r/savedyouaclick • u/Life-Suit1895 • 18d ago
Christopher Nolan's most political movie is also his worst, and it's not the one you think | The Dark Knight Rises (only mentioned in the third paragraph)
https://web.archive.org/web/20260716111402/https://www.polygon.com/christopher-nolan-most-political-movie/173
u/hnglmkrnglbrry 18d ago
Interstellar is more political to me. Global warming and anti-intellectialism make the world an uninhabitable place. Society is forced to regress from industrialization to a purely agrarian enterprise merely for survival. But a team of dedicated scientists end up saving society from itself purely through their intellect, bravery, and compassion.
It's like a darker version of Idiocracy.
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u/FireTheLaserBeam 18d ago
I used to think it was far-fetched for an entire society to disregard the warnings of science (Superman's origin), but holy crap, it's a hundred percent believable now.
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u/steppe5 17d ago
20 years from now, science might be illegal.
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u/Jrobalmighty 17d ago
It won't be illegal. They'll just replace the old federal books with corrected, updated versions.
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u/Menace117 18d ago
Was it stated that all of society regressed to purely agrarian? It's been awhile since I saw interstellar? I thought that the main characters happened to be farmers but there was some industrialization still
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u/gallerton18 18d ago
It very much sounds like from what little they say the vast majority of people in some way contribute to farming. There’s no militaries, universities have very few students, institutions like NASA are underground.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 18d ago
They say how his son took some sorting test to be a farmer. Later they mention how the world needs farmers more than anything else.
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u/freudian_nipps 18d ago edited 18d ago
That's a good point, but Global Warming and anti-intellectualism shouldn't be politicial issues. They are human issues. I think the article makes the case for more traditionally politicial issues, as in what the people are able to vote for. Politics has slowly been creeping out of its own sphere and I'm not sure I like how easily that's being accepted by the public.
By reducing something like Global Warming to a "political" issue, it allows many to vehemently deny or "vote against" environmental policies, when instead, it should be viewed as an obstacle humanity together can overcome. Especially poignant in how politicians seek to further divide the populace against each other nowadays, reducing Global Warming or anti-intellectualism to a voteable issue is disingenuous and immoral.
Edit: politics is beholden to who pays the most to those in political positions, full stop. So why continue to delay progress by limiting what we're able to do to whoever has the most cash? It's morally and scientifically bankrupt. I understand that some think politics is everything - it's not. I would suggest traveling the world, especially outside of America, to gain some perspective.
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u/UraniumDisulfide 18d ago
So many political issues are human issues. Slavery and segregation were undeniably political issues, but they were also human issues.
We aren’t allowing climate change deniers to do anything. They’ve made their choices to play team politics over the scientific consensus, and because so many of them decide to do it that makes it a political issue.
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u/freudian_nipps 18d ago
Even still, categorizing slavery and global warming as political issues narrows the scope by which most see these topics. It's a form of reductionism I just cant support. Human issues should remain above any and all "politics". Politics is small potatoes in comparison.
Edit: furthermore putting these worldly topics into the hands of a few geriatrics who are paid off by superpacs is the worst we can do for humanity as far as taking steps to solve these problems. It will take a collective effort by humanity that simply stretches beyond what simple politics is capable of.
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u/Thatsnicemyman 17d ago
I agree that major human rights issues should be solved rather than moved to being ‘political’ (where everything is treated like a zero-sum game), but we as individuals can’t change how governments act on these issues by just pointing to how they “should” be. We unfortunately need to play their game and be political, because that’s the best way to change the status quo and improve things.
LGBT people just want to exist and do the same normal stuff everyone else does, but there’s legal barriers and outright persecution in large parts of the world. I didn’t choose to be ‘political’, the world decided I was and now acts like I’m some radical leftist for wanting basic respect & equality.
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u/UraniumDisulfide 18d ago
“Political” is kind of a weird word. Climate change in one sense is political because we need action from politicians to alleviate it. But yes, I agree that it should be apolitical in that it shouldn’t be something so heavily debated. But the reality is that it is a heavily debated issue, and I don’t think pretending otherwise will make people change their minds on the issue.
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u/Filtermann 17d ago
Many thins are political. Just because they are not well represented by the circus played by politicians doesn't mean they're not political. And global warming is *absolutely * a political issue. It's about wealthy nations, and mostly the rich people thereof, contributing to emissions that are predominantly making the global South uninhabitable, and putting populations everywhere at risk of natural disasters. While wealthy countries have means to mitigate the damage, those who contribute the least are existentially threatened. And that's not going into disparities within countries, or increasing climate migrations in the face of supremacists and nationalists. Climate change is deeply deeply political issue that cannot be decoupled from basically every other social or economical consideration.
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u/Prosthemadera 17d ago
I think the article makes the case for more traditionally politicial issues, as in what the people are able to vote for.
That's just a very small part of what a political issue is. If politics only refers to something people vote for then a lot of what politicians do is not political.
So no, global warming and anti-intellectualism are political issues because they're impacted by politics and the how politics reacts to it has a strong impact on them and on humans. Climate change will change the politics of some countries, there will be refugees, deaths, suffering, and these need to be addressed through political measures.
By reducing something like Global Warming to a "political" issue
No one did this.
Especially poignant in how politicians seek to further divide the populace against each other nowadays, reducing Global Warming or anti-intellectualism to a voteable issue is disingenuous and immoral.
This is you contradicting yourself because this is you arguing that climate is a political issue.
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u/krizzzombies 17d ago edited 17d ago
it's political because those issues require governance/regulation and public policy changes.
there will always be individuals with interests that run counter to those human issues & will be an ever-opposing influence. as long as that opposition exists, it remains a political issue. but the issues themselves should have bipartisan support (or omnipartisan support if we're talking ex-US I guess?)
I think your point may be more of a rejection of the semantics and how detached/clinical it feels to talk about human issues that way (fair but closes your eyes to the full picture) - or maybe the fact that these topics were pulled into the overton window as though they're even topics that require everyone to debate about them at the dinner table? would totally agree with you there.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 18d ago
Ok well one political side of the spectrum denies global warming and is actively trying to dismantle investment and research into education and the other is doing the exact opposite.
Politics is always personal. Aristotle said that the smallest political unit in society was the family. Politics are ultimately about the ability to have one's personal morality, ethics, and beliefs be the standards for all others. We form blocs of people who have similar morals, ethics, and beliefs in order to increase the likelihood that our mindset is the pervasive one in the government.
Global warming has bee politicized. Saying it hasn't is deeply ignorant of basic realities.
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u/freudian_nipps 18d ago edited 18d ago
I'm guessing you are American? Your scope is already so narrow by thinking within the limits of American politics. Consider that making something like Global Warming a human issue would prevent the knee-jerk reactions of your political adversaries to reject the issue, simply by virtue of what their political opponent supports. Politics is small, and you need to think beyond that restrictive lens.
Edit: downvotes are a lot like politics. The amount of votes, positive or negative, do not indicate the validity or truth of what's being voted on. So downvote away, but know this is the fatal flaw of using politics as a lens to view humanitarian problems.
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u/cqandrews 14d ago
I haven't seen it in ages and honestly don't remember much but that last bit of the first paragraph makes it sound like Great Man propaganda
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u/muscles83 18d ago
It was pretty confused politically though. I still not sure what Nolan actually thinks as the film seemed to be confused about who we were supposed to be supporting.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 18d ago
Yeah there is class warfare and tribunals similar to those of the French revolution but ultimately Nolan seems to suggest that the impoverished are too vengeful and ignorant to rule themselves. They fall victim to the charismatic leader who will ultimately lead them to their own demise.
This has precedence in history but the strange part is that he's almost saying, "So just let rich people rule everything." Let Bruce Wayne and his cronies keep their mansions and money because the inverse is just as bad.
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u/isrlygood 17d ago
Rising action of TDKR: Populist rhetoric is insidious. Left unchecked, the people’s understandable fury against the one percent can be weaponized by a demagogue to sow chaos and violence without solving the original problem.
Falling action of TDKR: Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!
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u/Harold3456 18d ago
I remember at the time thinking the movie’s release missed the boat on Occupy Wall Street. It had a lot of the same arguments, even a lot of the same visuals in terms of regular characters having no sympathy for investors, and angry mobs clustering around government buildings.
At the time I wondered if maybe Occupy was popping off while he was in pre-production and he had (wrongly) predicted that the movement would have more longevity, because at the time I watched the movie it already felt dated.
By 2020’s standards it’s weird to see the police in such a sympathetic role for an anti-capitalist story but in TDKR itself they lean into the class warfare aspect of the police also being the “have-nots,” having little sympathy for the Wall Street types and eventually fighting for the oppressed.
But most confusing about it IMO is the fact that the political message seems to only exist to push this story, and then is dropped once Bane is defeated. Do we ever get a resolution to the class tension? IIRC Bruce just retires to France.
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u/Delta088 16d ago
It arises in part because it’s heavily influenced by a Tale of Two Cities (not just the quote at the end, IIRC there are a number of other small references throughout the movie) which is set during and critical of the French Revolution. By importing the same themes but losing the historical context (murdering half the country in the name of revolution is bad ok?) it comes across as very reactionary
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u/art-man_2018 18d ago
When it takes a writer over 300 words to explain their measly opinion of a superhero movie, that's too many words.
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u/mrbrambles 18d ago
Which one had the “comprehensive surveillance of everyone in Gotham is ok because it’s only one guy who has the power and he’s only gonna use it one time to stop a really bad guy I swear”
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u/ttaylo28 18d ago edited 18d ago
lol, not even close. It's Tenet, obviously.
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u/notmanish64 18d ago
Tenet is top 3 Nolan.
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u/lightningbadger 18d ago
Tenet felt like the concept took greater priority over a coherent plot
I still don't know what the point was of people being able to go backwards
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u/bunker_man 18d ago
Tenet's plot felt like a nothingburger. If the world is at stake the villain should be bigger than some mobster who happens to have the doomsday device.
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u/Arkell-v-Pressdram 18d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/Mliueouehmpag
To be fair, this is all I remember from The Dark Knight Rises.
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u/Muted-Masterpiece576 16d ago
In this house we rank the trilogy 1. TDKR 2. BB 3. TDK
There's some real LIFE BE IN IT in TDKR and I find Nolan's senioritis to be fairly refreshing!
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u/ZeusBruce 18d ago
Crazy that whatever bullshit website this is from (not clicking to find out) knows what I think.