For instance, when Boromir stands up to lecture the council about how Gondor keeps their lands safe, instead of staying in a close up, it cuts to a wide shot of the entire council with him towering above them all in frame, visualizing his prideful, holier-than-thou energy as he speaks down to them?

This is just one of many genius framings in this sequence, and in the next few minutes, I’ll go shot-by-shot, analyzing the entire scene, showing you subtle details you might not have noticed.

Let’s get started!

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We begin with this establishing shot of the council in Rivendell. At first it might not seem like a lot’s going on here, but I assure you there’s a wealth of information being communicated, whether you register it or not.

One of the first things I notice are these leaves falling through the air—an element that’s present throughout the entire sequence. They seem to be coming from this huge tree they sit under, with leaves that are turning from green to yellow, as if its the middle of autumn. Look at these trees in the left hand side of the frame, too, featuring these bright red leaves, which, again, give off Autumn energy.

What are the filmmakers trying to communicate here?

In The Filmmaker’s Eye, a book about cinematography, Gustavo Mercado writes,

“Beyond providing a geographical context, establishing shots can also express other narratively meaningful information.. A helpful strategy to showcase locations in ways that can visualize these additional meanings is to approach them not merely as places, but as characters with distinct ‘personalities.’”

What is the personality of this setting, then?

It’s beautiful and majestic, yes, but there’s also a sense that this place is dying thanks to the falling leaves and Autumn colors. Reinforcing this feeling is this structure in the middle of frame that the designers left in ruins.

Adding to all this, we hear Elrond saying, “Strangers from distant lands, friends of old…”

Themes of age, and dying, saturate this scene already, whether we register it or not.

But although the hour is late, golden light still illuminates the council, giving a sense of hope and significance to it. The personality of this setting, then, seems like one of an old hero who, despite facing an overwhelming foe, smiles because they still have a trick or two up their sleeve.

We cut to this medium close-up of Elrond featuring a subtle dolly-out movement. This scene is full of medium close-ups, close-ups, and extreme close-ups, which you’ll see as we keep going. Part of this is just Peter Jackson’s style, but these shots also add an enormous amount of dramatic tension to the scene, and the film! I mean, watching Hugo Weaving say “The Ring was made in the fires of Mount Doom. Only there can it be unmade,” while the camera dollies into the pores on his face is as suspenseful as it gets.

So these tight framings add a visual exclamation point to certain moments, and help us understand how serious all of this really is.

Next we cut to this long shot of the council. This is also what’s called a group shot in cinematography. In The Filmmaker’s Eye, Gustavo Mercado talks about how, when used at the beginning of a scene, group shots function to establish where everybody is situated within a space. They’re also used to suggest relationship dynamics between characters. Gustavo writes,

“Character connections in these shots are often communicated through blocking and body language.”

This is evidenced by Boromir here. Take a look at his body language—while everybody else is sitting up at attention, he’s slouched in his chair, communicating his pride, and rebel personality.

All the different “factions” sit together as well. Elves are on the left, dwarves are in the middle, and men are on the right, communicating a certain coldness each faction feels towards the other.

This circular seating arrangement also ties into the ring, I feel. Throughout the scene, we see how the ring bends the minds of these characters until they’re all fighting with each other. Could this circular arrangement be subtly communicating this corruptive influence? Let me know in the comments what you think.

After a handful of medium close-ups of Legolas, Aragorn, Boromir, and Elrond, we get this Over-The-Shoulder shot of Elrond asking Frodo to bring forth the ring.

Take a look at the framing. Elrond towers over Frodo here, and Gandalf hogs the entire left section of the shot, while Frodo is crammed into the far right side of the frame. I feel it makes Frodo seem small and insignificant compared to the titans of this great council. This is actually very important, since it’s Frodo, the one everyone forgets about, who volunteers to take the ring to Mordor.

This feeling of Frodo’s insignificance continues in the following 9-second shot, featuring a slow pan of him approaching the center table.

This long-shot, which is simply a shot that shows characters from head-to-toe, really accentuates Frodo’s small stature, since it visually juxtaposes him against the elves. The message seems to be that Frodo is way out of his league.

This long shot also highlights the reactions of the characters behind Frodo, like Gimli and this other dwarf who lean in when Frodo places the ring on the table. This wide framing helps communicate a lust for the ring that the members of the council feel, a lust further accentuated by the circular arrangement of the chairs that bends inwards towards the center table on the edges of the frame, giving the ring a magnetic quality.

But this slow pan also accomplishes another objective.

In The Filmmaker’s Eye, Gustavo Mercado writes, “Showing a character moving in space with a continuous pan shot instead of using a number of shots edited together can add a sense of anticipation and tension in the minds of the audience, because a lack of cuts would immediately make the scene stand out from the rest of the conventionally edited narrative.”

So, this 9-second pan shot is working to add tension to the scene as well. Peter Jackson could’ve cut to character’s faces while Frodo walked towards the table to show their reactions, for instance, but he didn’t.

We then cut to a close-up of the ring while the camera slowly zooms into it, and following that, we get a dolly in shot on Boromir as he says, “So it is true.”

This slow zoom here on the ring, again, seems to visualize its magnetic quality. It’s further emphasized by the dolly in shots that follow on Legolas, Gimli, and Boromir as they look at the ring. These dolly-in shots, intercut with a slow zoom in on the ring, visualize a lust and desire for this power that they feel. This zoom shot makes the ring occupy more and more space on screen, just like it’s occupying more and more space in their minds.

In the midst of all this, we get a shot of Aragorn without a dolly-in movement as he looks at the reaction of the council, communicating his incorruptible heart.

Not once in this whole scene is it insinuated that Aragorn feels any desire for the ring via camera movement or blocking. He’s also one of the only people in the scene who doesn’t stand up while everyone else starts fighting, communicating his humility and maturity.

After Boromir says “it is a gift,” he stands up, and the camera stays low, looking up at him in a medium close-up. I’ve mentioned this before, but low angles are typically used to communicate a character feeling powerful. In this case, it makes Boromir feel prideful, like he knows better than everybody else, like he feels a certain authority over the council.

This low framing is not used for close-up shots involving Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn, or Elrond. It’s only Boromir who gets this low angle treatment, making me feel like this was intentional.

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Let’s skip ahead to the moment Gimli tries to chop the ring in half.

After Gimli says “then what are we waiting for,” there’s a shot I really love. Elrond, in a medium-close up, jolts himself up as Gimli approaches the ring. The camera follows his face, with a violent tilting movement. I highlight this because so far the camera movement in this scene has been slow, featuring smooth dolly-in shots and pans. This quick jerking of the camera breaks that trend, and communicates that something unsettling is about to happen.

As Gimli strikes the ring, we get four shots edited in quick succession. The first is this extreme close up of the ring. The second is this shot of Sauron’s Eye. Then we get two close-ups on Frodo’s face with rapid dolly-in movement.

The quick editing and extreme close-ups communicate that Frodo feels a sharp pain, and is more connected to the ring than he thought. The genius is that this “jump scare” makes us feel Frodo’s pain as the audience, since we jump out of our seats with him.

It’s weird because they actually used two versions of the same shot of Frodo’s reaction back-to-back. Why? Let me know what you think in the comments.

After this, as Elrond tells Gimli the ring can’t be destroyed by any craft they here possess, the camera slowly dollies into his face until we can see the pores in his skin. Peter Jackson LOVES his close-ups, but I don’t think we’ve gotten this close to Elrond’s face yet, which gives this moment extra weight.

It fits, because this is when the most horrific information comes. They can’t destroy the ring themselves, they can’t use it, and they MUST go to Mordor to get rid of it.

That’s as intense as it gets.

Then we cut to an extreme close-up of the ring that matches this forward movement with a slow camera zoom, until the ring almost occupies the entire frame.

This shot gives the sense that, like the ring dominating the frame, it’s now dominating the destiny of everyone in this council.

As Elrond transitions into talking about the trip they must take to Mordor, the camera slowly dollies out from his face, until he says, “One of you must do this.” It kind of gives the sense that we’re now “zooming out” and looking at the bigger picture.

Then we cut to basically the same exact shot we got in the beginning of the scene—this long shot of the council sitting together. This shot, for me, is so important. It feels like that awkward moment when the teacher asks the class a question and nobody wants to answer it. The message being sent with this shot is, nobody wants to do this, which is so important because it gives Frodo’s volunteering much more weight later on.

Peter Jackson had to establish that not a soul on this council wanted this burden, and he does it, visually, with one 3-second shot.

After Boromir does his “one does not simply walk into Mordor” thing, Gimli, Legolas, and Boromir stand up and start yelling at each other. We then cut to this wide long-shot of the council from behind these stone beams. In film school I learned that filmmakers sometimes use vertical elements cutting across frame like this to convey a sense of division amongst characters on screen. Peter Jackson could’ve decided to cut to this shot from earlier, or this one, or even this one, but no, they chose this specific framing from behind these stone beams. It leads me to believe this was done on purpose to convey this exact sentiment.

Another shot I love in this sequence is this low-angle shot of the Elves on one side, and the dwarves on the other. What’s cool is it was shot with a wide-angle lens, which distorts how things look. One way it does this is by introducing what’s called a barrel distortion at the edges of the frame. Barrel distortion is an optical defect where straight lines near the edges of the frame bow outward, making the image look bloated or curved like a barrel. You can see it a little in the stone tower's arch on the right side of the shot here, which looks significantly wider than the arch just a few feet to the left of it.

It also makes Legolas and the elves here look substantially taller. That’s because another thing wide-angle lenses do is make objects in the foreground appear significantly larger, stretched, and exaggerated compared to the background.

This barrel distortion is actually mimicked in the following close-up of the ring, which, if you look closely, features the exact same framing of the shot we just spoke of, with Legolas on the left and Gimli on the right. The reflection in the ring itself has a more pronounced barrel distortion, visually linking it with the shot we just talked about.

The objective of these distorted shots is obvious—to visualize the way the ring is warping the minds of the council, making them not act like themselves.

Heightening the chaos of this moment are these crowded shots framed with telephoto lenses. Telephoto lenses are just lenses with a long focal length that magnify distant subjects, and narrow the field of vision. What results are messy, chaotic compositions as Peter Jackson stuffs more and more people in frame. As audience members, we feel lost in the chaos.

Frodo stands up suddenly, and the camera tilts with him violently as he does so. It resembles the shot of Elrond we talked about before when Gimli struck the ring, and has a similar effect. It’s jarring us from the spell the film’s put us under, and acts as a visual wake-up call.

After Frodo says “I will take it,” we cut to this medium shot of Boromir arguing with Gandalf from Frodo’s perspective. A medium shot simply means a composition that shows characters from the waste up. This is noticeably wider framing than this shot we got seconds ago of Gandalf and Boromir fighting. It seems the crammed framing Jackson utilized in the previous shots to communicate chaos starts to transition into wider, less intense ones, communicating that the storm has passed.

This trend continues with a long-shot of Frodo approaching the council. The shot highlights his small stature, which I feel puts an exclamation point on the enormity of his sacrifice. He is the smallest of them, and yet has the most heroic heart of them all. This shot tells the entire story of Lord of the Rings. Everyone is turned away from Frodo in frame, highlighting how it is sometimes those who folks think nothing of that do the unimaginable.

We cut to this close-up on Gandalf’s face, as we see a rush of emotions race across his face—from surprise, to fear, to being proud of Frodo. It’s the visual encapsulation of what he said to Frodo earlier in the film,

“My dear Frodo! Hobbits really are amazing creatures... You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you.”

I know there’s more to this scene, but that’s really all I have to say about it. I don’t want to give you fluff for fluff’s sake.

What did you notice in this sequence? Let me know in the comments below. And if you liked this breakdown, consider subscribing to my channel. I publish new film analysis like this every week. Thanks so much for watching, I’ll see you next time!

Master and Commander is simply one of the best films of the 21st century. It is a tour de force in cinematography, acting, practical effects, and immersion. I was completely transported to 1805, and felt like part of the crew of the HMS Surprise for 2 hours.

In the following days, though, what I thought about most was its philosophy.

Master and Commander seems to have two warring philosophies, represented by it’s two main characters: Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen. These include conflicts between authority and rebellion, the supernatural and scientific, and even big picture thinking vs. microscopic thinking.

But at its core, this film is really about pride.

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The film is subtitled ‘The Far Side of the World,’ which is perfect because the film is about the danger of ambition and pride. The danger of straying too far from humility, and how that can lead you into dangerous waters.

At the end of the film, Jack tells the crew, “their greed will be their downfall,” talking about the Acheron’s greed to take the Surprise. It’s this same greed he had to take the Acheron that made him chase it into rough waters, though, leading to the death of William Warley.

In fact, before the Surprise’s mast falls into the sea, the ship’s carpenter tells Jack "I'll not vouch for this mast, sir. Not around the Horn."

What’s ironic is the crew blames Hollom for what happens to Warley, but it’s really Jack’s fault for not heeding the carpenter’s warnings, and steering into rough seas nonetheless.

Which brings us to the fine line between leadership and pride. Within the first 20 minutes of the movie, we get a great glimpse at who Jack is as a commander. He tells his officers after the Acheron attack that “the simple fact is we were soundly beaten,” showing humility and a clear-eyed view of the situation. But then when it’s implied The Surprise is a vastly inferior ship to the Acheron, Jack calls his ship a “good bird” and says she’s in her prime.

He then tells everyone they aren’t going home, and will refit at sea, a decision that his officials seem to disagree with.

So Jack’s clear-eyed, humble, and also optimistic. It’s this optimism that brings out the best in his men, and you could say this is what leaders do—they show people a different way forward, one they couldn’t imagine, or believe was possible. Optimism and good leadership are intimately connected, but where it gets fascinating is how optimism can easily veer into pride. For instance, did Jack want to refit at sea and continue hunting the Acheron because he was optimistic, or because he wanted revenge?

Did he continue sailing into the Horn because he was confident about his ship’s ability to do it, or because he was too obsessed with capturing the Acheron?

It’s hard to tell the difference between pride and optimism—because both of them present as wanting to reach just a little farther to accomplish something.

It’s interesting, because the Acheron is called a “phantom ship” a lot in the film, and the filmmakers accentuate this by deliberately not showing the Acheron—or any of it’s crew—up close until the end of the movie. Some of the shots of Jack looking through his telescope at the Acheron are haunting, like this one of the Acheron seemingly rising out of the ocean like a bat out of hell.

The more Jack chases the Acheron, this phantom ship, the more it slips through his fingers. Could this be a metaphor for how chasing things in pride never ends the way we want? How the perfect outcome we’re imagining is nothing but an illusion in the end?

What’s interesting is, we actually see this same theme about pride show up in Doctor Stephen’s arc. For one, the insects he studies that blend into their environment are called phasmids, which is based on the ancient greek word phasma, meaning ghost, apparition, or phantom.

But he also chases this flightless bird with reckless abandon, which becomes the object of his obsession since the first time he lays eyes on it. Like Jack crossing oceans pursuing the Acheron, Stephen treks across 10 miles of terrain to find this bird, dragging his companions along with him. When he sees it at the top of this hill, the style of the film shifts, incorporating shaky camera and unstable close-ups with Stephen frequently bobbing in and out of frame as he climbs after the bird. This moment feels visceral—like something’s wrong. I can’t help but draw parallels between this moment and this shot of Jack looking through his telescope at the Acheron with greed.

And like Jack chasing the Acheron, Stephen doesn’t catch his bird.

What’s cool is, it’s only when Jack stops chasing the Acheron that they actually capture it. It’s the ceasing of the chase, the giving up of prideful pursuits, that leads to the completion of the mission.

And Stephen has a similar journey. He must give up all the specimens he collected in order to get back to the Surprise and tell Jack of the Acheron’s location. It’s the halting of Stephen’s selfish pursuits—like Jack’s—that leads them to victory, too.

It’s here we arrive at God.

God is a huge presence in this film, from the Jonah storyline to this old guy spouting off bible verses to the saying of the Lord’s Prayer at the end of the film. Speaking of the Acheron, the old guy says, “The devil’s at the wheel of that their phantom ship, you better hold fast.” Later, another crew member speaking about Jack says, “I’d reckon he’d follow him to the gates of hell if he had to.”

It also seems that certain events are directly tied to God’s judgement somehow. Like how, as Stephen and Jack talk after Warley dies, a thunderstorm rages above them, almost like God is angry with Jack. Or how “Lucky Jack” runs into an extraordinary bit of bad luck as the wind dies completely, leaving his crew stranded on the open ocean. It almost seems like God’s judgement for Jack’s ambition, and the breaking of his promise to Stephen to stay at the Galapagos Islands.

At one point, Blakeney asks the Doctor, “Does God make them change?” talking about the Phasmids.

The Doctor replies, “Yes, certainly. Do they change themselves as well? Now, that is the question, isn’t it?”

After the crew turns on Hollom, Jack tells Stephen that "sailors can abide a great deal, but not a Jonah.” Stephen replies, "My God, you don't believe in this yourself, surely?" to which Jack says, “Not everything is in your books, Stephen.”

It seems like Jack and the Doctor represent a clash between the spiritual and the scientific. Stephen sees the world a lot more soberly than Jack, who’s head can be in the clouds sometimes—for better or worse! Stephen’s the first to see when Jack is being led by pride more than duty, and how close he gets to becoming a tyrant instead of a Commander. Stephen brings Jack back down to earth in that regard.

Jack: Men must be governed!
Stephen: That’s the excuse of every tyrant in history from Nero to Bonaparte!

But Jack is an incredibly charismatic character, too. Multiple times he brings the Surprise right up on the back of the Acheron, despite his officers not believing their ship has a chance.

It seems Jack is capable of making the impossible, possible, which creates this aura around him that the crew can feel.

This is the reason we love Jack in the first place. He does things that nobody can imagine, and inspires his crew to do the same. While Stephen lives closer to the ground, Jack lives in the clouds. Like the music they play together that’s incomplete when playing alone, they need each other.

I feel this ties into pride, and God, and authority in clever ways.

One of the big differences between Jack and Stephen are their views on authority. Jack is obviously a huge proponent of authority, saying that men must be governed, and that hard work and discipline are the only thing keeping their wooden world together. Stephen literally says he’s “opposed to authority. It is an egg of misery and oppression.”

At Dinner, when Jack talks about the great Lord Nelson, Stephen says, “Well it seems he would be the exception to the rule that authority corrupts.”

God, if you believe in that sort of thing, is the greatest authority that exists. And forgetting that leads to pride, which “goeth before destruction,” as Stephen says to Jack in the actual script.

Stephen: ..Chasing this larger, faster ship, with its long guns, is beginning to smack of pride ‘which goeth before destruction’?

God’s presence seems deeply embedded in this film, and things seem to break Jack’s way when he remembers God’s influence. After Hollom commits suicide, they have a ceremony for him on the boat. Jack says,

“The fact is, not all of us become the men we once hoped we might be. But we are all God’s creatures. If some of us thought ill of Mr. Hollom, or spoke ill of him, or failed him in respect of fellowship, then we ask your forgiveness.”

Earlier in the film, as the crew discuss what brought bad luck onto the ship, they blame Hollom. The creepy old man then says, “Evil comes… from him who evil thinks and evil is,” which means that people who harbor malicious thoughts bring negative consequences on themselves.

As soon as Jack asks forgiveness from God for anyone thinking ill of Hollom, the winds immediately return. They don’t return after he goes overboard, they return after they ask forgiveness from the ultimate authority—God—and let go of their evil thoughts for Hollom.

It seems the creepy old man’s quote about harboring evil thoughts, and the bad consequences that come from that, was true.

It’s also only after Jack relinquishes his obsession with the Acheron that Stephen finds it randomly, like it’s a gift from God. He sees the flightless bird on the hill, scurries up to get it, then he spots the Acheron in the water. It’s almost like God was using the bird to get him up the hill so he could see the Acheron. The reason I think that is because the shot of this flightless bird from Stephen’s perspective feels very divine, with the presence of this blinding light behind the bird here, as if God himself is calling Stephen to it.

Whether the film is trying to argue the existence of God is irrelevant, it seems. I think the film is more-so trying to make a point about pride, and is perhaps using the idea of God to make a point about not getting too carried away with it.

It really seems, at the core, that Jack and Stephen represent the classic liberal vs. conservative archetypes. When they sit to play music, Stephen’s on the left, while Jack is on the right. I don’t know whether that was intentional, but it fits. Stephen, after Nagle fails to salute Hollom, suggests stopping the crew’s grog, since he was drunk at the time. Jack then says “Stop years of privilege and tradition?” which sounds like a more conservative outlook.

Jack preaches the importance of strength and discipline to maintaining order on the ship. Stephen, on the other hand, says “I’m rather understanding of mutinies,” which makes Jack tell him “You’ve come to the wrong shop for anarchy, brother.”

People on the right could be defined as folks who value structure, tradition, and clear boundaries. People on the left could be defined as folks who value openness to new experiences, and questioning norms. Stephen, protesting leaving the Galapagos islands to early, tells Jack he would be “making discoveries that could advance our knowledge of Natural History.”

Throughout the film, I think, Stephen and Jack learn from each other. Jack, after getting an idea for his ambush from the Phasmid insects, tells Stephen “I intend to take a greater interest in the bounty of nature now.”

And Stephen, after seeing the Acheron off the coast, rushes back to the Surprise, and gives up his animal specimens, understanding the importance of the mission, and his duty.

It seems, at the core, there’s a tension between war and nature in the film. Stephen tells Jack at one point, “So after all this time in your service, I must simply content myself to form part of this belligerent expedition, hurry past wonders, bent on destruction.”

It struck me, the moment that the marine shoots the Doctor instead of the albatross on deck. This happens after Jack casts off prematurely from the Galapagos Islands in pursuit of the Acheron. It seemed to me a metaphor—a price that was paid for Jack’s singular pursuit of this ship, and war. It’s a war that’s being fought for good reason, but I feel the film is trying to say that only focusing on war and destruction can lead to the death of the more beautiful things in life. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The Doctor looking at the albatross with wonder while the marine tries to shoot it out of the sky is a perfect encapsulation of the differing worldviews we’ve been talking about.

The scenes on the Galapagos islands are beautiful, and make our hearts soar as audience members. The magnificent animals and landscapes give perspective, and make us stand in awe of what some might call God’s creation. It’s humbling. If we forget that beauty in our worldly pursuits—if we fail to value nature itself—we might kill the very thing that makes life worth living in the first place.

So you see, it’s a balance. It’s not one or the other, but an incorporation of both views that is necessary.

Master and Commander ends with the Doctor and Jack playing their music together once more. Forever in a dance, forever learning from each other, as they venture across the far side of the world.

What did you think of Master and Commander? Let me know in the comments down below. And if you liked this analysis, subscribe to my channel. I publish new film analysis videos every week. Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

For instance, how Jack’s initially framed high on the crow’s nest from low angles, emphasizing his huge ego and larger-than-life persona? Or how these initial shots have trickster energy, like Jack, with framing that makes you think he’s captaining a huge vessel, when in reality he’s simply on a small boat?

To show you what I mean, I’ll break down Jack’s introduction, shot by shot, showing you how it somehow defines every aspect of Jack Sparrow’s character in less than 90 seconds.

Let’s get started.

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We begin with one of the most epic shots in Pirates of the Caribbean—this crane shot that starts low, and climbs up the mast, until we’re positioned just over Jack’s shoulder overlooking Port Royal.

There’s so many interesting things happening here.

One of them being that this shot is a trick. Based on how it’s framed, it looks like Jack’s at the top of a big ship rather than the small dinghy we know he’s on now. That’s because the camera framing conveniently leaves all of that out, from the opening of Jack against the sky, to the closing of him overlooking Port Royal. We simply don’t see the rest of the boat.

The genius of it is, if you had to sum Jack Sparrow’s character up in one shot, this would be it. First off, Jack’s a trickster, and this shot is just one big trick. It’s literally only telling half of the story, which Jack so often does in his adventures. Second, it reflects Jack’s opinion of himself. He constantly refers to himself as Captain Jack Sparrow despite not having a ship, and him standing triumphantly at the crows nest while wind blows in his hair reflects his enormous ego.

The low camera angle this shot starts out with proves my point. Low camera angles are used for making characters seem powerful, intimidating, or larger than life. Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski wanted Jack to look legendary with this shot, and it worked.

Another important part of this shot is the vertical movement. This is what you’d call a crane shot—a type of dynamic shot where the camera moves up or down to gradually reveal a location, character, or object.

In The Filmmaker’s Eye, by Gustavo Mercado, he writes, “Due to their strong visual impact, using a crane shot to showcase an event will inevitably make a powerful narrative statement that communicates something or someone especially important is being shown. It should therefore be reserved only for those moments in your story that warrant this level of visual and dramatic underscoring.”

So the fact that Jack Sparrow’s introduction starts with a crane shot at all screams to the audience “Hey, this is an important person!”

Another thing that crane shots do is gradually reveal the full extent of a location—in this instance Port Royal. But where this initial shot ends is very important, because it foreshadows Jack’s commandeering of the Interceptor later on, which sits to the right of the frame over Jack’s shoulder.

Another important aspect of Jack’s character is that he’s always got a plan that nobody can figure out. He might look and act ridiculous, but he’s smarter than people give him credit for. This is yet another reason why this shot is so genius. It not only communicates Jack’s trickery, and ego, but his hidden plan—and we don’t even know it! The filmmakers totally decided to put the Interceptor in frame here, and make the camera settle on it as a point of interest. Jack’s head blocks out Port Royal, which would’ve made more sense to focus on if you were using this crane shot to reveal this location. No, like many aspects of this shot, this final framing is a trick as well—something you wouldn’t notice means more if you didn’t stop to look at it closely.

Thank goodness I’m here.

One final thing worth mentioning is the juxtaposition between this shot and the shot that came before it.

Before this, we got a shot of Governor Swann’s buggy that does the opposite of Jack’s intro shot. The camera moves vertically from height down to the level of the dirt road. This comes after a few desolate shots of Will—one where the door literally shuts behind him, and one where the camera pulls away from him, making him more and more lonely in frame. The final shot of Will’s scene ends on a literal ‘downer,’ only for Jack’s intro to come back with an ‘upper.’

I feel it subtly communicates Jack and Will’s opposing viewpoints. At the start of the film, Will is a law-abiding, proper citizen who follows all the rules. Jack is the complete opposite of that. He knows there are no actual rules in this world, saying to Will at one point “the only rules that really matter are these.. what a man can do and what a man can’t do.”

Perhaps Will’s ‘downer’ shot, also, is meant to communicate the oppressive nature of society’s rules, and how they hold him down, and Jack’s ‘upper’ shot is meant to show how free he feels not adhering to society’s rules.

I also think it communicates how Jack is about to come in and change Will’s life. Over the course of the movie, Will becomes more and more like a pirate, until at the end he looks just like one. This is all stuff I talked about in my other Pirates of the Caribbean philosophy video if you want to check that out. Perhaps this juxtaposition of shots connecting these two scenes are meant to show how Jack will “lift” Will to seeing things differently. How he’s coming in to shake things up, and be the chaos that Will needs to change his life.

The next shot in this sequence is a slow push-in on Jack Sparrow from the front. This shot seems pretty practical—meant to give us our first look at Jack’s face and costume from the front.

But there are some interesting things to note here.

One being that the lighting is all off here. Behind him we see the sun setting when just a second ago it was mid-day. Perhaps they did this for practical reasons to get a better-looking shot. Or perhaps they just ran out of time to get this shot—I don’t know. The thing is, the sunset behind Jack makes this shot look incredible, and the way the lighting changes in this scene makes it almost seem like we’re in Jack’s mind a little bit. Like this is more-so a representation of how he feels in this moment rather than a reflection of reality.

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Notice how Jack perfectly occupies the left vertical line here in frame, satisfying the rule of thirds that makes for dynamic-looking compositions.

This is a “push-in” shot that operates much like a “dolly” shot. In The Filmmaker’s Eye, Gustavo Mercado writes, “The dolly shot’s dynamic composition highlights the narrative importance of a subject, whether they are an object, location, or character.”

So much like the crane shot that came before, this dynamic “push in” shot is telling us that Jack Sparrow is a very important guy. These shots can also build emotional intimacy with characters, like this shot from Will’s scene at Governor Swann’s house. The camera starts as a long shot, and gradually moves in on Will’s face until it’s a medium close-up. These kinds of shots are designed to make the audience feel a connection with certain characters, and that’s what’s happening here with Jack.

The next shot is this canted composition of Jack jumping down from the crow’s nest. A canted shot just means the camera is not level with the horizon, and is tilted a few degrees to the side. This can give a sense of unease, like something abnormal or awkward is happening. Perhaps this framing is meant to foreshadow the fact that his boat’s sinking. Perhaps it’s meant to show Jack’s here to unbalance things and cause some chaos in general.

Note that this is another shot of Jack from a low-angle, making him look larger-than-life yet again. Also, the framing is still withholding information about the real size of his boat, as does the next shot, which is another tight framing, showing Jack’s boots landing in a flooded floor.

It’s only in the following wide shot of Jack in his boat that we finally understand Jack’s actually in a dinghy, and not some huge pirate ship like we’ve been led to believe. This is what’s called an extreme long-shot, which Gustavo Mercado writes in The Filmmaker’s Eye, “is often designed to underline differences in scale between a character and a location, establishing spatial relationships to them.”

This shot does just that. It pays off the previous four shots by giving us the reality of Jack’s situation. It’s showing the actual scale of his boat after tricking us into thinking it was some huge vessel via clever framing and camera movement.

After Jack tosses out a bit of water from his boat, we get this wide Subjective shot of these hanging skeletons.

A Subjective Shot is just a shot that shows events as if seen directly through a character’s eyes, with things like framing and camera movement. This shot seems like it’s from the POV of Jack, since the camera is bobbing up and down with the waves, and matches his eyeline from the previous shot.

Because of this, Subjective Shots help make viewers feel as if they’re active participants in the story.

Think back to when you FIRST saw this scene. You might’ve felt intrigued, confused, and potentially horrified at this sight. This POV shot helps us feel like we’re stumbling across it for the first time, and we genuinely don’t know what to think of it.

In The Filmmaker’s Eye, Gustavo Mercado discusses this, writing, “Since Subjective Shots often preclude the use of reaction shots to showcase a character’s emotional response, they can also generate a sense of narrative ambiguity, because audiences are not provided with specific dramatic cues to understand the full context and meaning of the events in which they are used.”

So, the trend of trickery in this scene continues because of this Subjective Shot, and how it withholds Jack’s reaction.

Jack puts his hat over his heart, and then we get two shots that visually link Jack with the hanging skeletons with both the framing and camera movement.

One is this medium shot of the skeletons, framed with a telephoto lens moving right. The other is this medium close-up of Jack, also shot with a telephoto lens moving right. Telephoto lenses magnify faraway subjects and narrow the field of view, and in this case the tight framing communicates to the audience that something important is being shown here.

The tight framing emphasizes the solemness of the moment, and the shot “matching” in general emphasizes how much Jack feels “linked” to these fallen comrades, and the pirate way of life as a whole. This is a very important part of Jack’s personality to show in his intro, too. For all his trickery, ego, and weirdness, he is deeply committed to the pirate way of life—of chasing the horizon, and freedom, and he takes living by this “code” seriously. And he respects those who live by this code just like him. One of my favorite parts of this film is when he’s on the beach with Elizabeth telling her what a ship is. He tells her, “Wherever we want to go, we go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and sails, that's what a ship needs. Not what a ship is. What a ship really is, is freedom.”

That’s the heart of Jack Sparrow that makes him more than just a funny goofball. He’s got a soul, and is deeply committed to an ideal.

After a couple shots that help establish the dock as a location, we get this iconic image of Jack sinking towards the dock with his ship completely underwater.

Take a look at these two warships in the harbor behind Jack here, along with the numerous longboats rowing out to them. These are put in frame to give depth to the shot, helping a 2-D image look more three dimensional. Take a look at this faint light that illuminates Jack here—someone on set shined that on him to make him stand out, drawing our gaze. The men in the rowboats behind him are so dark they’re almost pure silhouettes. You can see that, like before, we’re now back at sunset despite the shots preceding and following this taking place in broad daylight.

Like many other parts of this sequence, this shot is a trick, and highlights Jack’s inflated ego. At the start of the shot, he’s high in frame, positioned in front of a massive warship, taking up a LOT of space on screen. Then the camera slowly pulls back, until Jack looks like an ant in comparison, positioning him much lower on screen as he steps onto the dock.

It’s the last visual trick in a sequence that’s full of them, and puts an exclamation point on the idea that we’re never going to be on sure footing with Jack Sparrow.

It also plants this idea in our head that somehow, despite looking ridiculous, things work out for Jack. Whether it’s luck, or wit, or whatever, things work out for him. Like how he escapes being marooned on the same island twice, or how he escapes the curse of Cortés, or how he outsmarts Barbosa at the end, getting his revenge.

This introduction, via camera movement, framing, editing, writing, and a little trickery, somehow defines every aspect of Jack Sparrow’s character. It tells us all we need to know about him without a word of dialogue, and that’s why Jack Sparrow’s Introduction is absolutely genius.

What did you think of Jack Sparrow’s introduction? Let me know in the comments below. If you liked this video, consider subscribing to my channel! I make more film analysis like this every week. Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

In this video I’ll break it down shot-by-shot, examining camera angles, lens choice, and even some hidden symbolism I found that show the genius of the filmmakers behind it.

I hope you’ll discover a newfound appreciation for what I think is the best Spider-Man moment in movie history.

Let’s get started.

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We start with an epic 30-second shot. Spider-Man soars through New York City on his way to save MJ, and the camera pulls away from him until we see all of this was just a reflection in Doc Ock’s glasses. This technique makes it feel like we’re in Doc Ock’s world, making him feel like a puppet master pulling all the strings. The camera then pulls out, until a wide vista of the city is shown behind him. I feel this wide, expansive view of the city communicates that we’re in for an epic fight, that the whole city is going to be their playground this time. Last time Ock and Spidey fought on the side of one building. This time it’s going to spill out into all of New York City.

Here we get a standard two-shot, or shot that includes two characters in frame. The visual emphasis is clearly put on Spider-Man here, who’s higher than Ock in the frame, perhaps communicating his superior power at this moment in the story. Remember, Peter takes EVERYTHING Ock gives him in this fight, and it’s only because Otto creates diversions that he’s able to beat Spider-Man in the end.

Spider-Man’s superiority is reinforced again with this shot, a high-angle medium-close up on Doc Ock talking to Peter. Shooting characters from high angles like this typically communicates they’re feeling a sense of powerlessness, among other things.

As Peter jumps down at Ock, the action is framed with a longer focal length, IE the camera’s zoomed in on the main characters, which does a few things. One of them being, it gives a narrower field of vision behind the characters you’re filming. This can emphasize the speed at which characters are moving. The background moves across the frame in fewer seconds relative to the subject's large size, which tricks your brain into seeing high speed. Take this shot as a counter-example. This moment is framed with a wide angle lens from a distance. Even though Spidey and Ock are literally falling off the building at terminal velocity, their extraordinary speed isn’t emphasized with this framing. Why? Well, for one because they’re being shot at a distance, but two, because wide-angle lenses increase the field of view behind characters, so you get to see more of the background behind them. This distributes motion over a much larger visual area, causing the brain to perceive a lower speed. It’s harder to get lost, or disoriented, in the scene that way too. With this narrow field of view, it does kind of feel disorienting, and quick, which is something Director Sam Raimi emphasizes in this scene as a whole. I’ll point it out more as we go.

In this medium two-shot, Peter throws two punches at Ock, which he blocks, but then the camera cuts tighter on Otto’s face as Peter lands two punches. This tight framing emphasizes Otto’s reaction to Peter landing a few punches on him, and isn’t the last time Raimi uses tight close-ups, and zoom shots, to emphasize Octavius’ reaction to Peter getting the better of him. Like I said, Peter IS more powerful than Ock in this scene, and Raimi uses these close-ups to show him realizing that as the fight goes on.

For example, after Peter throws this metal clock hand back at Doc Ock, it lands inches from his face, and we cut to a close up to show how angry he is.

One of my favorite Ock close-ups comes in this zoom shot after Peter squeezes through the slits in this footbridge. The zoom here happens at blistering speed, highlighting Spider-Man's velocity as he flies towards Otto, but it also gives a sense that Octavius is running out of options here. Like the walls are closing in on him as the camera gets tighter and tighter on his face until his cheek is practically rubbing up against the camera glass.

Another Ock close-up comes after Spidey and Otto fall onto the train. We get this sick money shot of Spider-Man—crouched, poised, ready to go. Then we cut to Otto standing up in frame, who looks flustered, angry, and disoriented.

Otto’s reactions in this fight are crucial. We don’t get these close-ups with Spidey because, for one he’s got a mask on, but two this fight is about showing Spider-Man’s superiority and newfound resolve. We know who’s winning in the fight THROUGH Otto’s reactions, a point Sam Raimi seemed deeply aware of.

Let’s skip ahead. Ock knocks Spidey off the top of the building, and in this shot we see him falling rapidly. Remember how I talked about long focal lengths a second ago? Here’s another one of those shots zoomed in on Spidey falling from a distance. It makes his descent feel extra fast and perilous.

It’s here I want to talk about the symbolism of the action both in this moment and in this scene. Spider-Man 2 is about Peter Parker having an unbearable amount of problems thrown at him from all directions. From work, to school, to rent, to family, to the love of his life—Peter can’t catch a break. This is why Doc Ock’s inclusion as the villain of this story is so fitting, and genius. He’s literally got 4 extra arms, arms he uses to throw a lot at Peter at once, which proves too much for Spidey to handle at times. The villain’s powers reflect the personal problems that Peter deals with in Spider-Man 2.

However, Spider-Man’s powers ALSO symbolize Peter’s ability to bend, stretch, and come back stronger than ever.

For example, Peter’s just been knocked off of high ground in this moment, and is in free fall. But he uses his webs to latch on to the clock, grab the falling clock hand, and throw it back at Doc Ock. It seems like in this film particularly, Spider-Man’s fighting style is based on using opponents attacks against them, and bouncing back.

Another example is this moment when Otto throws Peter through the air from the roof of the train. Peter notices he’s about to fly into a bridge, and bends his body to fit through it, coming out the other side for a re-attack.

Another example is when Doc Ock reaches into the train to grab and toss two civilians to their death. Spidey manages to grab both of them and throw them onto a bed of webs. Spidey has a lot thrown at him in this fight, like in the movie at large, and takes all of it in stride.

Aunt May tells Peter in her famous hero speech “Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them. Cheer them. Scream their names. And years later, they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on a second longer.” Hold on a little longer, she says. Hmm, almost like the final moment of this train sequence where Peter has to hold on to the webs to stop the train. It can’t be coincidence that the actual events of this scene match so well with the film’s themes.

That’s a big reason why this fight scene is the best moment in Spider-Man 2. It’s firing on all cylinders—symbolic, cinematic, you name it.

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As Peter throws this metal clock hand at Otto, we cut to a canted shot of Octavius on the receiving end. Canted shots are created by tilting the camera laterally, producing horizons that are not level with the actual horizon. In the Filmmaker’s Eye, Gustavo Mercado writes that a canted shot communicates a sense of spatial imbalance that can suggest a character feels disoriented, anxious, and psychologically unstable. Basically, canted shots are used to showcase a character in distress, further emphasizing this ongoing visual theme that Doc Ock is not in control.

Take a look at this shot from inside the train after Ock and Peter crash onto it. There’s a concept called the Hitchcock Rule that states the size of an object or subject within a frame should be directly proportional to its narrative importance to the story at that exact moment. In this shot, the dents being made in the roof of this train are emphasized with this unusually high framing. There is some emphasis placed on the civilians inside, but their bodies are cut off by the bottom of the frame.

Moments later, we get this long shot of Otto and Peter on the roof of the train. Notice how much space Doc Ock and his arms take up in frame, both vertically and horizontally. Then, due to both the wide framing, and the camera angle favoring the side of Octavius, Spider-Man looks puny in comparison on the left side of the frame. It’s an unbalanced composition, meaning visual weight is unevenly distributed across the screen. The angle and lens choice makes Otto feel huge and threatening, and Peter like a small insect waiting to be crushed.

The next shot I want to analyze is this one of Peter and Otto fighting on the side of the train. It feels disorienting for a few reasons. For one the focal length is so high, and frame so tight, that Otto and Peter feel crammed into it. Second, this is an inverted shot, meaning it’s upside down. Third, the long focal length allows us to see the people inside the car with great detail, foreshadowing their involvement in the finale of this epic scene. It’s a shot meant to disorient the audience, and highlight the chaos of the moment.

I love this shot of Peter when he has to dodge the incoming train. It’s taken with a wide angle lens, which makes objects closer to the camera appear bigger, like Spidey’s head here, and the train on the left hand side. It also makes objects traveling toward or away from the camera look like they’re going faster, since it visually stretches the distance between the foreground and background. So this incoming train roaring past Peter not only looks huge, but feels like it’s going so much faster because of the lens choice.

A few seconds later, Otto knocks Peter off the train, and we get a 15-second sequence where Spider-Man picks himself up with his webs, gets height, and re-attacks. It’s the best representation in this fight of the film’s themes of not giving up, dusting yourself off, and holding on when things get hard.

Speaking of holding on, let’s cover the finale.

This medium group shot of Peter at the front of the train is interesting. For one, Peter has minimal headroom. Typically filmmakers will give a bit of headroom to main characters in frame, and when they don’t it signals they’re feeling trapped, or under intense psychological pressure. That fits for Peter here. It also matches with this medium-close up shot we’ll get a few seconds later, which also features little headroom for Peter.

I LOVE this shot here before Peter tries to stop the train with his foot. The low angle, paired with the tight framing of the train, along with the illusion of speed given by the dark pieces of wood flying past the camera, elevate the danger for Peter. Pay attention to how huge this train looks. It almost swallows Peter whole in frame. That’s because of the low angle and tight framing. It makes the train look like an out-of-control, emotionless juggernaut.

Let’s skip to this shot of Peter shooting his webs to stop the train. It’s shot with a wide angle, which distorts the size of things the closer to the camera they are. Notice how Peter is stuffed onto the right hand side of the frame with little to no room in front of him. This breaks the rules of thirds, for one, but also adds a sense of claustrophobia to the scene. We all know that Peter doesn’t have much time left to figure this out. The small space he’s given in this shot highlights that “back up against the wall” feeling. The wide angle lens also makes this web he shoots look extra long, foreshadowing how much he, and his webs, have to stretch to stop this train.

We then get this close-up shot of Peter as he shoots his web on the left hand side, too. This is shot with a telephoto lens from the side, which makes the background look like it’s screaming past him even faster than it is. This tight “from the side” framing is repeated a few more times in the next minute to accentuate the speed of this out-of-control car, and how much Peter’s running out of options.

After Peter launches two webs out to stop the train, we get a POV shot from the front of the train that operates like a dolly zoom shot. Dolly zoom shots are basically when you dolly in, or move towards a subject while zooming the camera out at the same time. It can create this kind of vertigo effect we see in this shot here. It can also be done the opposite way, IE zooming in while moving out. I love how this dolly zoom shot creates the sensation of slowing down rapidly—although, it’s not a true dolly zoom because the camera is connected to a train, not a dolly.

There’s a couple final things I want to talk about. As Peter holds all the webs, and tries to stop the train, Raimi employs close-ups on his face with shaky cam. So far, the camera movement has been relatively smooth and fluid. Here? It’s shakiness helps emphasize Peter trying to get this mammoth of a train to heel. Raimi also slowly moves in towards Peter’s face over many shots, from a medium long-shot, to a medium shot, to a medium close-up, up until his face practically rubs up against the glass at the very end. In filmmaking, tighter shots are used for many reasons. Like, to clue the audience in to some important detail that might come into play later, or, in this case, to get a front row view to Peter’s struggle as he stops this train.

In The Filmmaker’s Eye, Gustavo Mercado writes, “What sets close-ups apart from all other shots is its ability to give the audience intimate access to nuances of a character’s behavior or emotion.”

It can also, the book says, elicit a strong emotional connection with a character. So as Raimi gets tighter and tighter on Peter’s face here, it results in us feeling closer to him, to living this struggle, and understanding via Tobey’s performance, just how hard it is to “hold on” and be a hero.

It’s because of all these elements—camera angles, lens choice, editing, symbolism—that Spider-Man’s train fight sequence is pure cinematic magic.

What did you notice in Spider-Man 2’s train fight? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to my channel if you want more film analysis like this. I publish a new video every week. Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

For instance, how before Peter becomes Spidey, shots have more static, ordinary framing, but after he gets his powers, camera angles, movement, and lens variety change dramatically, visualizing the extraordinary nature of Peter’s powers?

To show you what I mean, we’ll break down Peter’s fight with flash, shot by shot, and compare its dynamic visuals to other moments from the film.

Let’s get started.

We’ll start with this shot of Flash storming down the hallway to confront Peter. This is what’s called a long shot, meaning it features characters shown from head to toe in frame, instead of tighter medium shots or medium close-ups. Filmmakers typically use the long shot for a variety of reasons. One of them being that it showcases the environment just as much as as the characters. Because they’re so good at showing the environment, filmmakers often use these as “establishing shots,” identifying the setting where a scene is about to take place. This long shot is especially important for this scene, since Peter and Flash’s fight is very public in nature. This fight could’ve taken place in a shady area behind the school, but it was important for Peter’s character development to fight Flash in front of other people. This long shot communicates how full the hallway is, setting up a very public showdown.

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It’s here we arrive at the famous spidey-sense shot. Peter looks up at the camera in an extreme close up framing. This looks like a macro shot shot with a macro lens, which allowed filmmakers to get very close to Tobey’s face and shoot it in incredible detail. You can see the pores of his skin.

Up until this point we haven’t seen framing like this, which rings alarm bells that something strange is happening.

You might say, “what about the scene right after Peter gets bit?”

This is a great scene, but it looks like it was shot with telephoto lenses from a distance rather than macro lenses a few inches from Tobey’s face. Both have similar feels with their tight framing and blurry backgrounds, but this macro shot of Tobey’s face features remarkable detail, keeping every pore in focus. This reflects Peter’s newfound hypersensitivity to everything in his environment—his ability to see everything that’s happening around him in ridiculous detail. This scene where Peter collapses into his bed features shots that deliberately shift in and out of focus, giving the moment a disorienting feel. This shot, however, feels like Peter just took a triple shot of espresso.

I like how blurry the background is here, too. In Peter’s transformation scene, the blurry background gave the moment a sense of disorientation, but here, it gives the moment a sense of focus.

We saw this minutes earlier when Peter saves MJ, and her lunch, from falling onto the floor. Just before she passed him, we got a close up of Peter’s face with the background completely out of focus. This shot came after a few medium close ups of Peter eating his lunch. The background behind him in these shots were more defined, even though they were also slightly out of focus. This close-up framing paired with extremely blurry background is a technique that Sam Raimi and cinematographer Don Burgess repeat over and over to showcase Peter’s spidey-sense in the film.

Moving on, the camera swishes left quickly, moves down the hall, and focuses on a paper airplane flying through the air. The tip of the airplane is in focus while, again, everything around it is blurry.

It’s here I want to pause and point out this quick camera swish. I know, it’s just a quick swish, but up until this point, the camera hasn’t moved like this much in the film. Outside of the scene where Norman becomes the Green Goblin, the only other quick swish we’ve seen so far was when Peter webbed this lunch tray minutes earlier. The camera pans quickly from left to right, reflecting the speed of the web launching out of Peter’s wrist.

It seems like Sam Raimi and Don Burgess saved these quick camera movements for when Peter started to get his powers. This increased use of dynamic, quick camera movement reflects Peter’s transformation from ordinary nerd to extraordinary superhero. So the visual language of the film evolves as Peter develops his newfound strength and speed—which was a stroke of genius from the filmmakers.

Speaking of camera movement, let’s talk about the rest of this shot.

The camera swishes and rotates around a few other subjects, like this fly buzzing close to a wall, and a spitball coming out of this straw. It’s not just these intense whip pans that are starting to get incorporated into the film’s image system, but this fluid, uncut camera movement as well that moves freely through space. We’ll see this again later when Peter climbs this wall in one of the film’s most important shots.

Finally, the camera swishes back to focus on Flash’s fist flying through the air at Peter’s head.

After the camera swish pans from Peter’s eyes to the paper airplane, it seems the shot transforms into what’s called a Subjective Shot. A Subjective Shot shows events as if seen directly through a character’s eyes. Since this is Spider-Man we’re talking about here, and his senses allow him to “see” his environment without actually looking at it, this is a very unique Subjective Shot. We’ve actually seen numerous examples of Subjective Shots so far, like this POV of Peter getting onto the bus at the start of the film. Or this shot from inside Peter’s camera as he tries to take a photo of this spider. We get another quick Subjective Shot when Peter falls onto his bed after getting bit by the radioactive spider, too.

These earlier Subjective Shots are obviously meant to replicate Peter’s own eyes, and experience, walking through the world. They replicate normal eye movement, like how this Subjective Shot on the bus pans from right to left as Peter scans his environment to find a seat.

But this Subjective Shot is meant to show Peter’s new hyper-detailed awareness of his environment—something only Spider-Man can feel. The camera’s fluid, rapid movement around this hallway makes us feel like Spider-Man, and shows us first-hand what it feels like to have these powers.

That’s the magic of Subjective Shots in general. They make the audience feel like a particular character, which helps us empathize with them dramatically. It’s also incredibly engaging, since now we feel like characters are talking, or interacting, directly with us as they look directly at the camera.

That’s why Flash’s fist coming directly at the camera here feels more intense. It feels like it’s coming directly at US, the audience. Now we feel like we’re in the fight, not just watching it.

These Subjective Shots are genius and a big reason why Spider-Man works as a film. It makes sense for his character, too. I mean, Spider-Man is a superhero that audiences connect with more because he feels like one of us. He feels like a normal guy who just so happens to have extraordinary powers. His life is filled with our kinds of struggles, like paying bills, getting bullied, and being socially awkward.

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It seems Sam Raimi really understood that about the character, and placed these Subjective Shots into the film to accentuate the audience’s identification with Spider-Man.

This next shot is only on screen for 1 second but it’s doing something clever. So this medium close-up looks like it was filmed with a wide-angle lens, which distorts images in interesting ways. For example, objects close to the lens appear disproportionately large while things farther away shrink quickly. You can see this effect solely in how Peter’s head looks huge at first, but shrinks rapidly as he dodges Flash’s fist. Also, near the edges of the frame, straight lines can bow outward—an effect called barrel distortion. You can kind of see that with the lines of the lockers here. They’re bowing a little bit, right? They’re not perfectly straight. Where this is relevant for this shot in particular is the speeding fist that comes into frame right here. Since wide-angle lenses distort the size of objects, making things closer to the lens appear bigger than they actually are, Flash’s fist and arm here look huge compared to Peter’s dodging head. It also magnifies the size of this dent in the lockers near the left hand side of the frame, too, exaggerating Flash’s power and increasing the danger in the scene.

We then get what’s called a two-shot, or a shot that features two characters in the same frame. The framing is something like a medium close-up, which normally shows characters from the shoulders to the top of the head. Since Joe Manganiello is 6’5” in real life, compared to Tobey Maguire’s 5’8” he dominates the shot with this tight framing. In fact, Tobey almost disappears out of the frame because he’s so short. Also, the angle of this shot is tilted slightly upward towards Flash, which is typically used to give characters a sense of power in the frame.

This next shot, which is another medium-close up that pans along with Peter as he backs away from Flash, gives the scene a sense of chaos, or unraveling for Peter. The tight framing makes the background look like it’s moving quickly around Peter, giving the feeling that he’s losing control of the situation.

After this are a few shots I don’t have much to say about. A Long Shot that establishes MJ’s presence as a spectator, and a few medium close-ups as Peter and MJ spout lines of dialogue.

Let’s look at this Over-The-Shoulder shot as Flash throws his first punch. We’re looking over Peter’s left shoulder, and Flash throws this punch right at the camera as Peter dodges to the right. I think it reinforces a lot of what we’ve talked about so far, with the Subjective framing, and feeling like we’re Peter. That these punches are coming right at us.

The tight framing on this next shot “sells” the speed of the punch. Speed as we perceive it on screen is relative to frame size—the same motion reads as dramatically faster when it eats up 90% of the image versus 20% of it. For example, if we saw this punch from this wide angle of the hallway, it’d look like it was going slower because it would only take up maybe 5-10% of the frame. Here it feels lightning fast.

After a few punches, we get this iconic shot of Peter watching Flash’s fist miss him in slow motion. Pay attention to the depth of field, or, how much of the frame is in focus. Peter being in perfect focus draws our eye to him naturally, as well as the lighting. There’s this warm light reflecting off Peter’s hair—a light that’s not present on the background actors—that separates him from his surroundings as well. This special lighting on Peter makes him stand out from everyone else, subtly communicating his newfound powers.

We then cut to a wide-angle shot of Peter bending over backwards to dodge Flash’s haymaker. The wide framing here helps accentuate a few things. For one, Peter’s isolated at the center of the frame with everyone crowded around him. The corner of the wall splits the frame in half almost perfectly, and Peter’s positioned right on that line. Typically filmmakers use the rule-of-thirds to frame characters in sweet spots for more visually pleasing images. But here Peter is framed alone in the center of the shot. This framing can communicate many things. Sometimes filmmakers do this to convey a sense of isolation for the character. Sometimes it conveys a sense of power. I think here it’s kind of doing both.

Second, the wide framing helps accentuate this amazing acrobatic move Peter does. The camera is lower than usual—level with Peter’s hips, showing him from the side, which gives us the perfect vantage point to see just how far back he’s bending. This was literally the perfect framing to show how extraordinary this move is.

Here we get what’s called an Inverted Shot of Mary Jane and her friends watching the fight. An Inverted Shot is just a shot that shows things upside-down. These shots aren’t used often by filmmakers, and tend to signal to the audience that the rules of the normal world of the story are being or about to be subverted. The world is literally being turned upside down. This is obviously congruent with everything we’ve seen so far with Peter discovering his new powers mid-fight with Flash. But what’s interesting is, RIGHT after this shot Peter takes Flash’s place in the hallway, and starts getting framed against the lockers himself. I feel like this swapping of positions is a subtle move from Sam Raimi to hint at Peter now being in control of the fight, since moments ago Flash looked so powerful himself in this framing. This is accentuated by this shot of Peter against the lockers, looking up at Flash, realizing he can actually win the fight. Notice how the camera’s angled up at Peter here, which a few minutes ago we discussed helps give characters framed this way a sense of power. Peter’s the Captain now. So right after this Inverted Shot, which is used to convey the rules of the normal world are about to be subverted, Peter takes control of the fight and starts beating Flash.

Also, this shot is technically from Peter’s point-of-view, making it yet another Subjective Shot. We, the audience, feel like we’re gaining power right alongside Peter.

One of Flash’s friends then sneaks behind Peter to ambush him, and we get another wide shot of the hallway, but this time there’s a few key differences. Peter occupies the left vertical line instead of the center here, and the camera is elevated a few feet above Peter’s head instead of on the same level as his hips. This does the opposite of the earlier, lower shot, accentuating the verticality of this insane double back flip he does. In fact, the camera needs to actually pan up as he jumps into the air.

This shot is followed by another dynamic framing of Peter jumping up into the air. The camera seems like it’s on the ceiling here, looking down at Peter performing this insane backflip.

This is such a cool-looking angle that immediately stands out from the more conventional framings typically seen in movies.

It seems like Sam Raimi, as Peter discovers his powers, uses more and more dynamic framings to highlight his transformation. Spider-Man is a character that thrives on verticality. He crawls on walls, hangs from ceilings, jumps high, attacks low, and oh yeah, swings from webs. That gave Sam and his cinematographer Don Burgess permission to use camera angles and movement that emphasize that. One of my favorite shots is this one of Peter climbing a wall for the first time. The camera twists, turns, and tracks past Spider-Man as he climbs past it. When compared to the more static shots of Peter seen at the field trip, for example, it’s like a night and day difference. This is like visual cocaine, and this is like visual oatmeal. As he gets his extraordinary powers, the camera moves, and is framed, differently—more dynamically. It’s absolutely brilliant, and makes for an exciting watch. We’ve already seen numerous examples of this framing in this fight alone.

Maybe that’s why this scene is so memorable for us. This is when the style of the film changed to accentuate Peter’s growing power. It seems the nature of Spider-Man’s powers gave the filmmakers incredible liberty to frame shots and film sequences in highly dynamic, entertaining ways. It’s a fact that you’ll see more and more as you go further and further into the film. One of my favorite examples of this is the sequence after this when Peter climbs a wall for the first time, and jumps across rooftops. Pay attention to the dynamic, fun framing of these shots. Pay attention to how Subjective Shots are mixed into it. Look at how the camera moves more fluidly as he gains more power. It’s right in front of you if you pay attention, and I hope this video woke you up to this fascinating fact if you didn’t already notice it.

I don’t have much else to say about this fight that I haven’t already said. I’ve already covered 95% of what makes this fight so genius. I’ll let you, if you want, pause and analyze the remaining shots and come to your own conclusions.

Let me know what you think of this fight scene in the comments. And if you liked this shot-by-shot analysis, subscribe to my channel. I plan to do more of these in the future. Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

It’s actually a philosophy that Christopher Nolan added to this 3,000-year-old story, and somehow he honors the core themes of the epic poem with this addition.

It’s wild! And in this video, I’ll break it all down for you.

About a month ago I ordered the Odyssey from Amazon so I could read it before watching Christopher Nolan’s film. I loved the book, and felt it presented Odysseus as a wily, cunning character who uses his wits to defeat opponents. The book seemed to praise these traits, and used each foe he encountered—like the cyclops, the suitors, or Circe— to show this cunning in some way.

But after the first 45 minutes of watching the film, I felt really confused. The tone of the film felt way different from the book. Sure, there’s sadness in the poem, but not on the same level as the film, and certainly not for the same reasons as the film.

But the more I pondered these changes, the more I thought it showed Christopher Nolan’s brilliance.

To help you understand what Chris did with the film, I’ll use one of this epic story’s most famous symbols as a metaphor: the Trojan horse.

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About 50 minutes through the film, Menelaus tells Telemachus the story of the Trojan Horse. Telemachus says something to the effect of “who hasn’t heard of the Trojan horse?” to which Menelaus replies “what about from the inside?”

We then get a jarring sequence from inside the Trojan horse. We see men drowning as the tide comes in, and Menelaus talking about the smell of piss and shit from inside that thing as they waited for their chance to strike. At one point, a guy gets stabbed with a sword after a soldier pokes the horse with it, and Odysseus quickly wipes the blood off the blade while Menelaus covers his mouth.

In the book, Menelaus talks with Telemachus about the Trojan horse, but it’s a much different story. In his 20-line account, he talks of how his wife Helen mimicked the voices of the soldier’s wives from outside the horse, trying to lure them out. A few soldiers were close to caving, but Odysseus put his hand over their mouths to keep them from making noise.

And that’s… all we get. No drowning, or poop talk, or soldiers getting stabbed by wayward blades. Just a story designed to show Odysseus’ mental discipline and restraint.

It’s here I want to present an idea to you. Nolan’s telling of the Odyssey is a LOT like his depiction of the Trojan Horse. In the film, Telemachus essentially says to Menelaus, “we’ve all heard the Trojan Horse story,” to which Menelaus says, “What about from the inside?”

The poem version of the story seems exultant in nature. The victory at Troy isn’t seen as a war crime like in the film—it’s seen as a martial triumph worth singing about.

But in the film, Odysseus carries significant guilt for the sacking of Troy, viewing it as an appalling act that fundamentally breaks the sacred bond between men, ending civilization as he knows it.

Nolan’s saying with this film, “Here’s what the songs left out.”

A few key lines of dialogue prove my point. When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, finally talks with Penelope in the film, they have this exchange..

Penelope: You know my husband Odysseus?
Odysseus: Of course.
Penelope: Through the songs?
Odysseus: I was at Troy, ma'am.
Penelope: The songs probably seem silly, then.
Odysseus: They make me cry.

At the end of the film, the Bard, played by Travis Scott, says, “The darkness of victory shrouds the writers in legends. It makes bards and blind beggars of us all.”

In other words, the songs and stories make the victory at Troy—and those responsible—legendary, obscuring the dark reality of what actually happened. It also essentially makes these figures gods in our minds, relegating us to the status of beggars in comparison.

It’s here we arrive at the genius of what Christopher Nolan did with the Odyssey. He reconciles the difference between the grandiose poem and his gritty film by suggesting the poem is just a glamorization of what really happened. But not in terms of the mystical elements like the cyclops, or the sirens, like you might expect, but the Trojan war!

I mean, the film starts with a bard shouting the tale of Troy in Odysseus’ halls. Minutes later Penelope asks him to stop, saying, “I don’t want a song of Odysseus, I want Odysseus.”

In other words, Penelope wants the real thing.

Nolan also uses this contrast between grandiose poem and gritty reality to make a point about the pride of men.

In perhaps the most important line of dialogue from the film, Calypso, just before she lets Odysseus set sail for home, says, “You’re a man who needs to control his fate. But you cannot control this. You must give yourself to the storm, and take your punishment. Give up the fight, give up control, and live. It is a leap of faith you haven’t yet made, Odysseus.”

The difference between Odysseus at the start of the film and Odysseus later in the film is humility.

He comes back a beggar to his own home. The great Odysseus! Who, across the Greek world, they sing songs about. He washes up on shore with nothing but a pair of raggedy pants to call his own. In the book, he actually disembarks on Ithaca with a bunch of gold given to him by the Phaeacians, and Athena makes him look like a beggar purely as a disguise.

In the book, Odysseus’ beggar look is a disguise, but in the film, it’s meant to showcase his newfound humility.

The Odyssey is full of examples of how pride, and ambition, ultimately get you nowhere. Agamemnon wins the war, and is welcomed back home as a hero, but ultimately gets killed in bed by his own wife. Odysseus’ Trojan horse idea wins the war, but destroys the world. After Odysseus escapes the Land of the Dead, he looks back and sees a hoard of fallen soldiers standing like ghosts in the mist. One of Odysseus crew members shouts, “Is that our fate?!”

We see further proof of this when Agamemnon sacrifices his own daughter for favorable winds. Or when Odysseus sacrifices Sinón to sell the Horse gift to the Trojans. Or how Odysseus sacrifices civilization itself—for victory at Troy.

With each of these “sacrifices,” the outcome does not justify the sacrifice. And in each example, the price that’s paid hits closer to home than they imagined. In Agamemnon’s case, his wife doesn’t forget the sacrifice of her daughter, and gets revenge by killing him. In Odysseus’ case, he sacrifices Sinón, his strongest bond to home and a symbol of his own honor. And in the case of the Trojan Horse, what’s sacrificed is human civilization as a whole, which threatens everyone’s home.

Remember Zeus’ Law? The way it’s defined in the film is, “treat others the way you want to be treated.”

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The Odyssey book places the gods front and center in the story a lot more explicitly than the film. I mean, Book 1 of the Odyssey is a scene with all the Gods on Mount Olympus talking about Odysseus. In the film, the Gods influence is a lot more subtle, manifesting itself more-so in the form of Karma, which I feel is a brilliant move from Nolan.

There’s a scene that visualizes this brilliantly.

On Circe’s island, Odysseus hunts for a deer while Circe turns his men into pigs. After Odysseus delivers the killing shot, he comes upon the body to see a man laying naked in the grass, shot in the back.

This is a perfect visualization of what Odysseus did at Troy. In sacking Troy, he gained victory, but he killed man—he killed civilization—in the process.

Odysseus tells Penelope later on, while disguised as a beggar, “We destroyed all that was sacred between people, and turned a fight into a hunt.”

This move from Nolan—to more-so make Karma the manifestation of consequence rather than the Gods—makes sense for his more grounded tone. For example, Agamemnon. He sacrifices his daughter to “the gods” for favorable winds. When he gets home, his wife murders him for it. Is that the gods judgement, or his wife simply remembering what happened and getting revenge?

Is the blowback to civilization from Odysseus’ trick with the Trojan Horse the gods judgement, or men simply adjusting to this new paradigm?

The film blurs the lines, I feel, suggesting that even if you don’t believe in the gods—there are certain rules about how the universe works—how men work— that are so constant they’re indistinguishable from the work of the gods. Rules like Karma, and Zeus’ Law. The film argues that you will only receive what you give, because people remember what you did to them, so tread carefully.

When Odysseus tells Penelope, “To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire,” he’s explaining karma. He’s explaining Zeus’ Law. And that cosmic justice is as real for us, the audience, as it is for Odysseus and his men in the Odyssey.

The Odyssey is a story about how we can’t escape retribution. It’s a message about how, the more prideful we are, the more we think we can control our destiny, the harder that retribution will fall on our heads—whether from gods or men.

It’s a message of humility. The characters in this story do things—go to war, sacrifice children, sacrifice friends, break the sacred bonds of man—and are too prideful to realize that retribution will come. Nolan’s Odyssey says, “You’re a fool to think that.”

Circe tells Odysseus the Gods have already decided his men’s fate, to which he replies, “Then I defy the Gods.” He also says early on, “The gods help those who help themselves.”

Odysseus pride is an element that’s present in both the books and the film, but in Nolan’s adaption, he expands it beyond just Odysseus to talk about the pride of man in general.

Odysseus’ visit with Circe spells this out explicitly. After Circe turns his men into pigs, she says, “this is what they are,” and “Men, with their appetites, too much is never enough!”

The way the men eat her food, which is cursed, is jarring. They laugh and slurp and can’t hold themselves back from stuffing their faces. It reminds me of how the suitors sound and act in Odysseus’ halls—a connection I feel was intentional.

One of my favorite lines of dialogue comes when she turns the pigs back into men. She says, “Go back into your disguises.”

When Odysseus talks with Tiresias about the fate of his men in the Underworld, he says, “I can still save them from the Gods,” to which Tiresias replies, “But not from themselves.”

Tiresias is talking about the short-sightedness of man here. Our pride, our ambition, our belief we’re in control of our own destinies. Odysseus’ pride, and the pride of his crew, is ultimately the cause of their downfall.

When Odysseus hears the siren song, he describes how it sounds, saying:

“It told you that what you most want is what you can’t have.
And what you most can’t have is what you already had, and lost”

Odysseus’ Trojan Horse idea was cunning, and smart. He didn’t weigh the consequences of this action, though, and in sacking Troy, Odysseus destroys his home, and the world. What he wants most is to return to the world he destroyed—a fact his pride didn’t allow him to see before everything happened.

But it’s funny. When Odysseus returns home with his white beard and raggedy clothes, and stands up on the shores of Ithaca with his chiseled body, he looks like a god. The more humble he gets, the more god-like he looks and becomes. The greeks believed beggars could be Gods in disguise, and lo and behold Odysseus comes home dressed as a beggar to his own home, and comes out of the shadows to string his bow, a feat fit for a God, and slays everyone abusing Zeus’ Law in his own home.

I think that what Christopher Nolan is trying to say is, it’s godly to be humble. Even if you don’t literally believe that gods exist, staying humble is the closest you’ll ever get to being one.

Hunting is a huge motif in Nolan’s Odyssey film. We see Odysseus hunting a boar at the start of the film, Telemachus and Menelaus hunting birds at Sparta, and Odysseus hunting a deer on Circe’s island. Remember the animals that Odysseus and his men see on their way to Circe’s hut? A cheetah, a panther, and a lion. Funny, Agamemnon’s armor has clasps with lions on it that hold up his cape.

All of these animals are hunters—apex predators. Then we obviously have Odysseus’ hunting dog, Argos, who waits for him to return.

I think Nolan is trying to say, too, that when we treat out fellow man like animals to be hunted, we turn into animals ourselves. Like how Circe turns Odysseus men into pigs.

If we want civilization to continue, we need to remember Zeus’ Law. We need to remember that nobody is above these rules. That, even if there are no gods above us, Zeus’ Law plays out in front of us all the same. Others will treat us how we treat them, and if we compromise this law, inescapable retribution will come eventually—whether it’s from gods or men.

Remember, it’s only after Odysseus lets go of his pride, humbles himself, and gives in to his punishment, that he’s able to return home and make things right. Maybe it’s the same for all of us holding on so tightly to our pride, trying to escape punishment for what we’ve done. We must let it go, give in to the storm, and make that leap of faith, as Calypso says.

What did you think of the Odyssey? Let me know in the comments down below! And if you liked that film analysis, subscribe to my channel. I publish at least one new video per week breaking down the greatest films of all time. Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

And that this symbolism has appeared repeatedly across thousands of years of human mythology, in stories like the Odyssey, representing similar ideas?

In this video, I’ll cite every example of this symbolism from Inception, explain what it means, and tie it to some of the most legendary stories humanity has ever told.

Let’s get started.

As I rewatched Inception recently, I was struck by this image of Cobb and Mal’s house that they constructed in limbo. It rises directly out of the water, giving it an odd, unnerving aura. I wrote this down in my notes and didn’t think much of it until I started pondering the design of the different levels Cobb and his team descend into during the Fischer job.

The first level takes place in a modern city setting in the middle of a torrential downpour. The second level takes place in a hotel with a storm raging outside. And the third level takes place at a snowy compound in the mountains. As I thought about it, I realized that all of these different levels incorporate water heavily in the design, whether it’s rain or snow.

As this idea of water being an important symbol in Inception got planted in the depths of my subconscious, I started seeing it everywhere.

The very first shot of Inception is of a wave crashing against the rocks for gosh sakes. Waking up in limbo, IE the deepest level of your subconscious is visualized by waking up on an ocean shore. Limbo itself, which is raw, infinite subconscious, features an unending ocean meeting an infinite beach.

Saito’s castle is positioned right on the beach itself, both in the beginning and ending of the film. And in one of the most visually stunning moments of the movie, Cobb gets dunked into a bathtub in slow motion to wake him up, which makes water crash into Saito’s castle. This isn’t the only time water is used to wake people up in the film. Remember, Yusuf drives the van holding Cobb and the team off a bridge and into the water to wake them up as well.

With this connection in mind, I researched whether water has historically had any connection to the subconscious in ancient mythology, or other popular stories. The answers I found blew me out of the water.

Carl Jung wrote things like, “Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious.” and “The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives."

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In Inception, characters have projections of their subconscious that walk around in the dream. At one point a projection of Cobb’s subconscious bumps Ariadne on the street, a fact she gets upset about. He then tells her, “It’s my subconscious, remember? I can’t control it.”

Cobb and his team, to pull off inception, must bury an idea deep into Fischer’s mind. He can’t consciously know they gave the idea to him. To do this correctly, they travel three dream levels deep. On the way, elements from Cobb’s subconscious continually get in the way of the job, like the train that cuts through level 1 of the dream, or Mal herself in level 3 of the dream.

Ariadne tells Cobb, “As we go deeper into Fischer, we’re also going deeper into you."

In Inception, journeying into the subconscious mind is continuously tied to downward direction. Whether it’s the old men in Mombasa who share dreams in the basement of this building, or Cobb’s elevator, which, the farther down it goes, holds more and more terrifying memories, or how Cobb and his team constantly talk about limbo, referring to it as a place “down there,” in the depths of their subconscious.

Linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson gave this a name—the conceptual metaphor theory. They wrote that most languages systematically map abstract states onto vertical space. The conscious is represented with upward motion, while the unconscious is represented by downward motion. Phrases like “He got up,” or “she woke up,” represent returning to consciousness, while phrases like “he sank into a coma,” or he “went under” with anesthesia represent a loss of consciousness. Lakoff and Johnson argue these aren’t arbitrary; they’re grounded in the body: humans and most mammals sleep lying down and stand up when they awaken, and drooping posture goes along with sadness, erect posture with a positive emotional state.

Carl Jung talked about how the sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious in mythology and folklore. There’s tons of examples of this. In a blog post on Feathers and Folktales, Diem Dangers writes, “In legends, myths and folktales throughout the world, the presence of the ocean as the background setting or obstacle to be overcome often comes with stories of transformation, of courage and bravery, as well as tragedy, as well as stories of wonder and bridging the unbridgeable, or finding something hidden in the depths.”

The Odyssey is actually one of the most potent ‘proofs’ of this sea-as-the-unconscious metaphor—especially Nolan’s adaption of it—which I’ll talk about later in the video. I just need to set the table more first. Bear with me.

A few years ago I was in a museum here in Mexico City, and came upon some paintings depicting the ocean as a mother, for instance. The museum label read that this artist was fascinated with depicting the ocean as a maternal figure since that’s where life on earth originally came from. I remember being fascinated by that and thinking it makes a ton of sense.

Similarly, on her blog, Diem Dangers writes about a love story from Vietnamese folklore about a crane and an ocean dragon who fall in love and birth 100 eggs that hatch into the Vietnamese people. The story represents the fusion of two different worlds—the sea and land—and how interesting “fruits” can come from unusual connections. I thought this story also reinforced the ocean as a maternal figure.

Remember what Carl Jung said? “The sea is the favorite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives.”

To drive the point home about the ocean being a symbol for the unconscious, let’s turn to some other stories.

The Inuit people have a tale about a woman named Sedna who is betrayed by her father and drowned in the ocean. Diem writes, “In the underwater world she transforms from victim to powerful agent, becoming the goddess of the underworld and the source from whom all humans must depend for their food.”

In this story, the sea functions as both the cause of Sedna’s death, and the source of her transformation. In the ocean, she undergoes a deep reckoning with the uncomfortable and painful truths of her past.

Diem continues, writing, “Up until then her father’s untrustworthiness, as well as her own power, was a shadow, hidden just below the surface of her own awareness. It is through living in that uncomfortable place, that she finds her power, her identity and her gift to others. I love how this suggests that what is hidden from us may be painful, and ugly, but also at the same time, may also be something that once realized, may help us reach our full potential.”

In Inception, Cobb’s guilt for Mal’s death prevents him from moving forward in his life. His projection of Mal, and guilt for what he did to her, constantly get in the way of the Fischer job.

As he goes deeper and deeper into himself, he finally reckons with Mal in limbo, and forgives himself for what happened. He’s able to achieve closure, and move forward.

It’s also what happens to Fischer, right? He confronts the painful memory of his father head-on, and emerges reborn, ready to become his own man.

It sounds a lot like how Sedna’s journey beneath the depths of the ocean—of her subconscious mind—is exactly what ends up setting her free and giving her her power.

Diem writes, “Just as the ocean teems with life both seen and unseen, our unconscious minds are filled with untapped potentials and hidden truths waiting to be explored.”

The thing is, what you find “down there” isn’t always going to be beautiful, or painless—in fact, it’ll be quite scary.

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If the sea is a common symbol for the unconscious, it fits that the deeper you go into it, the darker, more terrifying it gets.

Fear of the ocean’s depths is actually one of humanity’s most popular phobias, which is called Thalassophobia. There’s actually a whole set of Thalassophobia videos on Youtube designed to invoke terror in audiences in case you’re brave, I mean curious.

Human beings have been fascinated by the idea of sea monsters for thousands of years. From Tiamat, the primordial goddess of the saltwater ocean from the Babylonian creation epic, to the Leviathan, mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as a massive sea serpent, to Renaissance map makers drawing monsters on the unexplored parts of world maps. You also got the Kraken, and Moby Dick, and even Jaws.

Since similar myths showed up in cultures separated by oceans, with zero contact with each other, Carl Jung concluded that this must be something in the structure of the human mind itself that was generating the same patterns from scratch, everywhere—an idea he called the collective unconscious.

Jung interpreted the ocean’s recurrence in mythology, and the monsters in the deep, as a symbol for the unconscious, and the dangers within it.

Take flood myths, for example. The Biblical Noah’s Ark story, as well as the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, both use total immersion in water as the mechanism for cleansing and renewal. This matches Jung’s ideas that descent into the unconscious—however dangerous—is often the necessary precursor to psychological renewal. This idea matches what the Inuit tale of Sedna espoused that we explored a few minutes ago.

As Carl Jung writes, “the descent into the depths always seems to precede the ascent.”

It’s here we arrive at the Odyssey, which Carl Jung pointed to as one of the strongest “proofs” of this ocean-as-unconscious thesis. It’s pure serendipity that the same guy that directed Inception also directed the Odyssey.

Jung points to the Greek Nekyia as an integral part of his analytical psychology, which shows up in the Odyssey. In ancient Greece, Nekyia was a "rite by which ghosts were called up and questioned about the future."

In Book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus is instructed to make a journey to the Halls of Hades, across the River of the Ocean, to speak with the dead. He converses with popular Greek figures such as Achilles in this chilling chapter from the book.

Jung used this concept of Nekyia, of traveling to the underworld to converse with ghosts and demons, in his analytical psychology, writing that Nekyia is "introversion of the conscious mind into the deeper layers of the unconscious psyche". For Jung, "the Nekyia is no aimless or destructive fall into the abyss, but a meaningful katabasis ... its object the restoration of the whole man."

Jung called the Nekyia a “night journey on the sea…” specifically.

In The Psychology Of Transference, Jung writes, “The night sea journey is a kind of descensus ad inferos--a descent into Hades and a journey to the land of ghosts somewhere beyond this world, beyond consciousness, hence an immersion in the unconscious.”

In Jung Lexicon, written by Daryl Sharp, he writes, “Mythologically, the night sea journey motif usually involves being swallowed by a dragon or sea monster. It is also represented by imprisonment or crucifixion, dismemberment or abduction, experiences traditionally weathered by sun-gods and heroes: Gilgamesh, Osiris, Christ, Dante, Odysseus, Aeneas. In the language of the mystics it is the dark night of the soul.”

This makes sense for Odysseus, since he was captured by Calpyso and imprisoned for seven years.

In a paper called “The Odyssey - a Jungian Perspective: Individuation and Meeting with the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," they argue that entities like the cyclops and sirens represent Odysseus’ repressed traumas and primal instincts buried in his subconscious, and that defeating them requires him to confront and integrate these dark aspects of his psyche.

So it’s not just Book 11 of the Odyssey that reflects this descension into the subconscious, but the entire book! A book that largely takes place on a vast ocean filled with perils for Odysseus to confront.

There’s a moment in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film that proves this point perfectly. And real quick, there’s some spoilers here for Nolan’s film if you haven’t seen it yet.

In the film version of the Odyssey, Odysseus deals with significant trauma and guilt from the Trojan War. He blames himself for breaking the most sacred bond of man—by using a gift to deceive the Trojans and slaughter them in their own home. He believes that after breaking this foundational trust that makes civilization possible, that he won’t find a home to go back to.

Over and over again in the story, from the cyclops to Circe to the Laestrygonians, Odysseus finds evidence of creatures, and people, not showing his crew any hospitality—of that trust that makes civilization possible being broken.

So, as Odysseus has his “sea voyage” as Jung calls it, and metaphorically journeys into his subconscious, he encounters this buried fear, this trauma, everywhere he goes, in the form of the Cyclops killing his men instead of showing them hospitality, or of Circe turning his men into pigs, instead of welcoming them as guests.

There’s a moment in the film that catalyzes this idea perfectly. When Odysseus hears the siren song as he’s strapped to the mast, he tells Eurylochus this is what it sounded like:

“All the things you wanted to be and then all the things you wished you never wished for. It was a delicious itch you want to scratch but you find it under the skin and can't reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. It told you what you most want is what you most can't have and that the most you can't have is what you already had and lost. It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don't really want to go home."

This is Odysseus expressing sadness about a world he doesn’t believe exists anymore, and the terror he feels for the part he played in it. This is the moment I feel he confronts this truth head on instead of running from it. Likening it to Inception, this is like the conversation Cobb has with Mal, where he finally confronts his guilt, and processes it by tackling it head on.

It’s impossible to know whether Christopher Nolan consciously incorporated water, and the ocean, in Inception to represent the unconscious. The fact is that it’s everywhere in the film, in some of it’s most iconic shots, events, and locations. It’s also fact that throughout human history, we’ve used the ocean, and submersion into it, to represent a journey into ourselves where we reckon with our demons, claim a power we didn’t know we had, and emerge reborn. Consciously or not, it seems humanity keeps coming back to this ocean motif to represent similar ideas time and time again—and that, to me, is arguably the most fascinating thing we’ve talked about in this video.

Sadly, that’s it for this video, but if you want bonus analysis on Inception including hidden symbolism I noticed that DIDN’T make it into this video, become a member of my Youtube channel. The link to join is in the description, and the bonus video is live right now in the ‘Members’ tab. I plan to release a bonus ‘Deleted Scenes’ clip in conjunction with each new video I make moving forward. Become a member today!

What did you think about Inception? Let me know in the comments down below! Thanks for watching! I’ll see you next time.

At the 5:15 mark of Interstellar, we get a scene that showcases the two philosophies at odds with each other in the film. Every line of dialogue, every beat, every shot, points to what the film is trying to say. And you didn’t even know it the first time you watched it.

That moment, of course, is the corn chase scene. In this video I’ll break it down, connecting dialogue, shots, and events to other moments in the film, revealing Interstellar’s powerful themes.

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We begin with Cooper asking Murph to put the truck in higher and higher gear. She successfully finds second gear before stalling on third, which prompts Tom to tell her “find the gear dumbass.”

Finally, the back tire blows, which Tom blames her for, citing “murphy’s law.”

Cooper tells Tom to get the spare tire, to which Tom replies, “That was the spare!”

I’ll pause here because there’s already a lot of metaphorical significance to what’s happened.

First, let’s talk about Murph changing gears. In the first two minutes of the movie, Cooper has a flashback in a dream of his test-flight crash. The mission control operator says, “I’m shutting it down Cooper,” to which Cooper replies, “No, we need to power up!”

Even in this small scene, I see a boatload of meaning, and a connection to Murphy shifting gears upwards to go faster. Interstellar takes place on a dystopian earth where humanity’s lost all notion of who they are. Resources are limited, blight destroys crops, and humanity focuses on scaling down and being caretakers for earth.

Cooper, an explorer at his core, loathes this, saying, “We've forgotten who we are. Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers..."

This quote’s very similar to another Cooper quote I love in this film, “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”

In the first act, Interstellar establishes two opposing worldviews. One is built on optimism—on looking up to the stars—and the other is built on pessimism and looking down to earth.

Nothing demonstrates these opposing views better than when Cooper visits Murph’s school to talk with the administrators. The principal tells Cooper he needs to “be realistic” about Tom’s future when he asks about college, and that we need to stop filling kids heads with thoughts of leaving earth, which wastes resources.

Cooper: You don’t believe we went to the Moon?
Ms. Kelly: I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda, that the Soviets bankrupted themselves, pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines...

There’s a sense in the film that any pursuit of innovation, or progress, is incredibly wasteful—a point that Cooper disagrees with vehemently.

He tells them one of the “useless machines” made in the space race was an MRI machine, which could’ve saved his wife’s life.

To Cooper, it’s the exploration of the unknown—and innovation—that will solve our problems, not cutting back.

So when Murph shifts gears higher and higher, and when Cooper tells mission control “No, we need to power up!” I find it fits perfectly with this idea of innovation, of progress—which is continuously related to going up in Interstellar. When everyone’s telling Cooper to scale back, or slow down, he disagrees, saying we need to actually accelerate forward.

Where we left off in this scene was Tom telling Cooper that they have no spare tires left. I look at this as a pretty clear metaphor for humanity “running out of spares.” Before this scene, Donald tells Coop that the last harvest of Okra ever just happened. Later, Dr. Brand tells Cooper that corn will eventually die as well. He also tells him that Murph’s generation will be the last generation to survive on earth due to blight eating up all the nitrogen in the atmosphere.

Cooper tells Dr. Brand this after getting offered to go on the Endurance mission,

Cooper: An hour ago, you didn't even know I was alive and you were going anyway.
Dr. Brand: We didn’t have a choice.

Humanity has no options left in Interstellar, which I feel is cleverly represented by this being Cooper’s last spare tire.

Cooper asks Tom to “get the patch kit,” to which Tom replies, “How am I supposed to patch it out here?”

We see Tom’s classic pessimism on full display with that comment.

Pay attention to this shot by the way. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema could’ve framed this shot way closer to the truck, showing us more of the character’s expressions, or even followed them with a handheld camera up close. Why this framing?

For me, it gives this moment a sense of loneliness. Tom talks about the difficulty of patching the tire “out here,” and the camera pulls out to show their isolation. Isolation is a huge visual theme in Interstellar.

Cooper: So alone!
Amelia: We have each other. Dr. Mann had it worse.
Cooper: No, I mean them. (gestures to earth)

Some of my favorite visual representations of isolation come in these shots of the Endurance near Saturn. All we hear is a cold piano playing thin notes as we glimpse the Endurance against Saturn’s rings. It looks like a small speck of dust on the screen.

This isolation really affects Romilly. He says, "This gets to me, Cooper. This... Millimeters of aluminum. That's it. And nothing out there for millions of miles that won't kill us in seconds."

There’s a couple themes isolation helps reinforce in Interstellar. One is that it makes characters act out of necessity, since there’s nowhere else to turn.

Right after Tom asks his Dad how he’s going to patch a tire all the way out here, Cooper responds, “You gotta figure it out. I’m not always going to be here to help you.”

This line makes me think of Interstellar’s famous docking scene. Dr. Mann—great name by the way—sends the Endurance spinning out of control after blowing the airlock. Amelia shouts in horror, “Oh my god!” and Cooper, after processing what’s happened, accelerates towards the Endurance. Amelia asks him “What are you doing?” to which he replies “Docking.”

Cooper doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t feel sorry for himself. He doesn’t give in to despair. He analyzes the situation, makes a plan, and executes it.

Remember what he tells Case?

Case: It’s not possible.
Cooper: No, it’s necessary.

This is the film’s thesis. It is defiance of pessimism. It is hope, pure hope, in what humans can do when their back is up against the wall.

Isolation is necessary to provide the environment FOR this type of innovation and progress. As the famous saying goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Cooper’s positive outlook is directly in counter to Tom’s, who moans about how he’s going to patch a flat tire all the way out here. Cooper simply tells him, “Figure it out.”

One thing I love is Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Tom in this scene. He is the perfect representation of this more pessimistic way of looking at things, calling Murph a dumbass and blaming her for the flat tire. You can see his pessimism written all over his face. Tom eventually becomes a farmer himself, and refuses to leave the farm even when his family’s health declines. The difference between his mindset and Cooper’s are so far apart they might as well be at opposite ends of the universe.

We then get this quiet moment between Murph and Cooper as Interstellar’s main theme plays. Murphy asks him why she was named after something that’s bad—aka Murphy’s law. Cooper responds, “Murphy’s law doesn’t mean that something bad will happen what it means is that whatever can happen will happen, and that sounded just fine with us.”

When I revisited this scene the other day, I was struck by the simple profoundness of this statement. It’s pure optimism.

It’s faith that, if whatever can happen will happen, that something good will eventually come.

If you’re pessimistic, you’ll just be expecting bad news all the time.

If you’re optimistic, you’ll see the possibility in everything. You’ll expect to find a way. You’ll say, whatever CAN happen WILL happen. You’ll say, “I might fail a million different ways, but all I need to do is find the ONE way that works.”

That’s what Cooper means when he says that “whatever can happen will happen.” He’s choosing to ignore the million ways it could go wrong in search of the one way it COULD work. And that mentality is so different from how the vast majority of us think. Perhaps that’s why Interstellar is so beloved to this day. Hope is the core of the film.

And that’s really the story of humanity. Despite all the obstacles thrown in our way, we’ve made it here. It reminds me of that quote from Jurassic Park, “life, um, finds a way.”

What happens next in this corn chase scene is perfect. Right after Cooper says this about Murphy’s Law, an Indian air force drone comes out of nowhere, and flies over their heads.

Cooper and Murph jump into the car to chase after it, since it can help power their farm, to which Tom says “what about the flat tire?!”

It’s such a perfect representation of Cooper’s “we used to stare up at the stars and wonder, and now we worry about our place in the dirt” line. Cooper and Murphy look up to the sky with excitement, chasing the drone and the possibility that it represents, while Tom looks down at the flat tire, too preoccupied with the problem right in front of him to understand the opportunity above him.

It’s just, chefs kiss.

The drone flying over RIGHT when Cooper talks about how whatever can happen will happen is a perfect representation of his point. A lot of BAD things happen, yes, but that doesn’t mean GOOD things never happen either, like a drone that can power an entire farm dropping in out of nowhere.

I see connections between this “random” event and something Amelia says later in the film. She says that the black hole actually keeps planets close to it sterile because of:

Murphy’s Law- whatever can happen will happen. Accident is the first building block of evolution- but when you’re orbiting a black hole not enough can happen- it sucks in asteroids and comets, random events that would otherwise reach you.

What she says about accidents is SO fascinating.

For one, it’s an accident that allows Cooper to see this drone flying overhead in the first place. What if they never got a flat tire? They would’ve kept chugging along and been at the school by the time the drone reached their farm.

Second, think of what humanity’s doing now in the story. They’re not investing in space exploration because they believe it’s a waste of resources. However, it’s NASA’s secret program that eventually saves the human race. Imagine if America never funded this secret program? It was a long shot to begin with, but it worked! Much like a black hole, pessimistic thinking doesn’t give you the opportunity to succeed, because it doesn’t allow for happy accidents to happen. Why? Because you’re not even going to try in the first place!

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This makes me feel like the black hole, Gargantua, is a great metaphor for pessimism—intentional or not. Dr. Mann says that “the laws of nature prohibit a naked singularity” IE, you can’t see into a black hole. Cooper proves him wrong. Dr. Brand repeats the same poem over and over again. “Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”

Funny, Romilly describes the black hole as a “gentle” singularity, but if you look up whether this term even exists in astrophysics, you’ll find nothing. This is actually something I talked about in my very first video on this channel where I broke down Interstellar’s hidden symbols. I’m VERY proud of that video and think it’s one of my best. You can watch it via the link right here.

Romilly, when talking about Gargantua, also says, “nothing escapes that horizon, not even light.” Interesting! The poem goes, “Do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”

This poem, for me, feels like an anthem for defiance of your circumstances. It has a pioneer’s spirit, and puts the “good night” as an antagonistic force within it.

It seems the filmmakers are really trying to make the black hole represent not just death, but pessimism itself. It’s something we need to “rage” against—a force that, once adopted—spells doom for the human race.

The next shot in this sequence is of the flat tire flapping along as they chase the drone. It’s a callback to humanity’s ability to make things work in dire situations. It’s a metaphor for what Cooper and Amelia are able to do when earth has a “flat tire,” with seemingly no way forward.

I also love how Cooper cuts through his cornfield to chase the drone. He’s not taking the main road. He’s forging a new path, like a true pioneer, doing something that looks absolutely stupid and ridiculous chasing after a drone he might not even catch. This is a visual representation of the explorer’s spirit. Going off the beaten path, doing something that many would find ridiculous, and ultimately getting rewarded for it. This scene really is a metaphor for the whole film.

What’s interesting is, despite Cooper’s proclivity for pushing boundaries, he’s surprisingly pragmatic. For example, he doesn’t believe Murph’s theories about her having a ghost. “I know what morse code is Murph, I just don’t think your bookshelf is trying to talk to you.”

Later, he’s skeptical about Amelia’s ideas about love having a meaning we can’t yet understand. "Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing.”

Amelia quips back, “We love people who have died, where’s the social utility in that?”

Right before Cooper leaves, Murph tells him her ghost is telling him to Stay, which he also doesn’t believe.

So you see, for all of Cooper’s talk about pushing boundaries, even he has his limits on what he’ll believe in.

A similar worldview is actually represented by Dr. Mann.

Here Dr. Mann talks with Cooper about why the gravity equation can’t be solved in the first place:

“You need to see inside a black hole. And the laws of nature prohibit a naked singularity.”

He follows that up with,

“Some things aren’t meant to be known.”

Another example of Dr. Mann’s limited thinking comes in this quote about humanity’s capacity for empathy.

“Evolution has yet to transcend that simple barrier- we can care deeply, selflessly for people we know, but our empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.”

This is surprisingly pessimistic, limited thinking for an explorer.

It’s fascinating, because Interstellar is a deeply scientific movie. It was heavily based on the theories of Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who served as an executive producer and scientific consultant.

Many times Cooper lectures both Amelia and Murph about science.

“That’s not very scientific, Murph.”
"Fine. Murph, you wanna talk science, don’t just tell me you’re scared of some ghost- record the facts, analyze, present your conclusions.”
"You’re a scientist, Brand.”

Cooper talks about pushing boundaries the whole film, but is surprisingly conservative about theories he considers unrealistic. It kind of betrays his values, don’t you think?

Cooper lectures his daughter and Amelia for radical theories that aren’t very “scientific,” but he forgets what science is about in the first place. Murph says,

“You said science was about admitting what we don’t know.”

Foundational to science is a concept called intellectual humility. The idea that progress is impossible if we assume we already have all the answers.

This intellectual humility is something Cooper fails to display with Murph’s theories about her ghost, and Amelia’s theories about love.

Interstellar is a love letter to science, which actually hinges on rejecting certainty. It requires an open mind, which is precisely what it means to be a true pioneer and explorer in the first place.

And an open mind is eventually what saves humanity in the film, as Murphy makes the insane connection that her ghost is actually her father. If you remember, she tells Cooper at the end of the film that nobody believed her Father was the one that sent her the solution to the gravity equation.

That’s how radically open-minded you have to be as a scientist, and Cooper, the posterboy for optimism and open-mindedness in the film, needs to be reminded about that himself before the end.

So you see, Interstellar isn’t just exhilarating for it’s hopeful message about smashing boundaries in a physical sense—it also operates on more of a spiritual level as well. Despite being a highly scientific movie, it almost has a religious soul to it. A soul that dares you to believe—or at least consider—the unbelievable, which, ironically, is one of the most scientific things you can do.

I feel it’s this delicious irony that makes Interstellar punch like a freight train at the very end. As we watch Murph slowly realize it’s her Father behind the bookshelf, the film is almost giving us permission to believe that maybe our loved ones who’ve passed on are still out there, too. Probable? Maybe not. But possible? Sure. That’s what the open mind of a scientist would conclude. It’s possible.

Getty: So do you have an idea?
Murph: A feeling.

Cooper: She’s in love with Edmunds.
Rommily: Is that true?
Amelia: Yes. And that makes me want to follow my heart. But maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory.

Interstellar’s soundtrack features organs extensively, and Christopher Nolan, in behind-the-scenes featurettes, talks about how even though Interstellar isn’t religious in nature, the organs with their connection to the church, hint at this idea of believing in something supernatural. This is an idea that’s very much at the core of Interstellar, represented by Dr. Brand’s famous monologue about love.

“Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t yet understand it.”

Interstellar is so beautiful because it gives us permission to believe. It’s a love letter to science, reminding us of the hopeful spirit at the core of this field. It’s a spirit you might recognize in religious folks, optimists, and explorers. A spirit that anything is possible, and that if we haven’t found the solution to our problem, we will eventually.

What do you think of Interstellar’s philosophy? Let me know in the comments down below. And if you liked this video, consider subscribing to my channel. I publish new film analysis like this every week. Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

It’s a philosophy that also ties back into Batman Begins and The Dark Knight in very clever ways, delivering a satisfying thematic conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

In this video, I’ll break it down for you.

We start the movie with a beautiful set piece involving planes, LittleFinger, and impressive IMAX cameras. Making this first scene revolve around planes is interesting because height, and rising, is a big motif in this film in general. In fact, one of the first things we hear Bane say is this,

Bane minion: Have we started the fire?
Bane: Yes, the fire rises.

Later, at the charity event hosted at Wayne Manor, John Dagget makes this comment, “Everyone knows Wayne's holed up in there with eight-inch nails, peeing into Mason jars.”

It immediately made me think of the movie The Aviator, where we see Howard Hughes holed up in his home peeing into mason jars—adding fuel to the fire of this flying and rising motif.

Another obvious example of flying in the film is The Bat, Bruce’s new aircraft that he uses to fight Bane, which also delivers the nuclear bomb out over the bay, saving Gotham city.

There’s other tie ins to this rising theme, most obviously the jail that Bruce gets sent to after Bane breaks his friggin back. But this high vs. low motif is also represented by the sewers that Bane and his crew work in. They tunnel just below Bruce’s hidden weapon vault, breaking into it from below.

Commissioner Gordon comments on this in the hospital, “Now there’s evil rising from where we tried to bury it.”

Later, Selina Kyle tells Bruce at a masquerade ball, “You better batten down the hatches.”

Interesting! Hatches refers to the doors leading to the cargo holds down below on old ship decks.

“Cool Tom, what does this have to do with anything?”

Well, everything.

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A huge part of the Dark Knight Rises story revolves around this tension between the rich and poor—a tension we see manifested in Selina Kyle’s Catwoman. She tells Bruce this after he tells her they’re letting him keep Wayne Manor despite going bankrupt, “the rich don’t even go broke like the rest of us.”

She tells him at the masquerade ball, “You all will wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”

Bane, when he takes control of Gotham tells the people, “We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you... the people.”

Bane’s words contain a metaphor placing rich oppressors at the top of the totem pole keeping everyone down with myths of opportunity.

It makes sense that Christopher Nolan, trying to make a point about this, writes set pieces into the script that are both exciting AND involve characters literally rising up.

But there’s another way to interpret this theme—through the lens of Bruce Wayne’s philosophy.

One of the most important lines of the film comes in a conversation Bruce has with Alfred. Alfred says, “Bruce if you want to change the world, you have to start trusting it.”

In another conversation Bruce has with Robin, he says, “Batman is a symbol. He could be anybody that was the point.”

In this film, Bruce has to walk away from being Batman and trust that the people of Gotham will fight for what he stood for in his absence. In a lot of ways, this is the ultimate test of Bruce’s core thesis as Batman. In Batman Begins, he tells Ra’s Al Ghul, “Gotham isn't beyond saving. Give me more time. There are good people here.” And when Ra’s tells Bruce that his compassion is weakness after he fails to execute a murderer, Bruce says, “That's why it's so important. It separates us from them."

Ra’s al Ghul wanted to burn Gotham to the ground on account of it being corrupt, a philosophy that his daughter Talia echoes near the end of the third film,

Bruce: He was trying to kill millions of innocent people.
Talia: Innocent is a strong word to throw around Gotham.

Let’s talk about fire really quick, because throughout the Dark Knight trilogy, fire is a central motif.

In Batman Begins, Ra’s says, “No one can save Gotham. When a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.” He says this in the middle of a house fire after setting Wayne Manor aflame.

Then, in the Dark Knight, we encounter a class of villain who, as Alfred says “just want to watch the world burn.” There’s numerous visual callbacks to this burning motif in The Dark Knight, like the vehicles set ablaze before this epic chase scene, or the Joker setting this stack of cash aflame before the final showdown.

One of the first exchanges we hear with Bane and a loyal follower goes like this,

Bane minion: Have we started the fire?
Bane: Yes, the fire rises.

Bane tells Bruce later on that “We will destroy Gotham. And when it is done, and Gotham is… ashes… then you have my permission to die.”

The answer for the villains of Gotham is ALWAYS to burn it all down—a solution that Batman never agrees with. After the people of Gotham foil the Joker’s boat dilemma at the end of the Dark Knight, Bruce tells the Joker, “This city just showed you that it’s full of people ready to believe in good.”

Bruce never gives up on the people of Gotham, and in the Dark Knight Rises, Selina Kyle is the ultimate test for Bruce. Time and time again she fools him and betrays him, yet despite all that he STILL maintains faith in her.

Selina Kyle: I blow that tunnel open, I’m gone.
Batman: There’s more to you than that.

After Batman hands Selina the keys to his batpod, they have this exchange,

Selina: You’re trusting me with this? You’re not as smart as I thought.
Batman: I’m not looking for a criminal anymore, Selina. I’m looking for a hero.

For someone like Ra’s al Ghul, or Bane, they’d view Selina’s stealing as a crime that deserves to be punished—full stop. When you look at the Dark Knight trilogy as a whole—and many other superhero films for that matter—you see that it really comes down to hope about people vs. pessimism about people. The villains are ALWAYS cynical about human nature and either don’t believe there’s any possibility of redemption for them, or don’t believe they deserve a chance at it.

What makes Bruce Wayne heroic is that he has hope in people, and always tries to find the good in everyone—even folks who are actively trying to expose his secret identity.

This “rising” motif in the Dark Knight Rises, for the villains specifically, is tied to fire. But for Batman, this “rising” motif is tied to hope. Hope that people will rise above who they are right now and be something more.

Alfred: Perhaps both Bruce and Mr. Dent believe the Batman stands for something more important than the whims of a terrorist, Miss Dawes. Even if everyone hates him for it. That's a sacrifice he's making. He's not being a hero. He's being something more.

'The Bat’ aircraft’s inclusion in this final film is intentional and thematically significant. The people of Gotham now literally look up to Batman, who has air superiority. Maybe this is the filmmakers way of saying that hope in people is ultimately superior to pessimism.

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A pessimist like Ra’s al Ghul would’ve put Selina Kyle away for her crimes, for instance. However, with enough faith and compassion, she acts more and more heroically as the film goes on. She eventually becomes a hero like Bruce.

Bruce believing in people is so heroic because it’s so rare. So few of us would be willing to save someone who’s about to ruin our entire lives, for instance, like Bruce does with Coleman Reese in the Dark Knight.

But the problem with Batman’s philosophy up until this film is that he never committed fully to his belief in people. He participated in the lie about Harvey Dent told to the people of Gotham, for instance. If he truly believed in people, wouldn’t he be okay with telling them the truth?

I think this “problem” is manifested in the Dark Knight Rises with the safety rope Bruce has to give up to successfully make the jump in prison. Fear of failure has to find him again for his body to fully commit to the jump, which I look at as a metaphor for his need to “let go” of Batman and let the people of Gotham make their own decisions.

The problem Bruce runs into in this film is that Batman won’t always be there for the people of Gotham, due to age, or death, or injury. Batman has acted as a kind of “safety rope” for the people of Gotham so far. His presence has deterred crime and saved the city from villains, but as long as he continues being Batman, his core thesis about the underlying goodness of people can never properly be tested. As long as he continues being Gotham’s safety net, IE “the rope,” he’ll always be stuck in that metaphorical prison of being Batman.

If Bruce truly believes in people’s capacity for good, then he should have no problem trusting them to rebuild Gotham in his absence.

This is Bruce’s final test, and why the Dark Knight Rises is a perfect end to this trilogy.

In one of my favorite moments of the film, Bruce has a flashback to his father rescuing him from the well, which visually looks like the prison he’s currently trapped in. His father tells him, “Why do we fall down Bruce? So we can pick ourselves back up.”

In Batman Begins that line had a lot of power, but it takes on a whole different meaning when repeated in The Dark Knight Rises. The subtext is, we have power over our own lives, and our own decisions. Why do we fall down? So we can pick ourselves back up. This message of radical ownership means that the people of Gotham have power to fix their own city as well.

When Commissioner Gordon confronts Foley for hiding in his home, they have this exchange,

Foley: We have to keep our heads down until they can fix this. If you still had family here maybe you’d..
Gordon: This only gets fixed from inside the city, Foley.

IE, it’s up to the people of Gotham to save the city, not anyone else.

What’s brilliant about this film is that the people of Gotham are put into a situation that only THEY can get themselves out of. It’s literally just up to them.

When I think about the entirety of the Dark Knight trilogy, this might be the central theme: It’s up to us.

We see later that Foley does decide to fight for Gotham, as does Selina Kyle, as does Robin, as does Commissioner Gordon.

In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent says this,

Bruce’s Date: Who appointed the Batman?
Harvey Dent: We did. All of us who stood by and let scum take control of our city.

Again with this theme of radical ownership and responsibility.

Before Batman goes to deliver Bane’s bomb out over the Bay, Gordon asks him who he is. Bruce responds, “A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy's shoulders to let him know that the world hadn't ended."

This, for me, paints Gotham in a completely different light. Even when the city was scum-infested, there were heroes. Commissioner Gordon put a coat around Bruce’s shoulders as a boy—an inspiring act he never forgot.

Bruce also had Alfred, who raised him in his time of need. He also had Rachel, who guided him when he was about to lose faith in Gotham completely.

Bruce could’ve become like Bane, or Ra’s al Ghul, or even the Joker after the death of his parents, but he had enough good people around to steer him straight

For me the Dark Knight trilogy—and Batman in general—is a story about the power of just one person doing the right thing. Not just because of what one person can do, but for how that can inspire others to do the right thing, too.

It’s also a story about personal responsibility. When we fall down, we must pick ourselves back up. When there’s a problem we let fester in our own communities, it’s up to us to act.

“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

And finally, it’s a story about faith in people. Bruce’s Father died because he had faith his mugger wouldn’t use a gun—a belief Ra’s al Ghul says made him weak. The Joker believed people’s morality was just a mask dropped at the first sign of trouble.

If you love Batman, and you find yourself overly cynical about human nature, just know that’s the polar opposite of Batman’s philosophy. His whole M.O. is having faith in people, and in the Dark Knight Rises, we see the fruit of that belief in Selina Kyle’s transformation, in Robin taking up Bruce’s mantle, and the people of Gotham fighting for good.

People CAN change. It’s not weak to believe in people. It’s actually heroic, because in this cynical world where so many of us expect the worst out of each other, faith in others is exceedingly rare.

Most of us are NOT Batman, that’s the point. But the good news is, Batman isn’t just a symbol of hope for the people of Gotham, but for us, the audience.

Will we rise to answer the hero’s call? Or descend back into the easy cynicism of villains like Ra’s al Ghul, the Joker, and Bane? The choice is yours.

What do you think of The Dark Knight Trilogy’s philosophy? Let me know in the comments below. And if you want more film analysis like this, subscribe to my channel! I publish new film analysis like this every week.

Thanks for watching! I’ll see you next time. :)

That character was Heath Ledger’s Joker.

His cynical worldview that people are actually savages deep down, and that morals are for losers has been adopted by groups like the “red pill” community of the manosphere, who believe things like,

• Society is a rigged game designed to benefit some people at the expense of others.

• The people who play by the rules are naive.

• Morality is a performance people maintain when it’s convenient and drop when it isn’t.

I wish I could say that all the facts and data clearly point to the Joker being wrong, but that would be a lie.

The reason Heath Ledger’s Joker is SUCH a compelling character nearly 2 decades later is that he’s uncomfortably right about a lot of things. I mean, do you call Batman taking the fall for Harvey Dent a win in the grand scheme of things? The fact they have to lie about Harvey to keep Gotham in-tact kind of proves the Joker’s point, right?

In this video, I’ll answer one core question..

Was the Joker right about human nature?

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The Joker’s worldview can be summed up by one of his most famous quotes, “Their morals, their code, is a bad joke dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other.”

There’s actually a lot of studies people point to that seemingly “prove” the Joker’s point.

For example, Milgram’s obedience experiments. It created a situation where ordinary Americans administered what they believed were lethal electric shocks to strangers simply because an authority figure told them to do so. An astonishing 65% of participants administered the maximum, lethal 450-volt shock simply because the system and the authority figure told them they must continue.

Another example are the Asch Conformity Experiments from 1951. In this setup, a real participant was put in a room with a group of actors. The group was shown a card with a line on it, and asked to match it to one of three other lines. The answer was glaringly obvious. However, the actors were instructed to unanimously give the wrong answer.

Nearly 75% of healthy participants conformed and knowingly gave a wrong answer at least once, simply to avoid standing out or disagreeing with the toxic consensus of the group.

If you put 100 healthy people into a deeply corrupt environment, science proves that a large percentage of them will comply with evil due to the psychological pressure to obey authority and fit in with the group.

So when the Joker says our morals and code are a bad joke dropped at the first sign of trouble, it seems he’s got a point.

More proof of the Joker’s point is in how crime increases under weak systems. Decades of empirical studies compiled by agencies like the National Institute of Justice and Arnold Ventures prove that the certainty of being caught is a massive deterrent to crime, while the severity of the punishment does almost nothing.

Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson tested whether weak community bonds increased crime by tracking 8,000 residents over 343 neighborhoods in Chicago.

Sampson co-authored a paper in Science introducing the concept of Collective Efficacy—the measure of how much neighbors trust each other and are willing to intervene to maintain public order.

The data proved that neighborhoods with high collective efficacy had drastically lower homicide and violence rates, even when they had the exact same levels of poverty. When the social system breaks down and neighbors stop looking out for each other, crime automatically skyrockets because there is no informal social control.

So the data shows that people, when placed in high-pressure situations or in weak systems, are more likely to do bad things.

The opposite of this is part of Bruce’s strategy in Batman Begins. He puts the fear of getting caught back into the criminals of Gotham. By the time we catch back up with him in The Dark Knight, we see how his presence deters a lot of crime from happening in Gotham.

This is a pretty bleak view though, right? I mean, are people fundamentally bad and just acting good because the system doesn’t allow them to be bad? Is the Joker, gulp, right?

Many people these days believe this to be the case.

In a landmark 25-country study by the Pew Research Center, researchers asked citizens if they believed their fellow countrymen were morally good or bad. The United States was the only country surveyed where the majority of adults (53%) said that their fellow citizens are morally bad. That’s kind of insane, and literal proof that the majority of people in the United States agree with the Joker’s point about the fickleness of human morality. I’m NOT saying this means most Americans want chaos and anarchy—I’m saying that the majority of us agree with one of the craziest villains in movie history about people being fundamentally bad at their core.

Conversely, countries like Canada and Indonesia had 92% of their respondents say that they believe their fellow citizens are fundamentally good.

Other surveys from the Pew Research Center reveal shocking truths about American psychology. The data reveals that 71% of Americans believe that “most people would try to take advantage of you if they got a chance,” and that 60% of people flatly state that “most people can’t be trusted.”

One other landmark study from the Common Cause Foundation showed that 74% of individuals personally identified with unselfish values like honesty, helpfulness, and justice, while 78% of those same people believed that the rest of the population is deeply selfish. Most people believe they’re unselfish, yet walk around firmly believing they’re surrounded by bad actors wearing masks.

I actually posted a video about The Dark Knight’s hidden poker references last week, and how the whole movie is a metaphor for a poker game. This idea that most Americans believe the average person is just wearing a mask hiding their evil nature fits perfectly with the concept of players putting on a “poker face” to trick fellow players. The video is linked in the top right in case you want to watch it after you’re done this one.

Unfortunately, believing that people around you are fundamentally bad leads to a belief that the system is rotten to the core, too.

Research from the Global Trustworthiness Index shows that individuals who score high in “social cynicism” are highly likely to believe that institutions do not just make mistakes, but are actively conspiring to harm the public.

Even without research and studies, it’s not hard to connect the dots. If you believe the average person is secretly malicious, you’ll logically conclude that a politician, or CEO is even worse because they have power.

Multi-decade polling from the Pew Research Center shows that public trust in the federal government and mainstream media has hit historic lows recently—and it’s not just the government and media we distrust, but churches, banks, the criminal justice system, and big business.

In the last 20 years since The Dark Knight came out, Americans have internalized the philosophy of the Joker more than we might realize.

Which brings us to the red-pill community.

Gallup and Pew both show that trust in institutions has collapsed faster and further among men under 30 than any other demographic group. And their ideas about society being rigged, and how the “good person” self-image most people carry is actually a delusion lines up perfectly with the Joker’s worldview.

The red-pill community was originally framed around the idea that society lies to men about how attraction works, but it later expanded into a worldview that the entire social contract is a lie used to manipulate people.

If you accept this worldview, cynicism gets coded as intelligence, and hope gets coded as naivety.

I mean, influencers like Andrew Tate espouse the idea that the rules are for suckers ALL THE TIME.

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And, again, they’re half right. I mean, society IS a lie at the end of the day. Plato wrote about the “Noble Lie” in The Republic over 2,000 years ago. The idea that society needs to have myths that its guardians maintain even when they know the myths aren’t true or even have their issues. It’s not because people are stupid, but because the alternative—chaos and anarchy—create worse outcomes than staying in the system does.

Sociologist Peter Berger wrote about the “sacred canopy,” the idea that societies need a shared mythological framework to hold together. Yuval Noah Harari writes in Sapiens that all of human civilization is built on shared fictions— fictions like money, nations, laws, and human rights.

So that begs the question.. if the entire system is not just a lie, but corrupt, should we defend it or not?

And the answer is, the system isn’t nearly as corrupt as you think it is.

Before I give you facts and data on that, I want to clarify that I understand why people—and especially young men—feel disillusioned with the system. Ever since we ushered in the new millennium, Americans have seen and been through a lot—from 9/11 to the 2008 financial crisis, to the war in Iraq, to horrific police brutality, to the Catholic Church abuse scandal, and much more.

Social media acts like gasoline on that fire, and we already know that platforms intentionally feed us the most inflammatory misinformation about every topic under the sun.

In terms of the manosphere, there’s real issues we need to address as a society to lift up both boys and young men. Things like shortages of male teachers, counselors, and community leaders leave many young boys without relatable, real-world guidance, and that’s just the tip of an enormous iceberg.

But when you start asking the question of whether the system—and by extension people—are really as bad as we think they are, the answers are kind of shocking.

The truth is, the evidence does NOT support the Joker’s thesis that people are fundamentally self-interested and by extension, bad.

For example, a paper in ScienceDirect highlighted how evolution punishes unrelenting selfishness, and that for humans, who don’t have claws, fangs, or protective fur, mutual dependence and altruism were actually our primary evolutionary advantage.

Also, Joker’s belief that “when the chips are down, these civilized people, they’ll eat each other,” isn’t even true. Sociologists actually call the idea of savage human panic a Hollywood myth. The evidence is that in real-world disaster scenarios, like bombings, earthquakes, or fires, people rarely look out for only themselves.

We see this in the end of the Dark Knight with the boat showdown. Both boats, one of which was carrying a full load of convicts, decided to NOT act in self-interest, and show compassion for the lives of those on the other boat.

There’s also very strong evidence the system is not nearly as corrupt as we think it is. For example, the European Commission tracks both the perception of corruption and people’s actual experience with it every year. Across the EU, 68% of citizens say they believe corruption is widespread in their country, but when those exact same people are asked about whether they personally experienced corruption in the last year, only 4% to 6% say yes.

So millions of people who have never once encountered a corrupt official in their lives believe that every public institution around them is entirely corrupt.

In Western Nations, if you want to get a passport, get pulled over by the police, or need to go to court, the probability you will be forced to pay an under-the-table bribe is virtually 0%. When you zoom out and look at all of human history, this level of institutional integrity is unprecedented.

Research into institutional design from organizations like the World Bank show that Western institutions are built on redundant internal safeguards. They’re less corrupt because they’re systematically structured to prevent it.

So, what’s going on here? Why does everybody think the system is corrupt when the data clearly shows otherwise?

There’s a couple reasons. For one, there’s the scandal amplification effect. Out of 100,000 honest civil servants doing their job, the media will report on the one clerk who stole money. This makes our brain mistake a highly publicized anomaly for a systemic norm.

Also, as Gallup tracking on government corruption notes, when an institution catches and punishes a bad actor, the public doesn’t say “Wow, the system works!” Instead, they say “See? I knew they were all corrupt!”

The fact of the matter is, it seems like folks in Western nations blow a lot of this stuff way out of proportion. Really? Us? Blowing stuff out of proportion? Na, we’d never do that!!

That’s NOT to say we have no problems at all—we got em, trust me. But maybe we should pump the brakes on believing the entire system is corrupt and that our fellow countrymen and women are morally bad.

The data doesn’t just suggest that the “system” in Western nations is way less corrupt than we think—it suggests that working together is naturally how human beings do things.

David Rand, a prominent cognitive scientist conducted dozens of studies involving thousands of participants to determine whether we’re selfish or unselfish by nature.

He and his team used classic economic experiments like the Public Goods Game and the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but added a crucial cognitive variable: time constraints.

People were divided up into two groups—one group had to make a decision in less than 10 seconds, and the other had to pause, reflect, and wait at least 10 seconds before reacting.

The results across thousands of decisions were crystal clear: people who made decisions faster gave significantly more money to the collective pool. This suggests that when forced to act on pure impulse, humans default to acting unselfishly. However, when respondents were forced to slow down and calculate, contributions plummeted. This suggests that selfishness requires a conscious override of our first instinct.

But maybe the best “proof” that human beings aren’t nearly as savage as we think is Rutger Bregman’s bestselling book, Humankind: A Hopeful History. In it, he deconstructs the popular belief that civilization is just a thin veneer covering our inherently savage, selfish nature.

He actually digs deeper into the Milgram Shock Experiment which we talked about earlier. Deeper archival analysis showed that while 65% of people seemingly administered lethal shocks because an authority figure told them to, most participants deeply resisted, wept, begged to stop, and only complied because they were lied to and told the shocks caused no permanent tissue damage.

He also completely destroys the thesis of the Lord of the Flies. In fact, a real “Lord of the Flies” scenario actually happened, involving six teenage schoolboys who stole a boat from their boarding school, got caught in a massive storm, and got shipwrecked on a deserted island for 15 months.

Instead of turning on each other, like the book, these boys worked together, setting up strict rosters for gardening, cooking, and guard duty. When one boy broke his leg after slipping down a cliff, the other boys set his leg using bamboo splints and took over his chores. They even built a hollow-body guitar to sing songs and keep morale high.

All this to say, NO, human beings by nature are nowhere near as bad as we think they are. And in fact, the people who think folks are naive or “sheep” for having hope in humanity are actually naive—and sheep—themselves for believing in these false narratives. How ironic!

When I originally revisited The Dark Knight last week, I felt it had a very dark message about the fragility of society and human goodness. Now, after doing all this research, I realize all of that is largely just a smokescreen hiding the much less terrifying truth that humans are wired for cooperation, and that’s in fact been our greatest evolutionary advantage.

What’s terrifying is, lots of people believe the exact opposite. Many folks believe people are fundamentally bad, and that everyone has a monster inside them waiting to be unleashed under the right circumstances. What’s terrifying is, many people are actually the Joker—many believe what he says.

Well, I’m here to tell you, we aren’t, and there’s countless studies and research that proves that. I now look at the Dark Knight as a beacon of hope for us all. In the end, Gotham citizens proved the Joker wrong, and one man decided to take the fall, acting unselfishly, to ensure Gotham’s safety. What’s cool is, the unselfish altruistic behavior depicted in the film is ACTUALLY humanity’s default nature, not savagery.

In the end, the Joker was right about our tendency to expect the worst in people, but wrong about our nature when the chips are actually down.

In the end, Batman won.

What do you think of the philosophy of the Dark Knight? Let me know in the comments!

And if you liked this analysis, subscribe to my Substack for more just like this one.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time!

Joker henchmen: “Three of a kind.”
Bruce Wayne: “I’m playing this close to the chest.”
The Joker: “When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other.”
The Joker: “Harvey is my ace in the hole.”
Commissioner Gordon: “We bet it all on him.”
Harvey Dent: “You do like to play things close to the chest.”

These hidden details fit surprisingly well with other Poker references in the film, for example how the Joker leaves his “card” everywhere, which is literally just a Joker from a standard deck.

Or how luck and chance are so central to Harvey Dent’s character—elements that are also crucial to the game of Poker, since the cards you’re dealt are purely based on chance.

Or the constant bluffing going on in the film, like how Gordon fakes his own death to catch the Joker, or how Harvey bluffs, claiming he’s Batman, or how the two boats at the end of the film “call” the Joker’s bluff, refusing to play his game.

What if I told you that none of this is coincidence? That poker perfectly demonstrates the philosophy of the Dark Knight, and what this masterpiece is saying about human nature, the social contract, and the chaos of life?

Let’s dive into what The Dark Knight is really trying to say through the lens of one of its most prominent motifs: poker.

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Before we dive into the meaning of the film, let me hammer home the Dark Knight’s obsession with not just poker, but games in general.

Games abound in The Dark Knight, most notably the ones that the Jokers makes the citizens of Gotham play. For instance, how he says that if Batman doesn’t reveal his true identity he’ll kill one person per day. Or how he’ll blow up a hospital in Gotham if somebody doesn’t kill Coleman Reese inside an hour. Or how he captures Rachel and Harvey, forcing Batman to choose the one he wants to save.

These are all games that the Joker forces Batman and the people of Gotham to play to show something about their underlying savageness.

Even the moment when Batman charges the Joker in his Batpod is a game of chicken—a game that Batman loses at the last second. It’s the same game of chicken the Joker forces Gotham citizens to play in the famous boat scene at the end of the movie, where both boats have the detonator to blow the other one up.

The Joker makes other references to games in dialogue:

So, which of you fine gentlemen would like to join our team? Oh, there’s only one spot open right now, so we’re gonna have... Tryouts.

“I’ve gotta get you off the bench and into the game.”

It’s not just the Joker that plays games, but Harvey Dent. After he becomes Two-Face, he starts playing Russian Roulette like an ex-KGB agent.

Okay, great, enough talk of games. Let’s start diving into what it means.

So if you remember, belief is a huge theme in the Dark Knight.

Harvey Dent’s campaign slogan is “I believe in Harvey Dent,” a slogan that Bruce repeats at his fundraiser, “I believe in Harvey Dent.”

At the start of the movie, the bank manager tells the Joker “Criminals in this town used to believe in things.. honor.. respect,” to which the Joker replies “I believe what doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger.”

Batman tells the Joker at the end of the film, “This city is full of people ready to believe in good.”

And he tells Commissioner Gordon later on, “Sometimes truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”

Faith, IE, their belief.

It’s fascinating because belief is absolutely foundational to the game of Poker as well. In Poker, players have their own cards that only they can see, and everybody’s trying to guess what hand other players have. In other words, everything is based off what cards you believe other people are holding. And when someone tries to bluff you, it’s up to you to decide whether you believe them or not. The whole game is based on belief.

It’s similar with the system we all live under.

This belief in the system is something you can’t have a functioning society without, and Bruce knows that. He restores this belief for Gotham specifically in Batman Begins, only for the Joker to nearly destroy it in the Dark Knight. Then in the end Batman decides to become the villain, the outcast, so people can go on believing Harvey Dent was a good man, and keep believing in the system.

Think of it like a poker game where the Joker, Batman, Two-Face, the mob, and the people of Gotham are all sitting at the table. Imagine that the dealer represents the system itself—and even morality.

In Batman Begins, the dealer was initially bought by the mob. The dealer would always give the mob the winning hand, and whenever they bet big, everybody would fold out of fear because they knew the game was rigged.

Then Batman sat down at the table, putting the fear of god in the dealer, who then started to deal the cards more fairly. Then, when Batman began to make his own big bets, the mob started folding, and fairness was introduced back into the game.

Then, in the Dark Knight, the Joker takes the mob’s seat at the table, since they don’t know how to deal with the Batman. Oh yeah, and he sits down with a Tommy Gun.

The Joker then points that gun at the dealer, threatening to blow his head off if he doesn’t give him the winning hand, and starts making huge, aggressive bets to test people’s faith in whether the dealer will stay fair or not. When nobody at the table calls him, it reinforces his views that our faith in the system is easily broken, dropped like a hat at the first sign of trouble.

To the Joker, the choices people make under pressure show who they really are.

For instance, he wants Batman to turn himself in, and says that one person will die every day until he does, and what happens? Harvey takes the fall for Bruce, bluffing the Joker, raising his initial bet, while Bruce does nothing.

“I wanted to see what you’d do, and you didn’t disappoint. You let five people die. Then you let Dent take your place.”

Then the Joker makes another huge bet—telling Bruce that if he calls, Rachel will be saved, and if he folds, Harvey will be saved. Bruce chooses Rachel, and at that point it doesn’t matter if the Joker wins or loses—he’s proven to Bruce that when the chips are down, he has a self-serving nature, like the rest of us.

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Then he slides even more chips into the table, threatening to blow up a hospital in Gotham if Coleman Reese doesn’t die within the hour. He then drops a gun in the pot, daring people to call him, take the pot, and kill Coleman Reese with the gun. If the people of Gotham were a player at this poker table, many called right after the Joker made this bet. We see a mob outside waiting to kill Coleman Reese, and even the police officer holding him in the car tries to kill him.

One by one, the Joker shows, through the game, what human nature actually looks like. He doesn’t care about the money, he only cares about sending a message.

“It’s not about the money, it’s about sending a message.”

When Batman finally catches the Joker at the end of the film, he likens Harvey Dent to an “ace in the hole” in a poker game.

You didn’t think I’d risk losing the battle for Gotham’s soul in a fistfight with you? No. You need an ace in the hole. Mine’s Harvey.

His “ace in the hole” is showing how even the best of men, Harvey Dent, drops his morals when he realizes the whole game was a sham in the first place. It’s this ace in the hole that could make everyone at the table lose not only their chips, but their faith in the game entirely, and get up and walk away.

It’s like if the Joker lifted Harvey Dent’s sleeve up, and everyone was able to see he had an ace up there, and that he was cheating. Keeping with the poker metaphor, it was his honorable choices that made everyone feel the game might’ve been fair in the first place. People looked to him for inspiration. But if they saw that even he eventually cheated, that would make the people of Gotham walk away from the table.

The Joker is just there to make everyone doubt the game.

What Batman does at the end of the film, before the Joker can show the world who Harvey Dent really is, is stand up to say “I did it! I put the card up his sleeve! I’m the cheater!”

He takes the fall so people’s faith in the game remains—so that they continue sitting at the table, so that society can go on functioning.

Dent starts the movie believing in reason and institutions. The law, the DA’s office, due process — these are the mechanisms by which a rational society creates justice for Harvey. To keep with the poker metaphor, Harvey, at the start of the film, had complete faith that the game would give a fair outcome.

He was also the best player at the table, knowing all the strategies of the game—all the ins and outs, and he won a lot because he was good at the game, and reading people, and he had a great poker face.

In fact, people called him two-face before his accident because of his previous work in the police department’s Internal Affairs division. Because his job was investigating and turning in corrupt cops, many officers disliked him and spitefully labeled him as a “two-faced” snitch. In other words, he was great at bluffing people.

This metaphor for Dent being an aggressive poker player who uses big bluffs to win fits his character perfectly. Beyond that specific job, the Two-Face nickname reflects the underlying conflict and duality in his nature—the split between his public reputation as Gotham’s shining, righteous District Attorney and his hidden, ruthless, and aggressive tactics to get results.

His poker face convincing everyone that he has the cards to win, is sometimes a bluff concealing his true nature. And because he knows the game better than anyone, he knows exactly when to bluff and when not to. He uses the system itself—the way the game is setup—to his advantage.

However, Harvey gets a little too aggressive. After he bluffs Gotham into believing he’s Batman, both him and Rachel are captured, leading to Rachel’s unfortunate death.

Harvey went all in with that bluff, and the Joker called, showing him he had a better hand. Harvey losing everything when Rachel dies dismantles his belief in the system, and basically in life itself. He curses the game for not being fair, and eventually stops playing by the rules himself.

Which brings us to the finale. The Joker rigs two boats with explosives and gives each boat the detonator to blow up the other boat. This would be like if the Joker went all in and told the table that whoever folds first doesn’t die. Inexplicably, everyone at the table calls him on his bluff, choosing to do the right thing, and trust the players around them, even if it means potentially dying in the process.

This is an outcome the Joker never could’ve predicted. To him the entire game is a sham to hide the fact that we’re all savages deep down. He ends up losing all his chips and gets kicked from the table.

But does he really lose in the grand scheme?

Batman says “this city is full of people ready to believe in good,” but what if they stop believing? Joker then says his ace in the hole is Harvey Dent, and that once people see how even he was corrupted, their spirit will break entirely. So did the people on these boats NOT blow each other up because they’re fundamentally good, or because their faith in morality just hasn’t been broken completely yet?

As we know in the Dark Knight Rises, the lie about Harvey Dent comes to light, and the city does turn on itself. So does the Joker lose at the end of the Dark Knight? Or is his victory just postponed?

To me, the answer’s pretty obvious.

So what’s this movie really trying to say? That the Joker was right? That people do become savages once their faith in the system breaks completely?

Which brings us to Batman.

Batman is Christopher Nolan’s “ace in the hole” in the Dark Knight. Even if you look at the boat standoff with the bleakest of interpretations, concluding that it’s just another mask for humanity’s savageness, you still have the “problem” of Batman. One man—one human being—did the right thing even at great personal cost to himself. You can’t conclude anything about human nature if just one person bucks that conclusion.

This is why Bruce is so heroic in the film. He saves Coleman Reese even after Coleman threatens to reveal his identity. He creates sophisticated sonar tech only to use it once so he can beat the Joker. He takes the blame for Harvey’s crimes so the people of Gotham can go on believing in the system.

Is it cheating? Kind of! But it also directly negates Joker’s worldview, since instead of only looking out for himself, he acts in the best interest of others, even when it comes at immense personal cost to himself. The Joker fundamentally doesn’t believe people are capable of that when the chips are down.

This is why Batman is so beloved. He’s a symbol to the rest of us, a beacon of hope and light guiding us in dark times. An incorruptible force for good that people can turn to to say, “As long as he’s there, I have hope in people.” And that’s really what belief in the system is at the end of the day—belief that people will do the right thing when the chips are down. Just how the Joker says that madness is like gravity, and that it only needs a little push, perhaps faith and decency are similar. Sometimes we just need someone to nudge us along, and be a good example. And if we truly want to be heroic, like Batman, we can take up the mantle and be that example for others.

What messages did you pick up on in the Dark Knight? Let me know in the comments!

And if you liked this video, consider subscribing to my Substack. I’ll be covering the philosophy of the Dark Knight Rises next week, and then I’ll do a video analyzing the philosophy of the entire Dark Knight trilogy after that.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

Margaret goes to a black site where Wardex is holding Daniel Kellner, and uses her psychic abilities to cut through dozens of guards, and free him.

How does she cut through dozens of guards? Easy! She presents to them as the people they love most, and talks to them, and one by one they fall into a stupor instead of capturing her.

Later, Noah Scanlon says “My god, what is she?”

To which his right hand man Casper says, “Unstoppable.”

Disclosure Day does something brilliant. It uses aliens, and our preconceived notions about their vastly superior technology, to present empathy as a tool with unstoppable power.

In this alien film, the most powerful technology they bring isn’t a weapon, or a spaceship, but the ability to understand people. I find it an immensely empowering message that rings truer than many people might realize.

Disclosure Day opens with a POV shot of a wrestler getting kicked in the face. The wrestlers, unironically, wear red and blue outfits, and folks in the crowd are seen wearing red and blue clothing, with some sporting red baseball caps that have USA printed on it.

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It’s not hard to see what Spielberg’s hinting at with this analogy.

The world at large is on the brink of World War 3, and everything changes when a little cardinal visits Margaret Fairchild in her Kansas City home. She’s suddenly given psychic abilities that let her “drop in” on people’s minds, and see what they’re thinking.

These abilities allow her to do things like get out of traffic tickets, or see where people are in the world. It connects her to people so deeply that everyone she comes into contact with, even if they’re diametrically opposed to her, can’t touch her. She walks right through anyone in her path peacefully.

A lot of Spielberg’s critics say his movies are too emotional, or hypersensitive. They probably see his messages as incompatible with a deeply problematic world where all too often brute force rules, and kindness is tossed by the wayside. After all, you can control everything in a movie—but real life is way messier. I think these folks have a point, but I also think their criticisms ironically prove Spielberg’s argument about empathy in Disclosure Day.

Yeah, the world is a dangerous, flawed place that’s severely lacking in kindness, but that’s precisely why radical empathy would be so transformative for it. We just don’t see a lot of it in our day-to-day lives—if at all. I actually don’t think most of us know what love and empathy truly are. I mean, when’s the last time you truly felt understood by someone on a very deep level? Like someone knows your deepest, darkest fears, your desires, and your interests? Conversely, when’s the last time you truly tried to understand someone else on this level?

The real-world research on this is heartbreaking.

Data from the American Perspectives Survey and the General Social Survey highlight that the percentage of people reporting they have absolutely no close friends has quadrupled over the last thirty years. And in 1990, the average person had roughly 4 to 5 close confidants. Today, that average has dropped to 2 or 3, with many people reporting only 1.

It’s estimated that roughly 8-17% of adults live without a single close confidant. When scaled globally, data from Gallup reveals that more than 300 million people report having zero friends or family members they can rely on or talk to deeply.

Empathy is on the decline as well. In 2011, Social psychologist Dr. Sara Konrath discovered a 40% decrease in overall empathy among college students in 2009 compared to college students in 1979.

And in massive tracking surveys, the number of parents who report they would be deeply upset if their child married someone from the opposing political party has skyrocketed from roughly 4% in 1960 to nearly 50% today.

My point is, empathy for anybody outside our own tribe is in short supply these days, and it’s getting worse as time goes on!

For those who feel that empathy is a trap, or is too “touchy-feely” to create change in an increasingly hostile world, the research actually proves Spielberg’s point about the transformative nature of empathy.

Behavioral scientist Guy Itzchakov proved in a landmark study that when people are subjected to high-quality listening, IE they feel heard deeply without judgement, it forces a psychological reset. The person being listened to automatically lowers their defensive walls, begins to reflect on their extreme attitudes, and naturally depolarizes.

Remember the final word of Disclosure Day?

Margaret goes up on live television and says “listen.”

This final exclamation point on Spielberg’s message about empathy lines up perfectly with Guy Itzchakov’s findings about the power of listening. Studies show that listening to people can transform them.

Research from Jamil Zaki, a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, showed that when people are guided through exercises where they imagine the daily struggles, fears, and childhood backgrounds of a political adversary, their brain’s “out-group bias” crumbles. They start engaging with the human being in front of them instead of a caricature of the opposing political party.

Social psychologists also point out that when radical empathy is introduced, it changes the questions we ask. Instead of debating a hot-button topic, an empathetic framework forces us to ask, “What underlying fear or personal experience drove you to care so deeply about this?” Finding common ground on core human fears completely changes the trajectory of democratic dialogue.

The problem is, most of us suck at empathy for people outside our family, friends, and those who share our exact worldviews.

Studies prove this. For example, in the standard Empathy Quotient test, which is scored from 0 to 80, the average neurotypical male scores a 42, and the average female scores a 47. This means that the average person is good at basic social politeness, but consistently fails to comprehend perspectives from people belonging to different socioeconomic, political, or cultural groups.

There’s also something known as the “If I Were You” Fallacy, where when someone tells you a problem they’re having, instead of imagining being the other person, you imagine what YOU would feel in their situation. So if someone’s scared about public speaking, and you’re not, an example of the fallacy would be you saying something like “Public speaking is easy, you’re overreacting.” This is what the average person does. We’re kinda bad at empathy.

In fact, scientists say that if empathy were a school subject, the average person would pull a consistent C-minus.

If you’re still not convinced that,

A. Most people aren’t great at empathy
B. Political polarization would drastically improve with more empathy

I don’t know what to tell you.

The research literally shows all of this—the problem is, most people are just really bad at putting it into action, including me!

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However something happened to me recently that changed my entire life—and it has to do with radical empathy.

5 years ago, my sister started distancing herself from my family. It caught all of us off-guard, and we could feel a distinct coldness from her that hadn’t been there before. She used to be one of my best friends, and seeing her act so uncaring towards us was a very hard pill to swallow.

My whole family struggled with this for years—especially my Mom. I mean, it’s like if someone you knew and loved suddenly woke up and was totally different—and not just totally different, but indifferent to YOU!

It really hurt, and many tears were shed by us in the aftermath of all this.

My sister started talking about things like trauma, and therapy, and emotional neglect. I couldn’t imagine where she was coming from because I lived in the Philippines and saw what real hardship looked like. I mean, we won the lottery!

I watched my Mom cry about it for years. I watched as my sister selfishly went about her life, seemingly not caring about the pain she caused my parents, or me! It was as if her heart went cold, which was so weird because my sister was always so warm with all of us.

I became so angry with her for hurting the family, that last May I was this close to cutting contact entirely, and letting her live her life in peace.

And then I watched live action How To Train Your Dragon. laughs

So I watched that movie, and started reflecting on Hiccup’s journey. He’s a kid who disappoints his father because he’s not viking-like. Instead of being a big dumb jock, he’s smart and sensitive, which rails against the viking way of life.

However, we find that Hiccup is actually precisely what the vikings needed. We realize he’s right about the dragons being gentle souls, and that he’s able to find out their idiosyncrasies because he sees the world differently from everyone else.

Hiccup is a nerdy weakling of a character, but he actually shows more courage than the valiant warriors of his tribe, because it takes lots of courage to disappoint your parents and everyone around you.

Everything suddenly clicked in my mind.

I realized that my sister was Hiccup, and we were Hiccup’s father. She was showing us a new world—displaying immense courage—and we never considered her point of view.

We were all too focused on our own pain.

I mean, if we truly loved her, shouldn’t we have been concerned about what she was telling us? If we truly loved her, shouldn’t we have been happy for her finding peace at last?

In a second my animosity was replaced with curiosity—my pain replaced with empathy. I spent an hour writing a message to my sister, telling her I loved her. Without getting too detailed, I told her I understood the burden she had to bear as a child, and how she gave, gave, and gave to everyone until there was nothing left for her. Our family really depended on her for SO MUCH, and then got mad when she refused to hold everything together for us. It was time for her to look after herself now, I said.

The message I got back from her an hour later was so sweet and warm that it felt like a miracle. I never thought my sister would ever talk like that to me again, and since then, after dozens of calls and countless messages, she’s become my best friend again.

So, why did she react this way?

Well, because of empathy! For the first time, someone from her own family understood her instead of judged her—chose to walk alongside her in her journey instead of chastise her for going the wrong route.

It was incredibly cathartic for her, and the way she’s interacted with me ever since has shocked me.

So when I see Margaret Fairchild stopping agents in their tracks, changing their entire demeanor through sheer empathy and love, it resonates very strongly with me because I know it’s possible. I know you can change people, and yourself, very radically if you just try to empathize with them.

And for the people who think this is too schmaltzy of a message from Spielberg, I don’t blame them! Exactly one year ago I would’ve held a similar view.

But not today. Not after seeing the true power of empathy up close. I do think it’s the most powerful thing in the world, and making it the most advanced of alien technologies in Disclosure Day is actually a perfect analogy for its power.

In the film, Margaret tells Jackson that ever since seeing the cardinal she feels “in the flow.” She then tells him it’s like when he’s playing his music. That’s how I feel these days ever since I invited radical empathy into my life. It feels like I was stuck playing life on hard mode, and now I get to play it on easy mode.

If someone tries to hurt me now, it doesn’t affect me that much. I know they got stuff they’re probably dealing with.

If someone needs space from me, I don’t take it personally. I just want them to be happy.

If I want to connect with someone, I find it so much easier now, because I expect to find beauty in them eventually.

Everything in the world starts making more sense when you invite love into your life. You start understanding that we all got our own trauma that make us who we are today, and you stop blaming people for it. You start feeling compassion.

Yes, the world is messed up, but that’s because there’s so little love and empathy in it. It’s actually really bad, you find. But that’s why true empathy works like a miracle with people—because they simply don’t experience it all that often.

In Disclosure Day, after Margaret finds out Clark wouldn’t follow her if she left Kansas City, she doesn’t get angry at him. Instead she reacts with love and understanding, telling him she loves him.

How many people are really capable of reacting that way?

Radical empathy broadens your world. It makes you see everyone as allies in the grand scheme of things, and when you get this 30,000 foot view, you see how pointless so much of this is. We’re all just floating on a rock in space, here for a blink of time in the grand scheme of things. We’re all scared. We all want to be loved and understood. And so much of the bad things we do are done because we can’t see this broad perspective.

In Disclosure Day, Margaret’s mind gets broadened. She goes from egotistical meteorologist to Ghandi in a flash. Her whole world opens up, thanks to visitors from the outer reaches of space. And that’s perhaps the real genius of Disclosure Day. The world is on the brink of annihilation, and news of extraterrestrial life, which massively broadens our horizons, saves the day.

Just like how news of aliens would make our problems feel small, and broaden our view of the universe, empathy does the same exact thing. All one needs to do, to unlock this superpower of transcendent perspective, is listen.

What did you think of Disclosure Day? Let me know in the comments down below!

If you liked this analysis, consider subscribing to my Substack. I publish new film analysis like this every week.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

In this video I’ll try to break down the meaning of the film, along with some of it’s more mysterious images like,

What does the shadow Pirate signify?
What’s up with the backwards stop sign? And..
What’s with the Backrooms “recalling” people poorly the more times it remembers them?

Over the next 15 minutes, I’ll explain my interpretation of what Backrooms’ is really trying to say.

Also, real quick, I can’t use clips from the film because it’s still in theaters but I’ll try my best to put relevant trailer clips over my voice to show you what I mean in certain moments. I hope staring at my face for 15 minutes isn’t too boring.

So, right off the bat, the Backrooms are a pretty clear a metaphor for our subconscious mind. Early in the film we hear Mary say something like, “Your consciousness is a room full of memories. It erect walls to protect itself from the outside world. We’re not aware of it, but if it goes on long enough, it can leave you feeling trapped.”

Emphasis is also placed on the loops, or cycles, our mind develops over time.

Mary says, and I’m paraphrasing, “As you walk through life, the untrained mind accumulates loops. Habits. Behaviors. That keep you drifting in circles. Creating the same problems, reaching for the same solutions, over and over and over again. Neural pathways of least resistance.”

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These loops are partially represented by the moment Clark first goes into the Backrooms. He explores for a while, going through a few doors, before he notices something lurking in the shadows. Panicked, he goes through a window-like structure and arrives right back where we he started, near the backwards Stop sign.

And when Clark ties Mary to a chair in the Backrooms, she pleads with him to let her go, to which he says it’s useless, because she’ll just end up right back here again with him.

It’s a brilliant metaphor, using these analogous backrooms to represent our own brain, and the habits we repeat over and over again.

If you watch this movie closely, you’ll start noticing a blue color motif embedded throughout the story.

For instance, the map Clark makes for Mary of the Backrooms is drawn in blue ink. The condo being built overtop Mary’s old home features a blue billboard. The pamphlet Phil gives Mary at the end of the movie is blue. The color of the tape Clark uses to mark the entrance to the Backrooms is blue. The pillows Mary sleeps on at her house are blue and red. When Clark abducts Mary in the Backrooms, he places blue plates and cups on the dinner table, and her hands are tied down with blue ropes.

There’s TONS of other moments where blue lighting is used, like when Mary first enters the Backrooms. Behind her, in the basement of Clark’s furniture store, blue light clashes with red on the ceiling and walls around her. Speaking of Clark’s store, blue paint is heavily featured in the main showroom.

Another recurring motif connected to the color blue are the TV’s we see in the film. The found footage at the start of the film ends with the TV turning blue. Clark watches TV in bed at his furniture store. Phil watches The Never Ending Story on TV with his family before Clark’s furniture store commercial pops up. And Mary watches her own commercial on TV as well, which features blue lighting that we see blasted onto her as she sits on her couch.

The color blue was heavily associated with TV’s from the 80’s and 90’s. Whenever a channel went off the air, or no input was connected, the TV would automatically display a solid, bright blue screen instead of loud, static white noise.

So, what does it mean?

So Mary says in a narration for her cassette series about “Opening the window” that our brains create habits that trap us into creating the same problems and reaching for the same solutions over and over again. She calls it “Neural pathways of least resistance.”

Interesting. There’s another thing I’ve frequently heard connected to the phrase “paths of least resistance…” water. Water famously takes the path of least resistance in many instances, and I feel like blue represents Clark’s and even Mary’s proclivity to take that path of least resistance in the movie, jumping into old patterns, and reliving moments from their life over and over again.

Whether it’s Clark remembering the night he was kicked out of his house, or Mary remembering the childhood trauma her Mother inflicted on her.

There’s actually three recurring colors in Backrooms, and they all play off each other. Do you want to guess what the other two are? Vote now on your phones…

Okay so one of the other colors is yellow/orange, obviously, which is the dominant color of the Backrooms. I viewed yellow and orange as representing our subconscious, given how that’s the color of the Backrooms themselves.

One of my favorite shots of the film that’s evidence of this thesis is at the end when Mary talks with Phil. The camera sits at eye level, and the wall behind her features white and orange paint—white at the top, orange at the bottom. What’s interesting is, the line separating these colors cuts directly under her eyes, visually cutting off the top of her skull.

I felt like this shot, with the orange band of paint resting beneath her brain visually, might represent our thought patterns, our habits, buried deep in our subconscious.

What primed this thought were MRI images of Mary’s body, skull, and brain that briefly flashed on screen before this scene. This is a movie about the human brain, after all.

Also, remember the mural Clark paints on the wall in the Backrooms? The shadowy pirate figure is shown chasing, or lifting, a yellow figure towards a window. If you really pay attention to that mural, you’ll see yellow, red, and blue represented extensively.

Which brings me to our third color, which you’ve probably guessed by now is red. Yes, red is a huge motif in Backrooms. I initially clocked this in the scene where Clark is listening to Mary’s cassette tape in his car. His whole sound system is deep red here, and after I noticed this, I realized that red is mostly connected to Mary in the film.

Actually, red AND blue are shown many times with Mary at the same time. Like when she first enters the Backrooms, or her bed which features red and blue pillows. There’s also a moment where Mary is at a social gathering and a girl sitting with her mother catches her eye. The girl wears a shirt with a big red patch on one shoulder, and a blue patch on the other, while her Mother wears a yellow shirt.

I just want to take a second to say, it really sucks I can’t show you these things with movie clips, but they’re there—I promise.

Anyway, other examples of red showing up in the narrative are the red breaker switches tacked on to the breaker at Clark’s furniture store. Or the red Christmas tree that Clark comes across in the Backrooms, or the red lamp that one of the humanoids turns on when Mary and Clark meet in the Backrooms.

There’s lots of other examples of red featured prominently in Backrooms, like the stop sign that we see over and over again in different rooms, and also in real life montages outside the Backrooms.

So, what does it mean? Well, we know red is featured heavily in tandem with Mary, and that Mary’s whole schtick is “Opening the window” and escaping from problematic habits we repeat over and over again.

What better color to represent this “opting out” of these habits than red? What better visual metaphor for this than a stop sign, featured so prominently in the movie? I mean, the Backrooms themselves tell Clark, in his first foray into this realm, to stop with that big stop sign. It’s one of the first rooms he comes across—that one with the big stop sign in the middle of a dark room.

So Mary’s methods, and philosophy, are based on stopping these patterns. Red, the worldwide color of warnings, danger, and stopping, fits her like a glove. BUT, why then is blue featured next to red so much with Mary?

Well, she has her own trauma she’s currently dealing with, right? She keeps revisiting childhood memories of her Mother throughout the film, so I think this red/blue that tends to conflict with one another in the lighting and props surrounding Mary shows this internal conflict.

She’s trying to open the window, and break these patterns herself.

I feel like Mary becomes a therapist, in part, because she’s trying to fix something that happened in the past. She’s trying to fix her Mother, who needed a lot of help, through her patients somehow.

When Clark asks Mary at the end of the film, “How do I stop?” she tells him, “I don’t know, It isn’t up to me. I can’t save anyone.”

That’s a really key moment for Mary, who has her own bad habits to break. She admits she can’t save anyone, and accepts that for what looks like the first time. I love the way Renate Reinsve plays this moment. You can see in her face that she’s not saying that to Clark, she’s saying that to herself. She’s opened up a window for herself after clearly struggling with the trauma of her childhood the entire film.

Remember what she uses to beat the Shadow Pirate across the head? Yes, the concrete mold of her hand she made as a kid. I feel it’s a pretty clear representation of how we must let go of what we learned in the past to beat the “Shadow Self” hounding us all.

There’s tons of child-related imagery in Backrooms. One of the characters—I can’t remember who—comes across a child’s tricycle and other toys in the Backrooms. Mary has numerous flashbacks to her childhood, where she learned her own patterns and survival instincts. On TV, Phil and his family watch The Never Ending Story, which is about a boy who escapes bullying and grief by stealing a magical book.

I think the film is saying that a lot of these destructive patterns—maybe all of it—is learned in childhood. So when Mary smashes this concrete mold of her child hand onto the monsters face to get away, I think it’s a pretty clear metaphor for what “defeats” the shadow in our own lives. We must face our childhood trauma, identify the patterns we learned to survive as kids, and break them to be free.

Speaking of that mold, there’s tons of examples in the Backrooms of props being absorbed into the walls. In Clark’s mural, he recreates this, drawing people stuck in the floor, as if it were quicksand. Around the red Christmas tree we talked about earlier, mannequin-like objects are stuck in the floor, and when Clark first comes into the backrooms, he sees the purple chair he sits on when filming his commercial stuck in the floor, along with Kat’s flip flops and Bobby’s shoes.

One of my favorite images from the film is the one where the Backrooms title is shown. We fade into what looks like a solid concrete wall, and then Mary’s hand comes in and presses into it, making a mold.

Her mold is such an important prop for the story, and to me it represents how we can get stuck in our past—stuck in our own patterns. Mary says this to Clark directly in their first meeting, telling him our mind erects walls, and if we don’t become aware of it, it can lead to us feeling stuck. I thought this recurring motif of things being stuck in the walls and floor of the Backrooms was a genius representation of that.

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I found it perfect how, in this never-ending maze of rooms that represent our subconscious minds, there’s a dark figure lurking in the shadows waiting to get us. In psychology, the concept of the Shadow Self is very prominent. For those who don’t know, the Shadow Self refers to the unconscious parts of the personality that the conscious ego represses or hides. It contains traits, desires, impulses, and fears that are deemed unacceptable, shameful, or contrary to one’s self-image.

If the Backrooms are a metaphor for the patterns we re-enact over and over again, it’s perfect that the Shadow Self is what chases people around inside this place, forcing them further and further into the maze, making them all the more stuck.

The Shadow represents unprocessed trauma that keeps us stuck in these cycles.

The “Shadow” is Clark’s pirate alter-ego. It’s interesting, because numerous sets and props reinforce this pirate theming in Backrooms. Like the room with the tropical wallpaper that one of ASYNC’s workers gets murdered in at the start of the film. Or the big sheep wheels this worker sees embedded in the ceiling and wall in that same found footage. These wheels correspond to the big ship wheel the mannequin helms at the front of Clark’s store, or the ship wheel clock in Clark’s office. And obviously, the pirate branding for his store.

So, why all this pirate theming?

In one sense piracy is a great metaphor for the shadow self because black is the universal color of piracy. The big shadow figure in Clark’s painted mural IS the pirate in all black.

Also, remember, Clark opens a furniture store despite being an architect. He does this out of necessity, since his wife is in school and he has to pay for that. But Mary reminds him that he’s in control of his own life, and it’s his own fault he’s not an architect, not anybody else’s.

So maybe the pirate motif is a metaphor for Clark rebelling against his own dreams, which he does out of fear. I love the part where Mary escapes pirate Clark by slipping into a narrow alleyway structure. She looks back and in his wide, panicked eyes, you can see his fear and desperation.

The shadow self, an idea from Carl Jung, represents the hidden, unconscious parts of the personality. It contains denied emotions, primal instincts, and traits deemed unacceptable by society or the ego.

What better way to represent something unacceptable by society than a pirate?

We talked about how much childhood trauma plays into the philosophy of Backrooms. Well, for Carl Jung, the shadow forms, in part, from our childhood experiences. As children, to gain love and approval, we form a conscious “persona” (a mask we show the world) and banish unaccepted traits into our shadow. The ego then splits into a public mask (a persona) and a hidden closet (a shadow).

Clark’s shadow isn’t just a manifestation of his fear, but his anger that he unconsciously holds towards himself. He blames others for his problems, when in reality this big pirate character he made dominates his destiny. Deep down he subconsciously knows that, and it’s a truth he runs away from, leading him deeper into the winding, terrifying backrooms of his own psyche.

The dark, shadowy terror of Clark’s life is that he is the architect of his own pain.

It’s no mistake he’s an architect in the movie. This fits thematically with the Backrooms, but it also fits with this idea that Clark is the master of his own fate. He is the one at the helm of the ship, spinning the big wheel. Perhaps that’s why ship wheels were repeated as a motif over and over again.

A few times in the film, in various contexts, we also see seagulls. Obviously there’s one in the found footage at the start of the movie, but we see them flying in the montage where we see a homeless guy picking up a bottle as well. Later Mary sees a seagull who hit a wall and lies dead in the Backrooms.

I think birds are a universal symbol of freedom. Just spreading your wings, and going where you want to go. It also invokes thoughts of caged birds as well. When the homeless man picks up a glass bottle, he’s framed in an extreme low angle shot pointed almost directly up to the sky, where we see seagulls flying overhead.

I think the meaning of this is pretty obvious. These patterns our shadow selves traps us in—these backrooms of our psyche—prevent us from being free. We’re like a bird flying into the walls, bloodied and hurt, when trying to navigate these terrifying spaces in our minds.

Glass is another big motif in this movie. Mary says in her cassette tapes that we can become reserved to watching our lives unfold behind glass, and that we start believing the outside world is better off without us. There’s a couple shots, items, and story events that reinforce this motif.

For one, when Clark hears Kat behind the wall in the Backrooms, she says “I’m on the other side of the glass. How can you not see me?” To Clark, though, it’s a solid wall.

There’s an interesting repetition of shots involving Clark’s glass storefront. When he goes up to it at the start of the film, the camera frames him from the right side looking at the “RIP OFF!” grafitti painted on the glass. Later, when Mary goes looking for Clark, she’s framed in the exact same way looking through the glass.

We talked a little bit about TV’s earlier in the video. TV’s, I think, are connected to this glass motif because for one, TV’s from the 80’s and 90’s had glass screens, and two, people watching TV is repeated over and over again in the film.

What better way to show the idea that many of us watch our lives unfold behind glass than a television? When Kat says she can see Clark behind the glass, it’s perfect because Mary says our mind erects walls to keep ourselves safe, and that leads to us feeling we’re watching our lives happen behind glass.

Clark’s store is a metaphor for the walls he’s erected to keep himself safe. One of the best visual tricks in the film is when he lays in his bed watching TV, then the camera cuts to a wide shot of his store, where we see he’s not at home, or a hotel, but living in his actual store!

Speaking of TV’s, I love how both Clark and Mary have their own commercials on TV. I feel that both of them are projecting a better version of themselves to the public that’s not congruent with how things actually are. Mary sells people answers to dealing with their trauma, despite dealing with her own trauma in private, for example. This is a great metaphor for how we try to project having everything together to everyone every day of our lives.

But there’s one big unanswered question we haven’t covered yet.

What the fuck did the whole “you can eat them!” part mean? Why does the Backrooms, the more times it remembers a place or a person, create worse and worse copies of them? One of the most visually striking moments of the film is when we see Mary’s childhood home, and the camera moves down, copying it over and over again until it looks nothing like how it used to. If you remember, a big gaping black hole forms in the corner of the room. What’s all that about?

I feel like it’s a metaphor for how our minds can bend what actually happened in our past to fit a narrative in our mind, until the narrative looks nothing like reality. Clark blames everybody else for his problems. To him, it’s his wife’s fault he can’t be an architect, but the dark truth hidden in his subconscious is that that’s not reality—he’s the one in control of his own life.

Maybe these warped, surreal spaces are a metaphor for how our brains can warp reality—how it can play tricks on us. How we detach ourselves further and further from the truth as we build these walls over time.

To me, it’s also partly a metaphor for how lifeless living this way really is. You know, where we erect walls to defend ourselves from the outside world. The final shot of the movie is of a copy of Mary in the Backrooms, frozen and horrified.

These “people” in the Backrooms don’t feel, and have no pain, ego, or fear. They simply exist like the furniture, Clark says. I feel like this is a metaphor for what happens to us, as we erect more and more walls in our minds. We protect ourselves, yes, but we lose what makes us human in the first place. We choose to not feel—to run away from our pain, and fear—just to keep ourselves safe. The result is that we end up living like a mannequin, and we start misremembering who we really are in the first place, which is connected to who we were as a child before we developed all these survival tactics.

This is what I think Backrooms’ philosophy is on a personal level, but there’s actually a broader point I feel the film’s trying to make about humanity in general.

At the end of the film, Phil tells Mary “Nothing in our recorded history means more than this.” In the context of the story, it makes sense. I mean, ASYNC basically found a whole different dimension. Of course it’s important in terms of the story. But next to nothing in Backrooms, I feel, is surface-level. When Phil says “nothing in our recorded history means more than this,” I feel the film is trying to make a point about trauma, facing our shadow, and therapy in general.

Remember the caveman cut outs speaking in all different languages that Mary and Clark come across in the backrooms? They all had wires connected to them, leading to closed doors.

It makes me think of something Mary tells Clark after he asks her how he can stop being the way he is. She says, “It’s not your fault, it’s just how you’re wired.”

I feel like Backrooms is heavily suggesting that we don’t just have our own personal shadow, but a collective shadow as a species. It’s suggesting, perhaps, that humans are all “wired” the same.

This is actually one of Jung’s concepts. He didn’t just write about a personal shadow within all of us, but a collective shadow we share as humans. It contains what Jung called archetypes: primal fears, instincts, and patterns that aren’t learned in childhood but inherited biologically, encoded over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution.

Some of these fears include darkness, being alone, and being cast out of the group—these are, unironically, things that Clark struggles with in the film. The child afraid of the dark and the caveman afraid of what hunts at night are running the same program.

There’s a really good shot that’s only shown on screen for 2 or 3 seconds of a cow grazing in a green pasture in the foreground, and way off in the background we see a typical American suburban neighborhood.

It was such a striking image, and I immediately wondered what the filmmakers were trying to say with that.

Maybe what it’s trying to say is, despite how far we’ve come as a species, we still fear a lot of the same things we did when we were hunter-gatherers. When wired cardboard cavemen speak in all different languages inside the Backrooms, the filmmakers are perhaps trying to show how we all—regardless of nation or language—are wired the same way. We’re all scared of the same things.

The Backrooms as a setting is almost a perfect map of these primal fears. Fluorescent light that could go out at any moment. Endless corridors with no exit — the primal fear of being lost and alone. Something hunting you in the shadows. The horror works because it’s not invented — it’s remembered. Every person who encountered the Backrooms internet myth before this film felt immediate dread because the setting activated something ancient and shared. That’s the absolute genius of the metaphor.

And every room looks the same in these Backrooms, perhaps, because everyone’s unconscious fear looks the same.

When Phil says nothing in recorded history means more than this, the film seems to suggest that this—facing our shadow, deconstructing it, understanding it—is the most important thing in human history.

I can’t help but agree. I feel like a lot of the problems we face as a society are created by fear, and trauma, which has been passed down generation-by-generation since the birth of humanity. Maybe that’s why we have so many problems today. We never learned to deal with it—we never learned how to face our trauma. We just run away from it, build walls, and pass our trauma onto our kids in a never-ending cycle.

In the last 100 years, we’ve really woken up to a lot of these things. We’ve become aware of the cycles that not only we repeat, but humanity repeats over and over again. Maybe understanding this IS the most important thing that’s ever happened to us. Maybe it can mark the dawn of a new age for us as a species. Maybe, instead of repeating these patterns, we can eventually break them and live more authentically as more people wake up to the importance of this issue.

The backrooms is one of the best visual metaphors I’ve ever seen in a movie. Kane Parsons, and everybody involved in developing this concept, is a genius. I’ll never forget this movie for as long as I live, and I can’t wait to see where they go in future sequels as we learn more about ASYNC and the nature of the backrooms.

That’s enough from me. What did you think about the meaning of Backrooms? Let me know in the comments below!

And if you liked this breakdown, subscribe to my channel. I publish film analysis like this every week.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time. :)

But I’m here to say that maybe we’re wrong about Jurassic Park.

I believe this film is deeper than it looks, and has hidden symbolism that cleverly ties into its core themes.

In this video, I’ll break it all down for you.

The first thing we’ll talk about is a potential blue vs. red color theme running throughout the entire film.

In the control room scenes at Jurassic Park, for instance, a cool blue light is heavily featured if you pay attention. The opening scene of the movie with the Velociraptor features lots of blue light as well that flashes through the perforations of the containment box. And in the most memorable moment of the film, the T-Rex encounter, faint blue light not only paints the night, but radiates from Lex’s flashlight as she… decides to tell the T-Rex to come and eat her.

When John and Ian discuss the danger of tampering with nature, projectors throw blue and red light onto screens surrounding the table. Pay attention to how Ian’s framed and lit while delivering this line of dialogue:

“What you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world.”

A vivid blue light beams the back of Ian’s head here, and the camera clings tightly to his face as he delivers this iconic line.

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I’m sorry, you can’t convince me that Spielberg and the filmmakers DIDN’T put this blue light here for a reason. They staged the scene this way, with projectors blasting light at screens all around the characters. They could’ve eaten in the dining hall, or in a suite above the lab with a glass window looking down at it. This scene could’ve been setup countless other ways… so why THIS way?

Well, there’s a line Hammond delivers that might answer that question..

“How can we stand in the light of discovery, and not act?”

Spielberg and his DP Dean Cundey seem to have latched on to THAT line when setting up the visual philosophy of this scene, bathing the characters in thick projected light to emphasize them standing in the “light” of scientific discovery.

It reminds me of the scene in Hammond’s amber mine when the boss asks his workers to give him light while examining a mosquito trapped in amber.

It’s here we arrive at the antithesis to this cold, blue color found in so much of the film—the color red, orange, and yellow.

When Jurassic Park starts out, we get these beautiful orange and red titles projected onto the screen. The orange and red of these titles, no doubt, connect to the mosquitos trapped in amber, and the blood extracted from them to create dinosaurs.

Jurassic Park itself features a red and yellow logo—and these colors are used throughout the park in props like the tour Jeeps and the gigantic wooden doors that welcome folks to the tour. Not to mention.. this moment..

*Shows Alan igniting red flare during T-Rex scene*

You’ll also notice in the aforementioned dinner scene that red light flashes from these projectors at certain moments throughout the conversation, perhaps representing two different worldviews in debate with each other.

So.. what does all this mean?

It seems like blue is connected to chaos in Jurassic Park. We see it in the opening Velociraptor sequence when a worker is violently eaten alive. Flashing blue light saturates that entire scene, giving it a “science experiment gone wrong” feeling. Like we’re watching Frankenstein in his tower trying to animate the body of his creation during a lightning storm.

That explains why the T-Rex attack also features heavy blue lighting, both in the ambiance of the scene and the flashy lightning strikes illuminating the T-Rex’s face.

When Dennis goes to steal dinosaur embryos from the lab, blue light dominates that entire scene as well.

These are all moments in the film where characters—be it animals or humans—plunge the story into chaos.

It’s funny how the control room where John, Ray, and Robert try to manage the dinosaurs features blue light so heavily—hinting at the idea that chaos finds its way into everything eventually—that control is an illusion.

Blue could also represent a certain unnaturalness to what they’re doing at Jurassic Park, bringing dinosaurs back from extinction and all, while colors like yellow and red represent natural things like how yellow ties into the amber sap from prehistoric trees, and red the blood of these mosquitos.

This sanitary blue color gives Jurassic Park a kind of nightmarish quality as well. We feel like we’re caught in a bad dream watching many of these scenes.

Now, I wanna be clear, this is all just speculation. Neither Spielberg nor his DP have come out to say “Yes, this is what we were trying to do here,” but then again filmmakers generally don’t talk about the hidden symbolism in their movies anyway because over-explaining can ruin the mystery and fun of a film.

Besides, there’s a concept called “The Death of the Author” in film theory and literature. It basically says that once a work is released, the creator’s explicit intent is often considered secondary to what the audience sees and feels on screen. Many directors agree that their words do not supersede what an attentive viewer experiences.

So even if all of this wasn’t intentional, it doesn’t even matter, really, because film is art at the end of the day, and art no longer belongs solely to the creator once released, but to the audience too.

So with that said, let’s have some more fun analyzing this film.

Let’s go back to the projector scene for a second. Pay attention to the costumes of these characters. Ian wears black, and John wears white—a color that both of them sport for the entire film. Now, this dichotomy naturally places them at odds with one another visually, reinforcing their opposing philosophies about whether to bring dinosaurs back to life or not, but I think it also does something deeper.

So John wears white, right? Let’s think about why that’s a perfect color for him. John is very much a god-like character in Jurassic Park. When we first see him, he descends from the heavens in a helicopter that’s BLUE, by the way, to meet Alan and Ellie. John creates life, bringing dinosaurs back from extinction, and is obsessed with being there for the birth of all his “creations.”

Hammond thinks he can control everything, like a god, so naturally he wears white, a color that conjures thoughts of perfection and infallibility.

Ian wears black, the polar opposite, representing the chaos of nature. He’s not an optimist at all—he’s a realist—and understands the futility of trying to control everything. Black almost represents the irrefutable power of nature to swallow everything whole eventually. He is the yin to Hammond’s yang.

There’s a line of dialogue I love from John that drives home his god complex even more. He tells Dennis “I don’t blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask they pay for them.”

That sounds like basically every God ever.

Hammond’s inability to control things is shown in how he tries to get Alan, Ellie, and Ian to eat dinner after the lab tour, but all they want to do is see the Velociraptors. Or how they get out of their tour vehicles to visit the sick triceratops. He watches them disobey him on their tour through hidden cameras that let him see everything in the park, like a god.

I mean, just the idea of Jurassic Park itself being a metaphor for the illusion of control is brilliant. This is a place where cars glide over preset tracks to visit dinosaurs placed in fixed enclosures along the route. Everything is built exactly to the creator’s imagination in a theme park, and you then invite people into that park to have a very specific, controlled experience. It’s like Hammond built his own little planet—his own world.

And, of course, everything goes off the rails in this world. Cars go off their tracks, animals escape their enclosures, and humans, well, do whatever they want to do.

Another clever representation of chaos theory is when Alan ties two female ends of a seatbelt together as they land on Jurassic Park. For one, it represents the idea that “life finds a way,” like Ian says later—where despite any environmental constraint, life finds a way to break through barriers, and thrive. But also it kind of ties perfectly into how the scientists on Jurassic Park made all the animals female to control breeding. These are two female parts of a seatbelt that Alan ties together here. Intentional or not, it fits Jurassic Park like a glove symbolically.

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Another example of chaos theory in Jurassic Park are the kids themselves. At one point Ian says, “I love kids, anything that can and will happen,” referencing Murphy’s Law and the chaos that children bring by nature. In the projector scene, Ian tells John, “Genetic power is the most powerful force the world has ever seen, but you wield it like a kid who found his Dad’s gun.” And when Alan and Ellie see the dinosaurs for the first time, they react like children, laughing and falling over themselves—not to mention they continually break free of John’s guided park tour to explore the island themselves.

When I watched the T-Rex scene, I couldn’t help but wish death on Lex for turning on a flashlight. Like, that’s a level of stupidity I don’t even see in horror movies. But I think Spielberg’s intention with that WAS to inject chaos into the scene to prove a point that “whatever can happen will happen.”

Kids as a representation of chaos—whether intentional or not—is definitely present in the events of Jurassic Park.

Another representation of chaos in Jurassic Park is the massive tropical storm that hits the island midway through the film. The storm is an unstoppable force of nature that also represents chaos itself.

Which brings me to water.

So, remember when Ian does the water experiment with Ellie Sattler to showcase how chaos theory works? He demonstrates how water droplets fall differently on our skin depending on microscopic differences in our skin patterns, etc. ? Well, I feel like water is a huge motif in this film—intentional or not.

I mean, one of the most iconic images of Jurassic Park is tied to the ripples in a cup of water—which, in and of itself could represent the unintended ripple effects—or chaos—tied to any given action.

As I rewatched this film recently, I saw so many examples of cascading water present in the mise-en-scène of Jurassic Park. The most memorable example is this massive waterfall framed behind Hammond’s helicopter pad. We see it both at the beginning and end of the film. On an aesthetic level, it gives Jurassic Park a divine ambience. It’s important that, as soon as our heroes step off the helicopter, they feel like they’re in a magical land.

This waterfall wasn’t present in the books, though, which means Spielberg and company added this in. Whatever reason they had for this, we can’t ignore how perfectly this massive waterfall ties into Ian’s water experiment with Ellie Satler. Aesthetically, the waterfall gives Jurassic Park a divine ambiance, but symbolically, it’s a massive reminder of the unpredictable chaos of nature—and also the power of nature with all that water cascading down every second, carving out pathways in the rock. The way this chaotic waterfall envelops each of the characters as they step off the plane works almost too well with the underlying themes of Jurassic Park.

Another time the film features cascading water is when Dennis tries to get the dino embryos to the docks. His jeep gets stuck on the side of the road, and water gushes down the embankment as he tries to get it out. Later, the Barbasol can he uses to house the dinosaur embryos washes down this cascade, and gets buried in wet mud. I mean, it’s perfect. Even the guy who represents chaos ends up being done in by chaos itself, perfectly represented by this pop-up waterfall on the side of the road.

One last recurring motif I noticed in Jurassic Park was trees. There’s a few major scenes that take place in trees, like when Alan saves Tim here, or when Alan, Tim, and Lex hang out with a couple Brachiosaurus. If you remember, amber is actually made of tree sap, so the whole movie kind of owes itself to trees in the first place. Ellie is a paleobotanist, studying prehistoric plant life, and in many other scenes, like when Alan and the kids see a flock of Gallimimus, they find shelter behind a massive tree trunk. Also, do you remember where Alan finds the wild dinosaur eggs? That’s right—nestled between massive tree roots in the park.

So what do they mean? I view them as representations of adaption and evolution. It’s in a tree that this little exchange of dialogue happens.

Kids: What are you gonna do that you can’t dig up dinosaur bones anymore?
Alan: We’ll have to evolve, I guess.

You see, Jurassic Park’s messages about chaos ARE scary, but there’s also a light side to it. Just like life “finds a way” and things spiral out of control, chaos can also push life into adaption, or even work in your favor. This is shown in the film when the T-Rex, previously a scary predator, saves the day for our heroes and shows the Velociraptors who’s boss.

Trees are featured in two scenes where Alan adapts in real time. He saves Tim, forging a real bond with him that catapults his character into new emotional territory. Later, he bonds with the kids again as they watch and feed the Brachiosaurus from a tree. These trees save our characters in both scenes—without it, Tim would’ve plunged to his death in that car.

Trees spread their branches, growing unpredictably, and stand the test of time. Some trees on earth have been here for thousands of years!

So I feel that these sturdy trees represent how sturdy adaption and evolution can be to preserve life despite any chaos that goes on around us. Those are the strong roots, so to speak, that keep us from getting swept up in that chaos.

And for me that’s really the main message of Jurassic Park. Technology is only going to keep advancing, wiping out entire industries, and leaving millions of people without jobs, but the flip side to that is, we’ll find a way to adapt. It might not be pretty, or painless, but we’ll find a way, because that’s what life does.

“Life.. finds a way.”

What details did you notice in Jurassic Park? Let me know in the comments down below!

If you like that analysis, consider subscribing to my Substack. I drop new film analysis like this every week.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

On one hand Spielberg uses clever framing, lighting, and audience surrogates like Satipo to give Indy a massive aura throughout the first 8 minutes of the film.

But then.. this happens. shows temple crumbling

Then this.. shows darts being shot at Indy

Then this.. “Adios señor”

Then this.. Indy almost dies because of a vine

Spielberg replaces this smart, brave archeologist with…. a guy who tosses a multi-million dollar artifact to the only person with a clear escape route?

Then his arch rival steals this artifact right out of his hands? Then he runs away from a bunch of half-naked men, and barely escapes?

Who even is this guy?

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The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark is like a house of cards carefully built by Steven Spielberg. He spends the first eight minutes meticulously constructing a multi-level mansion—elevating Indy to mythical status—then he kicks it down like a sand castle at the beach—showing Indy’s humanity.

It’s perfect. It tells us exactly who this character is, and what we can expect from him in Raiders of the Lost Ark. In this video, I’ll break down the genius of the introduction of one of the greatest movie characters of all time.. Indiana Jones.

We start off with Spielberg’s iconic shot of this mountain here that perfectly mirrors the Paramount logo. Apparently Spielberg wanted to do this trick to ground the adventure in reality. The film’s producer Frank Marshall was tasked with driving around the island of Kauai to find a physical mountain that perfectly mirrored the snowy, angular peak in the Paramount logo, and he succeeded.

We then get a few shots of Indy’s entourage in the jungle. This low shot angled upwards towards the jungle canopy gives a sense of danger, like the jungle is looming over them—like a supernatural presence exists in this place.

This shot is one of my favorite in the entire sequence. We know the Hovitos live in this forest, and this faraway shot of the entourage through the jungle brush gives a sense they’re watching Indy and his crew.

They tie their donkey to a tree because the jungle’s getting too thick, and the very next shot is behind a bunch of foliage obscuring this massive stone statue.

I like the way Spielberg frames this statue here. Its face hogs the entire left side of the frame, and it feels like it’s about to burst out of the screen and into our laps. The tight framing makes it feel that way, and makes this otherwise un-scary statue feel somewhat intimidating.

This isn’t the only “jump scare” in this sequence, and we’ll see Spielberg use ultra-close up shots, along with rapid editing, for those, too.

Pay attention to the birds coming out of the statue’s mouth here. Spielberg is such a legend at grating cheese over the broccoli, IE, elevating a moment with pure spectacle. “How about we get a bunch of birds to come out of its mouth?” he probably said. And the crew probably spent hours figuring out how to feed birds through the mouth of this prop.

Indiana goes right up to this statue, completely unfazed, which sends a message to the audience that this dude isn’t easily scared. This is one of the only things we know about him so far.

Some folks who analyze this scene say that Satipo and Barranca act like surrogates for the audience, meaning their reactions tell the audience how to feel about Indiana Jones. This little exchange of looks here as Indy examines this statue is proof of that.

Now this is one of my favorite shots of the entire sequence. We get a typical shot of Barranca and Satipo walking through the forest, which looks very similar to the shots we’ve already gotten of the crew navigating the jungle, but then the camera rack focuses to a dart stuck in a tree in the foreground.

I love so many things about this shot. For one, Spielberg’s subverting our expectations. We think this is just another “traveling through the jungle” shot before Spielberg pulls the rug out from under us and rack focuses to a poison dart. It gives me the feeling that we should expect the unexpected in this scene.

Second, it gives a sense that there’s hidden danger everywhere—there’s peril waiting if we don’t pay very close attention to everything around us.

Third, Indy sees it. He’s all over it. So that tells us he pays attention to detail and is very perceptive. Add that on to the whole “he’s brave” thing and we’re starting to construct a very formidable character.

Finally, I LOVE Harrison’s physical acting here. There’s something about the way he slowly drops the dart that communicates calm, and a certain knowing about the danger they’re facing out here.

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Indy’s calm reaction clashes hilariously against the hysteria of Satipo and Barranca here.

Okay so it’s here that we arrive at the famous waterfront whip scene. So far the pacing and editing of this scene have been calm. Shots have been allowed to breathe, and there hasn’t been a lot of quick cutting. The framing has been relatively distant as well with little to no close-up shots.

All of that changes right here.

The camera dollies up into Barranca’s face here rapidly. This framing is starkly different from the more distant shots we’ve gotten so far, which communicates to us that something’s about to happen.

Spielberg follows it with a close-up of this pistol, then a close-up of Indy cocking his head, then a close up of Barranca aiming his gun, then a slew of close-ups of Indy’s whip as he disarms Barranca before he even knows what hit him.

The editing and framing of this sequence is PERFECT. It gives the sense that Indy has lightning-fast reflexes—which we can add to the running list of badass things about this character.

There’s one little shot in this sequence I love. We see Satipo in the background, and as Indy’s whip comes down into frame, we see him brace for impact. This shot is only on screen for literally .2 seconds or something, and even though we don’t consciously know what we’re looking at in the moment, I’d argue we subconsciously absorb it after the fact.

The quick editing and close ups give us a sense of disorientation, and I love how this moment jars us out of our slumber, waking us up to what to expect from the rest of the scene—the unexpected.

We then get one of the most iconic shots in cinema history as Indiana Jones comes out of the shadows.

This is the end of Indiana Jones being a mythical figure in our minds. He’s now flesh and blood—a human being—and Spielberg spends the next 5 minutes or so taking a closer look at Indy while maintaining the illusion of his mythical status—before he destroys it all, of course.

Moments later we get Indy’s first dialogue. He mentions a competitor of his died here, and that he was very, very good. If the mythical Indiana Jones thinks this guy was good, and he died here, then this place must be very dangerous.

I noticed that when Indy first enters the temple, the pacing of this sequence slows way down. This initial shot from behind the spider webs lasts 24 seconds without cuts. The camera movement is also very minimal in this first part, and when the camera does move, it inches along timidly. It’s almost like the camera’s just as scared as we are—waiting, listening, terrified of going any further.

A good example of this timid movement is this shot of Satipo and Indy. The camera’s out front, just barely inching along.

They come along a mysterious blue light, and Indy tells Satipo to “stay out of the light.” These shots here are static. We’re frozen, not moving a muscle. Then Indy puts his hand up to the light… and…

show spikes coming out of the wall

We get 4 shots in 2 seconds here. It’s an enormous jump scare. My favorite shot that’s the key to this moment is this one of the decomposing, impaled body hurtling towards the camera.

This 4 shot sequence ends on a close up of the decomposing skull.

Throughout this opening sequence, Spielberg uses close ups and fast editing in the tensest moments. There’s a rhythm to it, where you have minutes of slower cuts with distant framing interrupted by an explosion of rapid editing and close ups.

Once Satipo and Indy cross this pit, the style of this sequence changes once more.

Now you start seeing a lot more slow-moving dolly shots as Indy sets his sights on the idol and crosses the room to get it. It feels like Spielberg’s using these to show how the idol’s almost calling Indy forward like a siren song. There’s an air of artificial security to these shots, like “come on, nothing’s going to happen!”

When Indy goes to get the idol, Spielberg follows his feet with a handheld camera. It feels.. wobbly, like at any moment Indy will lose his balance. That’s a feeling we only could’ve gotten with a handheld camera here.

When Jones finally makes it to the idol, Spielberg dollies in to Indy’s face, giving the sense that Indy’s world has shrunken to only thinking about this idol. The golden glow on Indy’s face as he stares at this relic accomplishes similar purposes.

Spielberg dollies in slowly on Satipo for a moment, shoveling even more tension onto the scene, and then, just before Indy makes his move, we get a wide shot of the treasure room which seems to tell the audience… “This is it!”

Then.. Indy makes his move.

SLOW MOTON I said before that this sequence is like a house of cards. Spielberg keeps giving Indy “tests” to overcome, like a rogue crew member, tarantulas, or deadly spikes, and he passes them. If you’ve ever built a house of cards, you know that the tensest moment is when you first place a new card triangle and let go. You’re waiting to see if it will fall, or stay. So far all of Indy’s cards haven’t fallen, but in this moment while placing the final cards to complete the house, not only do those cards fall over, but the entire house does with it.

Indiana Jones then spends the next 4 minutes running for his life.

You can’t help but wonder why Spielberg did all this. He shrouds Indy in mystery, showing him as a brave, perceptive archaeologist with quick reflexes. Then we go inside the temple and we see how intelligent Indy is as he conquers the booby traps.

Then he… fails? And runs frantically for his life while the temple crumbles around him?

What was the point of all THIS, then?

Well, it establishes that Indiana Jones is more of a whimsical story than we thought, which gives his character a different flavor from other stoic action heroes of the time.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is hilarious and silly. I mean THIS is a scene in this movie (show basket chase). And THIS (Indy gunning guy down). And THIS (Indy laughing with dude in truck before punching him).

The DNA of Indiana Jones has a playful gene to it that’s present throughout the entire series. It’s not that serious, and Spielberg making us THINK it’s THAT SERIOUS with the first 8 minutes of this film is a delicious misdirection. I’m convinced that the opening of Raiders is just one big joke that we don’t know is a joke until the entire temple crashes on Indy’s head.

I mean, we saw how Spielberg shot this sequence. This dude presented Indiana Jones as a mythical figure, unafraid of jungle spikes, tarantulas, and poison darts, only to make him yell “I hate snakes Jock! I hate em!”

It puts the rest of Raiders of the Lost Ark on unsure footing. It plants a doubt in the audience’s mind for the rest of the film. No matter how in control Indy looks, or how far he gets, there’s always a chance it will all fall apart on him. When Indy says to Sallah and Marion “I don’t know, I’m just making this up as I go,” that’s basically Indiana Jones’ mission statement.

So the real genius of this intro to one of the greatest characters in cinema history is the misdirection. It’s the building him up only to tear him down. It’s the way we marvel at Indy for disarming Barranca, then laugh minutes later when he runs away from a bunch of half-naked dudes in the jungle.

Spielberg is a playful guy. If you watch the “Making of” the Indiana Jones trilogy, you’ll see how much fun he and everybody else was having on set. Raiders of the Lost Ark needed that trickster energy to become what it is today. It gives Indiana Jones an air of unpredictability that keeps us glued to our seats, and we spend the rest of the movie subconsciously wondering.. what trick is Spielberg going to play on us next?

What did you think of Indy’s introduction in Raiders of the Lost Ark? Let me know in the comments! And if you liked that video, consider subscribing to my Substack for more film breakdowns just like this one.

Thanks so much for watching, I’ll see you next time!

When I was young I liked Batman Begins, but never fell in love with it. As I rewatched it at 33, taking copious notes, I realized that this film is a masterpiece, and recognized a depth to it that’s rarely—if ever—seen in comic book movies.

In this video, I’ll break down the very important philosophy of Batman Begins.

To understand the philosophy of this film, let’s break down the philosophy of the film’s two opposing forces—Ra’s al Ghul and Batman.

Ra’s al Ghul and Bruce Wayne are very similar in how they diagnose Gotham’s problems. Despair, crime, and corruption have ravaged Gotham since Thomas Wayne’s death—both Ra’s and Bruce would agree on that.

Where they deviate, obviously, is in their solution to the problem.

Ra’s, like Bruce, says he wants justice, but justice in Batman Begins means different things depending on who you ask. Early in the film, Bruce and Rachel have a conversation about the nature of justice and revenge. Bruce tells her, right after he tries to murder Joe Chill, that sometimes revenge and justice are the same thing. Rachel then tells him,

“Justice is about harmony, revenge is about making yourself feel better.”

After Bruce falls through some ice during training, Ra’s talks about the anger that nearly consumed him after his great love was taken from him. Bruce asks him how the anger stopped, to which Ra’s replies, “vengeance.”

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Revenge is a perfectly fine goal to Ra’s, and seems to be the bedrock of his idea of justice.

While Ra’s burns down Bruce’s house, he says, “Justice is balance. You burned down my house and left me for dead.. consider us even.”

That’s a very eye-for-an-eye way of looking at things. Unsurprisingly, it’s this same philosophy that would’ve justified Bruce killing Joe Chill. Joe killed Bruce’s parents, and now, to restore balance, his life should be taken. Ra’s al Ghul would’ve been completely okay with that.

We hear Ra’s discuss balance again later in the movie..

“Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.”

When Ra’s attacks decadence here, he’s not saying that people are having too much fun or being hedonistic.

He means a civilization has lost the tension that made it vital. The things a civilization earns through struggle, like wealth, comfort, and security, eventually remove the very pressures that created strength, discipline, and purpose. The society becomes soft, self-referential, and unable to defend its own values.

This is actually a real cyclical theory of history famously articulated by Ibn Khaldun, a 14th century philosopher. The basic arc is: hardship → solidarity and strength → conquest and wealth → luxury and complacency → collapse.

For Ra’s, security and wealth lead to corruption, which eventually triggers a society’s collapse. Instead of letting nature take its course, Ra’s and the League of Shadows give fragile civilizations a push to “restore the balance.”

In other words, they take matters into their own hands. How vigilante of them!

“The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague rats, burned London to the ground.”

One of the words that most aptly describes Ra’s al Ghul’s philosophy is moralism. Moralism is the practice of judging human behavior through a strict moral lens.

Moralism isn’t to be confused with morality. Morality is just a set of internal principles that help people navigate right and wrong. Moralism is often seen as a vice—a rigid approach where a person weaponizes those principles to police, shame, or control the behavior of those around them.

Or, in the case of Ra’s al Ghul, murder millions of people.

Moralism is a very black/white philosophical framework. At its extreme, in the case of Ra’s al Ghul, it does not allow for any nuance. If you’re a criminal, to a hard moralist, you must be punished without question.

It relies on rigid rules rather than evaluating situations in their own context, and redefines complex human behaviors into binary categories of pure good or pure evil.

To the hard moralist, moral imperatives can override all other societal needs.

An example of this would be a country completely banning trade with a nation that violates human rights, even if that trade ban triggers recession back home, destroys local industries, or causes widespread job losses.

Moralism is perfectly captured by the ancient Latin maxim: “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.” In every scenario, hard moralism creates a zero-sum outcome. It actively accepts—and sometimes welcomes—societal collapse, financial ruin, or totalitarian control, provided the stated moral objective remains uncompromised.

This represents Ra’s al Ghul’s worldview in Batman Begins verbatim. Societal collapse and financial ruin are totally fine as long as it’s bringing “balance.”

One of my favorite lines from the movie that ties into this is when Ra’s says, “Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s understanding.”

This quote shows Ra’s whole worldview. Gotham is corrupt, in part, because we’ve been too lenient on criminals. We must get back to punishing crime, and punishing it hard.

Ra’s solution to corruption and crime seem to be tied to retributivism, which is a theory of criminal justice holding that wrongdoers deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their crimes.

Retributivism isn’t a forward-looking philosophy, meaning that instead of focusing on future outcomes like deterring crime or rehabilitating the offender, it looks back at the crime committed to restore moral balance.

Like Ra’s al Ghul, retributivism is a pretty tough stance on crime, and is traditionally associated with right-leaning ideologies.

An example of retributivism is the “Three-Strikes” laws, which were widely enacted in the United States during the 1990s. These laws mandate long, 25+ year prison sentences for individuals convicted of three sequential felonies. The thinking is that these people have shown persistent disregard for the law, and that their prison sentences should be severe to reflect that.

Conservatives largely championed these laws, while liberals felt they ignored rehabilitation, didn’t treat the root socioeconomic causes of crime, and lead to unjust punishments, like life sentences for minor, non-violent third offenses.

Research shows the “Three-Strikes” laws had a mixed impact. Prisons became overcrowded, and billions in taxpayer dollars were spent housing these inmates. Many policy experts argue that this money could have been far more effectively spent on community-based crime prevention and rehabilitation programs.

We actually see that a younger Bruce Wayne holds a more retributive view of punishment for the man who killed his parents. When Rachel says Chill will get early parole in exchange for testifying against Falcone, we hear Bruce say, “Rachel this man killed my parents.”

That’s retributivism right there. Bruce is saying ‘this man did something wrong, and he deserves punishment, no matter whether he can be useful to take down the biggest crime lord in the city.’

Someone on the other side might say ‘Yes, what he did was wrong, but let’s look at the broader perspective here.’

In fact, that’s what Rachel does when she takes young Bruce on a ride through the underbelly of Gotham.

Rachel says, “Falcone floods our streets with crime and drugs, preying on the desperate, creating new Joe Chills everyday.”

It’s interesting, because Ra’s al Ghul actually agrees with this line of thinking.

“Create enough hunger and everyone becomes a criminal.”

So you see, the more liberal-leaning perspective is focused on the broader picture. They ask things like, what made this person so desperate to commit this crime in the first place? This is a philosophy more in line with behaviorism.

One of the big things behaviorists believe is that we are all shaped completely by our environments and past experiences.

While Ra’s is over here saying “Hey, this guy is a criminal, he must be punished!” Rachel is asking “What conditions are leading him to be a criminal in the first place?”

If you don’t believe me, consider the fact that poverty has been shown to significantly increase the likelihood of criminal activity. A groundbreaking dataset from the Brookings Institution, for example, linked tax records of families to the adult incarceration status of their children. It was shown that boys who grew up within the bottom 10% of income earners were 20 times more likely to be incarcerated by their early 30s than boys from the top 10%.

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If you’re still not convinced, there’s many other studies that link poverty to incarceration, but if we’re honest it’s not hard to understand why this happens. Economic desperation, lack of legitimate opportunities, and the severe stress and mental health challenges OF chronic poverty is enough of a pressure cooker to turn the best of us into the worst versions of ourselves.

In Batman Begins, Bruce actually goes on a journey to find this out for himself. Falcone tells him, “You don’t understand ‘desperate.’ This is a world you don’t understand, and you’ll always fear what you don’t understand.”

Bruce knows he’s right, so he gives his coat to a homeless man, burns his wallet, and jumps a ship to live like a criminal. He tells Ra’s al Ghul that,

“First time I stole so that I wouldn’t starve, yes, I lost many assumptions about the simple nature of right and wrong.”

This statement is a direct refutation of retributivism, which is all about the simple nature of right and wrong. As Bruce traveled, he understood the mindset of criminals, and the fear of them he once had was replaced with empathy.

It’s here that Bruce starts veering away from retributivism and towards ideas like Meliorism, civic humanism, and restorative justice.

When Ra’s al Ghul brings this criminal in for Bruce to execute, and he declines to kill him, they have this exchange,

Ra’s: “Compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share.”
Bruce: “That’s why it’s so important. It separates us from them.”

The difference between Ra’s and Bruce’s ideology is razor thin. It seems they both want justice, but they disagree on the way to attain it. They both talk about harmony, but Ra’s uses chaos and murder to attain it while Bruce favors compassion, hope, and symbolism.

Ra’s wants to burn the whole thing down and start over, while Bruce wants to work inside the system to rehabilitate it.

Restorative justice is the term for Bruce’s methods. Rather than punishing the corrupt system to death, restorative justice tries to rebuild trust and accountability within it. This is exactly what Batman is able to do throughout the film, using fear to straighten out crooked cops and keep those preying on the weak in check.

When he first arrives at the League of Shadows, he says, “I seek a way to fight injustice. A way to turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.”

The League of Shadows, unsurprisingly, doesn’t believe in restorative justice at all. They believe in something called accelerationism, which says things must get worse before they can get better. The League rejects the idea of reform entirely, arguing that a few good actors cannot make a meaningful difference. Rather, a single unquestionably powerful reckoning has to occur—Gotham has to tear itself apart so that the survivors can rebuild a more dignified state.

When you get to the core of it, one side has hope that things can change with work, and the other has no hope that things can change without complete collapse.

Bruce’s hope that things can change is in line with a philosophy called Meliorism. Meliorism is the belief that the world can be made better through sustained human effort. It is not blind optimism, and does not claim the world will inevitably get better, but rather it can if we work for it.

There are critiques of Meliorism, but there is evidence that supports it as well, like how global life expectancy has skyrocketed from roughly 30 years in 1800 to over 70 years today due to medical progress.

Or that fact that global literacy rates expanded from roughly 12% to 86% in that same time frame.

In general, historical and sociological data indicates that meliorism is very effective, provided it’s pragmatic and experimental.

In the case of Gotham, fear has kept the city from improving for decades.

When Rachel talks some sense into a young Bruce, she drops him off at Falcone’s base of operations and says, “As long as he keeps the bad people rich and the good people scared nobody will touch him.”

In Batman Begins, ever since Bruce’s parents died, there’s been a lack of support from the “good people” of Gotham. This is an idea in line with civic humanism—the philosophy that individuals have a positive duty to participate in maintaining just institutions. It’s like what Uncle Ben says to Peter in The Amazing Spider-Man,

“If you could do good things for other people, then you have a moral obligation to do those things.”

Civic humanism emphasizes the vita activa (active life), arguing that citizens have a moral duty to engage in governance and promote the common good. So, to characters like Rachel, Thomas Wayne, and later Bruce Wayne, it’s less about your beliefs and more about your actions. Huh, that sounds familiar..

“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

Thomas Wayne built cheap public transportation for the people of Gotham, and it’s revealed that Bruce’s ancestors were part of the Underground Railroad, helping slaves travel to freedom.

In Batman Begins, generations of Bruce’s family HAVE engaged in civic humanism, and now it’s Bruce’s responsibility to carry on that tradition as Batman.

It’s here we arrive at vigilantism, because Ra’s al Ghul would agree with the philosophy that you have to take matters into your own hands to help a situation. His whole M.O. is that the system is beyond saving, and that he should step in to do what’s “necessary.”

Ra’s would agree with Rachel, saying that the “good people” of Gotham haven’t done the right thing for a very long time. They haven’t gotten rid of corruption, or punished crime as much as they should.

Ra’s tells Bruce that his Father died because he failed to do what was “necessary,” I.E. instead of taking a soft approach with the criminal who shot him, he should’ve been more “strong,” and took him out first, or perhaps been more tough on criminals instead of trying to help them.

The part of this movie where Ra’s and Bruce fight on top of a frozen lake, I think, was done deliberately. As they fight, the ice cracks and creaks below them. They are skating on thin ice with these ideas—they are walking a very fine line.

When does Bruce eventually fall into the ice? When he gets angry, and sacrifices his steady, defensive stance to land a killing stroke.

Killing stroke. Interesting, given how Batman famously doesn’t kill people.

“I’m not an executioner.”

The frozen lake scene is a metaphor for the thin ice Batman skates on as a vigilante. To be Batman justly, Bruce can’t let his own personal feelings, like anger, get in the way. Alfred tells Bruce this near the end of the movie after Bruce asks him to take a sedated Rachel home.

“We both care for Rachel sir. But what you’re doing has to be beyond that. It can’t be personal, or you’re just a vigilante.”

The way Alfred chastises Bruce for making things “personal” reminds me of what Rachel says about justice,

“Justice is about harmony, revenge is about making yourself feel better.”

Remember what Ra’s al Ghul says to Bruce after being asked what stopped his anger towards the person who killed his wife?

“Vengeance.”

It seems like Ra’s al Ghul’s obsession with cleansing Gotham is really just anger and resentment he still feels towards criminals at large, since one killed his wife.

So it’s established that justice must be free of personal motivation to be considered justice in the first place. That’s what makes Bruce Wayne becoming Batman—a symbol in the eyes of his enemies—so perfect. He ceases being a man at all, destroying the “self,” to fight for justice purely.

But we’ve left out a very important part of this story—fear.

Batman uses fear to fight his enemies, Scarecrow uses the fear toxin to terrify HIS enemies, and Carmine Falcone uses fear to corrupt Gotham’s institutions.

Everybody is terrified in Gotham. It’s like what Rachel says about Falcone, “As long as he keeps the bad people rich and the good people scared nobody will touch him.”

Even Jim Gordon is scared. After he sees his partner accept a payoff for the mob while on-duty, he tells him, “I’m not a rat,” and “In a town this bent, who would I even rat to anyways?”

In the story, though, Bruce goes out into the world to understand the mind of the criminal. Through his travels, he understands the fear, and rush of committing a crime, and it makes him more empathetic to criminals. He now knows what real desperation looks like, and what it does to people.

Bruce is also terrified, like Ra’s al Ghul says, of his own power.

“What you really fear is inside yourself. You fear your own power. You fear your anger, the drive to do great or terrible things.”

After Bruce’s parents died, Bruce became angry at the world for not giving him justice. That’s why he tells Rachel that Gotham’s system is broken in the car, and tries to take matters into his own hands. His fear is that the world is a terrible place, without justice, where nobody is coming to save him.

But remember, this film is about civic humanism—the idea that if you have the power to fight injustice, you have a moral obligation to fight injustice.

So when Ra’s tells Bruce that what he really fears is inside himself—that he fears his own power—I can’t help but wonder whether he means that Bruce fears the fact that he CAN stand up and do something, but fears the consequences.

It’s a little bit of a scary thought. When Rachel says “It’s not who you are underneath, but what you do that defines you,” that’s the filmmakers sending all of us a message that it’s not enough to believe in equality, and justice—we must put actions behind those beliefs to keep the forces of darkness at bay.

Fear goes both ways in Batman Begins. Fear can be used to control regular citizens, yes, but you can also put fear into the minds of criminals by standing up for what’s right—by doing the right thing. That’s essentially what Batman does. He puts fear back into the minds of the criminals. They think he’s a legend when he’s really just flesh and blood. Like Ra’s al Ghul says, fear has the power to distort reality.

The Scarecrow is a perfect villain for this movie because a Scarecrow, in real life, doesn’t really have any power. But the crows don’t know that. I feel like it’s the same in real life. A lot of what we fear is just a mirage, and if we have the courage to face our fears, like Bruce does, we might be surprised by our own power.

Like Bruce’s parents, who inspired the city with their own example of philanthropy, we have the ability to be like Batman and be a beacon to others struck by fear. After all, “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”

What stood out to you about Batman Begin’s philosophy? Let me know in the comments below.

And if you liked this philosophical analysis, subscribe to my Substack. I publish videos breaking down the philosophy of movies every week on here.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

The filmmakers obsessed over these details in a way we haven’t seen in Star Wars since, and in this video, I’ll break down the hidden genius of this legendary scene.

When I close my eyes and think of Star Wars, the image of Luke and Vader’s lightsabers in this smoky, shadowy set comes to mind. This, for me, is the quintessential image of Star Wars. Nothing beats it.

If I’m going to talk about this scene, I have to talk about how they constructed this legendary image, which means we’re first going to discuss the lighting, set design, and cinematography of Empire Strikes Back.

In doing research for this video, I stumbled upon a blog post on Bills Film Blog that details the differences in cinematography between Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi. The post was written by an actual DP, and the author states that they find Empire one of the best shot films of all time, and Return of the Jedi incredibly bland, dull, and paint by numbers in terms of its cinematography.

Ouch.

In a nutshell, the author talks about how most Star Wars fans might say Empire is “darker” than the previous film, but that the darkness of Empire isn’t quite the same as the darkness of Return of the Jedi, or the prequels that came after.

The author writes,

“The first thing that really strikes me about the lighting is that, generally speaking, most of the light in the scenes come from light-sources established within that scene. In layman’s term, the character’s faces are lit by things that create light in the room, their faces are NOT lit up by some magical spotlight that follows them around. This I think is in stark contrast to both “Star Wars” and “Jedi” which have a much more traditional notion of lighting - light the room, then light the actors. It’s not to say that the characters in “Empire” are solely lit by set-dressing light sources, but that the film lighting they use is cleverly disguised. The end result is that the film is very shadowy, heavily atmospheric and portrays a greater range of mood.”

The author then draws a comparison to this famous shot from Empire of Vader shrouded in smoke, and this shot of Emperor Palpatine’s throne room in Return of the Jedi.

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There is some natural light coming from space via these massive circular windows on both sides of the frame, but there’s this strange white light lighting the stairs that Vader and Luke climb here. Where it’s coming from, we don’t know. It just feels bland.

The author then compares that image to this one of Vader from Empire,

“The image (of Vader in Empire), iconic as it is, suggests a far more threatening notion of a spider biding its time or a monster in its lair and feels far more aggressive than the Emperor ever feels in any of his shots. The ESB image has the illusion, again, to be lit only by the lighting in the room.”

Another thing this DP highlights is Empire’s use of colored lighting, and how it uses color more than A New Hope or Return of the Jedi. Whether it’s the cold blues of Echo base, the red glow of the Carbonite chamber, or the sickly atmosphere of Dagobah.

There’s one more way that Empire’s cinematography stands above the other films in the original trilogy, and that’s in its dynamic framing and camera setups. We’re going to talk about that a lot in this video in terms of how Vader is framed in this fight to give him a sense of overwhelming power.

On Bill’s Films Blog, the DP talks about that while continuing to rip into Return of the Jedi, stating,

“Many of the shots have an uncinematic lacking of DOF and a lot of beauty of the framing seems lost because of narrower lenses and/or the shot is a little too wide, has boring composition or leaves a great deal of headroom. There is a GREAT lacking of crane-shots, moving dolly or steadicam shots. And many of the angles are shot at eye-level and rarely do we see something from a high or low-angle, unlike “Empire“.

Now that we’ve established how Empire uses lighting, color, and dynamic framing to heighten scenes, let’s get into the actual fight itself.

After Luke arrives to the fight, director Irvin Kershner gives us a wide establishing shot of this Carbonite chamber. This dark environment is so different from Dagobah, Hoth, and Cloud City, and we get a sense that Luke is at a disadvantage immediately.

I like the way these sharp metal arms protrude from the ceiling and angle towards Luke. Everything about this shot from Luke’s isolation, to the smoke, to these aggressive metal arms reaching down at him, screams danger.

Vader’s voice booms from the edges of the screen, “the force is with you, young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet.”

In a Medium article from 2017, author Matthew Trask talks about the significance of this shot of Vader waiting in the shadows.

“Darth Vader, once a fabled Jedi who defected to the dark side, is often obscured by smoke in this scene mystifying him while also giving him somewhat ghostly and supernatural presences on screen.”

‘Ghostly’ and ‘supernatural’ are perfect words to describe Vader, and make me think of this moment when Vader glides down to Luke like a ghost after knocking him down the stairs.

In that same article, Matthew talks about how the oranges and blues of this scene seem to represent Vader and Luke.

He writes, “The significance of colour in this scene is particularly interesting as it often highlights what is happening on the screen. For example, when Vader is in control of the fight Luke is lit by the orange and blacks but when Luke gains the upper hand the blue is most prominent on the screen.”

What strikes me, though, about these first few shots are how much they reinforce that Vader is in control, and that Luke is in peril.

It does it, most obviously, by placing Vader at the top of the stairs, in a position of height and power. “I have the high ground!”

But the framing here of Vader as Luke walks up the stairs where we peer just over his shoulder, looking down at Luke, gives him a sense of power as well. This is what the DP was talking about on Bill’s Films Blog where Jedi framed shots mostly at eye level, while Empire uses high and low angle shots.

We’ll see this technique in a later shot, when Vader walks towards Luke down a hallway.

I was reading a brilliant article on The Beat written by Johnathan Paul titled ‘Creating the Cloud City Duel from The Empire Strikes Back’ that had something to say about this shot in particular.

Johnathan writes,

“Though dialogue isn’t heavy during this scene, Kershner still needed to establish a version of the shot/reverse shot. He was able to do this several times throughout the sequence by placing the audience just off to the side and over the shoulder of each character as seen in the incredibly impressive dolly shot below.

While simple in technique, its visual implication is massive to the story… Through this shot we gain a sense that Luke is not ready for the encounter, just as Yoda and Obi Wan warned.”

I want to take a second to highlight how Luke and Vader move around in this scene. So Luke comes up the stairs and ignites his lightsaber quickly while stepping forward aggressively. Vader ignites his own lightsaber, but instead of doing it with quick, aggressive movement, he stands there calm while the saber slowly comes out of the handle. It exudes power and control, while Luke’s movements exude the eagerness and recklessness of youth.

Luke swings at Vader with all his might, which Vader easily deflects with one hand. Even the way Vader “resets” here, twirling his lightsaber slowly, continues exuding complete control and hints that he’s toying with Luke.

So, here’s a bit of behind the scenes info..

In an article on Paste Magazine called Fight Night: Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back, author Kenneth Lowe tells us that legendary swordmaster Bob Anderson, who worked on Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Mask of Zorro, actually stood in for Vader during these fight scenes.

David Prowse, who was 6’7, did all of Vader’s dramatic scenes, but Bob Anderson, who was 6’1, stood in for Vader in the fight scenes. The filmmakers, to compensate for this height difference, utilized low angle shots looking UP at Vader to emphasize his size and power. They also got Bob Anderson to wear platform shoes and even stilts, apparently, to make sure he could believably stand in for Prowse.

In the articles I read breaking down this scene, a lot of them mentioned the editing of this first part, and how it features minimal cutting and wide shots to let the audience take in the action.

Matt Trask writes, “The stripped down nature of this final scene is particularly interesting as Luke and Vader finally meet face to face for the first time in the reality of the film. Through the film, Vader has been a consistent presence in Luke’s story through Kershner’s use of production design, music and editing, but within this moment he strips away the music, dialogue, and editing in order to leave the scene to build tension and to emphasize its dramatic weight within the film.”

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So, this scene is unlike anything we’ve seen in Star Wars so far, and the filmmakers wanted to make it feel special by stripping away the editing and music, to let this moment breathe.

I also just want to mention how the lighting and editing of this scene accentuates the lightsabers themselves. Johnathan Paul, writing for The Beat, had something to say about this,

“Beyond the actual fight, the look and feel of the scene had to be perfect, as there was a lot of layered conflict going on in the scene. There was the obvious good versus evil — but there was also power versus weakness, control versus freedom, and order versus chaos. To portray this tangle of emotion and motivation, McQuarrie and the artists at ILM crafted a set that would stay fairly neutral, while the costumes and lightsabers would highlight the conflict.”

So the neutrality and stripped-down lighting of the set was done on purpose to highlight the lightsabers, which in-turn highlighted the complex undercurrents of this battle in a basic, binary way.

After cutting away to Leia and Lando Calrissian for a second, we’re back with Luke and Vader.

Luke gets knocked down these stairs by his Father, and as Luke’s back is up against the wall, the frame becomes dominated by these bright orange colors, signaling, perhaps, that Vader is in full control now.

After Luke is knocked down into the Carbonite chamber, he escapes via force jump, and regains control of his lightsaber. Now, blues start to dominate the frame as he gets the upper hand on his Father, and knocks him off the platform.

Take a look at how much Luke is sweating here. Mark Hamill said that shooting this duel was absolutely grueling. He said it was so vigorous that he actually lost weight during filming, and the look of him bathed in sweat here as lightsabers screech and grind against one another adds another dimension to the scene.

One thing that Matthew Trask noticed is that, as the fight progresses, we go deeper and deeper into the under-belly of Cloud City, and that the architecture and set design starts reflecting the gray blandness of the Empire more and more. “The walls are now angular and utilitarian,” Matthew writes, “Luke is now within Vader’s world.”

In that same article for The Beat I’ve been referencing, they talk about the progression of set design in this scene, and its meaning.

“There was great importance on making this final section of the scene feel isolated and dangerous. Because of the shocking revelation that Luke would receive from Vader, the set design should exist in such a way that it heightened the tension for the scene. With this in mind, Christian and set designer John Barry crafted the catwalk set on one of the sound stages at the legendary Pinewood Studios.”

This isolation is further reinforced by the way shots of Luke are framed. Like this one of him taking a second to look back and talk to his Father. Luke’s stuffed into the right hand side of the frame, while a gaping space of nothingness occupies frame-left, heightening his isolation and sense of helplessness.

The final location of their duel does a lot to underline the drama as well. The wind is so strong you can see Vader’s helmet wiggling here, giving the sense that Luke is caught up in something way beyond his control. Luke’s helplessness is deepened by this location, which feels like a vortex trying to swallow him whole.

The filmmakers were firing on all cylinders with this legendary lightsaber duel, and it changed the face of Star Wars forever.

Kenneth Lowe in Paste Magazine writes, “At the beginning of that fight, Star Wars was a space fantasy phenomenon, a kind of fusion of Flash Gordon and Kurosawa and The Dam Busters. After the fight, Star Wars became an epic saga of destinies, fathers and sons, good vs. evil. Luke isn’t a plucky hero striking out for glory anymore, but an epic hero fighting against a force of evil that has corrupted his own father. Which is to say: Star Wars became Star Wars.”

If this fight scene wasn’t perfect, I’m not sure Star Wars would be the Star Wars it is today. I hope that after viewing this video, you understand a little more about why it was so perfect, and how it changed cinema forever.

What did you notice in Luke/Vader’s fight scene? Let me know in the comments.

And if you like this breakdown, consider subscribing for more film analysis like this of important scenes from popular movies and tv shows.

Thanks so much for watching! I’ll see you next time.

I want to be straight with you.

When I launched Sunday Film Club, I had big plans for live film discussions — a space where we could actually talk through movies together in real time. And I still love that idea. But the live events just haven’t had the turnout I hoped for, and honestly, that’s on me. I jumped ahead of where my commu…

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Never before have I seen Star Wars so nuanced, and to me, that’s what makes Andor the best Star Wars ever.

Let me prove it to you.

The hidden philosophy of Andor, to me, can be traced to perhaps the greatest piece of writing in the entire show: Nemik’s manifesto.

In the manifesto, Nemik writes,

“Remember this, Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction.”

This is the first part of Andor philosophy. The second part comes later in that same manifesto, when Nemik writes,

“And remember this: the Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”

If I had to boil down 2 seasons and 24 episodes of Andor to its absolute essence, it would be these two ideas. And if I had to boil these two ideas down to short, concise sentences, they would be:

Freedom is natural.
Control is unnatural.

These are two mighty statements when you really analyze them, and they line up perfectly with existing Star Wars philosophy in ways I’ll talk about a little later. First, let me detail the presence of this philosophy in Andor by giving you some examples.

In a more obvious sense, we see many instances of characters choosing to fight for freedom spontaneously in this show. Whether it’s Luthen shouting “make it stop!” in a flashback sequence, or the people of Ferrix who spontaneously start fighting the Empire in the streets of Ferrix after Maarva’s speech, or the famous Narkina 5 prison break sequence.

These are more concrete examples of choosing freedom spontaneously, but what makes Andor so incredible are the ways it subliminally reinforces these natural vs. unnatural themes via its set design, costumes, and story events.

For instance, Empire design is more unnatural in its colors, shapes, and overall ambiance. Most Empire interiors feature bland black and white colors, and rigid lines and shapes. This is seen at ISB headquarters, and even the Imperial outpost on Aldahni, but it’s also shown in smaller sets like Syril and Dedra’s apartment, which is almost laughably white and lifeless. Their apartment is, unsurprisingly, an Imperial-owned residence.

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In general, Empire spaces are also made of newer, more industrial materials, while rebel spaces like the outpost on Yavin 4 feature older, more organic materials, like this ancient pyramid. Whether it’s the wooden rebel encampment on Aldahni, or the colorful brick buildings of Ferrix, or the wheat farms we find Bix and company on in the beginning of Season 2, it seems that Andor creators wanted to place the rebels in more organic, natural surroundings.

Take a look at the curved arches of Ferrix buildings as well, and the circular doorways featured in the design. These go in stark contrast with the angular, rigid lines seen in many Empire structures.

Now, this design dichotomy is nothing new in Star Wars. The Empire has always looked like this since the first movie, and the rebels were always placed in more natural environments like Hoth, Yavin 4, and Endor.

But I’d also argue that, even though there are direct parallels between Andor’s philosophy and the philosophy of the Star Wars films, the films were never trying to use design to make a point about freedom being a natural state of being humanity gravitates towards.

George Lucas used the Ewoks on Endor, for instance, as a metaphor for the Viet Cong fighting the United States. George put the rebels in more natural environments to make them seem like scrappy insurgents fighting a technologically superior empire.

What makes Andor so brilliant is in how it reclaims these design cues to stay true to the feel of Star Wars, but also take it a step further, highlighting this point about freedom being pure and unstoppable, and control being brittle and unnatural.

If this sounds farfetched, let me draw your attention to Andor’s Aldahni arc, specifically the Eye of Aldahni. As we know, the Eye is a naturally recurring meteor shower that happens once every 3 years. In fact, it can be predicted down to the minute. During the event, millions of crystals swarm the atmosphere, heat up, and explode, painting the sky with spectacular colors.

As Nemik says, “From the ground, it’s a thing of beauty. In the sky, it’s chaos.”

Practically the Eye works as cover for the rebels to escape Aldahni during the heist, but I believe it’s also a clever metaphor for the rebels, and the philosophy of Andor as a whole.

The writer of Andor, Tony Gilroy, has talked at length about his obsession with studying revolution.

In an interview with IndieWire, he said, “I’m no academic. I’m not even a college graduate, but I have been a reader of history for 30, 40 years and I’m a news consumer and I’m a freaking old white guy who listens to history podcasts all the time.”

In that same interview, he went on to say, “The history of revolution is just fascinating; from the Roman revolutions all the way through, everybody’s got them. They’re all different, they’re all the same.”

Diego Luna, the actor who played Cassian Andor, echoed similar sentiments in a Slash Film interview, saying, “Yes, there’s reference to the past, but sadly, history repeats. We’re not that different from our parents or our grandparents.”

So the Andor creators themselves talk about how, from the Romans on down, everyone seems to have had their own revolution throughout history.

Jack Goldstone, one of the leading academic scholars of revolution, argues in Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction that successful revolutions tend to require the same combination of factors regardless of era or geography: state fiscal crisis, elite defection from the regime, and a broad popular coalition. The French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Iranian Revolution, and American Revolution all share this skeleton.

How does this relate to the Eye of Aldahni? Well, it’s interesting how it happens once every 3 years down to the minute. It’s a perfectly predictable NATURAL event that repeats over and over again, just like rebellion.

You might say, “Tom, that doesn’t prove this is a metaphor for rebellion!”

So first off, this plot device could’ve been anything. It could’ve been a migration of space bats in the night sky or something. And also, the whole situation itself with the Alkenzi Air Base being 52 kilometers away from the Dam, and the threat of air power, and the need for the rebels to make an escape into the sky, could’ve been written countless other ways. They could’ve robbed an Imperial freighter in space, for instance. Tony Gilroy and company imagined this specific celestial event, with these specific constraints, on this specific planet, for a reason.

Remember, filmmakers are just making all this up.

The biggest “proof” I have of the Eye of Aldahni being a metaphor for the rebellion is actually in something Luthen says during his famous monologue in ‘One Way Out.’

After saying that he’s condemned to use the tools of his enemy to defeat them, he says, “I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.”

Remember, the Eye of Aldahni is a meteor shower where millions of crystals flood the atmosphere, heat up, and explode. Luthen’s monologue isn’t the last time the rebellion is compared to a fire. In the finale of Season 1, Brasso relays a message to Cassian from his late mother.

“Tell him, none of this is his fault. It was already burning. He’s just the first spark of the fire.”

In episode 2 of Season 1, Cassian is framed walking through sparks directly in frame, both at the beginning of the episode, and at the end.

So he is compared to a spark by Maarva in dialogue, and visually connected to them in frame in early episodes. It seems pretty intentional.

Tony Gilroy himself has likened rebellions to a fires in interviews, saying, “All these rebellions get to the point where someone lights a match and then everything changes…it’s quite extraordinary in history how people once tipped over, go all the way.”

This is a big reason why Andor is such a beloved series, and arguably the greatest Star Wars project ever made. The level of attention that went into every single detail is mind-boggling.

In an interview with Yahoo, Tony said that he brought on production designer Luke Hull four months before they brought anybody else in. He worked with him exclusively on the series visual storytelling before they even formed a writer’s room!

A huge theme of Andor is how the rebels burn their life for a sunrise they’ll never see. Cassian ends up dying on a beach on Scarif fighting for the rebellion. Luthen eventually dies. Mon loses her whole family. Vel loses Cinta. Nemik gives his life, and so does Taramyn. Kino Loy incites a prison riot despite not being able to swim and make an escape. Almost all the freedom fighters on Ghorman lose their life.

What better visual metaphor for the chaos, self-sacrifice, and beauty of a rebellion than crystals burning up beautifully in the atmosphere?

Remember what Nemik said? “From the ground, it’s a thing of beauty. In the sky, it’s chaos.” When Dedra goes to capture Luthen at his shop, she says “You don’t want freedom. You want chaos. Chaos for everyone but you.”

If you pay attention to how the Eye of Aldahni scene develops, it starts off with beautiful blue and green colors, but as the rebels climb, it inevitably gets more chaotic in the sky as the crystals explode. The calm blue and green colors are replaced with oranges and reds, and all the tie fighters chasing them, trying to maintain their grip on order, are destroyed.

It’s a perfect metaphor for Andor’s theme of control being unnatural, and freedom being natural, because for one the Eye itself is a naturally recurring event. Secondly, it reflects the fundamental chaos of the universe, and the lie that you can control anything in a reality with countless variables to account for.

Nemik says in his manifesto that, “Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle.”

Tyranny requires constant effort because there’s literally too many variables to account for in the pursuit of control. The universe is chaotic by nature.

It’s interesting how even the Imperial workers themselves, as the Eye of Aldahni forms in the sky, stand there watching it in awe. If you believe the Eye is a metaphor for rebellion, and by extension freedom, then this right here might be one of the best “proofs” of Andor’s philosophy that freedom is natural, and pure, and something that humans naturally gravitate towards.

Even though they work for the Empire, they can’t deny their own humanity.

The Eye of Aldahni is a great microcosm of Andor’s themes, but another great proof of the philosophy it espouses is in something Vel says during the Aldahni arc.

“Everybody has their own rebellion.”

And she’s right. It’s not just Cassian, Luthen, and Mon that rebel in Andor, it’s also the characters we follow who work for the Empire themselves. Dedra rebels in the form of ignoring protocol, and overstepping boundaries to hunt and capture Luthen. Syril rebels in the form of hunting Cassian in Arc 1, despite directives from his superior to let it lie. Mon’s daughter rebels in the way she embraces problematic Chandrilan tradition. Bix rebels by leaving Cassian so he can focus on the rebellion.

Watching Syril and Dedra—Imperial loyalists—actively rebel against it by ignoring directives is so fascinating to me, and proves my point that humanity naturally gravitates towards finding some wiggle room, some freedom, to operate in when constrained.

But perhaps the coolest part of Andor’s philosophy is how it ties in so well with Star Wars philosophy in general.

Something Nemik says about the Empire in his manifesto ties directly into Sith philosophy. He says “Oppression is the mask of fear.” Yoda talked about the role of fear in turning to the dark side many times in the films. “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

Oppression being the mask of fear is best highlighted in Season 1 by the Empire’s urgency to “close their fist” after the Aldahni raid.

Colonel Yularen: “The only question we need to answer is how tight to close our fist.”

The irony of it all is, the more the Empire closes their fist, the more they stoke the fires of rebellion, as seen on Ghorman. One line from Princess Leia in A New Hope substantiates this idea as well. She says, “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

The Empire’s need for control, as depicted in Andor, runs parallel to Anakin’s pursuit of control in the prequel trilogy, which inevitably leads him to the dark side. He wants to prevent Padme from dying. But what happens is, his desire to control the situation actively leads to her death. Just like how the Empire’s tightening of their fist to control the situation inevitably leads to more rebellion.

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When Dedra comes to capture Luthen at his shop, they have this exchange:

Dedra: You disgust me.... Everything you stand for.

Luthen: Freedom scares you.

If “control” is a word we’ll use to represent what the Empire wants, and by extension the Sith, then consider this interesting fact: various antonyms of the word control include freedom, surrender, and chaos.

Freedom maps perfectly with what the rebels want in Andor, and “surrender,” or “letting go,” maps perfectly with Jedi philosophy, which is all about letting go.

Yoda: “Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”
Obi-Wan: “Let go, Luke.”

This emphasis on “letting go” maps well onto what the rebels must do in Andor. Mon must “let go” of her family in the pursuit of overthrowing the Empire. Luthen must “let go” of kindness, love, kinship, and his own humanity. Cassian must let go of Bix. Remember, before she left him he was thinking about leaving the rebellion entirely. Maarva, instead of going with Cassian to flee Ferrix, decides to stay, cutting ties with him.

The rebels in Star Wars sacrifice everything in the pursuit of freedom, showing their ability to stick to Jedi code and “let go” of their life and personal safety.

Another way the Empire is connected to fear in Andor is in the propaganda it spews about Ghorman. The Empire stokes fear, leading to hate and anger towards an entire planet, until a genocide happens and is justified by members of the Senate.

I talk more about how anger and hate are tools of the Sith in my Star Wars philosophy video, so check that out if you want more detail.

But speaking of anger, isn’t it contradictory that the rebellion feeds on their anger to overthrow the Empire? That’s rather… Sith of them, right? Luthen talks about how he must use the tools of his enemy to defeat them. That doesn’t sound like Jedi philosophy.

To be honest with you all, it’s hard to refute that point. Luthen says that he burns his decency to make a sunrise he’ll never see. He tells us, straight up, that he’s not a good person and he knows it. He sacrifices Kreegyr and dozens of his men without a second thought. He kills Mon’s best friend without hesitation. He uses Lonnie and then kills him when he is no longer useful.

Maarva, in the finale of Season 1, says that “The empire is a disease that thrives in darkness. It is never more alive then when we sleep.”

So the Jedi philosophy of letting go of your emotions kind of opens up the door to fascism in real life. Yoda, help me out here.

“Into exile I must go.”

Okay Yoda.

It seems to me that, in Andor, anger, and perhaps even hatred, is essential to getting the rebellion off the ground in the first place. It’s Kino Loy’s anger that radicalizes him, and makes him start a prison riot. It’s Mon’s anger towards the continued overreach of the Empire that makes her fight against it.

Anger IS a big reason the rebellion succeeds in Andor, and it’s absolutely necessary in real-life revolution as well.

Luthen says this to Kleya in a flashback sequence,

“All you know now is how much you hate. You bank that. You hide that. You keep it alive until you know what to do with it. And when I tell you to move, you move.”

This is Luthen literally encouraging Kleya to keep her hatred alive. That’s Sith philosophy, full stop.

But, on the flip side, anger isn’t inherently bad in Star Wars philosophy. It becomes a problem when it consumes you. Jedi are permitted to feel emotions, but they’re taught to process, understand, and release them.

I think there’s a difference between being angry, and allowing yourself to be consumed by it. Luke, for instance, in Return of the Jedi becomes very angry in his final fight with Vader. He eventually realizes that he’s dangerously close to becoming a Sith himself, and throws his lightsaber away.

Even Obi-Wan in The Phantom Menace allows anger to fuel him during his fight with Darth Maul. We see this in how he pounces on Maul after Qui-Gon Jin dies. He’s angry here, and it’s obvious. Is Obi-Wan a Sith lord for this lapse? Obviously not.

In Andor, we eventually see the rebellion, as Luthen says, “fly away” and spread across the galaxy. It no longer belongs to Luthen, or Saw. In fact, heads of the rebellion on Yavin 4 don’t trust intel provided from Luthen—that just shows how much the rebellion developed over time.

For the Sith, it seems they don’t view power in a collective way. They view power as something to own for themselves. They don’t play nice with others.

When Dedra comes to apprehend Luthen, he’s accepted his fate, and rests easy knowing that the rebellion has “flown away.” He’s let go of the rebellion—the baby he helped raise—and given up control over it.

That sounds pretty Jedi to me.

Contrast that with somebody like Saw Gerrera, who, in Season 1, tells Luthen how all the different branches of the rebellion are LOST. It’s no mistake that we see figureheads of the rebellion fighting with him over hologram in the final episode.

I think Saw represents someone who’s allowed hate and anger to consume him a little too much. If you want to say the rebellion is actually connected to dark side philosophy, Saw Gerrera is probably the best example to point towards.

My point is, I don’t think it’s as clear cut as anger = bad in Star Wars. I think it’s only bad when you let it consume you entirely, which leads to distrust, lack of empathy, and a pursuit of selfish power.

I don’t think the rebellion, in the final episodes of Andor, reflects that at all. This is a movement that feels like a family, built on fighting for freedom for all, and collaboration, not domination.

Yes, anger in part fuels the rebellion, and yes, lots of morally questionable things are done by rebel leaders, but I would argue they stop just short of letting anger consume them entirely, and that’s proven in how the rebellion looks, feels, and operates in the final episodes.

Anyway, I’ve talked too much. It’s time for you to tell me what you think Andor’s philosophy is in the comments.

And if you liked this breakdown, consider subscribing to my Substack for more philosophical breakdowns of your favorite movies and franchises.

Thanks for watching! I’ll see you next time!

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Star Wars. I have never seen so many people love a film franchise, yet miss the point of it, so much in my life. Many folks cherry pick popular phrases like “Do or do not, there is no try,” or “Judge me by my size, do you?” or “Hello there!” and use them to affirm their own philosophies about accomplishment, achieving goals, and moving up in life.

But the problem is… that’s not Star Wars’ philosophy.

One time my Dad, as I debated quitting my wrestling team in college, said that I needed to “do what Luke did,” and “face Vader”—IE beat the guy who beat me in my weight class—before I threw in the towel.

I don’t know what movie he was watching, because Luke clearly does NOT kill his Father—he literally throws his lightsaber away and refuses to fight him.

This, right here, is when Luke actually becomes a Jedi for real. This is what good triumphing over evil actually looks like according to George Lucas. Refusing to fight. Choosing love over hate. Letting go.

Some surveys suggest that 60-75% of Americans have watched at least 1 Star Wars film, or consider themselves fans. That’s, like, a ton of people. And despite Star Wars’ core principle of fear leading to the dark side, and suffering, large swathes of Americans, according to some surveys, are very afraid of things like corruption in government, loved ones becoming ill, and economic collapse.

My point is, a lot of Americans LOVE Star Wars, yet seem to not internalize its underlying philosophy at all, and cherry pick quotes from the films to reinforce worldviews that kind of go directly against what Star Wars advocates for.

So in this video, I thought I’d break down the actual philosophy of Star Wars, and highlight how much many of us actually live in the dark side, whether we know it or not.

In the actual Star Wars saga, which are only films 1-6, fear, anger, and aggression are highlighted as pathways to the dark side. In Empire, Yoda says, “But mind the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression -- from the dark side are they.”

In The Phantom Menace, Yoda echoes a similar sentiment, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”

We see this chain of fear leading to suffering in both trilogies. In the Prequels, we see how Anakin’s fear of losing Padme eventually leads to him losing his best friend, the love of his life, and his own humanity, as he becomes “more machine than man” by the end.

In the Original Trilogy, Luke, fearing for the safety of his friends, falls into Darth Vader’s trap, gets his hand cut off, and receives news that makes him scream like a baby. His fear eventually leads to suffering.

Connecting this philosophy to our lives, it’s no secret how social media platforms are engineered to maximize engagement, featuring outrage and fear-mongering to generate more attention.

For example, in 2017, Facebook adjusted its algorithm so that “angry,” “love,” “sad,” and “wow” reactions counted as five times more valuable than a standard like. But Facebook’s own data scientists discovered that posts receiving angry reactions were more likely to contain misinformation and low-quality content — meaning the algorithm was systematically amplifying the worst stuff in the feed.

Yoda repeats this fact about anger being more seductive in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke asks Yoda, “Is the dark side stronger?” and Yoda responds, “No, quicker easier, more seductive.” Decades before the advent of social media, Yoda told us how easy it is for people to slip into hate and anger.

An even more terrifying study by Cordis analyzing over 12 million tweets showed that outrage culture teaches people to post more angry content on social media themselves, since it gets more engagement. So social media is actually training people to become more hateful and bitter, not just serving it up to them on a silver platter.

To be fair, I think that both sides of the political spectrum engage in rage-baiting and fear-mongering, so I don’t want to ONLY blame one side here.

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My point is, the next time you see a headline, tweet, or Truth Social post that gets your blood pumping, and anxiety levels sky high, ask yourself, “Am I feeling fearful or angry right now?” If so, according to the philosophy of one of the most beloved film franchises of all time, you are on the path to the dark side, which always ends in suffering.

The American Psychiatric Association’s 2024 poll found that 43% of U.S. adults feel more anxious than the previous year, which is up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022.

Another APA poll found that 70% of U.S. adults say they feel anxious or extremely anxious about keeping themselves or their families safe.

This is Yoda’s first domino—fear— which affects the overwhelming majority of the country, and it’s been steadily increasing year over year.

If this information alone makes you fearful, relax. Remember, that’s the path to the dark side. We’ll talk about how to swim against that current in a second.

Another fascinating aspect of Star Wars philosophy is how it implies the dark side makes you a slave. In Return of the Jedi, Vader says something heartbreaking to Luke, “You don’t know the power of the dark side. I MUST serve my master.” Vader’s not marveling at the power of the dark side when he says “you don’t know the power of the dark side,” he’s talking about how much it enslaves him. He tells Luke “I MUST serve my master,” not “I choose to serve my master.”

Vader is a slave to Palpatine.

“You don’t know the power of the dark side / I must serve my master” is almost verbatim how someone deep in addiction talks about their relationship to the substance. It has power over me. I can’t stop. And the thing that has power over them isn’t making them happy, it’s just keeping them from the pain underneath.

James Baldwin, a renowned American writer, essayist, and civil rights activist, once wrote, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

That quote lines up perfectly with what Vader goes through in the entire trilogy.

His mother’s death, Padme’s death, his slaughter of younglings, the happy person he once was—confronting that pain is unbearable for him, so the dark side functions like a psychological occupation. He keeps his mind busy, focused on an enemy, and a mission—crushing the rebellion—to avoid having to process his pain, and confront what he’s done.

In Return of the Jedi, Palpatine shows Luke the ambush his friends are walking into, hoping to stir up anger in him. He says things like, “I can feel your anger,” and “With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant.”

When Luke finally takes his lightsaber and crosses blades with his Father, we get one of the best shots in Star Wars history of Palpatine laughing in the background as the sabers scrape against each other. Luke IS being Palpatine’s servant. He’s doing exactly what he wants him to do—which is strike down his Father and become the Emperor’s new apprentice.

We see Palpatine play a similar game with Anakin in the prequel trilogy, where he manipulates him, stirring up anger and fear, to twist him over to the dark side, turning him into a pawn to help him destroy the Jedi.

Many Americans are going through a similar journey right now. A great example is actually in the rise of the manosphere. If you haven’t seen Louis Theroux’s documentary on Netflix called ‘Into The Manosphere’ I highly recommend it. He explores the rise of male influencers flaunting riches, one-sided relationships with beautiful women, and inflammatory opinions designed to draw attention on social media so they can sell digital products.

Some of the things the influencers say, and do, in this documentary is truly horrifying, but what they’re doing to win the fanaticism of young men is very similar to Palpatine’s playbook.

Many young men have a lot of pain right now because of social rejection and loneliness. The manosphere weaponizes this pain by giving these young men something to blame, like the system, women, “woke” agendas, and even jews. That explanation feels like relief.

The Manosphere weaponizes the fear of these young boys into anger, and then outright hate, which inevitably leads to suffering. The hateful content these influencers push out aren’t treating the underlying problem for these boys, they’re just making them angry and bitter. So, in much the same way Anakin is a slave to Palpatine, young men become slaves to these influencers, finding comfort in blaming others instead of sitting with and processing their pain.

As a quick aside, I do feel we’re failing young boys as a society and I have a lot of empathy for their pain. I just don’t think worshipping assholes is the way out of this mess. Yoda would agree with me.

The Jedi say that the force binds us together. Yoda says “it’s energy surrounds us, and binds us.” When an entire planet is destroyed in A New Hope, Obi-Wan can feel that disturbance in the force because he’s tapped into the force, which binds every being together. After Luke uses the force to deflect a few blaster shots in A New Hope, Obi-Wan says “You’ve taken your first step into a larger world.”

In Return of The Jedi, Luke and Emperor Palpatine have an interesting exchange. Luke says, “Your overconfidence is your weakness,” and Palpatine replies “Your faith in your friends is yours.”

The Jedi seem to be more focused on unity and connection between beings, while the Sith seem to be more focused on division, seeing these bonds as weakness.

The Sith Creed states this worldview explicitly. It reads, “Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through strength I gain power. Through power I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken.”

“Peace is a lie,” suggests that the Sith fundamentally don’t believe in harmony between beings, all they see is power. And it’s focus on achieving victory fundamentally pits everyone against each other.

Let me read you the Jedi creed real quick. “There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.”

I particularly like the phrase, “There is no chaos, there is harmony.”

As I rewatched Empire the other day, I thought about why George Lucas decided to make Dagobah the home of the last surviving Jedi Master. Why not an ocean planet, or a desert planet, or a frozen planet like Hoth? Why a swamp planet?

Well, I think a swamp is actually a perfect representation for the force in general. What better way to visually represent the interconnectedness of the force than a vast swamp where you can’t tell where one tree ends and the other begins? Where the lines that divide one thing from the other are blurry, and unclear?

Contrast the organic aesthetics of Dagobah with the unnatural white and black design of Empire spaces. George Lucas describes the dark side of the force as a corruption, or cancer of the Force rather than the yin to the light sides yang.

Designing the Empire—or dark side—as more industrial hints at the coldness, and artificiality of this point of view. There is no warmth, or interconnectedness, only pain.

Darth Vader himself represents a literal transformation from human to machine. Obi-Wan says “He’s more machine now, than man.” This is what the dark side and things like fear, anger, and hate does to people, it makes them less and less human, cutting them off from their ability to feel.

One thing I’ve realized as I enter my mid-30’s is how discouraged a lot of people are about humanity. Christians, for instance, can talk a lot about how “fallen” we are, and how sinful, and brutal humanity can be. Our ruthlessness is emphasized so much that many Christians seem to believe humans are fundamentally bad, and that we can only achieve perfection in heaven.

This can create a fear of people, though, in the present. It can create separation and even hatred of the other. Can being the key word, because I don’t believe all Christians are this way at all.

My point is, believing that brutality and injustice is simply the way of the world does seem like a Sith way of looking at things.

Remember their creed? “Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through strength I gain power. Through power I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken.”

Sith only see power, not things like peace, or harmony. They fundamentally believe the world isn’t capable of peace, or harmony, believing instead in fear and anger, and wielding them to gain more power.

They’re realists, or at least they see themselves that way. This is just the way of the world, they might say. While I certainly wouldn’t call these people bad, they might be shocked to realize they certainly hold the worldview of a Sith Lord. Power reigns, and that’s that.

One of my favorite quotes from Yoda is, “you must unlearn what you have learned.”

In The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda teaches Luke, over and over again, how things are not always as they seem.

Luke: “Moving stones around is one thing but this is totally different!”
Yoda: “No! No different! Only different in your mind!”

Yes, you could analyze this as a commentary on self-belief and accomplishment, but I look at it a bit deeper.

I look at it as, the world has taught you one way of looking at things, and it’s actually wrong. You must unlearn what you have learned. Obi-Wan gives Luke a helmet during a training exercise in A New Hope, telling him to reach out with his feelings, and not to trust what his eyes are telling him.

Maybe it’s the same with us. Maybe, instead of believing in whatever creed, religion, or idea that was simply given to us since childhood that we had NO power in choosing for ourselves, we need to re-think how we see the world. We need to, as Obi-Wan says, “trust your feelings” and “let go.”

Maybe we shouldn’t trust the outrage, and fear-mongering we see on social media as an accurate reflection of the world, and people.

The Jedi’s emphasis on trusting your feelings seems so detached from how a lot of us live our lives in the 21st century. I see many men living in a cage, cut off from their feelings, afraid to show any emotion at all. I see people afraid to be themselves, afraid to trust, afraid to hope.

It’s fitting that the title of Episode 4 is literally A New Hope. How many of us DO hope? How many of us are hopeful for the future instead of fearful? How many of us, instead of being afraid of rejection, decide to be ourselves anyway in front of people and live freely?

Fear and anger, unfortunately, rule humanity. It’s an act of rebellion to hope, and feel, and see the possibility for harmony instead of division. That’s why Luke’s journey in Empire Strikes Back is so difficult for him. Everything he’s seeing, and everything he’s been taught, screams at him that this is dangerous, or that’s not possible, or this is not the way the world works.

The most inspiring philosophy that I take away from Star Wars is encompassed in possibly the greatest moment in the entire series, when Yoda lifts Luke’s ship out of the swamp, and places it gently on dry land.

Yoda is showing the power of the Force when used for good. IE, he’s showing the power of living in the moment, of feeling, of being connected to everything around you. Yoda says a few moments earlier, “For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.”

Maybe George Lucas and the creators of Star Wars are trying to not only show the easy power of fear, and anger, but also the transformative power of hope, and harmony, to accomplish things we never believed were possible.

Luke: I don’t believe it!
Yoda: That, is why you fail.

What do you think the philosophy of Star Wars is? Let me know in the comments.

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