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There is no doubt that the film poses finance capital as a problem that will be solved by the return of a re-personalised capital, with 'the enlightened despot' Bruce taking on the role of the dead Thomas. It is equally clear, as we've already seen, that Batman Begins is unable to envisage an alter…

Wayne's language is not that of renewal-through-destruction (and here Schumpterian capitalism and fascism, in most other respects entirely opposed, find themselves in sympathy) but of philanthropic meliorism.

Nolan's revisiting of Batman is not a re-invention but a reclaiming of the myth, a grand syncresis that draws upon the whole history of the character.

the sentimentality it can never extirpate

Batman has contributed more than its fair share to the "darkness" that hangs over contemporary culture like a picturesque pall. "Dark" designates both a highly marketable aesthetic style and an ethical, or rather anti-ethical, stance, a kind of designer nihilism whose chief theoretical propositio…