The long-awaited Dark Knight Rises may be a film with a socially conscious theme, but it is not based on the rise of the OccupyWallStreet movement (OWS).
“You really think this is going to last? There’s a storm coming Mr. Wayne,” Selina Kyle tells Bruce Wayne in the Rises trailer.
“You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”
Although veteran director Christopher Nolan acknowledged certain parallels between the movie and OWS’s message about the 99%, he emphasized that Rises was conceptualized over three years ago, long before the birth of the movement.
According to Nolan, A Tale Of Two Cities – the classic novel by Charles Dickens published more than 150 years ago – is the true source of inspiration for Rises.
As ComicBook’s Scott Johnson notes, there does seem to be a “great deal of correlation” between Rises and a Tale of Two Cities.
“Gotham City clearly appears to be a city where ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’ Scenes from the second trailer that show Bruce Wayne in some type of prison also could be seen as a parallel to Charles Darnay’s imprisonment in A Tale Of Two Cities,” Johnson explained.
“Like Darnay, Wayne has a virtuous nature, but his wealth makes him a target to the wrath of revolution… [Clearly], the Dark Knight Rises [likely] owes a lot of inspiration to A Tale Of Two Cities, as Nolan suggests.”
