[Despanan]

You guys are idiots.

Fascist apologism? What do you want? it's Batman. Batman is a fascist idea (Well, not necessarily fascist, but definitely conservative and authoritarian.)

Spoilers Below:

You can't judge the movie as fascist apologism because the story had to play out in a certain way. Batman had to be good. Bane had to be bad. Bane had to want to destroy everyone in order to fulfill the league of shadows plotline established in the first movie and tie the three together. Batman had to win, and as much as I would've loved it Batman couldn't actually die. As Nolan was tapping into the Zeitgeist, Bane had to be a populist pseudo-revolutionary. There is literally no other plotline you could've chosen, given the structure and themes of the first two movies and the source material.

Hell, if I'd written it I would've gone with that plotline. I would only have deviated on a few key details.

But fascist? No. If this movie was fascist it would have ended with a restoration of the previous social order: Batman would've stood truiphant over Gotham City, as their rightful protector.

That's not what happened. Batman lashed the bomb to his batwing, flew out over the water and vanished in a nuclear explosion.

Bruce Wayne was reported dead. His property was donated to the city to be use as an orphanage, and batman's arsenal was passed to Robin a working class former orphan.

The thesis of the movie was that the rich need to give up their priviledge, they need to move their property into the public sector and they need to put working-class Americans in charge of the nation. outdated institutions need to be reformed, and per Robin's moment on the bridge, police (and by implication, the military) need to question their orders and when appropriate disobey them.

Nolan isn't a fascist he's a liberal. He's an oldschool democrat.

Honestly, it's silly to expect him to be a revolutionary. He's old. He's part of the establishment. He is the 1% and his career is based around making movies to please an enrich the 1%.

Lucky for us he is a true artist as well. He understands the zeitgeist, and has done his damnedest to understand and sympathize with revolutionaries...but he's just too old, too priviledged, and too established to see eye to eye with us.

OF COURSE he only understands revolutionaries in the context of the French and Russian revolution. Of course he only understands anarchism as chaos. He's from a generation that only understands anarchy as something punkrockers say to sound edgy, and only understands communists as stalinists who want to blow everything up.

TDKR is a massively important movie. It is a brilliant reflection of the times we live in, through the eyes of the generation before us. The generation that is currently in power. I don't think that it would've been possible for the movie to be this relevant without someone like Nolan at the helm, and frankly I'm glad he was. Bane wouldn't have been nearly as successful a villain as he was without Nolan doing his damnedest to see through our eyes.

Now if only the movie hadn't been so insidiously sexist and racist.

But seriously, this is probably the least fascist Batman has ever been, with the exception of when he was an anarchist in Red Son.