6 Movies With Political Agendas You Didn't Notice

#6. The Dark Knight – Batman Kidnaps Foreign Citizens (Just Like the CIA)

The Scene:

It’s a subplot that largely gets forgotten in a movie that winds up being all about the Joker. At the beginning, a guy named Lau, the accountant of all the mobsters in Gotham City, flies to Hong Kong to hide their money. Lt. Gordon really needs to interrogate Lau, but obviously Asia is a little outside his jurisdiction. No problem: His pal the Batman simply flies over to China, grabs the accountant from his highly protected office and escapes back to Gotham by reverse-parachuting up into an airplane. It’s kind of awesome.

Above: The audience’s expression during this scene.

The Intended Point:

We’ve mentioned before that The Dark Knight is an allegory for everything about the War on Terror, and this sequence is undoubtedly the most transparent attempt by Christopher Nolan to draw a parallel between Batman and George Bush (OK, maybe it’s second after the “We have to tap every citizen’s phone for their own safety” thing). Swooping into Hong Kong and dragging Lau back to Gotham to be interrogated is supposed to mimic the CIA’s controversial policy of forcibly extraditing citizens from foreign countries and dropping them at Guantanamo, while dressed like bats.

How It Messes Up the Plot:

Some of you are already thinking, “What? Where the hell are you getting this Bush stuff from? Why can’t it just be a cool scene?” But stop and think about how the whole sequence sticks out like a sore thumb. First, how often do you even see Batman leaving Gotham, in any film incarnation? This is Batman, not Mission: Impossible. Spectacular globetrotting raid missions isn’t what Batman does.

Somebody get CBS on the horn!

But more importantly, taking Batman out of the country creates a bunch of weird inconsistencies. For example, to set up the whole thing, there’s a scene where Gordon and Harvey Dent talk about how Batman could retrieve Lau from Hong Kong since he’s “under no one’s jurisdiction” (and the Joker says pretty much the same thing to the mobsters). But why would they even assume that Batman has the resources to pull that off? They don’t know he’s a billionaire.

Think about the strings that would have to get pulled, not just to perform that elaborate kidnapping under the noses of all of this guy’s armed guards (in his own building, in his home country), but to then get out of the country after. We’re talking about escaping who knows how many police waiting on the ground at every nearby airport and/or all of the jet fighters that Hong Kong would use to intercept the slow-flying plane that just took one of their citizens hostage. It’s the kind of operation that very few governments could pull off, yet Dent and Gordon are saying, “Yeah, our local costumed vigilante could do it for us.”

This also means that you have to think of a very convincing alibi for Bruce Wayne — by the way, “He absconded with the entire Russian ballet” isn’t one, because there’s an entire Russian ballet that knows it isn’t true.

“Bruce is the old British dude, right?”

And it wouldn’t have been hard for somebody to figure it out after the fact. Lau disappeared right after meeting with a Wayne Enterprises employee (Morgan Freeman), who traveled across the world for basically no reason. Did no one think that was weird?

The point to all of this is, why does the movie introduce all of those complications? If you just wanted that cool skyscraper/plane scene, couldn’t the accountant have escaped to Denver or Metropolis or something? No, they wanted to insert that whole bit about how justice trumps those petty rules about “jurisdiction” and “the sovereignty of other countries.” Besides, cutting it would mean that Nolan would have been left with just the other 19 allusions to the War on Terror in the movie, and we can’t have that.

#5. Ghostbusters – If You Give the Federal Government Too Much Power, Ghosts!

The Scene:

After successfully busting ghosts all over New York City, and while attempting to prevent the summoning of an ancient Sumerian god, the Ghostbusters are visited by Environmental Protection Agency representative Walter Peck (aka “Dickless”) who demands that they immediately shut off the nuclear-powered ghost containment unit in their basement.

“And this, random man off the street, is our wildly illegal nuclear battery.”

Despite the protests from both the Busters and the mechanic Peck brought along to do his dirty work, the unit is shut down, releasing hundreds of ghosts into the city all at once.

The Intended Point:

So, the plot point was “ghosts escape and wreak havoc.” But why did it have to be due to the EPA? Why couldn’t it have been due to, say, some wacky accident? Or some super strong ghost breaking containment? Or one of the two possessed characters turning off the machine under the influence of the giant demon dogs? Because this was the Reagan ’80s, and so the villain had to be a weasely dickless government bureaucrat, to shoehorn in some point about how, damn it, the EPA just shouldn’t stick its nose into private enterprises.

Honestly, how are entrepreneurs expected to prevent the coming of destructive deities with the federal government imposing all of these oppressive regulations on their businesses?

“If you cut me, do I not bleed money?”

How It Messes Up the Plot:

Wait a second. Why is that scene in the movie at all?

Remember all those ghosts we just mentioned being released, causing havoc across the city? If you do, then congratulations on having a better memory than the writers of this movie, because no one ever busts these ghosts. After the authorities let the Ghostbusters free, they charge off to rescue Sigourney Weaver from the aforementioned Sumerian god, Gozer. They succeed, cover the EPA douchebag with ectoplasmic marshmallow goo …

Boiling to death in molten sugar is a fair penalty for diligence.

… and call it a day, driving off while dramatic music plays, leaving the city in the grips of a rampaging army of pissed-off supernatural beings.

“Thus solving the problem forever!”

Once you realize that they never deal with the ghosts, it’s painfully obvious that this scene has no real purpose in the movie. Its only connection to the plot are the two seconds where we see the possessed Rick Moranis sort of staying behind — the Ghostbusters lose track of him and he goes off and releases Gozer, but that could have easily happened without forcing the EPA into the story to make a point, especially since they weren’t exactly keeping a tight leash on Moranis on the first place.

Also, why would a machine designed to contain ghosts use nuclear power? Remember, that’s what brings the EPA to the Ghostbusters’ doorstep: They were operating a nuclear device in the middle of New York City and apparently didn’t even bother to get the necessary permits. But hey, at least we got some great one-liners out of the whole situation.

Read more here:  http://www.cracked.com/article_19923_6-movies-with-political-agendas-you-didnt-notice.html