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 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)
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.
