"There's a storm coming."
I like the article, and I liked the movie. Prepare for FReepers who haven’t seen the movie to trash it though.
Lifelong Batman fan. Seen the movie; it was fantastic. I agree with this article 100%. One of the most conservative movies I’ve ever seen.
Case in point: one little scene in the movie where Selena Kyle, who for most of the movie had viewed herself as a Robin Hood-esque class warrior, walks into an abandoned house after the “Revolution” she had wanted. The house was once beautiful, but not is a shell. There’s an old picture of a happy family on the dirty floor. Selena whispers, “This was once somebody’s house.” A girl next to her declares “But now it’s EVERYONE’S house!” And Selena just smirks. The house is no longer worth living in, and is destroyed.
That was one of the most small, subtle, beautifully-put cases against Marxism I’ve ever seen.
The article is right. I saw TDKR the other day, and it is definitely an ANTI-Occupy Wall Street movie. And the hero (Bruce Wayne) is a rich white guy who believes in PRIVATE charity.
Thank you for this! Now I’ll see the movie. Boyer said all the right words—Dickens, Carton, Robespierre, Revolution, Burke, and alludes to Sir Percy Blakeney, descended from Crusader knights, another wealthy, seeming fop who takes his personal charity, honor, and chivalry seriously—governments and socially meted-out justice be damned.
I saw it last night and thought it was great, and yes, it did have a very anti-OWS, anti-leftist message. “Everything belongs to the people”...who suddenly find they have nothing and are huddled together burning bits of the furniture to stay warm (while, of course, the revolutionaries, Bane and Co., live large).
Dickens is all through it. Probably my favorite scenes were the “courtroom” scenes, which showed a kangaroo court where a judge who looks very much like Baltasar Garzon or an NYU professor “tries” people by asking them whether they’d like death or exile (which actually is also death). He’s seated in the midst of and peering over heaps of documents and rubble from the destroyed offices, looking like something you’d see in the offices of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, while at the same time reminding me of all of the books and piles of legal and business documents that were scattered into the air by 9/11, when anti-civilization forces struck at the symbol of business and order.
I thought it was a great film. I can see why the OWSers might not like it, but I hope Freepers will see it before making a decision on it. Rush would be advised to keep his mouth shut until he’s seen it, too; he always hears just a bit of something, misunderstands it, and runs with it, one reason I’ve pretty much quit listening to him. Incidentally, I didn’t think it was any more violent or bloody than any other action or superhero film.
I haven't seen the new Batman yet, but Fight Club is an absolutely awesome movie.
There was a bit of tearing down society theme, but it was in the context where the character(s) advocating it was in the thralls of a complete psychological breakdown, so any agenda he had was pretty muddled.
And Bob has bitchtits.
Another theme that I thought was very important was the need to want your version to prevail more than the other party on a very deep motivational level. The need to climb out of the pit risk all in the task and really earn your freedom and success was beautiful. The winner of the fight is the guy that wants it the most and is willing to risk it all to win.
A blockbuster movie with conservative themes made here in Pittsburgh? Our local Democrat hacks will never live it down.
I especially liked:
But it was not just a shortage of financial capital that ruined Gotham: moral capital was deficient too. Gotham’s social order was based on a lie: that Batman was evil and that the crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent died as a righteous martyr. As I pointed out in my review of the other two films in the series, the Platonic (and Machiavellian) useful lie is a major theme of the trilogy, and as I expected the lie would be found to be an inadequate foundation for long-term civil order. Alfred Pennyweather, the moral voice of the story, argues that it’s time to stop suppressing the truth, that truth must in the end have its day and be allowed to speak, whatever the consequences. Commissioner Gordon, the promulgator of the lie, is wracked with guilt and indecision about the lie and longs to correct it. Eventually, Bane uses the lie against the city, depriving it of legitimacy.
"There's a storm coming."