The references to QAnon throughout The Batman are hardly subtle. Let’s use that.’ From my perspective, QAnon was doing the same thing: whenever a supporter came up with a particularly good bake, they would go ‘yes, you’re right, patriot,’ and then quote it themselves.”
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It’s like how they write TV shows: you have a group of writers sitting around in a room, throwing out ideas, and then the show-runner goes OK, that’s good. “Whereas in QAnon, it was the readers who came up with the meaning – often Q’s messages didn’t really signify anything, they just asked questions or made vague references, and they would allow the followers to discern the meaning. “One thing I thought was interesting is that all of the Riddler’s puzzles have a solution,” says Jake Rockatansky, one of the hosts of QAnon Anonymous, a podcast that delves into QAnon and conspiracy theories more generally, about what the film has to say about online radicalisation. This is somewhat similar to the Riddler’s modus operandi, although the clues which he publishes are aimed squarely at Batman rather than his own followers.
#CONSPIRACY ICEBERG TIKTOK SERIES#
For context, the conspiracy theory began when an anonymous entity, who referred to themselves as ‘Q’, began posting a series of cryptic messages on 4chan. Throughout the film, there are a number of nods to QAnon. So the similarity is a coincidence, but not a particularly fortuitous one. It feels like such a direct nod to the January 6 Capitol riots that it’s almost a little embarrassing in its blatancy, but the script was actually written years before in 2017 and not revised in light of subsequent events. Near the end, the Riddler allows himself to be captured by the police, before revealing his somewhat anticlimactic final plan: a group of his internet followers are going to blow up some storm guards, cause a bit of flooding, and then assassinate the city’s new mayor: a progressive, almost Bernie-esque candidate (Jayme Lawson). The Batman, alongside a convoluted and tedious mafia subplot, concerns (spoilers ahead) the Riddler murdering a series of high-profile Gotham City public figures while exposing their corrupt double lives. The Batman is definitely trying to say something, but what it ends up saying is a little confused. Half-truths and total outright lies and even things that are absolutely true but are inflaming.” I t’s not a bad idea to have for a villain a metaphor for online radicalisation, but for a number of reasons the result falls a little flat. In fact, The Batman writer and director Matt Reeves has said outright that the film is about the corrosive effects of social media, “this virtual community where things can spread to, that get people inflamed and passionate. Through the character of the Riddler, the film seems to be making an explicit commentary on online radicalisation, misinformation, and QAnon: the American conspiracy theory (perhaps better understood as a network of loosely-affiliated conspiracy theories) which posits the existence of an evil cabal of Satan-worshipping, paedophile elites, against whom Donald Trump has been waging a secret war. But one of the main sticking points of The Batman, released last week, is the character of the Riddler, played by Paul Dano. Or at the very least, they can offer some vague nods to what’s been happening in the news (no doubt in three years’ time we can expect a deluge of Putin-like antagonists). It would be misguided to watch a superhero film and expect nuanced socio-political analysis, but even the most inane blockbusters can reflect the abiding anxieties of their time.
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