he’d have had no shot of saving either Dent or his girlfriend. Both would have simply died. Not true. “You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with! Nothing to do with all your strength! Don’t worry, I’m gonna tell you where they are. Both of them. And that’s the point.” I think the movie makes it pretty clear that no amount of torture would work on the Joker. He doesn’t tell Batman where they are because he was tortured, he told him because he wanted to. It was part of his sick game. ---
**Author:** ![planetcory](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/planetcory/32/1032_2.png) [@planetcory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/planetcory)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/64 "2011-12-21T02:23:51Z")
I think you’re confusing ‘telling both sides of the argument’ with ‘defending the side I don’t like.’ ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/65 "2011-12-21T02:34:16Z")
I’m fairly sure that Nolan did not have the OWS protests in mind at all. The core story line is close to the events in [The Dark Knight Returns](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Knight_Returns) written by Miller back in the 80s. The previous movie also drew from older source material in well-regarded comic story lines. In the movie, it’s implied that Batman hasn’t been active for a while. In the comics Batman comes back from retirement. In the trailer you see gang members who look similar to the Mutants gang from the comics. In both the movie and the novel, the emergence of a strong gang leader and the absence of regular patrols by Batman have led to the gang becoming a rising power to rival the police and possibly even the military. All they were waiting for was an opportunity to attack. We haven’t seen the trigger event in the movie version yet. The only things that are missing is a near-miss nuclear attack partially prevented by Superman and the re-emergence of the Joker. Otherwise, the basic plot is very similar to the much earlier comic. Both the first and second movie, and many of the comics — particularly those written in the mid-80s to the 90s — talk a lot about the disparity in income between the elite in Gotham and the normal citizens. This wealth inequality and related corruption, with politicians and police tied to crime organizations, are the core reasons given for Gotham’s incredibly high crime rate. Both the extraordinary rendition and torture were portrayed negatively. Lau’s testimony led to the arrest of virtually all of the crime bosses, creating a power vacuum that the Joker was prepared to step right into. The Joker is implied to have planned the bank heist, and set up Lau as his catspaw. He certainly has access to detailed information about organized crime in Gotham, and loves complicated plans that even if they partially fail still cause large amounts of chaos. Batman did exactly what the Joker hoped he’d do. The Joker deliberately goaded Batman into using violence against him. In the scene it was unquestionably portrayed as a loss of control. Batman’s normal tricks of fear and intimidation didn’t work, and the Joker knew how to push his buttons. Batsy lost it, and even as he started beating on the Joker he knew that he’d fucked up. But you don’t even have to take my word for that interpretation. Nolan commented extensively on that scene and how he was trying to make you feel that Batman is capable of going too far, going over the edge. Here’s a concluding quote; “And really, more than that, what it was is that I liked how Christian played it: When he drops the Joker, he has realized the futility of what he’s done. You see it in his eyes. How do you fight someone who thrives on conflict? It’s a very loose end to be left with." ([Hero Complex](http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2008/10/28/christopher-n-1/)) Lucius implies that he wasn’t happy with the skyhook idea and knew what Batman intended to do with it. His later dialog with regard to the surveillance is unambiguous: he said he would leave Wayne Enterprises and stop supporting Batman’s activities because of it. Wayne is principled enough to give the control of its destruction over to Lucius so that he could witness it himself rather than trusting that Wayne would keep his word. Lucius is both privy to Batman’s secrets and one of the only people technically minded enough to know if the surveillance capability was truly destroyed. It shows that Wayne was decisively cutting off further use of the technology and demonstrating trust in Lucius’s convictions against its use. It also shows that he had, from the beginning, planned to scuttle the system. I’d think it’s rather hard to put in those types of self-destruct capabilities after the fact. The storytelling in Nolan’s Batman films is strong and nuanced enough to show true character conflict. I think you have to have a fairly strong bias to see Batman as a conservative poster boy. He’s always been massively hubristic, and while in many of the more well-regarded story lines he’s used brutal force against criminals, that savagery has nearly always been portrayed as both his core strength and weakness. He’s quite capable of going out of the grey area right into dark-warlordism, which is why he has that absolutely stringent rule about killing his foes. That constant internal conflict between rage and control is one of the things that makes him an interesting character. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/66 "2011-12-21T02:48:58Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > What bigger reprisals? It’s what lets them use RICO to try the bad-guys. Which paves the way for The Joker. This is the main point I think **Spoke** keeps missing: everything Batman does that “works” just leads to bigger and graver consequences. This is maybe the primary theme of the movies. Everything escalates. Bruce Wayne decides to fight crime by becoming Batman, and soon some other guy becomes The Joker. And next he gets Bane and Catwoman, evidently. People who are just as obsessed as he is and are using some of his means to destructive ends. > [@Spoke](#): > > The rendition succeeds insofar as it allows the authorities to round up all the mob leaders, which was the point of the rendition. So yes, it is pro-rendition. And all it does is make things worse, because the mob was holding The Joker back. > [@](#): > > If Batman hadn’t tortured Joker, he’d have had no shot of saving either Dent or his girlfriend. Nonsense. The Joker tells him where they are of his own free will because he wanted to put Batman in the quandary of choosing between Dent and Rachel. That’s his whole game: he’s put them in convoluted situations of supervillain peril because he wants to force Batman to pick one of them or the other. If he wanted to kill them both, they would have both been dead already. The Joker could not say it any more plainly in that scene: “you have nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do, with all your strength.” You think he cares about being punched a couple of times? [Reading back over the thread, I see **AClockworkMelon** made the same point with this quote.] > [@](#): > > You think the movie is condemning torture? If the movie were applauding torture, wouldn’t the torture have to _work_? It fails completely. The Joker doesn’t give in, he lies to Batman despite the beating, Rachel dies anyway, and they don’t save Dent either. > [@](#): > > To me it seems pretty clearly to be saying rules be damned, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Maybe it is. But the problem is that breaking the rules to do what you gotta do has horrible consequences. How is that an endorsement of rule breaking? > [@](#): > > You’re not convinced that the Joker is cast as a terrorist in this movie? Really? Let me be clear on your position: do you mean to say that you don’t think Christopher Nolan intended any parallels to the War on Terror? Those are two different questions. Are there intended parallels to the War on Terror? Yes, of course. Nolan picked these themes because they’re contemporary. Are we supposed to accept The Joker as a proxy for real world terrorists - how they behave, and how they should be dealt with? No. > [@](#): > > And yeah, I think conservatives (or neo-cons at least) would be quite happy with America as an empire, so the comparison to Britain in Burma wouldn’t bother them at all. I think you’ve misunderstood them. Particularly with regard to the British as an invading power that didn’t understand what it was doing. ---
**Author:** ![unwashed\_brain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a9adbd/32.png) [@unwashed\_brain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unwashed_brain)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/67 "2011-12-21T03:00:04Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > Take two steps back. See? It’s a pointillist portrait of George Bush. No, it’s a Rorschach test, and if that’s what you see… ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/68 "2011-12-21T03:01:41Z")
> [@Sleel](#): > > I think you have to have a fairly strong bias to see Batman as a conservative poster boy. And I think you are betraying your own bias. I am a lefty who saw the movie with no foreknowledge, and the conservative apologia jumped out at me. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/69 "2011-12-21T03:02:02Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Which paves the way for The Joker. First of all, **it would have “paved the way for the Joker” even if they had managed to arrest him before he hopped back on the plane to Hong Kong.** So you can’t use this as an example of “extraordinary rendition” failing. That he was captured out of the country is irrelevant to what winds up happening once he’s in custody back in Gotham. And second, I don’t think it really “paved the way” for the Joker at all. If a cop arrests a gangbanger and the gangbanger’s friends go and kill a bunch of other cops for revenge you don’t go and say that it was the arresting officer’s fault or that his arrest “paved the way” for their rampage or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/70 "2011-12-21T03:06:40Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > As I said before, that is not inconsistent with conservative principles. Indeed, the Patriot Act is a sticking point for a lot of conservatives. (Represented by Lucius perhaps.) I’m sure plenty of conservatives told themselves, well we’ll only use surveillance until the threat is over. (Which of course it never will be.) The Dark Knight presents an idealized outcome from the conservative perspective. This isn’t a coherent theory. You’ve suggested the movie endorses the Bush administration arguments on terrorism, which means it should support intrusive surveillance unambiguously. By your reasoning, it should show Batman continuing to use the technology for benign ends and should probably explain that nobody’s rights are being violated. It should also show that torture works (it doesn’t at all) and it certainly should show that Batman’s tactics work and solve problems. What it actually shows is that his methods create at least as many problems as they solve. Batman creates problems, then he has to go further to resolve them, and in the process someone else takes it even farther. It looks like the body count goes up in the third one (it has to), so how does that help? As soon as the War on Terror concept was introduced, people started asking how you can defeat “terror” and no answer was ever articulated. I never heard the Bush administration say that one day the surveillance or detention or torture tactics would be abandoned because by doing so, they would have acknowledged that there was something wrong with using them. They didn’t do that. What they did was downplay it. They said the interrogation tactics worked, they said they were necessary, and that they weren’t a big deal anyway and certainly were not torture (according to a definition of torture they made up to justify what they were doing). That’s nowhere close to the attitude you can see in the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/71 "2011-12-21T03:12:52Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > First of all, **it would have “paved the way for the Joker” even if they had managed to arrest him before he hopped back on the plane to Hong Kong.** So you can’t use this as an example of “extraordinary rendition” failing. That he was captured out of the country is irrelevant to what winds up happening once he’s in custody back in Gotham. Then can we agree it’s mostly in there as an expensive set piece to show off the stunt work and break things up a little? 😉 > [@](#): > > And second, I don’t think it really “paved the way” for the Joker at all. If a cop arrests a gangbanger and the gangbanger’s friends go and kill a bunch of other cops for revenge you don’t go and say that it was the arresting officer’s fault or that his arrest “paved the way” for their rampage or whatever. I wouldn’t say it’s the officer’s fault, but I would say that one event precipitated the other, and that’s what happened in the movie. Once the gangs are out of the way, The Joker can do whatever he wants. The point here is that they may arrest the gang leaders using information from a suspect who was rendered into custody, but since the outcome is so negative, how is it an argument that rendition is good? Batman goes a little further outside the law, it works in the short term, and then things get worse. That’s pretty much how things go in these movies. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/72 "2011-12-21T03:15:50Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > This isn’t a coherent theory. You’ve suggested the movie endorses the Bush administration arguments on terrorism, which means it should support intrusive surveillance unambiguously. By your reasoning, it should show Batman continuing to use the technology for benign ends and should probably explain that nobody’s rights are being violated. I didn’t say the movie was from Bush’s perspective. I said it was from a conservative perspective. And as I also said, many conservatives screamed bloody murder about the Patriot Act. The movie presents an idealized conservative outcome (for conservatives who don’t like the idea of surveillance, or saw it only as an emergency measure – which I think would include _most_ conservatives): the war ends and so does the surveillance. Gotham’s war on terror is over. Therefore, the surveillance ends. That is a conservative fairy tale. In the real world, the war, and the surveillance, never end. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/73 "2011-12-21T03:23:34Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > I didn’t say the movie was from Bush’s perspective. I said it was from a conservative perspective. In the OP you said this: > [@Spoke](#): > > While I enjoyed [The Dark Knight](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/), I thought it reeked of a conservative defense of the Bush administration and its war on terror. Conservatives who screamed bloody murder about the law (and who weren’t fond of torture and rendition either) wouldn’t have made the arguments you’re attributing to Nolan. > [@](#): > > The movie presents an idealized conservative outcome (for conservatives who don’t like the idea of surveillance, or saw it only as an emergency measure – which I think would include _most_ conservatives): the war ends and so does the surveillance. So the idealized outcome for conservatives would be acknowledging that all of this stuff was wrong? That certainly was not the conservative line at the time, and it wasn’t the Bush administration perspective at all. Nevermind the fact that in the movie, most of it doesn’t work and all of it causes more problems. > [@](#): > > Gotham’s war on terror is over. No it isn’t, because we’re here talking about the sequel. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/74 "2011-12-21T03:25:28Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Then can we agree it’s mostly in there as an expensive set piece to show off the stunt work and break things up a little? 😉 That’s exactly what I think it is. > [@Marley23](#): > > I wouldn’t say it’s the officer’s fault, but I would say that one event precipitated the other, and that’s what happened in the movie. Maybe so, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t have been done. Maybe it shouldn’t have been done for other reasons, but this isn’t one of them. A cop can’t let the idea that criminals will get angry prevent him from arresting those he can, to continue with the analogy. So while it might be true that Batman’s actions ultimately influenced what the Joker was later able to do, I think that it’s a meaningless statement to make. You might as well say that if only banks didn’t keep money criminals wouldn’t rob them. Uh, yeah, it’s true, I guess, but so what? > [@Marley23](#): > > Batman goes a little further outside the law, it works in the short term, and then things get worse. That’s pretty much how things go in these movies. But like I said, his going further outside the law is irrelevant. The same thing would have happened had the cops arrested the guy while he was still in Gotham. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/75 "2011-12-21T03:27:40Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Conservatives who screamed bloody murder about the law (and who weren’t fond of torture and rendition either) wouldn’t have made the arguments you’re attributing to Nolan. You’re mistaken. Lots of conservatives who had no problems with torture or rendition (because it didn’t affect them personally) had big problems with surveillance (because they could imagine that affecting them personally). (I have to ask – do you know many conservatives IRL?) > [@](#): > > Then can we agree it’s mostly in there as an expensive set piece to show off the stunt work and break things up a little? Do you mean to say that you don’t think Nolan intended the Hong Kong segment to invoke extraordinary rendition? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/76 "2011-12-21T03:32:14Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > You’re mistaken. Lots of conservatives who had no problems with torture or rendition (because it didn’t affect them personally) had big problems with surveillance (because they could imagine that affecting them personally). I can’t say I’ve ever seen it, but OK. > [@](#): > > (I have to ask – do you know many conservatives IRL?) Some, sure. > [@Spoke](#): > > Do you mean to say that you don’t think Nolan intended the Hong Kong segment to invoke extraordinary rendition? I don’t have an opinion on that. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/77 "2011-12-21T04:10:50Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > And I think you are betraying your own bias. I am a lefty who saw the movie with no foreknowledge, and the conservative apologia jumped out at me. Not even the guys at TVtropes see it that way. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDarkKnightSaga](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDarkKnightSaga) > [@](#): > > Torture Always Works: **Subverted hard** by the Joker during Batman’s interrogation: “You have nothing! Nothing to threaten me with! Nothing to do with all your strength!” ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/78 "2011-12-21T04:53:55Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Not even the guys at TVtropes see it that way. [There](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/bat-bush-true-dark-knight/story-fna7dq6e-1111117053351) [are](http://voices.yahoo.com/is-george-w-bush-inspiration-christopher-nolans-1741547.html) [plenty](http://washingtonindependent.com/509/batmans-dark-knight-reflects-cheney-policy) [of](http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/12/19/occupybatman-dark-knight-rises-villainess-spouts-obama-campaign-theme/) [people](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121694247343482821.html) [who](http://robomonkey.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/bushdk.png) [do](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100020772/the-top-10-conservative-movies-of-the-last-decade/). ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/79 "2011-12-21T04:56:10Z")
Anyway, I look forward to seeing the new film. I guess we will see soon enough whether it has a conservative slant. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2011, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789/80 "2011-12-21T05:55:06Z")
> [@Spoke](#): > > [There](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/bat-bush-true-dark-knight/story-fna7dq6e-1111117053351) [are](http://voices.yahoo.com/is-george-w-bush-inspiration-christopher-nolans-1741547.html) [plenty](http://washingtonindependent.com/509/batmans-dark-knight-reflects-cheney-policy) [of](http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/12/19/occupybatman-dark-knight-rises-villainess-spouts-obama-campaign-theme/) [people](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121694247343482821.html) [who](http://robomonkey.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/bushdk.png) [do](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100020772/the-top-10-conservative-movies-of-the-last-decade/). Meh, just looking at the first one one can see that the opinion piece is hand-waiving the fact that torture was failure, the Joker manipulated Batman, just like one could say Al-qaeda manipulated Bush. I’m afraid they are just like Reagan when he used the song “born in the USA” in his campaign, it is in reality a protest song about the plight of the Vietnam Veterans, but sure by using some of the lyrics and avoiding the context it “sounded” nice for conservative ears. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dark-knight-rises-is-christopher-nolan-taking-a-shot-at-the-occupy-protestors/606789.md?page=5)