Read Graeber's article on capeshit where he talks about exactly this
I rewatched that Nolan trilogy last month and it is incredibly reactionary.
Short thoughts on each film:
Batman Begins: Why does the League of Shadows even care about the "corruption" in Gotham? To be clear, Gotham is depicted as incredibly corrupt, but what do these people in Asia care? It almost looks like it would be about revenge against Wayne industries exploiting cheap labor, because you see some cargo boxes labeled with Wayne, but it isn't about that at all. So the motives were bewildering.
Dark Knight: Honestly the best of the three. Joker's motive of just being a crazy guy I think is wholly insufficient, but the backbone of the film IMO is the Harvey Dent story arc. Joker's little speech to Harvey about how everyone else is a schemer is extra stupid because all Joker does the entire film is scheme. In Dark Knight yes there is a big Noble Lie and a PATRIOT Act spy system, but neither one is portrayed as being a good thing, but a necessary thing. But that's how the slide toward fascism always begins, right?
Dark Knight Rises: There isn't another spin on it. It's dialed up in the third film where a major plot point is the difference between a functioning society and a non-functioning one is the police force. This is the fascist police state movie.
He couldn't even decide what the whole give Gotham back to the people thing meant. The supposed popular uprising is shown as rich people getting forced out of their fancy condos. This is depicted as being bad, of course. But there isn't any depiction of anything going wrong in Gotham to foment popular resentment and revolt. In fact the movie makes a point of saying how Gotham's streets are clean and crime is low thanks to the Noble Lie from the prior film. Nobody seems to have an issue with this except for Bane and the League. For some reason. Still. But, no matter, the unwashed masses are angry! Or are they? Because aside from that short montage of some people marching in the streets and kicking the rich people to the curb, everyone was just cowering under Bane's henchmen, so it wasn't even consistent on the whole give Gotham back thing. Dark Knight Rises was a truly awful film on almost every level.
Nolan seems to believe either he's too smart for his audience, or his audience is too dumb for him. Not sure which. The plane thing at the start was really cool, though.
Never really thought of the League's motive but it definitely is weird. I remember in the first film when Raz explains that the league has put an end to many a great empire when their decline had started. But what sense does it make to accelerate their ends with no true motive? Like, it all most sounds like they were trying to maintain some sort of balance or progression, but a balance/progression of what exactly?
Also DK does that cringe thing where general chaos and disorder=anarchy. NGL, for a long time, when I was more of a lib, I viewed anarchy in that way. I guess it isn't shocking how this is how many people see anarchy with how it's usually taught in schools and is represented in mainstream media.
yeah he explains how the league of shadows has been there for all these supposed historical purges of major cities and it's like... dude? The Great Fire of London was you? And the UK then colonized the world? Sounds like you failed!!
It probably makes sense if you're a fascist and believe in "dgeneracy" and social darwinist shit. "This civilization is no longer darwin fit so we most euthanize it to keep the geneseed of the volk strong!" Shit. Fash would just be like "oh yeah Race al-Bannon is just trying to purge the dgenerates from society but bat-fash thinks the city can still be saved before it becomes untermenschopolis and hurts the fitness of,idk, other cities?"
Idk fuck Nolan.
Dark Knight Rises was a truly awful film on almost every level.
but le epic bane mask face
Show
Dark Knight Rises: There isn't another spin on it. It's dialed up in the third film where a major plot point is the difference between a functioning society and a non-functioning one is the police force. This is the fascist police state movie.
It's been forever since I've seen that movie, but isn't Bane just objectively right? Like not even in a "Killmonger is right, but he shouldn't have started kicking puppies" way?
B-b-but the rich people's houses got looted! A-and they had people's courts!
He has to be for something to be right about it. He's not really for anything except exposing Gotham's corruption but not in a way that makes sense, and only really kind of by accident. He recovers notes from Gordon about the "truth of Harvey Dent." Bane later exposes the Harvey Dent/Two Face lie to the people of Gotham, as if it was his plan all along. But his plan was set into motion long before he discovered those notes, so I'm just going to have to conclude no. Bane was not right about anything, nor wrong about anything. He's just a cartoon villain who plans to kill everybody in Gotham, including himself. The movie just makes it appear that he's about more than this. A sort of deception on the filmmaker's part to make the movie's plot appear complex.
The league of shadows are straw an-prims or anarcho-nihilists, or a non-straw version of whatever this anarcho-warhammerist people think they"re doing. Remember the "some men just want to watch the world burn" line. Nolan thinks a desire to change anything is inherently incomprehensible.a
The third movie was Nolandoing anti-Occupy propaganda on behalf of the Capitalists. Just straight up, no complexity - "these people who want banks held accountable for making their lives worse are evil and insane"
Coming back to this many hours later to just point out that Talia al Gul is equally nonsense as a villain. She's back in Gotham to complete her father's work. Her father, who she didn't know and didn't like because she was born in a prison.
Then the whole time bomb element? They were planning on blowing up Gotham and themselves. They could've done this at any time. Why wait until the literal moment that time runs out? The plot of this movie makes such little sense because the characters motivations are so stupid. But they're not laid out plainly, so it's given an appearance of depth where there is none. It's just occluded.
The Dark Knight Rises really could have used a rewrite to clean up all of those problems, but the writers were on strike I think. The biggest one for me is when Bane starts the riots by revealing the truth from the last film - why would anyone in Gotham get the torches and pitchforks out over hearing that a guy whose been dead for eight years killed a couple cops and it was covered up? And why would their response to learning this information be to burn down the prison and free all the prisoners? The film should have smash cut from his big speech to some pundits arguing over whether or not it was true, and most of the city not giving a shit.
Good points. I think it's fair to say if anything they'd be complacent or even happy that the Dent Act is in effect, not just apathetic, because Americans only understand stories where the police almost caught the bad guy... but if only their hands weren't tied by the friggin' law!!
A law where the police can catch all the bad guys? Sounds like a good thing! And in the movie it is, because it's not shown to be overreach. Anyone in prison is shown to actually be a Bad Person. The cops aren't corrupt or criminal, and no civilian is wrongfully targeted.
Really, before Bane makes an appearance the only bad thing going on in Gotham is Bruce Wayne is depressed and withdrawn, which means he's not managing any of his philanthropic (lol) projects like funding the orphan boys' home.
He couldn't even decide what the whole give Gotham back to the people thing meant
I think releasing all the criminals locked up by Harvey dent act is supposed to be the giving back to people thing. Since Gotham has the dumbest police force in entire world, Bane could capture the whole city with just the prisoners released
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Batman is explicitly fascist.
Nolan modernizing a vigilante that beats up Polish migrants, two-faced liberal politicians, and feminist eco-terrorists isn't doing anything that prior writers hadn't already been doing for decades.
I want a movie that is just Ivy and Bruce standing in front of the last dead seqoia or something while Ivy gives Bruce a 2 hour long "the reason you suck" speech about how if he hadn't spent 50 years defending Exxon execs from her attempts to save the world there would still be ducks.
I mean, they might be getting to that. The past 10 or so years, they've basically been making Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn into antiheroes.
That's basically the Harley cartoon series. Batman is portrayed as even more unhinged than the Joker.
I agree but also then the sequoia then beats the shit out of Batman
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Batman is explicitly fascist.
All superheroes are fascist if you apply adult reason to them, which is why they should remain children's characters. Batman isnt even that bad in terms of fash superheroes. If you remove the technology and the crocodile people, he doesnt do much for Gotham that Sherlock Holmes didnt do for London. Now Iron Man is a fucking fascist.
All superheroes are fascist if you apply adult reason to them
Come on, now, that's not true. The X-Men are about as explicitly anti-Fascist as you can get, for instance.
Batman isnt even that bad in terms of fash superheroes.
He's just a Pinkerton with a bat fetish. Shy of doing a full blown "Super Hitler", you're going to be hard pressed to beat that.
he doesnt do much for Gotham that Sherlock Holmes didnt do for London
Sherlock Holmes was a Facts And Logic response to Victorian Era mysticism. His whole schtick was debunking the paranormal. Half the time, modern Batman comics have him fighting (or teaming up with) Real Wizards. Hell, current arch-nemesis is a century's old alchemist who heads up a clan of mystic ninja assassins.
The thing that makes Batman fascist is often in the negative. His enemies all tend to benefit from or embody late 20th century progressive tropes. Penguin is a crippled foreigner who uses his disability to shield himself from culpability. The Joker is constantly getting let out of Arkam Asylum either thanks to its lax security or to due to duping some gullible psychologist. Mr. Freeze is a villain for wanting to save his cryogenically frozen wife at the expense of Wayne Industry's bottom line. Two-Face is a literally two-faced politician. Poison Ivy is an ultra-feminist eco-terrorist.
Batman is the only "normal" one. And he's "normal" because he's the guy clear-eyed enough to keep to his conservative family values and strong (read: rich) enough to defeat the evil progressive bad guys when The Government is too incompetent or too corrupt or too paralyzed by their innate liberal weaknesses to try.
That's what makes the comic fascist.
Freeze has no connection to Wayne Industry's bottom line, and Penguin is literal aristocracy. He's also rarely if ever a foreigner. He is from old money in Gotham like Bruce, but his family one way or another lost it but kept the prestige so he goes to Britain and comes back. Telltale plays with this nicely, but usually he is just an aristocratic "legitimate" businessman. No progressive trope about him. You could've went with Ras or Anarky, why use Penguin?
Freeze has no connection to Wayne Industry's bottom line
He's introduced as a Wayne Industries employee who gets fired for misappropriating company property.
Penguin is literal aristocracy
That... depends heavily on the writer. Sometimes he's born into a rich family and breaks bad. Sometimes he's a come-up-from-nothing crime boss. But the general theme of the character is that you can't trust successful disabled people because they could only have come into their money by being crooks.
No progressive trope about him.
Its a very old trope, because its ultimately a commentary on eugenics. He's literally "born bad", in the same way the crippled guy from 300 is just naturally bad. The argument is that these guys shouldn't have been allowed to survive to adulthood.
You could've went with Ras or Anarky
I thought I hit on Ras with the Evil Wizards comment. Anarky isn't really a mainline villain.
That is only Freeze's origin in New 52. The iconic tragic origin his boss is Boyle. That's the one just about everyone thinks of, and it is sympathetic, certainly not vilifying him for that. Hell I'd say Freeze is made too sympathetic, too much of an anti-hero in comics. I like the one moment in the tapes from AC that has Strange point that Nora didn't want this shit, and that Victor is essentially dehumanizing her by keeping her alive in a block of ice against her will.
As for Penguin, the general theme is not that you cannot trust disabled people. I can maybe see the point that the old trope is present, but it sure as hell is not the general theme. A theme gets played with, or is a constant, Penguin being untrustworthy because of disability even as subtext or just what is conveyed implicitly (which is not a general theme, it is an implication) is only really a thing in the Burton film. Penguin was not disabled in the comics for decades. it is not till 1981 that we see the origin that he was bullied for being short, and had to carry an umbrella cause his worried mother didn't want him to die from pneumonia like his father. He is made a high society outcast in 1992. I can kinda see the "unworthy" thing in The Batman where he shows up to a Wayne party that he is not invited to and is rude but Bruce and Alfred also come off like they are more annoyed that he doesn't fit in. his family is "the bad billionaires" essentially, and in contrast Alfred's grandfather back in England was a butler for a Cobblepot and was treated like shit. So the classic "we can show bad rich people, but only if we also have good rich people as a focus"
I can't find anything beyond Arkham and Telltale that has him be British and in both cases he is not a foreigner, but very much old money in Gotham who went to boarding school. You want to actually criticize the text itself the way more on point criticism is that Penguin is used to justify felony disenfranchisement. Saying his general theme is that cripples are bad is so loose and tangential at best beyond Batman Returns (and even then not a foreigner) , whereas Penguin has consistently been used as someone who gets parole and manipulates the law into thinking he has reformed when he is really still evil. It goes as far back as Batman 36 from 1946 with him "going legit" but not really.
This trope was repeated again and again to the point that it is now undeniably the crux of the character. B:TAS even has an episode using it. In one story he legit does reform and get released but sees a cartoon belittling Penguins so he returns to crime in anger. Batman 41 has him have another business that is a front for robbing people, etc etc. It really has been THE Penguin trope since fucking 1946 and no one wants to break from it.
I am not defending the way Batman stories handle disability, but it is such a stretch to say that's the general theme for penguin, or that it even applies a lot of the time. I know the trope, but once it can even apply to Penguin he had already been established and very soon after it could be applied he was specifically made an aristocrat. Outside of Arkham, and Batman Returns I just don't see that holding weight. Particularly when there are other tropes that Penguin stories play into much harder than going for eugenics. If anything it is more than they play him up as slimy and grotesque because he is an aristocrat. That is not a good trope, and disability shouldn't be used as punishment full stop, but it comes as a corollary to someone being evil because they are an aristocrat. A better example of this would be Salazar from Resident Evil 4 which don't get me wrong is cringey as well for that. I think this video on that character and particularly some of the comment section break it down better than I can https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AOuTzNQ2YM
Essentially they target and dehumanize disability as a means of mocking aristocrats in the same way one might play up Hitler's fucked up body or Goebbels disabilities. On its face a means of drawing attention to the fact that these people who see themselves as inherently superior are in fact possessing of the very traits they would see others exterminated for. It plays into the same bigotry towards the disability or otherness that said fascists and aristocrats are vile for upholding. It makes hypocrisy the sin, NOT bigotry. like that Preacher panel people love to bring up that mocks white supremacists with double chins and beer guts, I get the point, but in the end it is just reinforcing the premise of said assholes.
Boy that was a tangent.....oh yeah Penguin. So yeah I think Batman villains are often made more sympathetic than Batman himself. Sometimes in a way that goes too far, and regardless it serves to sorta just say "look Batman feels bad for Killer Croc and him being dehumanized due to his disability, that makes it complex when Batman beats the shit out of him and also makes Croc the real victim when he murders people" etc. The problem with a lot of sympathetic villains in Batman stories is they need to keep coming back, so their sympathetic act has to either justify repeat offenses, or they choose to keep making mistakes etc. The complexity is sacrificed for serialization
The problem with a lot of sympathetic villains in Batman stories is they need to keep coming back, so their sympathetic act has to either justify repeat offenses, or they choose to keep making mistakes etc.
Very true. And also one reason the comics can't be particularly Utopian, as they would stray too far away from the premise to be recognizable to new readers.
The complexity is sacrificed for serialization
One reason why I grew into an Anime fan over time. They tend to have much better direction and purpose
Point taken about the Penguin, though.
X-Men deserves credit, yeah, its foundation is so much less cringe than most superheroes. Its drama comes from people and how they interact with the world, rather than constantly edging with that dreadful "oohoohoo but if PowerMan was just a little less selfless he could really fuck you peons up, and he'd be right to do it because you worms hurt his feelings as a kid" shit. At least X-Men is about adults protecting and fostering a community of outcasts at its core.
feminist eco-terrorists
I prefer the title feminist eco-warrior tbh, terrorist implies im doing something wrong
Unleashing your mutant hyper intelligent Venus flytraps on the city crosses the line.
I had a vaguely leftish friend who decided he hates Poison Ivy and leftists who "apologize" for her because she does some of the "actually the person who is ideologically correct does some bad things too" stuff which became one of many arguments we had. They have since blocked me over disagreements over Ukraine though.
Sounds like they need a cactus to bloom out their asshole to change their mind
Yeah but like, I love the Bat-fam ok? My treats please? Cassandra Cain please?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Batman is explicitly fascist.
I think it's more insidious than that: he's a liberal. He's the liberal fantasy about consequence free legitimate violence, an enforcer of the status quo who always takes the bad guy alive, who never goes after innocent people, and who also works within the system via private charity, and he gets contrasted with overtly fascist villains like the League of Shadows whose worldview he fundamentally agrees with but whose methods stray outside what is politely acceptable for liberals to endorse.
Almost never do superheroes make, create, or build anything. The villains, in contrast, are endlessly creative. They are full of plans and projects and ideas.
Never really thought about this but it would be really interesting to flip this, but I'm sure if done it would just end up as like Batman building a hot new surveillance police state and the villains just keep getting in the way.
Never really thought about this
Its not strictly true. A bunch of Silver Age comics were utopian, particularly wrt Superman fighting natural disasters and relieving famines and doing diplomacy on behalf of warring nations. The original JLA built a giant space station in order to guard the Earth against calamity. They regularly served as ambassadors to alien civilizations and inventors of fabulous quasi-magical inventions. They would routinely speak before the UN, counseling the general progressive wisdom of the moment.
But, as a consequence, they had to face ever greater stakes and threats. Super plagues and Time Bandits and War Worlds and the collapse of reality itself were all treated as solvable problems by superhumans who got more and more absurdly overpowered.
So there was this initially token effort to bring the heroes back down to Earth. Make Superman a story less about flying across the galaxy to punch a Space God and more about juggling his superhuman duties with his dating life. Make the villains more complex, by giving guys like Lex Luthor salient ideological positions rather than just having him be the guy who steals 40 cakes. Introducing ideas about how these heroes might be too powerful and perhaps prone to hubris as a result. That gets you to the whole "Flash doing time travel wrong" arc that became the most recent movie flop.
Modern comics have largely abandoned the Utopian vision in favor of the Endless Conflict approach to comic book storytelling. But go back 20 years or so, and there were plenty of superheroes that were engaging in positive and productive pursuits.
Its not strictly true. A bunch of Silver Age comics were utopian, particularly wrt Superman fighting natural disasters and relieving famines and doing diplomacy on behalf of warring nations.
Yeah I can see how that can create a conundrum for the writers. Now I guess they hit those massive stakes like what your describing, but really no attempt at changing the world outside of stopping the big bad. I've been reading comics a lot more over the last couple years and especially now cannot get into the superhero comics at all. Might have to check out some of the silver age comics since that does sound a bit more refreshing.
but really no attempt at changing the world outside of stopping the big bad
They DID change the world, significantly. Pick up a copy of Kingdom Come and you'll see the fruits of their labors.
But the end result of a century of superheroes/villains is a world that's wholly unrecognizable to a new reader. Superheroes siding with the status quo is as much about normalizing the setting to new audiences as it is about the heroes themselves.
You either have to retcon back to basics in order to reset the stakes or the heroes need to end their arcs having reset the status quo, so the next writer can pick up on a functionally fresh slate.
Might have to check out some of the silver age comics since that does sound a bit more refreshing.
YMMV. They are definitely more Utopian, but they're still fairly liberal.
But the end result of a century of superheroes/villains is a world that's wholly unrecognizable to a new reader. Superheroes siding with the status quo is as much about normalizing the setting to new audiences as it is about the heroes themselves.
You either have to retcon back to basics in order to reset the stakes or the heroes need to end their arcs having reset the status quo, so the next writer can pick up on a functionally fresh slate.
Yeah I can see how that all would lead to issues and then requiring the retcon/ reboot. Also, probably explains the constant spin-offs. Like I was thumbing through those freebie program things they give out and I know this is the modern stuff but there were like 4-5 Spiderman comics going at the same time. I've been reading nothing from Marvel and DC so it was wild to see.
YMMV. They are definitely more Utopian, but they're still fairly liberal.
Damn, yeah I guess I should have expected that.
There was a whole episode in Batman: The Brave and the Bold which was about The Joker dismantling a surveillance panopticon Batman had built... not out of any revolutionary motivation of course, he just thought it would be funny.
Am I trippin' or is this animation terrible? Low ass frame rate lookin' shit.
I think ot has to do with how hegemonic the status quo asumptions about the world are. For example japanise ligth novels and anime are generaly also like this. The protagonists simp for some monarch or some already exsisting structure. Contrast that to chinise wuxia novels where the protagonists usually remake the world as they see fit. I think this means the chinise audiences are corrently seeing their country being built up and so recognise that improvments can always be made and so change is good. while western audiences have been condotioned to beleve liveralism is the end of history and thus the status quo needs to be preserved (even if its a monarchy in a tantasy world)
As other posters have mentioned older turn of the century fantasy and science fiction involved more positive changes. There was after all significant technological progress and audiences could imagine improvments in society. So while many campbellian heroes are reactionaries in their values they all have their own ideas about how to change society. They are creative.
Yeah good point on the material conditions and existing ideology affecting the art.
Yeah, why DON'T they create anything? There could be a whole arc about Bruce Wayne designing, building, and testing a device to create a solution to a problem.
But that's all antagonists. They're the ones that have agency, protagonists simply react, they're at the mercy of the antagonists, story wise. The relationship, as presented in TDK is actually inverted, the joker doesn't need batman to exist, it was the other way around all along.
That's sorta Batman INC, except it is more of an international NGO thing. Morrison plays with the implications but never gets to actually go anywhere with it because, as he has Bruce in a meta way comment on in the final issue, in comics nothing can change, the profit motive will always destroy risk or creativity
Weird how Graeber left out Golden Age Superman fighting against systemic issues and the villains being landlords, businessmen, and corrupt politicians.
Reactionary low brow to middle brow spectrum: Michael Bay -> Zach Snyder -> Christopher Nolan
I've always thought of that scene in Dark Knight where Batman goes after that guy in Hong Kong as a metaphoric justification for the War on Terror. At face value it just seems like an excuse to have some set pieces outside of Gotham, which, yeah, it is, but the whole thing about ”Batman having no jurisdiction” (which is considered a good thing) and the Bush mass surveillance apologism make it obvious to me that the message is that it's sometimes good when people invade another country and do what they want with no accountability.
Western powers do that all the time they use legalistic bulshit to justify kidnaping random people, doing piracy in the high seas, stealing peoples money from banks.
Jurisdictions and legality are tools of the people making the laws. There is no diferent between that and batman nabing a guy.
Or north korea wackig some spy. I happen to belibe the north koreans are in the rigth. But the truth is that it can also be seen as me suporting these types of actions when its the guys i like doing it. And honestly im fine with that. Id love it if an iranian equivalent of batman were to grab reza khavari for example.
The Prestige is by far my favorite. Not too far up its own ass like his more recent works and I love when a movie has genuinely shocking twists
I would say it's pretty different from any other Nolan movie I watched (batmen, prestige, inception, and 1/3 of Tenet). And probably better than all of those, excepting for Dunkirk which I think is his best film.
I didn't know it was a Nolan movie actually, thats surprising to me, Its a great movie
Fuck inception just for popularising that fucking BWAAAAAAAAM noise that now has to be used everywhere.
<- me mere seconds before being vaporised by the force of a million BWAAAAAAAMs.
that trailer got me hype as fuck when i first saw it in the theater
it sure was a movie
Did the BWAAAAM thing start with Inception? I could've sworn I heard it in trailers before. Particularly "District 9" and that was a year before Inception.
Edit: Just rewatched the District 9 trailer and it's more BWAAAAK'y than BWAAAAM'y. https://youtu.be/_BjWEn5yvmw
My thing with Nolan is that his movies are all interesting enough to watch. He's an interesting director, though I think that's one of the nicer things you can say about him. Dark Knight Rises is bad, Inception is bad, Interstellar is more bad than good, but I wasn't bored watching any of those movies. Angry, sometimes, but not bored. And I think he's good at aesthetics, or good enough at least. His movies are nice to look at.
But despite that it really does seem like he is a stupid, reactionary person who believes himself to be a genius.
I know its a low bar but I give props to him for still trying to make original blockbusters not tied to IP. Wish tenet was decent like inception
Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, Prestige, and The Dark Knight are all pretty good if you watch them for the first time with no background info. Inception is straight up bad, with good set pieces. Dark Knight Rises I blame on Heath Ledger dying. Interstellar is as you say. Dunkirk was good. Tenet was so awful and made me finally realize he is a Zero Dark Thirty Patriot Act Freak, which made me no longer like the first two Batman movies. I am excited to see Oppenheimer. I want to see what they do with his commie girlfriend. I can see him having her “killed”, but it’s a good thing.
Half of his movies are a bit too convoluted but even those I enjoy watching for some reason. He doesn't really handle human emotions very well either. Aesthetics are pretty good and his films have interesting concepts. He's a very flawed filmmaker but I watch everything he does.
why do people feel so strongly about inception, it's ocean's eleven in the matrix without the subtext. it's fun for what it is, but people either hate it or love it and i don't get it.
The watch party I just filed with the agency lists Despicable Me, Children of Men, Dr. Zhiavago here, but only one of your's. first one to talk intelligible dialogue, gets to stay in my rotation.
So maybe a hot take but: I think the thing that is most interesting about Nolan's Batman movies is in the way that they explore Batman as being a symptom of a corrupt and broken society. The entire point and climax of the Dark Knight revolves around the idea that Batman is in fact NOT a hero. He saves Gotham but at the end of it all ultimately is forced to become a pariah who society has to hunt down for the crimes he both did and did not commit. They kinda fuck with this in part 3 but the Dark Knight Trilogy as a whole I think is about the precarity of modern society and the fact that its essentially all being held together by outright lies and contradictions. The police and district attorney follow the laws and go after the badguys....except when they are massively corrupt and also accept the help of a vigilante who breaks laws all over the place. People deep down are good and want what is right...but also they're one bad day away from going completely psychotic. Maybe the world is all held together with brutal violence and hypocrisy....but we still owe it to ourselves and others to believe in something greater.
I struggle with the idea that Oppenheimer will be an explicitly pro-nuclear-bomb film if only because it would mean Nolan gave infinitely more nuance and thought into a children's comic hero that nobody even really asked for at the time.
The entire point and climax of the Dark Knight revolves around the idea that Batman is in fact NOT a hero.
I see where you're coming from, the whole "he's the hero we need but not the one we deserve" at least pays some lip service to the fact that what he's doing is questionable, actually. Further reinforced when Batman destroys the surveilance system after he's done using it because it's too evil you guys. But here's a couple of things that dilute it a bit: 1. that police and military are already justified under the banner of pragmatism (in my view, being an anti-hero vigilante is simply cynical detachment) and 2. the counterpart, the hero gotham deserved, was harvey dent, some dumbo politician.
I actually think the subtext within the movie is far more cynical on Harvey Dent then it gets credit for. There are several clues/moments that show Dent's crusade is not pure altruism and is motivated more than a little by narcissistic ambition. Even just his monologue on the Batman and Roman suspension of democracy infers that he sees himself more like Batman than as a counterpoint to him, and he is shown interrogating a man at gun point long before he goes completely insane.
The counterpoint to Batman and what is needed in the end is not in fact Harvey Dent the person, deeply flawed and broken...but instead the idea of what Harvey Dent represented. The incorruptible white knight.
Fire the Zimmer Cannon!
