"Oh, Isa, when I found out you were in Chile, I thought you were living like an ascetic."
"But after I got off the plane — oh my God — this place is practically the Manhattan of South America!"
"I really didn't expect Chile to have such an incredibly luxurious city!"
"Seriously, I feel like this place is even better than Melbourne, better than Sydney!"
"Though I haven't really explored Melbourne or Sydney much either."
"Hehe~"
Margot Robbie's loud, excited exclamations made Isabella smile.
She scooped up a spoonful of seafood stew. When ordering, the restaurant had claimed their seafood stew was made by simmering together the region's most famous wild conger eel, king crab, abalone, and other precious ingredients — but after tasting it, Isabella found nothing particularly special.
Or rather, she felt a bowl of soup costing two hundred US dollars was simply an IQ tax.
After one sip, she had the distinct feeling of having been robbed.
Putting down the spoon, the salty, savory taste lingering in her mouth, Isabella shifted her gaze toward the window.
In the eyes of the world, Chile might only be a small Latin American country with a certain presence on the world stage — because Chilean cherries were sold across the globe — but that presence was not especially strong, since aside from cherries, it was hard to think of anything else when Chile came to mind. In reality, that was indeed pretty much the case.
In Latin America, Chile's development could be considered relatively good. On a global scale, however, its pace of development was nothing impressive.
Yet even the poorest places had wealthy districts, didn't they?
Santiago, where Isabella currently was, had urban construction no different from the wealthy areas of developed countries. Skyscrapers stood in clusters, and roads extended in every direction. Historic sites were here too, and quite well preserved — the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral, whose construction began in 1748, was maintained beautifully. At the same time, the people here had actively embraced nature, transforming the mountains within the city into a national park and erecting a statue of the Virgin Mary at the very summit.
Precisely because Santiago's construction was no different from that of well-known cities around the world, Margot Robbie immediately began acting like a wide-eyed tourist upon arrival, curiously examining everything around her.
Yes. After learning she had no other filming plans this year — and that her boss had explicitly said that if she had nothing to do, she should come be her assistant — Margot, at loose ends in California, decisively answered the call and eagerly came to South America.
And then —
Wow~
The freedom of a billionaire made envy bloom across her face.
"Personally, I still think Santiago is a little behind Sydney," Isabella said. "Sydney's prosperity is diverse, but here — honestly, the prosperous part of Santiago is basically just the area beneath our feet. Go even a little farther, and the world turns gray."
"As for that — Marg, I think you've had some experience with it, since we met in a village."
After gazing outside for a moment, Isabella withdrew her gaze and looked back at Margot. Having celebrated her sixteenth birthday last month, she already carried the beauty she would hold in later years — and right now, she was still youthful and radiant.
Isabella's words seemed to stir up some unpleasant memories. Margot raised her brows, nodded, shrugged, and spread her hands. "Yeah~ I really did get a deep taste of what you're talking about."
"The day before yesterday, when I got off the plane and met your bodyguard, the first thing he said was that you were waiting for me. I thought you'd be at a hotel in the city center — but after I followed him into the car, I was jostled around for almost three hours while the roads around us grew more and more desolate."
"Do you know what I thought? When I realized the car could go from asphalt to cement to countryside dirt roads, I actually thought I'd been kidnapped. I was scared to death — convinced the bodyguards beside me were bad guys in disguise."
"But then — Wow~ — you were actually living inside someone else's nature reserve!"
"Isa, honestly, when I first saw you, I thought I was seeing things. You were squatting on the beach, watching a group of — a group of — little guys fighting?"
"You really do have refined tastes."
Her rambling words amused everyone at the table. Margot's expression — equal parts retrospective fright and helplessness — made Catherine reach over and stroke the large animal beside her hand.
At the movement, Chestnut — who had been gnawing on raw eel on the table, the little otter raised by Isabella and the others — lifted its head and looked around curiously, as if to say: Are you calling me?
Utterly adorable.
Margot curled her lips. "The key point is that it couldn't even beat the others. It could only hide behind Bread and beg for help."
"Hahahahaha—"
The moment the description of the battle-useless creature appeared, everyone at the table burst out laughing.
Isabella glanced to her side. The "Bread" Margot had just mentioned was currently gnawing on grass.
Bread was the capybara Isabella had raised.
And naturally — Isabella had gone on vacation, so how could her pets possibly stay home alone? Bringing them along was only natural, and for Isabella, entirely simple. Many airlines wouldn't accept the transport of exotic animals, but she was taking the private jet provided by Warner. Forget an otter and a capybara — she could have brought an elephant and no one would have stopped her.
As for the fighting Margot mentioned? That was actually a beautiful misunderstanding.
The place Isabella had been staying was a nature resort in Algarrobo — a hundred kilometers from Santiago, right by the sea. The scenery was excellent: sea lions, South American penguins, all kinds of things. The sea lions kept their distance, but the penguins would sometimes wander right into your room — and then Chestnut, with its modest territorial instincts, would start a fight with the uninvited guests.
Perhaps through a sneak attack in the first round, or perhaps because Chilean penguins had never encountered otters before — in any case, the first clash ended in Chestnut's victory. Every furry thief that broke into Isabella's room was driven away.
But once the fearless penguins came prepared for round two, the battle evened out considerably. Penguins weren't strong fighters, and neither were otters, so Isabella simply let them carry on.
The trouble was, they were in penguin territory. When the penguin family returned in superior numbers, Chestnut's family was pecked until they yelped — and then the funniest scene unfolded.
Unable to beat the penguins outright, Chestnut's family called for reinforcements. Whenever a dispute broke out, they would use their speed to kite the penguins — darting in to land a hit, then running. And where did they hide after stinging the penguins and fleeing?
Naturally, beside their steadfast good brother, through thick and thin.
When Isabella discovered that otters had independently invented guerrilla warfare, she laughed herself silly. That simple, unforced joy — the beauty of life welling up on its own.
And this —
"Oh, Isa, I have a question." Kevin Feige, freshly shaved, looked up from beside the table with a thoughtful expression. "Do you have any thoughts about raising penguins? Because giving animals food, water, and shelter is only the baseline. Making them genuinely happy — I think that's what every dedicated owner pursues. Since Chestnut's family clearly enjoys playing with penguins, have you considered finding them a proper playmate?"
Kevin Feige had come to South America together with Margot — or rather, Margot had only decided to come after learning Kevin Feige was making the trip. Their overlapping itineraries meant he too had witnessed the farce Margot described.
As for his question —
"No, no, no — before our family zoo is officially built, you are absolutely not raising penguins!"
Before Isabella could speak, Vivian was already waving her hand, tone firm. "I can accept otters and capybaras — they aren't birds and can control themselves — but penguins are birds, so —"
She left the sentence unfinished, but Isabella understood completely.
"Isa, I also think we can't raise penguins," Catherine said, spreading her arms wide to gesture an impressive distance. "Because last time, they sprayed right in front of us — from here to there."
Margot had seen penguins in Australia and immediately grasped what Catherine meant. Her eyes went wide. "So you got sprayed all over?"
"Not exactly," Catherine said, shaking her head. "But that scene was just too beautiful — so beautiful that I have no desire to see it every day."
"Hahahahaha —"
The "terrified" delivery sent Margot into hysterics, laughing and slapping the table.
Isabella nodded, the "beautiful" memory fresh in her mind. She said to Kevin Feige, "We may raise penguins eventually, but we won't keep them close — they're a little dirty."
If there were spray warriors on Earth, they were unquestionably penguins. When penguins defecate, they project it outward — and since birds have only one exit, every discharge is a watery, forceful blast across the ground. If one absolutely had to describe it: SpongeBob wielding a tomato-salad Gatling gun, firing wildly.
And yes — penguin droppings come in yellow and red. A long fish diet produces yellowish-brown feces; a long krill diet produces pink.
In any case — disgusting.
The vivid, lived-in description left Kevin Feige somewhere between laughter and dismay. Isabella shifted topics smoothly. "Alright, enough of that. Kevin, you've been in Chile two days and we still haven't talked about work. Getting impatient?"
"Oh — I feel fine —" Kevin Feige shrugged. "Before coming, I cleared everything on my plate, so two days without work talk? Honestly, this feels like a paid vacation."
Even if he were anxious, he wouldn't say so now. Isabella was his boss. If the emperor wasn't worried, what kind of eunuch would openly fret?
A playful gleam crossed Isabella's eyes. "Is that so? Then I can't let you stay too comfortable. Let's get to it — what was it you told Susie you wanted to ask me?"
At the unmistakable air of labor exploitation, Kevin Feige performed a dramatic faint.
After a beat, he set the joking aside and said, "What I told Susie was that I wanted to understand your goals — your personal career plan."
The idea was straightforward: Kevin Feige wanted to understand why Isabella was holding both DC and Marvel simultaneously. If it was simply because she loved both franchises, he would build the respective cinematic universes around her preferences. If she wanted to actively play superheroes from both at the same time, a whole pile of his brain cells would have to die. And if it was something else — he'd have to take it case by case.
These were serious matters concerning the future of two major IPs, and Kevin Feige wanted to understand Isabella's needs through a real conversation.
His seriousness satisfied Isabella greatly. Rather than answering immediately, she gently swirled her wine glass — which contained juice; drink alcohol again like last time and her mother would beat her — and asked, "Have you spoken with Christopher?"
"Nolan?" Kevin Feige asked.
"Yeah."
"I have." He answered immediately, then shook his head. "Christopher isn't easy to approach. He doesn't talk much, so most of the time I communicated with his wife and brother."
"So you understand the creative direction for the Batman sequel?"
"Yes. I believe I sent the concept to Susie, so —"
"What do you think of it?" Isabella asked with a smile, a hint of amusement flickering in her eyes.
In her previous life, people had hailed Christopher Nolan's "Master Wayne trilogy" as the pinnacle of depth, claiming that compared to Nolan's work, the Marvel superhero films Kevin Feige produced were practically children's movies. The debate had raged fiercely, yet neither man ever publicly responded. Kevin Feige had, however, quietly flirted with Warner for a time, and many outlets reported he wanted to join them to prove he could succeed anywhere. It never amounted to anything — even after he was eventually pushed out following Robert Iger's retirement, he still didn't join Warner.
So Isabella wanted to know: in Kevin Feige's eyes, what was Christopher Nolan's Batman, really?
She wasn't stirring up trouble for its own sake. The probe was practical. If Kevin Feige genuinely couldn't connect with Nolan's Batman at a fundamental level, he might struggle to operate the DC Cinematic Universe — because The Dark Knight was the first superhero film in history to break one billion dollars at the box office.
After Isabella posed the question, Kevin Feige fell into thought.
"I think the Nolan brothers wrote a great story," he said at last. "The Dark Knight may become the first truly explosive film in the superhero genre — even bigger than Spider-Man."
"Why?" Isabella asked.
"Because —" Kevin Feige hesitated, then spread his hands slightly, like opening an accordion, his expression turning serious. "Because the Nolan brothers seized on a raw nerve in American society. What he's really filming isn't a superhero story — it's North American society itself."
The Dark Knight was, in truth, a deeply layered film.
Before 2025, nearly every viewer who claimed to have fully understood it was quietly proven wrong. The common reading had been that Nolan used Batman, Two-Face, and the Joker to dramatize the eternal tension between good and evil in human nature — that the Joker embodied the ancient idea that human nature is inherently corrupt; that he and Batman were mirrors of each other, one absorbing pain and clinging to faith, the other returning pain to the world and chasing his authentic self.
But it was already 2026. That reading, however eloquent, was a surface layer.
The deeper reason Americans loved The Dark Knight — the reason the Joker was idolized — had something to do with Nolan's craft and Heath Ledger's performance, yes, but not as much as people assumed.
What American audiences truly recognized was the social Darwinism embedded in the film: the brutal natural selection that defines American society.
The Joker didn't go to extremes because he was born broken. Society made him what he was. What he wanted to smash and burn was never Gotham City — it was the corrupt architecture of the North American continent itself.
This is precisely why, upon discovering that Gotham's district attorney was called the "White Knight" by the people, the Joker targeted him with singular obsession — kidnapped him, destroyed him with his own hands, and turned him into Two-Face. Nolan wasn't trying to show how unhinged the Joker was as a character. He was making a different argument entirely: that even the most decent person — Gotham's own district attorney — once entangled with the evil produced by the North American social system, had no path back. He would fall. He would become Two-Face.
Nolan had already placed all of his thematic cards on the table through the Joker's own words.
In the interrogation room, after being captured, the Joker tells Batman: "There's no going back. You've changed things... forever." A man from the bottom of society who has seen everything with perfect clarity. The greatest evil in Gotham, he believes, is Batman.
When facing the White Knight — the district attorney — the Joker says: "Introduce a little anarchy... upset the established order... and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair." Someone from nothing, who understands that only through struggle can what was taken be reclaimed.
And after the district attorney falls, the Joker says to Batman: "See, madness, as you know... is like gravity. All it takes is a little push." He takes no pride in what he has done. He didn't push Harvey Dent over the edge out of malice. The hand that pushed was never the evil within Harvey — it was Batman. It was Bruce Wayne. It was the lord who controlled Gotham. The capitalist perched above it all.
The most devastating line in the entire film isn't the Joker's. It belongs to Harvey Dent, in his final moments before falling: "You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time."
That is the real reason North American audiences love the Joker. Not nihilism. Not a celebration of madness. Not a meditation on the duality of human nature.
A film that merely dissects human nature does not belong in the upper echelons of cinema history — because human nature is complex, and everyone's interior is different. Only circumstances are universal. Only shared suffering creates shared resonance.
Because The Dark Knight's script is rich with open allusions that American audiences recognize viscerally, it earned 533 million dollars domestically alone, with a single-day record that even Avatar never matched. After its release, a wave of resistance-fueled incidents broke out across North America. When the Occupy Wall Street movement emerged, protesters wore Joker masks.
So — if Kevin Feige, who had built his career on crowd-pleasing spectacle, could not reckon honestly with the social reality Christopher Nolan put on screen, Isabella would have no foundation from which to discuss what came next.
But Kevin Feige had already seen through it all, long ago.
"Okay," Isabella said, smiling. "My idea is actually very simple. I don't want to chase too much profundity. I just want to sell toys through DC."
"So —"
"Find a way."