Only film critics have seen The Dark Knight Rises. Everybody who’s making the Bane/Bain connection, from random Internet meme-wizards to popular entertainment personality Rush Limbaugh, is basing the theory that the connection stings Romney on the fact that the two words are homonyms.
But – SPOILERS – it looks like Bane is actually a dark joke on left-wing idealism and rancid populism. Nick Pinkerton, reviewing the film for the Houston Press, gives away some plot details.
For the [director/co-writers] Nolans, it is characters who voice seemingly utopian goals such as “restoring balance to the world” of whom the most is to be feared. And while The Dark Knight’s climax hinged on finding faith in the common man’s decency, upon witnessing the goings-on in Occupied Gotham, it is impossible to imagine this revolution accomplishing anything decent — the citizen’s tribunal kangaroo court, a fantastic production design flourish by Nathan Crowley, is Reign of Terror by way of Kafka, while a parody of the Bastille is played out before Blackgate Penitentiary.If anything, that sounds Burkean. If it’s an Occupy parody it’s quite astute. The hardcore Occupy movement is/was about replacing the current capitalist system with a new, fair-share society. The Occupy camps in the hearts of cities were designed to prove that, with food, libraries, art, and micro-governance. Here’s another clue. As David Sirota points out, the third writer on TDKR is David S. Goyer, a multi-platform action writer who worked on the first two movies and wrote the new Call of Duty game. The villain of that game is Raul Menendez, a narco-terrorist who becomes a sort of populist figure for left-wingers. In the game trailer, we briefly see a magazine cover that asks whether Menendez is a “Messiah for the 99%.”
I’m starting to imagine conservatives turning around and embracing the new Batman movie in, oh, 48 hours.
