Agreed, but then again that's pretty much what "post-modern" culture has become anyway: a grab-bag, where the past is sort of a buffet to be picked over regardless of context, and sometimes it makes sense and sometimes it doesn't

Agreed - and it's also part of the reason why a lot of the time, pop culture not only fails to make any truly subversive point, it cannot do it. Some iconic images have been used and re-used so many times that they have no context beyond emotional resonance and can be used for any purpose (see also the abundant use of religious imagery in Buffy). No, Lucas doesn't mean to hint that the rebels are fascists (nor did Jackson in LoTR, despite all the focus on Free Men Of The West With Pure Bloodlines), but the point is that if they had wanted to make that point, nobody would have gotten it. (See also Starship Troopers.) We identify with the lead characters, therefore they are good and right, and therefore any imagery that tells us this makes us cheer. You could argue that that in itself is a subversion, that it helps defuse the very idea of propaganda, but I'm not entirely sure that's always true, if it doesn't blind us to it instead (which is a whole other discussion, really). BtVS partly avoids that trap, at least IMO, with the (comparatively) consistent storytelling that the imagery, but...

Visually I also noted some homages to Metropolis, which pretty much set the standard for our filmic template of "oppressed workers as cogs in the wheel of modern industry".

...Anne still ends with the Shiny Special One freeing all the uneducated serfs from their subterranean hell. ;)