Near the end of The Dark Knight, Morgan Freeman's nattily-turned out R&D man is shown a surveillance center that's tapped into the communications of all of Gotham City. Beautiful. Unethical. Dangerous. You've turned every phone in the city into a microphone... This is wrong. "No one should have that kind of power," he says. "That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it," he's told. But, "Spying on 30 million people wasn't in my job description." "When you've finished, type your name to switch it off."
In the flurry of action as the film closes, Lucius Fox does that. The surveillance panopticon shuts down like fluorescent lights in an office building that's shed its workers. Come January 20, it's doubtful a similar apparatus will be terminated with the letters B-A-R-A-C-K O-B-A-M-A. Fade-outs in the real world are harder to come by.
(For award and year-end consideration, Warner offered a refresher IMAX screening of The Dark Knight at Navy Pier at 9am this morning. A PDF of the script is downloadable here.)
[Winchester Street below Augusta Boulevard]
