OCCUPY WAYNE MANOR!

Christopher Nolan's phenomenally successful Batman series has recently screened its third installment. Critics and fan reactions alike seem to read wildly different opposing political and economic messages into the movie's theme.

What do you think are the social implications of the movies' success, and of the movies themselves?

WARNING: SPOILERS ALLOWED. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SPOILED DON'T READ ON)

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Comments

[lonespark]

I have a feeling this thread would be all ROT-13.

I went to a preview showing. They tried to show us Ice Age 4 instead, and it took me until the actual movie started to catch on. I am not sure why I thought all those animated children's epics would be previewed before something so dark. But we did get to see the Simpson's short, so that was a nice bonus, and fitting too.

I was not a fan and continue to be not a fan. This is largely because of VERY BAD PERSONAL THINGS surrounding going to see The Dark Night, but also I have not been a Batman fan and Nolan's Bruce Wayne is not a person I can stand, and I hate how everything is ALL ABOUT BATMAN and regular people's lives only matter inasmuch as they give him motivation. Like all of Gotham is shoved in the refrigerator whenever necessary. A notable departure from this was the thing with the boats in TDK.

Is too spoilery to say that I learned that Asian Guy Dies First (and gets no lines) and WOC exist to provide tragic backstory with no lines? Learned again, I should say. And I kinda wish Inception was a franchise.

[lonespark]

I wish the thread could just have a big spoiler warning so we wouldn't have to scramble stuff; it seems kinda pointless to try having the discussion...

[St. Jebus]

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V nyfb jnfa'g n uhtr sna bs gur flehcl fjrrg raqvat. V guvax vg jbhyq unir orra orggre unq Oehpr npghnyyl qvrq - vg jbhyq unir orra zber va-yvar jvgu gur zbbq bs gur erfg bs gur frevrf.

[St. Jebus]

I kind of agree with you about the scrambling, lonespark. It will be difficult.

[Caretaker of Cats]

The ending felt a bit like part of it was written like a stinger but shown before going to credits.

[The Board Administration Team]

NOTE: WE HAVE NOW DECLARED THIS THREAD OPEN TO SPOILERS. NO NEED TO ROT13

[St. Jebus]

@ Caretaker I felt like that too. I sat through and waited through the credits for a stinger anyway, though.

[Lonespark]

I appreciate it, TBAT. I hope others don't mind.

Agreed on the ending. I would have been happier if Bruce Wayne had either died or never been heard from again. Maybe you can't do that with a franchise like this? But couldn't you just reboot later?

I was happy to see some of what was done early in the film regarding inequality and the financial system...but then as it went on I felt like the movie wasn't interested in any of that anymore.

I liked what was done with Gordon's confession, and how it underlined the idea that once you lie and cover up, you really can't make it right, and there's no right time to stop lying.

[Gotchaye]

I thought it was okay. Not nearly as good as the pre- Two Face parts of TDK, though. Henry over at crookedtimber covered what I think Nolan was basically going for with the movie. Lonespark, you might be interested in checking that out if you haven't already – he's very good on the ALL ABOUT BATMAN thing.

TDKR seems like awful political messaging to me. Not awful in that the messages are awful but awful in that they're extremely muddled. And not “makes you think” ambiguity, just nonsense. What is Bane's deal with going on and on about letting the people take over? That's not a League of Shadows thing; it's just his own completely unexplained delusion/motivation. And he never lets the people take over! He gives the detonator to a co-conspirator and brings in his own bizarrely loyal mercenaries (plus maybe the criminals that probably “the people” did not want back on the streets). He places several severe limitations on what “the people” are allowed to do (like leave, or not blow up). He's an occupying force, and it's obvious throughout the movie that he's actually in control no matter what “the people” want, two out-of-place scenes of the kangaroo court that may or may not have been supported by regular Gothamites notwithstanding. I feel like Nolan had the action all planned out and then saw some news coverage of Occupy Wall Street and decided to crib some dialogue.

I hated the thing with the boats in TDK. That scene seemed like it was in the movie in order to say that most people are crappy, and furthermore lack the courage of their convictions. Basically everyone on both boats wanted a button to get pushed. No button was pushed because one convict cheated and none of the people on the other boat could bring themselves to personally push it. And nobody on either boat stopped to think that maybe they shouldn't just take Joker at his word*.

But TDK did strike me as having a more coherent message. Batman is obviously the hero, and his final heroic deed (taking the fall for Dent's crimes and Dent's death) is very political. And there's very much a message there that the people are a mob and are not to be trusted. They need to be manipulated into support something for their own good. TDKR walks that back a bit with Gordon feeling guilty and Bane making a big stink about Dent, though it's not clear how many actual citizens have thereby soured on the Dent Act which has very obviously made them hugely safer and better-off.

*I mean, come on. If a supervillain hands me a device and explains that he wants to play this sick game where my device will blow up somebody over there that I can't communicate with, that the distant person has a similar device to blow me up, and that if nobody pushes a button then both of us blow up, why on earth would I believe him? Why shouldn't I think that part of the sick game is to hand me a detonator for my own bomb? Maybe the other guy isn't even rigged to blow up (that'd certainly save the supervillain some work). This is just Pascal's Wager; there are more possibilities than that the clearly evil person who rigged me to explode is telling the truth, and I have very little ability to assign probabilities to the possibilities. Of course, Joker actually did tell a lie very much like that later on involving Rachel and Dent, so in retrospect I'm inclined to say that the detonators probably would have blown up the boat that each was found on. The passengers' failure to consider this gives the game away. The boats are not full of people; they are full of object lessons (and the lesson is that almost everyone is crappy and wimpy).

[lonespark]

If the movie was Bane's story I would have been way more interested.

[Ross]

*I mean, come on. If a supervillain hands me a device and explains that he wants to play this sick game where my device will blow up somebody over there that I can't communicate with, that the distant person has a similar device to blow me up, and that if nobody pushes a button then both of us blow up, why on earth would I believe him? Why shouldn't I think that part of the sick game is to hand me a detonator for my own bomb? Maybe the other guy isn't even rigged to blow up (that'd certainly save the supervillain some work). This is just Pascal's Wager; there are more possibilities than that the clearly evil person who rigged me to explode is telling the truth, and I have very little ability to assign probabilities to the possibilities. Of course, Joker actually did tell a lie very much like that later on involving Rachel and Dent, so in retrospect I'm inclined to say that the detonators probably would have blown up the boat that each was found on. The passengers' failure to consider this gives the game away. The boats are not full of people; they are full of object lessons (and the lesson is that almost everyone is crappy and wimpy).

Yeah. I only watched The Dark Knight this past weekend, and one thing that bugged me was that it was just "Everyone takes the psychopath at his word and expects him to keep his promises" OVER AND OVER AGAIN CONTINUOUSLY FOR TWO AND A HALF HOURS. Like every episode of Transformers where the humans decide that "These robots whose team name is literally "the Decepticons" seem trustworthy," squished together.

While I can appreciate the skill with which this trilogy was made, it doesn't really seem like a very good set of movies. Batman is a violent thug who isn't very smart and solves problems mostly by his willingness to give and receive beatings. I just don't find this Batman a very compelling character.

[lonespark]

I am glad I am not the only one who feels that way. It's hard because I'm not very familiar with Batman - I have general pop-culture exposure, having seen an episode or four of several shows from various decades, and I think three of the earlier movies, mostly due to things like friends' thinking Val Kilmer is hot. Nolan's movies don't make me want to become more familiar, but lots of people whose opinions I respect seem are interested in the character...

This last one made me think people performing an inception on Bruce Wayne, or on the audience, or...something.

[GTW]

This movie doesn't really make a political statement. It hints at one, but never reaches the level of actually making one. Catwoman clearly harbors resentment toward the wealthy, which changes as she sees society after the people rise up against... everything; Bruce Wayne clearly sees his privileged role as a position of service. But any real political message is choked out fairly quickly by the fact that the whole thing is orchestrated, maintained, and enforced by Bane, who by the end is shown to have no real political or philosophical opinions driving him, but is instead driven by his loyalty to Talia who is driven by her loyalty to her father.

I don't think this was an error. I think Nolan wanted to focus on the question of how Bruce Wayne could ever grow beyond Batman. I think this weakened the movie somewhat simply because it made the villains' motivations seem too simplistic (so... it was all about revenge because Batman beat Ra's al Ghul? Also, destroying Gotham in a really long drawn out way?), but I also think that the intention of maintaining focus on Batman's evolution from hermit, back to Batman, and then to a full and complete human being was a wise move on Nolan's part simply because it showed Nolan's focus on his chosen main theme (although it's hard to remember that that's the main theme with nuclear bombs, vaguely sadomasochistic headgear, and ambiguous backstories featuring children crawling out of holes).

[lonespark]

Talia who is driven by her loyalty to her father.

Although I enjoyed the reveal, her motivation made absolutely no sense to me. And it was kind of cheap to have such an awesome puppetmaster/deceiver villain but never really get to see her in action. Why couldn't she have more flashbacks/montage?

[lonespark]

And yeah, agreed that the movie doesn't make a statement, and that's fine, but why so many trappings of having something to say about society, just to muddle and forget about it?

[GTW]

I agree. I, and I think everyone else, wanted a formidable villain for Batman to face off against. It would be fine if that villain was Talia, but we never got to see her be formidable. We saw Bane be formidable, and then we are told that Talia was behind Bane, but that doesn't exactly transfer everything that we've felt for Bane onto her.

The movie tried to give off certain political flavors, without actually making a statement. If I wanted to be cynical, I would say that this is because so many people found political messages in The Dark Knight, that Nolan decided to capitalize by adding a handful of vaguely political scenes and plotpoints, and then let the public make their own connections. Since I rather like this movie and don't want to be cynical about it, I'll say that Nolan wanted to explore all the ways that Bruce gave of himself to Gotham, which inevitably led to comments on wealth and poverty.

Probably a little of both.

[Froborr]

I am planning to get more in-depth on this in an article I'm working on for my own blog, but I think there's an issue any superhero story with political overtones has to deal with. And I just want to note before I say this, this is not an attack on superheroes. I love superheroes; I believe it is fully possible to love a genre or a fictional archetype while recognizing problematic implications.

First, superheroes engage in the coercive use of force. That's pretty much what they're for: punch the bad guys. (Or trap them in green bubbles with your magic ring from space or shoot them with your laser eyes or whatever.)* They're also really, really good at the coercive use of force; except for parody, there's little point in a superhero who isn't better at it than the police and military. This becomes especially true if superheroes are common enough that every country has them: If the Justice League opposes, and therefore does not participate in, the invasion of Iraq, that invasion will inevitably fail when Iraq's superheroes get involved. Likewise, if the U.S. considers assault weapons legal, but the JL opposes them, assault weapons will vanish pretty quickly. Whether they want to be or not, and excepting the relatively rare case in which they work for the government, superheroes are the de facto government of any setting they find themselves in: Their personal moral codes are the laws that get enforced, and therefore the true law of the land.

As characters, superheroes are generally (again, except for parodies and deconstructions) possessed of great power, essentially the law unto themselves, and cannot be held accountable because (again) there's no point to a superhero unless they're more effective than the police and military. And yet they do not become corrupted, and continue to do what is right anyway, because they're just that righteous. The people need protection, and the hero provides that protection without becoming predatory or controlling. Even if the people dislike the hero (as is frequently the case with Marvel characters, or with Nolan's Batman), it is because they do not truly know what's going on. If they did, they'd realize the hero is doing what everyone wants, clearing the streets and keeping them safe, fending off super-terrorists, defending Truth, Justice, and the [insert your nation here] Way, unconstrained by all those silly rules like due process and the rights of the accused.

The superhero is a government without limits, an expression of the national will in a single superior person who, nobly and incorruptibly, carries out that will by force despite not being answerable to the people in any way. That would only hamper their ability to act swiftly and decisively, after all.

Whether the characters or writers are themselves pro-fascism, the concept of the superhero is inescapably fascist.

*Hey, look! FRUIT!

[Amaryllis]

I didn't see the movie, and probably won't. So, since this is a spoilery thread anyway, can someone tell me what does happen at the end?

I saw The Dark Knight, and found the whole thing rather muddled. But I was probably spoiled for Batman (in the non-blabby sense) life by having my first impression be the campy, silly Adam West TV series, anyway.

[lonespark]

I don't know that I think all superheroes are connected to the national will. Surely some have a more local perspective?

[Froborr]

Batman appears to heroically sacrifice himself to save the city from a neutron bomb. People mourn him, build statues, etc. Then in rapid succession we learn that the autopilot on the Batcopter wasn't broken (which was the reason he gave for sacrificing himself; he had to stay on the copter to pilot the bomb away), John Blake's real first name is Robin, Batman left Blake sufficient clues to lead him to the Batcave (with implications that he is going to become the new Batman), and finally we see Alfred on his annual vacation in Italy; he looks across the crowded cafe, and sees Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle sitting at a table, happy.

Honestly, I thought it was a pretty good ending, moreso if you think Alfred (who had previously mentioned he would sit in that very cafe and fantasize about Bruce giving up his life for a simpler, happier one) is imagining the final scene.

[Froborr]

@lonespark: True, but even then they are the de facto local government/self-appointed expression of the local zeitgeist and I think the same argument applies.

[Froborr]

Sometimes they are very nearly explicitly self-declared expressions of the local zeitgeist, like the way The Question (Charlie Sage) quasi-mystically "reads the City."

[The Board Administration Team]

All posts are now open to comments, except the "Further Changes" post, which will remain closed. Discussions of present and future community standards, moderation policies, etc., may continue on the "At Patheos: NRA: Marchons, marchons!" thread. As a reminder, comments that focus on re-hashing past conflicts and grievances will be considered de-railing and deleted with a yellow card.

[anamardoll]

I have nothing of value to add except that I loved Froborr's comment, especially the bit about FRUIT. :)

And I didn't care for the bit with the boats, for the reasons outlined above about it being Pascal's Wager levels of simplification. That has bugged me SO MUCH since then. I would have much preferred some nobility from the 'common people' -- I myself would not have wanted the button pressed. How is that hard?

Also: 'Criminals' do not automatically equal the worst people on earth. This is perhaps a small point, but I'm getting tired of it being made over and over again in movies and television. Some of the 'criminals' on that boat would have, statistically, been innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. Many of them would be guilty of non-violent crimes. Etc.

Unless the boat was entirely stocked with mass murderers. It's been awhile, and I didn't care enough to remember, obviously.

[lonespark]

I am considering the ways that "de-facto government" thing does and does not apply to the Avatar, and to benders more broadly, in AtLA/LoK.

[chris the cynic]

Why shouldn't I think that part of the sick game is to hand me a detonator for my own bomb?

That was actually my thought. But we never found out because the button didn't get pushed.

Credit goes to the criminal for realizing that it was a Wargames situation. I think his words were, "I'll do what you should have done at the beginning," or something like that. And then he did.

The only way to win is not to play.

[Froborr]

Hmm, interesting quesiton, Lonespark. I think Legend of Korra has been exploring that a bit; Korra is more superheroic and less messianic than Aang, IMO.

[The Board Administration Team]

Just a reminder: although the normal rhythm of posting has been disrupted this week we will still be posting "This week in the Slacktiverse" this week. Submissions to that post are still being accepted.

[Kirala]

@Froborr re: superhero incorruptibility: I think the Marvel Civil War arc tried to show superheroes crossing the line (or at least plausibly differing to the point of fighting) - and while I didn't read it thoroughly enough to evaluate the execution, it was a very interesting setup. In light of the Patriot Act and the government gathering information on its citizens, would it be appropriate to resist? The Superhuman Registration Act was a chance to play that out with superheroes and see whether the law was a good thing, whether rule of law was a good thing, and whether superhero law was a good thing. I keep meaning to dig it up and find out whether it did anything beyond driving Spidey to ground and making Iron Man into a creepy fascist.

Regarding Nolan Batman: I loved the ferry boat exchange, although I understand the difficulties with taking the Joker at face value. (Then again, from the general populace's POV, the Joker had thus far been quite reliable with his promises - there might have been too much fear to think it through much.) I find it very plausible that a boat full of civilians would have trouble speaking up loudly for the rights of prisoners once the "they had their chance!" started flying around. (Look at how we treat people in prisons, and how many people sneeringly describe America's prisons as luxury hotels for the evildoer - how dare they have televisions! Don't they know they're lucky to see daylight after the horrible things they've done?) I think the indecision pulling the trigger was simply mitigating the moral point that yes, even Those People are human beings and deserve to be treated as such. And I think the conscientious prisoner who removed temptation from his boat was a further demonstration of the fact. There are no acceptable targets.

In the third movie, I found the Occupy -> Reign of Terror utterly irrelevant to modern America (and was distracted worrying that Nolan might find it relevant), but once I put that aside, I did think it was rather cool that Crane/Scarecrow/Fear was the judge when chaos reigned. I found myself wondering what role the Joker might have had if Heath Ledger had lived - fandom seems evenly split between "the League would kill him for being too dangerous" and "the League would have released him to sow chaos." I'd like to know.

[St. Jebus]

I think I come down firmly on the "released to sow Chaos." They're smart enough to realize that they can't control him, but sadistic enough so that they'd just let him do his thing. I expect there would be some sort of fail-safe - a poison implant with a trigger, for example.

[GTW]

I had the same thought on the ferries that's been mentioned on here a few times. I just assumed that whoever pressed the button would blow up their own boat [although, in retrospect, I think either detonator would have blown up the criminals. Joker wanted to bring common people to his level]. But, to an extent, that doesn't really matter. If you're placed in the situation where someone hands you and another person detonators and claims that pressing your respective button will kill the other person, then you're still stuck in a situation where you have to choose what to do with that information.

I took that scene to be a "faith in the absurd" scene. Based on everything Gotham's character has shown, you would have expected one of the ferries to have blown up within seconds. Up until that point, the Joker seemed more or less in control of the situation. Batman, contrary to all evidence, had faith that neither boat would push the detonator and then focused his efforts on stopping the Joker from blowing them up from the outside. Even the citizens reactions to the detonator go along with this: they voted to detonate the other ship, but then no one could actually do it. The people were more decent than their own worldviews.

Of course, Batman then proves that he doesn't really have faith in the citizens of Gotham, because he doesn't think they could endure the corruption of Harvey Dent. One thing I loved about Rises was that they showed Gordon struggling with the immorality of their cover-up of Harvey's actions and let John Blake condemn the whole cover-up.

[chris the cynic]

One of the the things that the detonator situation did, which did get called out in the film, is that it did allow for communication between the two boats of a very limited form.

Every second you don't go boom that means the people on the other boat didn't push the button. The only way you'll be allowed to push the button is if the other side is better than you are.

If you think, -even for a moment- about what you know (and you assume the situation is as it was laid out), you can't console yourself knowing that you're better than they are and that justifies things. You pushed the button, they didn't. To push the button is to admit, "I'm the worse person, but fuck it I want to live."

You don't just have to commit mass murder to save yourself, you have to commit mass murder of people who are demonstrably better than you.

That's the level the Joker was hoping people would drop to when he hoped that one of the buttons would be pushed.

[Gotchaye]

That was Crane?? I knew I was supposed to recognize him but couldn't place him; I kept thinking he looked like David Tennant. There goes the only part of the movie where I thought a regular citizen was doing something interesting.

I like X-Men so much largely because the mutants aren't these one-off ubermenschen. There are good mutants and bad mutants and indifferent mutants and mutants who are sometimes good and sometimes bad and mutants who start out good and become bad and vice versa. I think that once we get superhero institutions – once there are X-Men or maybe a Justice League or a Green Lantern Corps (I'm not very familiar with much outside of X-Men) – individual superbeings are a lot less dangerous and a lot less politically troublesome. Yeah, the superbeings are only really kept in check by other superbeings, but something like that is true of people with weapons and police/military training in the real world. It's especially true if the superbeings are embedded in society – if they have human family and friends and live in largely human communities.

Going even further afield, I'm ambivalent on how the Superhuman Registration Act stuff is handled. Especially in the X-Men movies. There's a strong “mutants as marginalized group (mostly gay people)” thread running through the story, but a lot of the discrimination that gay people face isn't the kind that mutants would face, and while registration for gay people would be awful, registration for (some) mutants is defensible (it's important to know if there is a mutant who can perfectly impersonate anybody or if there is one who can read minds, for example). And mutants are obviously of great economic and military value; there's no way that a government can /afford/ to be so anti-mutant that a foreign government starts helping mutants escape the country (this was a bigger problem with the mutant cure storyline). Having Storm helping out with preventing hurricanes and droughts and whatnot is worth just about any amount of money she demands.

But the point is that when you have enough superbeings, when none of them are clearly superior to all the rest, and when they have different loyalties (or just a bad union), you actually just have very talented individuals who only really have market power over others. They're more dangerous than most, and if they turn to crime they're going to do more damage and be harder to stop, but they can and will be stopped because the superbeings are embedded in existing institutions; it's not a super state of nature.

[Amaryllis]

@Froborr at 10:01, a belated thank you.

One of those endings, is it? On the whole, and in the absence of any actual evidence, I'm going to believe that Bruce is dead. And the next Batman will be somebody else.

Or else some director will go back to the beginning and tell Bruce Wayne's story all over again. Hey, it worked for Spiderman and Superman and all those guys, right?

[chris the cynic]

I remember saying to someone (lonespark maybe?) regarding the preview that the only way the "The Legend Ends" hype makes senses is if:

1 Bruce Wayne dies. For realzes. Not a movie death, not a comic book death, an actual death.
2 This death is in such a way as to prohibit any form of resurrection or reanimation.
3 This happens in such a way as to make sure that no one ever takes on the role of Batman ever again

Otherwise the whole press campaign leading up to the movie was nothing but massive false advertising.

I have not seen the new movie, and I've mostly stuck to the parts of the thread that dealt with previous movies, but the impression that I'm left with from the comments I have seen is that the new movie failed to deliver on the promise of, "The Legend Ends" in every possible way.

Which, I kind of expected since it didn't seem like, "The Legend Ends" would be a viable thing to do with a movie like Batman.

[Froborr]

I really think TDKR is the last movie in the Nolan continuity. The next Batman movie will almost definitely be a reboot.

[Brin]

Otherwise the whole press campaign leading up to the movie was nothing but massive false advertising.

There was a press campaign? Why did nobody tell me?

(I haven't actually seen any of the latest trilogy, so there's not much I can say about it. I didn't even know until I saw people referring to TDKR as "the third of the trilogy" that it was a trilogy. I'd been under the impression Batman Begins was a prequel to the previous Batman movie series.)

[Ross]

@Froborr: I think, though I'm not quite sure, that they have already announced that a batman reboot is on the way.

I have often disputed the popular view that hollywood is only interested in remakes and reboots these days, but when you announce the reboot before the third movie in the trilogy comes out, I think you;'re going too far

(Also, there is a remake of Total Recall and a reboot of Judge Dredd coming soon and the trailer for the Superman reboot debuted with TDKR. It's like my life has lapped itself)

I will note that there is perhaps one more movie you could do in the Nolan continuity: you could probably fit in an adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns.

[LauraHeron2]

I have decided to totally decloak. I will not do a predator and kill everyone on sight. I have met Kit in meatspace (waves) and since this community is one I have valued for nearly 8 years, even though I rarely think quickly enough to comment, I thought if I wanted it to survive this kerfuffle I had better start commenting. I may even write an above the line post, if I have anything to say after my novel writing, blog writing and other writerly things. I have never been part of something like this before, so Ding me if I get it wrong, and I will have to pull out if it interferes too much with my actual trying to be a writer while still earning enough money to support myself thing.

Froborr said most of what I think about batman. I saw the first two, and although I have followed a lot of the critical summary, I have not actually seen the film. Having said that, I have thoughts.

My main problem with the trilogy is the Batman is inherently a silly concept. I mean, love the guy - buff men in plastic suits punching things are awesome - and silly is not a bad thing. But ultimately the idea that the best way to fight crime is to dress up like a bat with a plastic fetish is ludicrous. So something like Batman 66 works well, and even you can do something interesting with the cartoon Batman, because cartoons seem to occupy a different space in our head. You do not feel viscerally the same horror at the violence because it is turned into a beautiful caricature.

However, the trilogy paints a bleak picture of a realistic city in collapse. And posits the answer is a rich guy who dresses up like a bat. Tonally, it doesn’t work for me. And the relentless lack of fun Nolan seems to want to portray works against it for me as well. I mean, the Bat mobile is the coolest looking vehicle I have ever seen, yet Christian Bale has No Fun At All Because Fighting Crime Is Very Serious.

The highlight was the Joker, who managed to bridge the gap between the ridiculous and the Grimdark by being chaos. Lovely work, and afterwards the films fell flat to me.

I blame Watchmen. What I saw the comic doing was criticising the very basis of the superhero story. What too many people (Cough Miller cough) took away was that making everything gritty is GrownUp and Awesome. Also, Watchmen ended.

Finally Bane is hot.

[Anonymus]

Welcome, Laura. It's good to see you in the comments and I hope you do find time to keep commenting. I don't know very much about batman, but I found your comment interesting nonetheless and I wanted to say hi.

[chris the cynic]

Welcome, Laura.

I don't actually have anything else to say at the moment, but... hi.

I hope that you are able to find your time here worthwhile.

I totally understand time constraints. I always seem to be low on it even though, in theory, I should have nothing but free time.

[LauraHeron2]

thanks for the hi! hi back...

[storiteller]

What is Bane's deal with going on and on about letting the people take over? That's not a League of Shadows thing; it's just his own completely unexplained delusion/motivation. And he never lets the people take over! He gives the detonator to a co-conspirator and brings in his own bizarrely loyal mercenaries (plus maybe the criminals that probably “the people” did not want back on the streets).

I think there were three things going on with his "for the people!" deal:
1) It was a distraction from the fact that the nuclear bomb was going to blow up no matter what. If you could keep the world's eyes on the kangaroo courts and Reign of Terror-like trials, the mainstream media and potentially even the federal government would be too busy paying attention to that to ask what the real end-game was.
2) It gave a certain percentage of the population hope. There were some people who wanted to see the rich dragged down, even if not in the way that this "revolution" was doing. It also suggested that this thing could end without everyone getting blown to bits. Seeing some sort of light at the end of the tunnel just made it far worse when everyone's hopes would be smashed, the point he makes with the prison analogy.
3) It could have actually proved the League of Shadows' point. An ongoing theme of the series has been that the villains think that the population of New York (ahem, Gotham City) will just implode and hurt each other if given the chance. In every movie, they don't and come out of it together. (The boat example didn't illustrate this very well, but I think that's what they were going for.) By having "the people" take over, ideally for Bane it would show that both the decadent and the poor were corrupt to the very heart and deserved/needed to be wiped off of the face of the planet. However, because people didn't, he had to make it look like they did by faking it for the media.

I don't think any of those were particularly well-expressed in the movie, but Christopher Nolan is much better at thinking of interesting ideas than expressing any sort of political or philosophical point. That's why I actually like his non-Batman movies better. It also seemed like Bane enjoyed some serious chaos regardless of a philosophical point - I don't know much about the traditional comic-book presentation of the character, but he definitely seemed to be solidly between Ra's al Ghul and the Joker in personality.

Talia who is driven by her loyalty to her father.

From her speech - which was not exactly substantial, considering the reveal - I thought it wasn't loyalty to her father so much as to his and the League of Shadows' philosophy. I thought that she had always believed in their philosophy, but it wasn't until Batman killed Ra's al Ghul that she bought into it enough to act on it. I didn't see it as simple revenge. Weirdly, my husband knew it was her from less than half-way through the movie. She's a continuing character in the comics and Batman cartoon.

In general, I thought it was really entertaining, although philosophically muddled. I did like the ending in that Batman/Bruce Wayne actually trusted Gotham to take care of itself for once. I also thought the idea that Batman was necessary because the police were corrupt was an interesting idea, although even more fascist than embracing the police. After all, it's even harder to hold a superhero accountable than a police officer.

[lonespark]

The people were more decent than their own worldviews.

Yeah, that's what I got out of the boats thing. And it's a truth I see in the world on good days. I also liked that the one guy took the decision away, although I guess it would have spoken better of them it had been agreed to first. You can't trust yourself to withstand pressure and repeated debate; better to just declare you're the kind of people do the right thing, and do it before you have time for second thoughts and human weakness.

[lonespark]

One thing I loved about Rises was that they showed Gordon struggling with the immorality of their cover-up of Harvey's actions and let John Blake condemn the whole cover-up.

This.

[lonespark]

Hi Laura!
I love all the things you said (and agree with many of them.)

Sometimes (this iteration of cinematic)Batman feels like the less-fun version of MCU Iron Man. Rich guys who think they get to decide what regular people are ready to handle = people I want to punch. They're really smart, and can fix anything with tech. And they're made of aaaangst, too. But at least Iron Man movies are a fun ride.

[LauraHeron2]

Thanks Lonespark. You are so right re. Ironman. And RDJ is more attractive too.

My friend, who I was talking about this to yesterday, suggested that i read the films wrong. That they should be read more allegorically - Gotham City is City x1000, with all of the problems that come with a modern city. That crime is Crime, and corruption Corruption, and that Batman is a morality tale done in four colours.

I think that the concept makes more sense in the world, but I think Nolan did not go far enough if this is what he was meaning to do. And one of the main problems is how Christian Bale acts, as well as the script. If Batman is Justice, the Greatest Detective of the comic, then he must be good at strategy, and detecting, and the movie Batman is just not bright enough.

Sorry I cannot speak to the Bane for the people thing, as I haven’t seen this one! Possibly Nolan comes across as essentially small c conservative (the Batman who will save us is an oligarch, the people too stupid to create a functioning bureaucracy (and when the people organise anything, bureaucracy is the only form of organisation we have)) and so he cannot trust the people to revolt without it becoming the french revolution. Too easily manipulated by the supermen (Bane), afterall...

[LauraHeron2]

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/07/no-the-dark-knight-rises-isnt-a-right-wing-opus/260511/

Ta Nehisi Coates talks about Batman and politics in his usual well written, incisive way...

[chris the cynic]

In the movies, haven't read the comics, Tony Stark knows he's a jerk and tries (with varying degrees of success) to work on that fact. He tries to not be a jerk, or at least not be so much of one. Without that simple character trait I would find the movies unbearable.

Imagine an entire movie of Tony acting the way he did in the flashback at the beginning of of the first Iron Man movie. It would be unbearable.

When he came out of the cave he wasn't magically a better person, but he was someone who was willing to work toward being a better person. (Even if he, kind of, sucks at it.) That made all the difference for me.

[lonespark]

Tony has Pepper (and Rhodey, and then later teammates) to call him on his crap. Alfred kind of does that, but not in an entertaining way.

[Mira]

Just got back from the movie, and now I have to see what everyone on the internet says about it!

Bane's fake populism didn't seem particularly necessary or useful to me, either. It did read like a clear reference to the early days of totalitarian states though - it's all "for the people," but of course someone needs to establish order and get things under control while the people get on their feet, and that someone might happen to be a brutal dictator. In the meanwhile, "the people" are trying to lay low and stay alive and really would just like normal lives, for the most part. It seemed pretty realistic in that sense (as much as you can approximate realistic despotism in a comic book way). And no real relationship to Occupy that I could see, although as an American not living in poverty, some of Selina's lines were a bit chilling to me in an "I think she's right, but don't know what to do" sense.

The big question was WHY. Creating a cover, like Storiteller suggests? But why that one in particular? No indication in Bane's background of why he would hate elites and corrupt systems, and in the very end, no particular explanation of why he and Talia wanted to blow up the city, either. "I hated my father, until you killed him, and now I'm fulfilling his mission" doesn't do it for me, especially if Ras al Ghul's mission was to raise a new city, not just destroy it and die along with it.

[Froborr]

Hmm... I saw Bane and Talia as inheritors to both Ras al-Ghul and the Joker. They really just want to watch the world burn, but unlike the Joker, who was honest about it, they dress it up as following Ras al-Ghul's beliefs.

[lonespark]

You might be right, Froborr. I feel like that's not useful or satisfying, though.