In retrospect maybe decades of saturation in American cowboy and superhero fiction - in which solo vigilantes (fed up with incompetence and malice of public servants) work outside of government or the law to single handedly restore order - weren’t such a good idea…
I think about this alot.
Telling a good story about a competent organization is hard. I can’t necessarily think of an example from TV or movies (police procedurals, maybe?); and from books, Kim Stanley Robinson is one of the few authors who tells of a possibly positive future…
“I thought that it had serious and worrying implications for the future if millions of adults were queueing up to see Batman movies. Because that kind of infantilisation – that urge towards simpler times, simpler realities – that can very often be a precursor to fascism.” -Alan Moore
The problem is they were written in a time when the Police were on the take and crime was sky high and you could buy an automatic Thompson in a hardware store…they are a snapshot of crime fighting before the war…
The evolution is Nolan’s Batman is from the French Connection not Untouchables.
