Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is capitalist propaganda

[Magus]

Yeah, I know the Patriot Act is horribly abused by law enforcement. The movie points out warrantless wiretapping can be abused. What more do you want? It's Batman, he does that shit all the time in the comics without any reference at all to the abuses of the Patriot Act. He just does it because he's Batman. So for Nolan to put that in there kind of made me think he wanted me to think about the facets of the current socio-political issues surrounding the Patriot Act.

In the new movie, there is a new controversial law called the Dent Act that increases the ability of the state's ability to incarcerate people for longer time periods, institute mandatory minimum sentences for more and more minor crimes, etc. Sound familiar? Like a current socio-political issue, perhaps?

[Krylo]

If they had wanted to show the wiretapping as a negative they would have made it not work somehow, say via Joker outsmarting it, and played up the invasion of privacy angle more with more people's conversations being overheard and more scenes of it showing people in private moments when looking over the wall of the city.

Or they could have left out such a contrivance in its entirety.

They presented the negative talking points used by civil rights activists just enough to then dismiss them by having the very person making those points decide to use the tool regardless of all the power and invasion of privacy inherit in it.

It's a pretty clear message that even though this is entirely breaking all these civil liberties it's still necessary to stop these horrible villains and totally works.

When in the real world such measures don't actually work as it's far too much data to sift through, generally they lead to entrapment schemes, and are unnecessary to stop anything, where competent less invasive procedures have been shown to work better across the world.

[Krylo]

It was a completely excellent movie, that doesn't mean it's not problematic in some areas.

As Greed was saying the other night, it's totally okay to enjoy problematic things so long as you recognize what is problematic about them.

[Magus]

If they had wanted to show the wiretapping as a negative they would have made it not work somehow, say via Joker outsmarting it, and played up the invasion of privacy angle more with more people's conversations being overheard and more scenes of it showing people in private moments when looking over the wall of the city.

For it not to work would be unrealistic. It can work. But at what cost, is the question? Hell, Lucius actually says "but at what cost?", now that I think about it.

Now I'm kind of hating the movie for being particularly unsubtle about this point.

But anyway, the Joker does in a way outsmart them. They spend all that time tracking him down, saving the people on the ferry, etc. and then he subverts it by revealing that his real plan was to turn Dent into a murderous vigilante. That this does more damage to the image of the city government than anything else. So in a sense they do pervert their moral base for naught as far as that goes.

Or they could have left out such a contrivance in its entirety.

True, but I guess they wanted that super-cool CGI sonar thing in the movie, despite how it working making little sense.

They presented the negative talking points used by civil rights activists just enough to then dismiss them by having the very person making those points decide to use the tool regardless of all the power and invasion of privacy inherit in it.

Like I said, that was why Bruce thought Lucius would be the best candidate to wield that power. I suppose this brings up the "benevolent dictator" issue, of course. This is referenced earlier in the film when they are talking about Julius Caesar, where Dent and Dawes argue about how much power one man should wield.

It's a pretty clear message that even though this is entirely breaking all these civil liberties it's still necessary to stop these horrible villains and totally works.

When in the real world such measures don't actually work as it's far too much data to sift through, generally they lead to entrapment schemes, and are unnecessary to stop anything, where competent less invasive procedures have been shown to work better across the world.

I could argue some minor nitpicks about it not being necessary or not working, but I want to look at your main point, that this is the clear message, and I don't think it is. Or if it is it is not as simplistic as you are making it out to be. I think it's more a mistake in execution than a clear message that "Patriot Act is totally great, George W. Bush is totally great" like people dismiss it as, since in the context of the rest of the movie this does not seem to be the case at all.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, The Dark Knight is problematic. No argument there. I probably forgive its flaws (some fundamental) both due to being a massive Batman fan and a massive Chris Nolan fan. So I do try to ignore the imperfections to an extent. But my main issues is it is presented as being particularly black-white/good-bad in a thread about a black-white/good-bad video game when it's definitely more nuanced than that.

[Magus]

Actually let's just blame this all on David S. Goyer, since that was the original point made, that David S. Goyer designed the villain of this game and also co-wrote the script to The Dark Knight, where I presume he foisted in this contrived subplot with the wiretapping machine. As you pointed out, it could have been left out entirely.

David S. Goyer was also responsible for pretty much all of Begins (much more than the Dark Knight, from what I understand, which had a lot more of Nolan in its actual script/plot), including entirely contradictory things like, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you." Even though he basically is responsible for the train crashing in the first place in that he tells Gordon to go blow up the train tracks ahead of it. He also murders a crap-ton of ninjas, though I guess he wasn't fully Batman at the time or whatever excuse we want to make for that part of it.

[Bells]

It's also a movie, and there is only so much time you have to explore certain things... the whole bat-tapping (?) is problematic sure, but it would be less so if they showed that Batman was responsible enough to deal with that such power... the Justice League cartoon did that.



Batman can handle it, the Nolan Movies just don't really do much to establish batman as a Long Career super hero.

[Magus]

Well, I don't want to dismiss people's concerns with it with a simplistic, "He's Batman, so it's okay", myself.

Though I could totally make that point. I mean, he is Batman, after all. Batman. Why wouldn't you make him President For Life?

But no, there are definitely fascistic aspects to Batman's nature that are troubling. But there are also philanthropic aspects, too. He fights crime as a vigilante who feels government is corrupt and useless, and takes the law into his own hands. So that's fascistic. But he believes his foes can be rehabilitated, that everyone, no matter how seemingly vile, has some basic worth to society.

Except probably the Joker, I guess. And any of the criminals who aren't clinically insane. At least he stops at being an executioner, though arguably for his own mental benefit, since he doesn't want to go down that path or he'll never be able to stop.

What I'm saying is that Batman can be a nuanced, interesting character, or he can simplistically propagandistic. It all depends on the execution of the portrayal. I thought Nolan's take was better than a lot of things that have been done with him, ala Frank Miller for example.

EDIT: Also this thread has been thoroughly derailed by all this Bat-talk so maybe a mod would be kind enough to copy-paste all the Batman posts and make a "Let's Talk About Batman" thread or something. I apologize for contributing to the intense Batmanity of this thread.

[Locke cole]

Because there's only so far you can go in politics with a well-placed batarang.

[Magus]

Originally Posted by Locke cole

Because there's only so far you can go in politics with a well-placed batarang.

That's funny, because I was on Youtube the other day and was watching the episode of Justice League entitled, "A Better World" which involves a parallel Earth where Superman murders President Lex Luthor (it's implied that Luthor was the worst president of all time and was about to start World War III) and he and Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the Justice League create a police-state dystopia to eradicate all evil.

In the comments someone put something like, "Superman is way better than Batman because he can kill people. Look, he just straight up kills Luthor here. No fuss no muss." And I was like, "Well, Batman would have just used Waynetech voting machines to rig the election in the first place so Luthor never won at all."

So he could easily do that himself to become president. Chilling! He's like a fictional Koch brother or something. Everyone on fictional Earth is entirely at the mercy of Batman's good nature holding out.

[Locke cole]

"Superman is way better than Batman because he can kill people. Look, he just straight up kills Luthor here. No fuss no muss."

Pfffahahaha.