I don’t really blame people for wanting there to be an Illuminati. It would be convenient for there to be an omnipotent secret conspiracy out there, even if it was malevolent*. But there’s nothing like DARK WEB: CICADA 3301 out there. We’re on our own.
Also: I think that GeekTyrant is right, and the movie will likely blow chunks. But it’s STILL a good candidate for Oscar bait this year! Chew on that for a while.
Moe Lane
*I forget who pointed it out first (Hell, it might have even been me), but one of the things that you notice about GURPS WAREHOUSE 23 (a TTRPG collection of stuff suppressed by the Secret Masters) is that, well, there were damn good reasons to lock all that stuff up. You could run a fun game around a concept of an essentially benevolent Illuminati — no wait, it’s basically THE ESOTERRORISTS.
Well, there’s entirely too many people who think that they’re enlightened, and who are going to make the rest of humanity behave properly.
Even if it kills the whole lot of them.
Some of them would be legitimate supervillains in any point buy system.
You have cabals of powerful people working towards a common goal of dominating a centralized world (with the chief difference between factions being who will rule, and what parts of the past should be washed away).
So, yeah.
If their schemes didn’t keep blowing up in their faces, we’d be totally there.
The ‘keep blowing up their faces’ is the big thing, though. Lawyers and political science majors absolutely suck at conspiracies, thank God.
It’s a big thing, in that “Secret Masters” sometimes looking like buffoons removes the mystique and makes the concept less scary.
I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
A fool with boxes of matches who believes that “fire is pretty” should be every bit as frightening as Vlad Tepes with a torch.
If not moreso.
Also, their winning percentage in tactical efforts which we are fully aware of and actively oppose are well over 50%.
(And much higher for things we don’t effectively anticipate and oppose.)
Those successful efforts build on each other towards strategic goals, and even the thwarted efforts tend to move the ball in their direction. Initiative and unity of purpose are advantages like that.
If you invoke George Soros (as one example among many), you’re almost certain to be dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.
But he really has said the things he’s said, done the things he’s done, and caused the things he’s caused.
There’s an old literary trope, where the chessmaster poses as the fool to advance his plot.
There is also the saying that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing people he didn’t exist.
If “Secret Masters” were supernaturally wise, they’d surely take advantage of that. If they had to expose themselves to the public eye, anyway.
Of course, if they were supernaturally wise, they’d almost certainly understand that while they could undermine the Republic and force an Oligarchy, their stated neo-feudal end is out of reach. Not to mention that Oligarchies are short-lived, and invariably end badly for the oligarchs.