Anyone know what Christopher Nolan's ("Dark Knight") politics are?

My husband said that the whole thing was a tribute to Bush in that a hero does what he "has to do" to protect people.

Now there are articles popping up all over the internet with that same idea that you have to be violent to deal with violence, etc.

Is Nolan a neocon?

"What Bush and Batman have in common"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121694247343482821.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE DARK KNIGHT YET!!!





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Also not noted by the Batman = Dumbass commentators: Batman arranges to destroy the surveillance equipment at the end, even though he doesn't even know at that point if he will win or not. Not quite the parallel that these idiot commentators are seeing.

I really hope Morgan Freeman comes back for Part 3, even though he said he wouldn't,for moral reasons.

I believe he's under contract for three Batman pics, as are Bale and Caine. Plus . . .





(SPOILER ALERT AGAIN!)




. . . he said he would resign only if Batman didn't destroy the surveillance equipment, but Batman told him to enter his name as the password, and then everything shorted out as Batman intended. When Fox walked away he was smiling. Clearly, his concerns were satisfied, as were mine that this was not a Gooper-themed movie.
:)

I thought so, but I just kind of brought it up to further the discussion along.

thanks for pointing all that out

Clearly, even Batman is disgusted by the blurring--and abandonment--of the law in this movie.

WSJ conservatives are able to convince people who haven't seen the movie or saw it and deliberately missed the point
that such breakdown of justice is a good thing. Nolan shows us it is not.

And when they were out riding horses during a stampede at Bush's 'ranch' in Crawford.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Miller_(comics)

Yikes! It's hard to be a fan these days of some artists and authors. The asshats have really come out of the closet.

MPK

I can't find anything on the net that would lead to any insight on Nolan's leanings. However, with the success of the movie and the themes in it I'm sure it will be a topic the next time he's interviewed.

I haven't seen it yet, and probably won't until it comes out on DVD. My Finn Friend said:

"I thought the movie was highly political.

I thought the Joker represented how America sees terrorism and fear: faceless, irrational, crazy and unpredictable. Also, I thought they had put a lot of "terrorist rhetoric" into Joker's lines, about American hypocrisy and how easily civil order can be brought down if you don't play by the rules.

Batman represented America's way of handling this terror, he's the traditional man-of-action figure who ignores the constraints of bureaucracy and just does the job while the rest of the world does a circle jerk at the UN. But when the Joker starts wreaking havoc, Batman is forced to question his ethics and bend the rules to justify the ends, kinda like America with a lot of things that's been going on after 9/11.

I guess Harvey Dent symbolized American idealism or something. The movie showed how fickle that idealism is if pushed to the limits by a faceless terror, and eventually the terror peels out the ugly side of America."


He's a solid thinker, so I value his POV. I'll make my own evaluation of the film when it comes out on DVD. Like V for Vendetta, I think it helps to understand the graphic novel, the traditions of same, and the likely attempt to make it relevant to today's conditions.

But all these elements have been an intrinsic part of the characters since the mid-80's at least. You should pick up The Dark Knight Returns if you've never read it. It's got a lot of political overtones. Watchmen as well-- if you've never read it, it may surprise you for being an incredibly smart examination of philosophical and political questions, through the admittedly odd superhero genre.

V for Vendetta is an example of a graphic novel written 25 years ago, inspired by the Thatcher government. When the film was made a couple of years ago, it was designed to incorporate the original story line, but was intended to comment on the Bush-Cheney madness.

A film can be true its original source and still be a commentary on current politics. I find it likely that the creators of this current film would want to achieve both ends.

Batman tortures one bad guy, and spies on citizens using their cell phones.

This was not a well written movie, and I doubt Nolan's personal politics had much to do with it.

The new masses of fans that love the "new" dark edginess have just discovered a Batman thats been around for over 20 years.

But I bet hacking into everybody's cell phone is a recent invention.

as cutting edge and new. If I recall, it was around '86 that I saw this Batman.


Look for Nolan's third installment to be Dark Knight Returns-like, with an aging Batman drawn out of retirement.

Can't imagine who you'd get to play Batman though. Ten years ago I would've said Clint Eastwood.

He might have the chance to play the Batman he could have played had not the biggest asshats in the Universe been writing/directing his movie.

It's actually a Batman storyline used recently:

http://en.dcdatabaseproject.com/Brother_Eye

Years passed, and Batman's memory slowly returned to him. He knew now that he could no longer trust the Justice League and embarked upon a plan of action to keep an eye on them. Using money through various Wayne Enterprises subsidiaries, Batman created Brother Eye – a semi-autonomous artificial intelligence surveillance system. Equipping it with an anti-detection stealth system, he launched the satellite into geosynchronous orbit. Through the use of Brother Eye, Batman collected a massive database of information concerning every known metahuman on Earth.

but from what I understand, he gets bad information.

It is a brilliant movie. And it is also a comic book movie, and I very much doubt that Nolan was making any kind of political statement with this movie. The only people who see anything political from this movie are political junkies like us, most people just see it as an incredible movie.

He beats the poop out of someone who makes him angry while trying to get information - yes, in the real work that's torture.

But when you say torture people are thinking of someone strapped to something having fingernails pulled off or electric shocks or waterboarding. Batman loses his temper and beats the crap out of the joker...

Pretty much I, and apparently most of the rest of the world disagree with you about it not being a well written movie. But that doesn't mean us right of course... just makes us....well, numerous I guess.

Twice, people are tortured in the movie, and both times it is to no avail.

Batman turned over the sole means of using the spy equipment to a good man he could trust (Lucius Fox) and provides him with the means to destroy the equipment immediately after it is used, which he accomplishes. Imagine Dick Cheney having the same capability and giving the keys to Dennis Kucinich.

I call BULLSHIT on the idea that this movie presents some sort of right-wing viewpoint regarding the war on terror.

95% of critics, and probably a higher percentage of the public, seem to disagree with you.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_dark_knight/

It's the fucking Batman. Leave politics in the lobby.

like all the vile shit that got thrown at lance armstrong yesterday because he appeared in a photo with mccain (mccain being a high profile cancer survivor) how dare a man whose foundation is for cancer research do that.
it seems our skin has gotten thin and we may be leaning a little bit to the side of paranoia.

It was an awesome movie. Nothing more, nothing less. But people will always dissect stuff to draw comparison.

Was an awesome movie though. Huge kudos to the director and writer. It was brilliant.

As for calling a "dark" hero movie a paean to Bush because he bends the rules to fight evil...give me a break.
Go check out Japanese pop culture, where they like their heroes nice and dark. I suppose THEY'RE worshipping
Bush, too?

Do we have to insert or look for politics in bloody everything?

No one is ruining anything for you. If hearing the opinions of others bothers you, why do you click on the thread? Put on blinders, put your fingers in your ears, and pass up threads that may alter your world view that films lack any meaning beyond entertainment.

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

The torturing did not work. Batman beat the hell out of the Joker in the Gotham City PD interrogation room. Note that the Joker merely started laughing after Batman smashed his head into the plexiglass hard enough to break it, and in the end, only delivered bad information (he switched the locations of Rachel and Dent.)

Dent pointed a gun at one of the Joker's goons, threatening to kill him if he didn't talk, but it turned out that he was a paranoid schizophrenic who was so out of it he couldn't say anything at all, and Batman had to stop Dent because he was the one that was supposed to be the face of the law.

The surveillance with cell phones did the immediate job, but left such a bad taste in everyone's mouths that Batman refused to use it himself, and asking Fox to use it for him, and built in a self destruct feature. Lucius Fox threatened to resign if the device wasn't dismantled, and eventually used the self destruct.

In the end, we see everyone struggling with decisions to act within the laws and morals of society, or to break them to achieve urgent ends. Dent chose eventually to break the laws and seek his own justice, and in the end, became a monster. Batman had always been skirting the laws, and found several times that there were consequences to doing that - he had to get in a fight with the cops, he had wannabes emulating him and causing problems, and in the end, he decided to become less of the bat - less of the monster, and become more human - by saving the Joker's life, even after all he did, and by taking the heat for Harvey Dent's crimes and agreeing to let Gotham's police pursue him as a criminal.

I think the movie was pretty good in its examination of morality - of what happens when people break laws, what happens when people decide the law isn't working and take matters into their own hands, and shows the consequences of these actions.

:shrug:

and attempt to politicize the shit their dog just took in the yard.

OMG IS MY DOG A REPUBLICAN??? HIS SHIT LOOKS LIKE AN ELEPHANT!!?!?!?

Personally I have been researching the trickster archetype all week because Ledger's Joker is a direct channeling of it.

Incidentally - the third subtitle on the wikipedia page for "trickster" is "The trickster's literary role in dismantling oppressive systems".

Why do you even bother trying to explain things to the proudly ignorant? There's a reason when someone is proud, ignorant, and proud of being ignorant.

Anyone who thinks all films are simply entertainment lacks the ability to know different. Most films are simply entertainment, but some have excellent lessons in history, politics, and human nature.

Those kind of people grow up thinking THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA is about fishing and listening to baseball. You can't educate those who are proud of being ignorant.

Newsweek interview with Christopher Nolan regarding Dark Knight:


Q. The film implies that Gotham's latest wave of psychos exist partly because of Batman, not in spite of him. His presence has unintended consequences in the same way that the U.S. presence in Iraq has consequences.
A. At the end of the first film we introduced the idea of escalation. Batman creates this extreme response to crime in Gotham—putting on a mask and jumping off rooftops. Well, what's that going to inspire from the criminals he's fighting? Batman has changed the world, but not all for the better. The use of force against an enemy is a tricky and fascinating thing to have in a story. And the film tries to make the point that everybody loses in these situations.

Q. So it's not a stretch to look at Gotham and see shades of Baghdad?
A. Well, where I suppose I would see a parallel is the threat of chaos, which is something we very much deal with in this film. And in today's world, Baghdad is a powerful illustration of that. It's frightening to imagine in one of our own cities.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/145508

Just asking.

his friends "under the bus". Harvey Dent's reputation, even in death, fared much better than Alberto Gonzalez's.

?

If you actually watch the movie, it's overwhelming message is anti-fascist and anti-vigilante

He grew up, at least partly, in Chicago, and he now lives in Los Angeles.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Miller_%28comics%29

Political stance

On January 24th, 2007, in an interview with American radio station National Public Radio, Frank Miller talked about his political views.<3><4> On the issue of the second Iraq war, he said : "Mostly I hear people say, 'Why did we attack Iraq?' for instance. Well, we're taking on an idea. Nobody questions why after Pearl Harbor we attacked Nazi Germany. It was because we were taking on a form of global fascism, we're doing the same thing now." In his view, America lacks firmness against its enemies: "It seems to me quite obvious that our country and the entire Western World is up against an existential foe that knows exactly what it wants... and we're behaving like a collapsing empire. Mighty cultures are almost never conquered, they crumble from within. And frankly, I think that a lot of Americans are acting like spoiled brats." About those being fought against, Miller said "For some reason, nobody seems to be talking about who we’re up against, and the sixth century barbarism that they actually represent. These people saw people’s heads off. They enslave women, they genitally mutilate their daughters, they do not behave by any cultural norms that are sensible to us. I’m speaking into a microphone that never could have been a product of their culture, and I’m living in a city where three thousand of my neighbors were killed by thieves of airplanes they never could have built." Miller also claimed that Iraq declared war on the U.S..

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That's why they call it "acting", even.

Sheesh.

Not an actor.

Ledger's creative vision of the Joker may not be reflective of who he was as a person beyond a profoundly gifted and dedicated actor, but I think that the stories you choose to write and how you choose to present them does say something about you as a person.

So why try?

I agree with your post. It would be amusing if not so tragic that some people not only never think of film as art, but try to brownshirt anyone who does appreciate the art contained in a film.

Film can be entertaining and good art. Why some resent those who look for the art is anyone's guess.

I've found that it's usually in my best interest to separate the art from the artist-- otherwise, the baggage that the artists brings with him via his own personal venue of opinions and perceptions becomes just as dramatic as the work itself, and may at times even overshadow the work he's created.

Really, who gives a fuck? IT'S A MOVIE!

AND YES I AM SHOUTING.

:D

Amen to that. I tip my glass of Jameson's to you.