The script was finished before OWS sprang up and principle photography ended in November 2011, when OWS became really popular. There's no evidence that this is an Anti-OWS film, which is hilarious because Bane finished what the Joker started: he created anarchy within Gotham, something OWS is not about.

Those are some pretty fast aging kids, then.

Yeah, the aging kids annoyed me too, but it's a minor continuity goof in the big scheme of things. I ignore it whenever I re-watch TDK.

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"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --

I'm not entirely sure that's true.

It could be more than a year. Gotham is still plenty corrupt at the start of TDK: only "certain" cops would respond to that mob bank robbery, Dent railing at Gordon about some of the members of his MCU and Gordon's reply that he doesn't have a lot of options, etc. "A year ago" could simply be when Harvey Dent was elected...or at least had made enough headway in the DA's office to matter.

As for what the Joker was doing in all that time until he made his Big Entrance in TDK I have no idea. Maybe it just took him that long until he got enough of a handle on the mob? IIRC he didn't really become the major threat until he started taking them over. Still dangerous, but not "terrorize the city" level.

He may have been gathering support for his various ventures to terrorize Gotham.

Yeah, Gordon and Batman's dialogue in the bank vault indicated that Joker had pulled other jobs/stunts in the past year. They were low-level enough to continue making the mob their main priority -- much to everyone's eventual regret.

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"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --

I'm also sure he was outlining his plans as well: the robbery, how to get Batman to unmask himself, starting to wonder how he'd corrupt Gotham's White Knight, etc.

It's not what OWS is about, but it pretty closely matches the strawman OWS myths constructed by conservative groups that had a vested interest in discrediting it. And while it may not have been anti-OWS specifically, it does show an inherent distrust of progressive and social justice groups, which were being attacked with a lot of the same strawmen before OWS showed up.

The writers may not have consciously thought "I'm going to write a Batman screenplay with a lot of anti-OWS imagery", but that's what they ended up doing. Whenever you write a narrative of any kind, your biases and preconceptions will color that narrative.

If you write a story about OWS, you aren't going to depict all of its supporters as criminals unless a) you specifically set out to do that, or b) you have a reflexive distrust of that type of political movement.

You're joking, right? You really think what we saw was a progressive movement in action in response to Bane's rhetoric? It was anarchy.

You either didn't bother reading my post, or you really aren't getting it. What we saw was a common strawman of progressive movements used by those movements' opponents. The fact that real progressive movements are not like that is irrelevant.

If you saw a movie where every black character was depicted as lazy, shiftless, and criminal, would you claim the movie is not racist because real black people do not act like that?

One little problem with your argument. The movie was filmed before the OWS protest movements were created.

How can TDKS be criticizing a movement that didn't even exist when the movie was written and filmed?

Because, as I said in the post you just quoted, those same strawmen are used against all sorts of progressive and social justice movements. OWS did not spring fully formed from the Hudson River. There was a lot of grumbling about the rich making their money off the misery of everyone else for years before OWS became a thing. Do you think nobody complained about bankers giving themselves six or seven figure bonuses the same year the US government had to bail them out to keep them solvent until after Nolan finished filming? That anger was there for years. People were angry about that before Nolan even started on the screenplay.

It's called anti-OWS because the Occupy movement has become a convenient shorthand. It's generally become a symbol of all of the non-Tea-Party-affiliated discontent over the past few years. The movement itself didn't exist when filming was finished, but the ideas and the attitudes that resulted in Occupy were very real and existed well before filming started. It doesn't vilify the movement because at the time it hadn't started. But it does vilify the attitudes that resulted in Occupy. And that's why I call it anti-OWS.

You're an idiot.

Why is he an idiot?

Aly, I think calling him an idiot is going a bit far. He believes the writers and producers were inherently biased against social justice groups in the way they depicted Bane's takeover.

Now I don't agree with him or with Fima, but I can understand his logic. I just think it's a stretch to insist the movie was smearing OWS and similar movements when the case in point was that Gotham was taken over by an army of criminals. Not "poor people put in jail for minor crimes by an unfair justice system". Actual career criminals, an army of organized crime thugs and capos and such who had been denied parole under the Dent Act. Honestly I think in-movie it was pretty clear that Bane was making a mockery of such groups, stealing its rhetoric and instigating class warfare simply to torment the city until the reactor went kaboom.

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”A Radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

American Conservatism is about the exercise of personal responsibility without state interference in the lives of the citizenry..... unless, of course, it involves using the bludgeon of state power to suppress things Conservatives do not like.

Moderator of SDN, Former Spacebattles Super-Mod, Veteran Chatnik

Opponents of OWS and similar movements do not view members of these movements as poor people being unfairly treated by the system. If you watched coverage of the protests on, for instance, Fox News, protesters were often depicted as being dangerous criminals, violent subversives, terrorists, and Soviet-style communists (when they weren't being depicted as lazy entitled kids). The actions of Bane and his army match up very closely to images and narratives that were deliberately constructed in an attempt to demonize liberal social justice movements like OWS.

So apparently the novelization states that the Joker, the sole remaining inmate at Arkham, disappeared after the chaos of Banes's five months (IIRC).

So how well is John Blake going to be able to cope if the Joker is actually back on the streets?

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The Christian fundies don't like Muslim Anti Zionism and the Arab nationalists resent the Israeli presence in the Occupied Territories because no one likes to see someone else beat the living shyte out of one's red headed step sibling.

"I am General Grevious, and I am NOT a sock puppet!"

Wait, Arkham was a big empty prison that only held the Joker?

Or was the Joker the only one Bane didn't let out?

According to IGN, from the novel:



http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/26/ ... ises-novel

"Here" is Blackgate. Nothing about him escaping when Bane took control.

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-A.L.
"Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence...Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." - Calvin Coolidge

"If you're falling off a cliff you may as well try to fly, you've got nothing to lose." - John Sheridan (Babylon 5)

"Sometimes you got to roll the hard six." - William Adama (Battlestar Galactica)

Saw it last weekend. I liked it overall, and found it a better movie than TDK altough Batman Begins will remain my favorite by far. Good villain although and nice twist at the end.

Things that I learned in this movie is that missiles fly really slow, and that when running straight towards hostile militia with machine guns, its best to be in a large, closely packed group so the bad guys aim for ground*.


*This was a real anticlimax. When Bane blows up half of NY, holding millions hostage and trapping most of the NYPD in the sewers, I was like "wow". Then you expect a full blown street war when the cops escape, but instead we get a lame skirmish that's even tame compared with some real life riots or football hooligans.

Because Bane believes true despair happens when hope is in the mix. He said this when he takes Bruce to the pit.

"I learned that there can be no true despair without hope. So as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls."

Was there any reason why Bane had a particular hatred for Batman/Bruce Wayne? I didn't really understand his motivation why Batman deserved such punishment.

He betrayed the League of Shadows.

"But we are initiated, aren’t we, Bruce? The League of Shadows. And you betrayed us..."

And he killed Talia's dad.I would think she had the hate for him and Bane was carrying out her revenge plan while pushing forward his ideological position. And Bruce blew up their base. With god only knows how many years worth of trainees and members. I wouldn't be surprised if they never quite recovered.

Which begs the question of why the fuck these people were ready to die when their charge is an endless watch.

That was bothering me, too.

It's possible any traditionalist voices were killed when Bruce destroyed their HQ or were purged when Talia took over.

Keep in mind, Talia personified Ra's warnings from the first film, about learning to control your rage and desire for vengeance lest it consume you. She cared less for the League and more about avenging her father.

If that meant dying -- and using a nuke as the League's final statement -- then she may have been fine with that.

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"...When you're down and out, and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout, 'WHO DO YOU HAVE TO F*** TO GET A BREAK IN THIS TOWN?!"

-- Max Bialystock, The Producers: The Musical --