Batman, One Percenter?
If The Dark Knight was about the War on Terror, The Dark Knight Rises puts equal force and fury behind a tale about financial crisis and revolution. It’s the first Occupy Wall Street blockbuster, and that Christopher Nolan’s film was well underway before the OWS movement even got started is a tribute to his perspicacity.
The new film is a pleasure, sprawling in its storytelling, satisfyingly brawny, and occasionally moving, particularly in a terrific final act. In addition to all of that, the movie is so unabashed about its conservative message that you practically expect it to end with a dedication to Ronald Reagan. See if you can think of the last movie you saw that shows hundreds of big-city police officers lining up against a rowdy mob — and the police are the good guys. The movie is a counter-revolutionary document with as much damnation for populist revolt as Dr. Zhivago.
Like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises is slow to get started and features a lot of long, talky, somewhat painstaking exposition before Batman finally appears about 45 minutes in. After staying out of the public eye for eight years, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a mass of scar tissue who can’t walk without a cane due to a bum knee. Alfred (Michael Caine) is more or less a nanny to him, and at a fancy party he is helpless to stop a society jewel thief named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) from robbing him of his mother’s pearl necklace.
Moreover, thanks to corporate intrigue he’s been marginalized at his company and he’s being hassled by a philanthropist (Marion Cotillard) who wants him to pour more resources into a failed clean-energy project involving a “fusion” reactor that is not only not working but can be converted into a nuclear weapon. With Gotham City at peace, Batman isn’t needed anymore, and thanks in part to the efforts of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), he is regarded as a terrorist psychopath anyway.
Instead, the city reveres the memory of the wicked D.A. Harvey Dent, who died in the last movie but who is credited with saving the city by a population that knows nothing of his collaboration with the Joker. Unloved and forgotten, Bruce Wayne lives in Howard Hughes-like isolation, until an idealistic young cop (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who knows his real identity urges him to get back in the game. A hulking, masked villain named Bane (Tom Hardy) who is so unstable he was excommunicated from the centuries-old anarchist brotherhood the League of Shadows captures Commissioner Gordon and is also working with Selina Kyle to eliminate Bruce Wayne as a potential threat as he plots destruction.
That’s the short version of the story. Nolan, who wrote the script with his brother Jonathan, is sitting at a different table than the makers of the other super-hero movies: He isn’t playing down to the adolescents (like the Spider-Man films) and he is much more interested in getting his audience genuinely disturbed than the Iron Man or Avengers movies. When Batman hits bottom, he really hits bottom.
When Bane goes to work destroying Gotham City, he first heads for the stock exchange to cause a mini-financial crisis (which, somewhat strangely, morphs into a big action scene that is more enjoyable if you don’t think about it too much). As Selina Kyle warns, in a line that could have been written by Occupy Wall Street, “There’s a storm coming….you and your friends better batten down the hatches.” On cue, her associate Bane launches a full-on proletarian revolution in which the meek are given the support of his thug army as they strike down the rich, the police officers having been caged up. This Michael Moore fantasy, though, is treated with no sentimentality at all. Garbage immediately piles up in the streets and justice is dispensed a la Robespierre, with bourgeois dissenters being sentenced to death without trial. Only Batman, an aristocratic capitalist hero, can restore the balance.
Watching a businessman billionaire smite the forces of a nefarious rabble-rouser who purports to speak for the surly mob is a story line we can only hope to see promoted from the entertainment section to the front page this November. But until then, The Dark Knight Rises is a rip-roaring serving of wish fulfillment, the rare summer blockbuster with a lot of ideas in its head and all of them conservative.
OMFG. I wasn’t planning to see this, as I found the very trailers of The Dark Knight too disturbing, but I just might change said plans. May I mention that my favorite Bible story is the one about the “populist” revolt of Korach (Numbers 16-18)?
At the moment, the left’s reaction to the movie has been at the homophone level (Bane sounds like Bain, get it?), and not on the actual narrative of the movie. As was the case with Nolan’s last Batman movie and its analogy to the War on Terror, odds are if faced with having to discuss the message, those same people will either try to deny the comparison or retroactively begin finding major problems with Nolan’s entire trilogy, especailly as compared with the far more liberal-friendly Avengers and its pro green-energy subplot.
Ought to be fun watching everyone try to squirm around connections to OWS, for starters.
I wonder if there is a way to quantify the reviews of critics in relation to how conservative the themes of a movie are. If it is true, that this is an anti-ows style movie, then I imagine that the reviews will be worse than they would be if it was a movie about Batman taking on 1% ers.
Roger Ebert takes an unexpected objective turn with his review. Not even a mention of the so called Bain = Bane connection. Gave it a three star rating.
Check rottentomatoes.com. Movies with political or philosophical slants tends to create a significant divergence between the user rating and the critics rating, due to critics being dominantly left-wing. High critics, low users usually marks pretentious lefty films;; low critics high users usually marks a pro-liberty or pro-mankind movie.
“Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1″ had something like a 50% gap between users and critics, and “Act of Valor” was even more extreme. “Syriana” went the other way.
Since this is early in the commentaries, if anyone would indulge me a few questions on the previous Batman movie. Since this movie received raves across the board- I’m certain I saw a different movie. The one I saw was a moral piece of ****.
General problem with it. The first Batman movie, Gotham was so corrupt it was worthy of genocide by Leam N. How did that universe change so much that Batman would indulge the quaint retro-idea of supporting a DA?
Was the Joker a psycho impulsive villain or a brilliant schemer? If the former, how was he capable of the long complicated set-up of multiple dilemmas at the end??? If the latter, where was the development to suggest it?
M. Freeman- he was aware he was supporting basically a vigilante, correct? So the surveillance equipment was the deal breaker? Was there some indication of his moral concerns before hand?
Lastly. Since we had a Joss W article, I’d like to refer to his Buffy-verse. He was very deliberate to explain that Buffy could not harm humans. Multiple episodes showed this.
What was Batman’s restraint with the Joker? This, I believe, is the moral confusion I felt thru-out the movie. If Batman has such a restraint, where was this shown prior?
As an aside- this confused me- the article states:
Instead, the city reveres the memory of the wicked D.A. Harvey Dent, who died in the last movie but who is credited with saving the city by a population that knows nothing of his collaboration with the Joker.
So DA Dent died??? See I did see a different movie- [I won’t even ask how the Joker took 2.4 seconds to corrupt him because by that time I was laughing too hard].
Thank you for your kind indulgence.
sorry. the movie works on images, not just the script. it holds together. if you weren’t laughing, you’d've noticed.
I’ve seen it five times at this point, half of it in slo-mo, per the teenager’s obsession with Joker.
It’s set up as a nearly formal set of paintings and portraits. It’s not a typical radio script with illustrations. It quite deliberately quotes most of the works in a northern european museum- the images of bourgeouis life and virtue, if you will. these are considered minor works, these days, as they praise lords, ladies, masters, servants, civil society, military honor, and so on. these images are contrasted against the more spectacularly chaotic scenes with, not just the joker, but all who have criminal and chaotic leanings. If you’ll notice- the mafia don’t look good. They’ve looked statesman-like and desireable since The Godfather movies. Here? The lines of sight are off, the perspective is somewhat deranged, and the formal geometric balance isn’t right, at all.
It’s really elegant, what the director has done. It can tell the story, with a full emotional arc, without one word of dialogue.
Great observations, Ari.
There are many, many things off-base about what you say here about the previous two Batman movies, both in theme and in regards to general plot points.
However, the thing I take umbrage with the most here is the suggestion that Buffy is incapable of killing people. There’s nothing in her powers that says she can’t kill humans (and in fact, Slayer powers are derived from the same demonic powers that the Slayer is meant to combat – it’s not like the Archangel Michael gave her some kind of magical for-good-only abilities). Buffy actually does kill a human in the season three episode “Bad Girls”. Other characters in the Buffy’verse likewise struggle with the morality of killing humans, and there are numerous episodes where others do kill humans.
Batman’s struggle is his own; against his own darker instincts, for finding ways to do what needs to be done without giving up his humanity in the process, or sacrificing those things he believes in. Buffy (and others in her world) face the same questions. It’s a statement about the human condition, not something set up for the convenience of the plot or because there’s some magic spell that restricts behavior. It’s about personal choice.
I don’t think the use of the Bane villain fits. In the original comics in 1992, created by great Batman writer Denny O’Neil (one of the true greats in comics and as responsible as Frank Miller for reviving Batman), Bane was far different.
Basically the reverse Batman. An evil Conan the Barbarian. As Batman was created by the murder of his parents, Bane was created when sent to a barbaric Caribbean island prison in substitution for his dead opposition poet father. He went in seven year old with a teddy bear and came out a steroidal monster with a brain. Nearly alone among Batman villains, he knows Bruce Wayne IS Batman. The two characters are opposite reflections of each other.
Bane is the opposite of Batman, and was used to pump up the “alternate Batman” … the Azrael character who takes over after Bane first runs Batman ragged freeing the Arkham prisoners and then breaks his back. Unlike Bruce Wayne, the Azrael Batman is ruthless, will let villains die, and will kill them occasionally. He’s far more heavily armored and scares the Joker etc. who don’t know what to make of him — he doesn’t respond to baiting and acts like a knight from the Crusades. Naturally the Azrael Batman just when Bane seems to have taken over Gotham beats him handily in front of everyone. Since Azrael was the one character Bane did not know about and figure out.
O’Neil has complained about the Obama stuff, saying his writing (back in 1992) was NOT about politics, just a Batman story. My guess in Nolan’s story is also non-political. If it REALLY was political it would have a Mexican drug lord seeking to rule the entire state, not just Gotham, or depict the reality of crime (nearly all Black and Hispanic, with almost no White criminals).
No one wants to see that of course, the truth is too hard for people to handle, not the least of which is that it suggests large social ills can only be dealt with by locking the astonishing amount of violent criminals the Black and Hispanic populations produce generation after generation. Detroit won’t be rescued by Batman, only by the people of Michigan and the United States (with the feds hands off) locking up the massive criminal population almost all of whom are young Black men.
@richmond mike
You sure saw a different movie than I did. It was carefully built up in both Batman Begins and Dark Knight that Batman will never kill anyone. That should in no way be a surprise to you at the end of Dark Knight. That was what caused his break with Henri Ducard/Ras Al Ghul in the first film! Al Ghul wanted him to kill all the scumbags and destroy the city. He felt he didn’t have the right to be judge, jury, and executioner. One thing too – people are often calling Batman a “vigilante.” He is not. Every American citizen has the right to pursue and bring to the police lawbreakers. He never renders judgement on them or punishes them himself – he leaves them, with appropriate evidence to convict them in a court of law I might add, for the police to pick up and bring to justice through the system. Nothing Batman does is really illegal, he simply helps the police do their job by doing all the legwork for them and bringing them the suspects.
“justice is dispensed a la Robespierre, with bourgeois dissenters being sentenced to death without trial. Only Batman, an aristocratic capitalist hero [with a dual identity] , can restore the balance.”
Shades, more than shades, of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
More than shades? Yes, it’s the Scarlet Pimpernel on steroids. Lots of steroids. The Anglospheric response to the Jacobins. You can speak of revolution all you want: there are only two kinds: French or American / Anglospehric. Choose. Nolan, being a Brit … well, work it out.
If Baroness Emma Orczy had not written The Scarlet Pimpernel, there would likely be no dual identity Batman, rises or begins, or at all. They really should put her name at the top of the credits.
If it doesn’t have “Bat Shark Repellent” it’s not a real Batman movie.
Conservatives have embraced this movie as having a purely conservative message. While I do see the conservative themes (and embrace the common sense nature of them), to boil the movie down to a conservative message is in my opinion an over simplification.
When he takes over the city and unleashes anarchy, Bane points out that the city embraced Harvey Dent who was a psychopathic killer. Using a false idol, the city enacted the Dent legislation that circumvented the justice system as it existed and locked up criminals without due process. This is how he was, in part, able to bring about anarchy. There was an underclass of people the system let down. Bane is able to use this narrative to his advantage.
Second, the movie sends a definite message that there is a responsibility for those with means to support those with little means and help them pull themselves up by their boot straps. The idealist police officer was formerly a resident of the orphanage funded by Wayne Enterprises. When Wayne fails to continue supporting the home, the boys age out at 16 and are forced to do what is necessary to survive and for some of them, it means finding work wherever they can, including the criminal underground. The idealist “Cop” reminds Wayne of his responsibility as the orphan boy who made it to give back. This is as much a cautionary tale about the danger of indifference as it is about class warfare.
Finally, Batman does not do it alone. He has the help of reformed Robin Hood style crook in Catwoman, an idealist police commissioner, and an orphan, as well as the police force. We have people from all walks of life making a difference here. Wayne’s interaction with Catwoman is interesting. Catwoman says she wants to see the Gotham high society come crashing down, but gets more than she bargains for. She has learned to watch out for herself and take what she needs for the rich. She has a chance to escape the city and avoid the bomb. When given the chance to run, she comes back because she sees the light and wants to do right by the people of Gotham, even if it means she will die in the effort. She understands that she has a responsibility to the citizens of Gotham. Wayne sees in Catwoman’s good intentions and a person who, under different circumstances may have been a hero. She did not have a benefactor like Wayne as Robin had. He is willing to forgive her discretions and give her a clean slate if she does the right thing. His gamble pays off.
In the end, I think the movie is more about learning to care for your fellow human being and taking individual responsibility for your actions. I think it is interesting that in the movie, there is a subversive organization bent on destroying the American way of life. this subversive force plays on the fears of and desires of the people, and manipulated them into fighting each other when the real danger lies in the fact that he plans to destroy the city including the people he has presumably set free. If terrorist prevail, it will be due to the fact that the people have bought into the divided system so whole heartedly, they fail to see the real enemy at their door step.
Excellent points, Chuckie!