Movie Monday: Dark Knight Rises to Film Near Occupy Wall Street Site
October 31st, 2011
The New York Times reports:
“He is a tycoon, but he is also a crusader for justice: Bruce Wayne is coming to Wall Street, and how the 99 percent will receive him is the latest worry facing a beleaguered Lower Manhattan.
In just over a week, “The Dark Knight Rises” — a film featuring a fictional 1 percenter, Mr. Wayne, and his superhero alter ego, Batman — is scheduled to begin filming on Wall Street, only two blocks from Zuccotti Park, which the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been using as their home base for the last month.
The film’s producers have told city officials that they want to shoot during the last weekend of October and the first weekend of November, and that would inject a new element of chaos into a neighborhood already unsettled by the protests and the attendant security, gawkers and news media.
The stakes in having the shooting go smoothly are high for both Warner Brothers, the film’s studio, and New York, a metropolis often associated with Batman’s Gotham City. The studio has millions of dollars and months of planning invested in the film, which is being directed by Christopher Nolan, stars Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway, and is expected to be one of the blockbusters of next summer.
The crew has already shot scenes in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and India, among other places, and is hoping to wrap up shooting in Lower Manhattan and other parts of the New York area by Nov. 11.”
Here’s hoping that filming goes smoothly so we can all enjoy the third installment of Christopher Nolan’s superb offering of the Batman story, an offering that has so far given us pause to ask some very serious and important questions: What is justice? Who enforces it? Is society worth saving, or beyond repair? Can a few determined people make a difference in a corrupt world? (Even if they have to be “rebels” and stand against a corrupt order?)
