I just saw The Dark Knight Rises (as in the start time of the movie was just over three four hours ago) and many thoughts are bouncing through my head. I reserve the right to augment/amend my commentary at a later date. Two warnings before I start:

1. There will be spoilers. Stop reading right now if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want it spoiled.

2. If you are the sort of person who prefers not to think about movies too much, or is the sort of person to respond to any negative criticism with something like “Jeez, it’s just a movie!!!” you should stop reading now, too, because you’ll only waste your time. I recommend that you instead check out the blog “Indifferent Cats in Amateur Porn” (NSFW, obviously.)

If you are still reading, I will assume that you have read the above disclaimers, and that you not only are interested in what I have to say, but find it more interesting, somehow, than pictures of cats next to ordinary people’s non-airbrushed junk. So here goes:

Dear sweet Flying Spaghetti Monster, is this movie pro-fascist or what?

I should explain, lest my use of the word “fascist” send you into a tizzy. Certain words have been largely stripped of all meaning by modern political discourse. For example, “socialism” has some very specific economic and political meanings, but tends to mean “stuff that Obama does” to many people. People who lack an understanding of both history and irony claim that he is both socialist and fascist. The Dark Knight Rises, viewed at least one way, is just plain fascist, and I use the meaning of the term applied by Noah Brand in his article “The Dark Knight Rises is a Pro-Fascist Movie”:

Fascism is a political ideology fixated on authoritarianism, militaristic imagery and action, and the use of authoritarian force against internal and external Others who are defined as threats to the continued existence of society. Fixations on nationalism and national or racial purity and unity are also common. Fascism is a phenomenon of the political right, and has always been fanatically anti-communist, communism being what happens when the political left gets equally douchey.

In fact, I started to read Mr. Brand’s article yesterday, but I stopped when I got to the spoiler warning. As I was pondering my thoughts on the film, I read the rest of his article a moment ago, and I realized that he already said most of what I want to say, dangit. Go back to the link above and read his piece. I’ll wait.

As he says, there is a fascistic undercurrent to most superhero stories, particularly the DC brands Batman and Superman. Whereas most films downplay that, Christopher Nolan wallows in it. The Dark Knight Rises wants you to think that it is juxtaposing “anarchy” and “justice” (or “order,” perhaps), but it’s not.

A Fascist-Enforced Peace

At the start of the film, we see a Gotham that is supposedly at “peace,” thanks to “Harvey Dent’s Law,” passed in memory of Gotham’s True Hero(TM). It is quite deliberately unclear what the law allows police and prosecutors to do that they could not do before, but we know that one thousand people are behind bars with no possibility of parole. See, in the Batman universe, “tough on crime” measures never go too far, so we needn’t worry ourselves about any of these criminals.

These tough laws, however, have caused the city and its leaders to grow soft. They’re not interested in doing the dirty work anymore. It is to the point that, when Commissioner Gordon reports seeing a masked man with a small army living in the sewers plotting something big, the other cops do not believe him. Because in a city that has seen an attempt by Scarecrow to contaminate the water supply with psychoactive chemicals and multiple efforts by the Joker to blow shit up, a masked man in the sewers is just silly. It’s a necessary plot device, of course, to show us that tough cops like Gordon are always the only thing standing between peace and chaos at any second. This is why people ought to be so willing to allow an unaccountable, anonymous strongman like the Batman to fight their battles for them.

In Come the “Anarchists”

So anyway, into this wonderland of peace and order comes Bane and his team of “mercenaries” who don’t seem too concerned about getting paid. He claims to be fighting for “the people.” It is unclear exactly what that means. He is just ushering in a different sort of dictatorship, one that is actually a ruse. He claims that he wants to give “the people” the chance to take their city back, knowing full well that the whole city will blow up soon.

Shortly after Bane announces his “people’s revolution,” we see the 1% being evicted from their homes. Whether or not Christopher Nolan intended to evoke some of the early scenes in Schindler’s List is unknown, but that was the first thing I thought of. It also appeared that at least some of “the people” of Gotham became enthusiastic participants in Bane’s uprising. We see a doorman gleefully throwing out his former tenants. The only spoken lines of a “commoner” in support of this redistribution of wealth comes from Selina Kyle’s roommate. Beyond that, we mostly only see Bane’s foot soldiers.

These scenes play out like a version of the Left Behind series for the anti-Occupy Wall Street crowd. If Fox News executives got together to storyboard what they think would happen if the unwashed masses rose up, this is probably what they would come up with.

Eventually, Bane’s story plays out like a tribute to a 99-percenter gone wrong. He succeeded where Bruce Wayne will fail, the guy in the prison tells us, because Bane was born into struggle, pain, and misery. Bruce Wayne was born into privilege. It takes Bruce Wayne getting mad, a la Rocky 3, for him to be able to escape the prison and defeat Bane. I really can’t tell if we are supposed to feel some empathy for Bane–his pre-murderous sociopath story has all the right dramatic elements, but for the murderous sociopath part. The same goes for Miranda Tate, who I just knew had to be a bad guy, because there would have been no reason to cast an actress like Marion Cotillard for what was gearing up to be a complete throwaway character.

Side Note on “Sustainable Energy”

It took less than five minutes to turn Wayne Enterprises’ “sustainable energy” technology into a four-megaton bomb. A bomb that, through simple radiological decay, will explode in five weeks (or month, I forget.) This is Star Trek-level science here, but I doubt anyone missed the point that sustainable energy is bad in this universe. I’m willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt that maybe the whole film isn’t just chum to the Fox News crowd, but this bit was laying it on pretty thick.

Cops Versus Crooks, with Not a Civilian in Sight

The final battle showdown, of course, involves a giant wall of blue-uniformed cops, which can serve as a symbol of justice just as easily as it can serve as a symbol of fascist oppression, facing off against the literally unwashed masses. This is the police state versus the caricature of the common people. There are almost no “common people” in The Dark Knight Rises, though. As near as I can remember, that doorman and Selina Kyle’s roommate are the only people we see, post-Bane takeover, that aren’t cops, Bane thugs, or Wayne Enterprises executives. The city is completely devoid of “the people” that are supposed to be rising up. Where are the 12 million people under mortal threat, who are supposedly Bane’s beneficiaries? Maybe they all stayed at home out of fear. There did not appear to be a Bane-enforced curfew, considering how Gordon, Blake, and other cops were able to move around the city with impunity.

Plot Holes and Unnecessary Characters

I came away from the movie thinking it was very well-made and well-acted, with much better pacing than 2008’s The Dark Knight. I’m sure there are ginormous plot holes and logical gaps in Bane’s master plan, but they won’t come into focus for me until a year from now, when HBO starts showing The Dark Knight Rises around the clock and I end up watching it twenty or more times.

Honestly, I thought the best part of the movie was Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle (and not because of the catsuit.) Her character had the biggest arc, from desperate criminal to somewhat-unwilling protagonist. She was never explicitly identified as Catwoman, which I liked. She was just a badass thief whose goggles happen to look like cat ears. Two observations about the character, though: First, she needs to do something about her hair while she’s burgling. She is certain to lose a few stray hairs here and there, and I’m sure police using Harvey Dent’s Law could track down her DNA in no time. Second, every single scene with Selina Kyle could have been cut from the movie and it would not have affected the main plot.

Why the Hell Does Scarecrow Keep Coming Back?

Wasn’t he insane at the end of Batman Begins? I assume he was among the thousand people let out of prison, but seriously.

The Rules of a Trilogy

Final note: this movie followed the “trilogy rules” laid down in Scream 3 to a T. To review:

Trilogies are all about going back to the beginning and discovering something that wasn’t true from the get-go. Godfather, Jedi, all revealed something that we thought was true that wasn’t true. So if it is a trilogy you are dealing with, here are some super trilogy rules. One: you’ve got a killer who’s gonna be superhuman. Stabbing him won’t work. Shooting him won’t work. Basically, in the third one, you’ve gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up. Number two: anyone, including the main character, can die. This means you, Sid. I’m sorry. It’s the final chapter. It could be fucking Reservoir Dogs by the time this thing is through. Number three: the past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest! Any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you.

1. “Killer who’s gonna be superhuman”: Check.

2. “Anyone, including the main character, can die”: Assuming Alfred was really in Florence at the end of the movie, and not having some fevered hallucination, they avoided this one, but the whole rest of the world thinks Batman is dead. Check.

3. “The past is not at rest”: The work of Ra’s Al Ghul was almost completed. Check.

In Conclusion

This was not only a disturbingly fascist movie, it was disquietingly scornful towards the less-privileged among us. Whether this was intentional or not, it was troubling.

If you have read this far, and still feel compelled to leave a comment to the effect of “OMG chill out, it’s just a movie!” please take a fork, hold it in your non-dominant hand, and insert it roughly 1/4 to 3/8″ into the back of your dominant hand. By the time you have tended to that, the urge to waste my time and yours with such an inane comment ought to have passed. If you leave such a comment anyway, I will do everything in my power to see that you are known throughout the internet by the nickname Predictable Pete.

Photo credit: ‘Batman (truck)’ by Wikibofh [CC BY-SA 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons.