Occupy movement is alive and well on big screen

Batman villain Bane (Tom Hardy) brings the fight directly to Wall Street in 'The Dark Knight Rises.'Ron Phillips, Warner Bros. PicturesAs the one-year anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement approaches Sept. 17, the former sites of nationwide protests are mostly silent. Entertainment One via AP
Robert Pattinson plays a financier who must navigate his limousine through mobs of protesters in 'Cosmopolis,' opening Friday.
Entertainment One via AP
Robert Pattinson plays a financier who must navigate his limousine through mobs of protesters in 'Cosmopolis,' opening Friday.
But in movie theaters, the voices of the 99-percenters are just starting to get loud.Last month, the ultimate occupier, Bane, led his forces against the Gotham City elite in The Dark Knight Rises— taking over the stock exchange. On Friday, Cosmopolis hits theaters, with Robert Pattinson as a financier whose limousine navigates through mobs of angry protesters.And on Sept. 14, Arbitrage opens, with Richard Gere playing a crooked billionaire trying to complete the sale of his trading empire with cooked books.The messages may be a little tardy, but filmmakers say the sentiments still resonate. "There's usually a bit of a time lag," says Cosmopolis director David Cronenberg. "But the desire to be topical and press a few buttons is always there. Filmmakers are always looking for a source of energy."Christian Bale, who plays wealthy industrialist Bruce Wayne (and Batman) in The Dark Knight Rises, was amazed that the Christopher and Jonathan Nolan-written script actually had foreseen the protest that exploded a few New York blocks from where they were shooting."By the time we were finished, it was like, 'How did you know?' " Bale said at a news conference in June. "It had become very topical."Likewise, Cosmopolis, adapted from Don DeLillo's prescient 2003 novel of the same name. When protests started on Wall Street eight years later, Cronenberg was shooting remarkably similar scenes at a Canadian sound studio."It was the weirdest coincidence and a bit spooky," Cronenberg says.The crowds in the film vandalize Pattinson's limo, brandish a dead rat and cause mayhem. But like the real occupiers, the Cosmopolis protests fizzle by movie's end."I have no doubt that people are still as outraged about the things as they were a year ago," Cronenberg says. "But there's only so much energy you can generate for something like that."That energy also can be directed at Abitrage's Gere, who represents the 1% poster boy to the dissatisfied."We are all frustrated by what happened to our economy," says director Nicholas Jarecki. "People want to know: Why did everything have to go down the drain? We tried to humanize this story."Even teenage dance movies got the protest bug this summer. The Step Up franchise became Step Up Revolution, and beautiful protesters busted some anti-rich dance moves to stop a greedy Miami developer. Their weapon: a dance flash mob at an investors meeting."People have a sense of helplessness. With the economy, it's a scary time," says producer Jennifer Gibgot, explaining the rad plot. "People want to feel control, like the power is back to the people."For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.
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