Realism in fiction

It's not often that a month goes by without anything showing up here, but it is in fact one whole month since the last post. Part of it is that I've been spending most of my writing time at Dystopia.ink. But another part is that we haven't been at the theater very often in the last couple months because there hasn't been much to see. I don't know if it's just a dearth of releases caused by the writers' strike a couple years ago or if the new approach of "Marquee Arts" (the new face of the Michigan Theater non-profit) is to emphasize stuff that makes money (mainstream films) over the smaller returns of the art films that were the reason we joined up in the first place. I really hope the latter is just idle speculation. But tonight we made it back for a film I didn't have tremendously high hopes for, but which turned out to be a solid effort. In a way, my perspective was like the outlook of the main character, Agathe (Camille Rutherford) in Jane Austen Wrecked My Life.

Agathe is an introverted bookseller at Shakespeare and Company (an actual bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris) and an aspiring novelist. She also has no relationships with anyone but her sister and nephew whom she lives with and her best friend and co-worker, Félix (Pablo Pauly.) When she finally gets inspiration from a sake cup in a local Chinese restaurant, she writes the first couple chapters of a romantic novel, which Félix likes and secretly sends to the Jane Austen Residency in England. Agathe reluctantly attends while she tries to sort out her own romantic interactions with Félix and Oliver (Charlie Anson), the son of the people who run the residency. It's not a complex plot, but there's enough depth to the characters and their quite human foibles and exchanges that it was sufficient to keep Story Guy interested in what was coming next, rather than sighing as I predicted the next five minutes from scene to scene. Agathe isn't an especially compelling character, but the story is genuine enough that she doesn't have to be.

This is a mixed-language film, which is nominally French, but spends about half the runtime with the characters speaking English. I'm not sure whether that was a nod to its inspiration (Austen) or just a demonstration of its modernist perspective, in that a significant portion of Western Europe can speak English (or, at least, that's been the case in our ventures into places like Germany, Portugal, and Liverpool.) There's still a certain level of romance (naturally) attached to the French language and I think that may have been part of writer/director Laura Piani's intent. It was billed as a "rom com", but there wasn't much about it that felt comedic, per se. As Jaime pointed out when we were leaving, it felt more like a drama that didn't take itself too seriously and left its characters in several situations that didn't approach the level of tragedy (using the old Greek dramatic split here (comedy/tragedy)), but were emotional enough to not have everyone laughing the whole way through. Stick in the mud that I am, I didn't laugh at all, but did appreciate the humor in several moments; most of them driven by the blessed European forthrightness of the dialogue. I always enjoy the fact that European films with modern characters don't shade their dialogue for the horrible crisis that might be a child walking into the theater. If they're talking about sex, they're not doing it on stage. They're doing it in real life and expressing themselves like real people do.

Of course, given that this film is largely about the crisis of confidence of a writer, I was also instantly interested in that, in the same way I have been with others. We've all been there before. We all will be again. I can say that I've been spending so much time on Dystopia because of that same struggle to put things into words that don't seem to want to cooperate. In Agathe's case, it was also about speaking those words to the people around her and taking the risk of being directly connected to someone. That's an introvert's regular challenge and it's part of why I found her character so believable. I have to say that I tend to share Oliver's initial perspective that Jane Austen is mildly overrated, but I also appreciated Agathe's assertion that Austen was the first Western writer to represent women as human beings, rather than plot devices, some of them "even with a sense of humor." There are points where the film drags a bit, but that may just be the nature of how Piani wanted to tell the story. The best word possible for both the main character and the story, in general, is "thoughtful." The other word that all of us emerged from the theater with is "cute." Again, that's not tremendously compelling, but it could have been a bog-standard, three act comedy, too, and this was elevated some way past that. Worthwhile.

Batman: TAS, episode #55: The Mechanic

Given all of my complaints about the previous Penguin episode and the character, in general, you'll probably be relieved to know that I won't spend this entire post complaining again, as The Mechanic, while not tremendously innovative in style or story, is still a solid entry for the series and well-told in terms of the action sequences, the believable danger for our heroes, and the threat posed by a villain who is often the least threatening of anyone who normally faces The Batman.

It's perhaps understandable that this episode features a more menacing Penguin (Paul Williams), because several elements of it were clearly taken straight from Batman Returns, Tim Burton's film which was the first medium to feature the character as anything other than a foppish rich guy. It was notably his first appearance as a mutant, with hands that looks like fins and so forth (unless you count the quite pointed nose that he's always had, I guess.) That feature was present from the beginning of B: TAS and now the attitude that Danny DeVito brought to the character came with it. It also inspired major elements of the plot, such as Penguin taking control of the Batmobile, and minor elements, like the giant rubber duck that sends Arnold Rundle (Steve Franken) presumably to his doom after he supplies the villain with the info by which to track down the title character of the episode, Earl Cooper (Paul Winfield), the mechanic. Winfield should be well-known to SF film fans (the lieutenant who tries to help Sarah Connor in The Terminator, among others) and he also wasn't the only SF star to be part of this episode, as John De Lancie (most well-known as Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation) voiced Eagleton, one of Penguin's henchmen.

The episode opens right into the action, with The Batman and Robin in hot pursuit of the Penguin's henchmen and with an acknowledgment that this kind of action is as routine as you'd expect it to be when Robin raises an eyebrow at one of them spraying the Batmobile with bullets ("Is he kidding?") and The Batman's subsequent response: "Maybe he's new in town..." Given that the plot centers around not only fixing the Batmobile and the parts involved, but also the hijacking of it, I found it extremely satisfying to watch the moment when Penguin's car drops off a bridge to a passing boat and how detailed and realistic the destruction of said car was (wheels flying off, etc.)m in contrast to usual Hollywood durability (or explosions that obviate that kind of detail.) In that same respect, I have to say that if they were trying to maintain the secrecy of Earl's workshop, driving the smoking Batmobile into one of the worst (and largely abandoned) neighborhoods in town is probably not the best way to go unnoticed. That leads right into the central plot, but kind of stuck out as a marked contrast to the otherwise fairly subtle element of that plot that leads the villain to the Batmobile. But that subtlety is kind of undermined by its circumstances, as well. As soon as Earl began ordering parts to repair the Batcar, my first thought was: "He's ordering parts from public suppliers? Wouldn't those normally come from Wayne Enterprises for precisely this reason?"

But most viewers probably wouldn't be thinking that much into it, either. What was interesting about Earl's setup is that it looked like an inspiration for the alternative HQ that Bruce Wayne adopts in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, after Wayne Manor is burned to the ground in his first film. Another atmospheric element that caught the eye was the billboard that announced: "Welcome to Gotham City. America's Playground." That's probably the first and last time that slogan was ever attached to Gotham City (and I'm not entirely sure when Las Vegas began using it) but the idea of a playground was in tune with, again, the high level of action in this episode. The opening scene was one aspect of it, but the entire third act was one long action sequence that was paced really well. The insta-gliders that both heroes were equipped with upon ejecting from the Batmobile were a really nice touch, especially since they didn't instantly disappear when they both landed, as would often have been the case in cartoons with lower production values. That menacing aspect to the Penguin also turned into actual murderous intent when he threatened Earl's daughter and assistant, Marva (Candy Brown.) His final moment on screen, in the prison license plate shop, was also a nice touch. The plate he tears apart says "Gotham - the Dark Deco State." Putting aside the fact that Gotham is a city, not a state, that moment was a nod by the producers, as "dark deco" was their label for the visual style of the series as a whole. So, all in all, a quite positive episode.

Next time, we get a two-fer of villains and the first example that may have set the tone for later villain series.

A stylish cloak on a standard frame

I generally like Ryan Coogler's films. I think he has a solid visual sense and good recognition of both the space and limits of the story that he's trying to tell. On those that he's been directly involved in (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther) and indirectly (Homeroom, Jesus and the Black Messiah), I think he's a key part of the process in getting stories told that often wouldn't be otherwise. Among those is his latest, Sinners. As with Fruitvale and Black Panther, he's both writer and director on this one and his sense of style is visible all over it. It's just that when we get to some of the plot details that I feel like he could've done even more to take it in his own direction and somehow play those last few notes. (Mild spoilers below.)

That latter phrase is based on the fact that the film is largely about music and its influence, not only in African-American culture, but world culture. It takes place in one of the most vibrant and deeply-felt areas of that musical culture: the Mississippi delta. That's where Coogler, regular leading man Michael B. Jordan, and regular accompanying composer, Ludwig Göransson, build story and music together so that one never becomes separate from the other. The film itself isn't a musical, per se, but has several musical numbers that tell large portions of the story by themselves. It's a stylistic approach that worked spectacularly, without forcing us to watch another version of West Side Story. The music wasn't just the vehicle for the story. It was the story. Central to that embodiment was Miles Caton, who played Sammie Moore, aspiring guitarist and the son of a preacher man. Caton was the very embodiment of Delta blues and his powerful voice and playing (ably assisted by one of my long-time favorites, Delroy Lindo, on piano and harp) drove the story forward even more than Jordan's excellent rendition of twin brothers, Smoke (Elijah) and Stack (Elias.) Everything presented there would've made for a great story even without the supernatural elements that accompanied it.

And it's there where the river kinda dried up. Due credit to Coogler for including the local Choctaw presence, who show up in pursuit of a bad element. Unfortunately, that bad element turns out to be a bog standard vampire. That English descriptive that I'm fond of is even more appropriate in this place, as the vampire, Remmick (Jack O'Connell) is appropriately European (Irish) in his desire to dominate or destroy the non-White cultures that he encounters. Of course, given the history of the Irish in this country and back in Europe, Remmick's appeal to solidarity among the collected peoples when he tries to convince the twins and their friends to join the non-human set is yet one more valid metaphor in the story that Coogler's trying to tell. But it's also the same, tired vampire myth that we've seen before; involving garlic, wooden stakes, and sunlight. Smoke's (ex-)wife, Annie (the wonderful Wunmi Musaku) is a practitioner of traditional spiritualism and medicine down on the bayou and, between her knowledge and the presence of the Choctaw, it feels like we could've ventured into something a bit more exotic and less retreaded than the same Romanian refugees who happen to be walking around with a Gaelic accent. Why couldn't we have had people possessed by corrupted shilombish or something like that? Instead, we get typical bloodsuckers who try to trick people into inviting them in, but are powerless to do anything else until that point.

My complaint about Black Panther was that it was telling an interesting espionage and international diplomacy story until we got to the third act, where everything devolved to explosions and cyber-rhinos. I assumed at the time that that was just the necessary price of entering the Marvel Universe. But that's kinda how this story ends up, too; with a cascade of bullets, blood, and fire, even after the supernatural elements have departed the scene. We go from a deeply-invested story about the power of music suffusing culture deep into the past and far into the future and, at the end, the only music we get is the staccato of a tommy gun, which kind of wipes the mind of everything that's been told before. For the first two acts, I really thought we were going somewhere and then the third just left us at the door of typical Hollywood horror flick, like a slightly more cultured From Dusk 'til Dawn. I liked the script and the dialogue (Women talking frankly about sex! Just like, y'know, real life.) I liked most of the characters and performances. I highly appreciated the music, including the Irish jig that Remmick and Co. engage in (Rocky Road to Dublin.) But, in the end, I came out of the film thinking about all of the opportunities missed, rather than the spectacle that I'd just seen, which is really unfortunate. It's certainly worth the time to see it, but I can't point at it and suggest that it's a song that's going to stick with you.

Batman: TAS, episode #54: Zatanna

This episode was an interesting comparison with the previous one. While we still ventured back into Bruce's past to witness his training in escape artistry with the magician, Zatara (Vincent Schiavelli) and his daughter, Zatanna (Julie Brown), we had a few more fireworks in the present based almost solely on Zatarra's use of "magic", confined solely to the idea of stage artistry. The original character is a long-time veteran of DC Comics and former member of the Justice League who first appeared in Hawkman #4 (1964.) In the comics, there was never any doubt as to who or what she was: an actual sorceress who not only communicated with the supernatural but used that power as a superhero; not just a stage magician as she's depicted here in the episode named for her: Zatanna. She was so much the sorceress that she even crossed the veil between DC Comics and the later imprint, Vertigo, when various mystical characters like The Phantom Stranger, John Constantine, and Dr. Fate gathered to deal with major threats from the magical end of the DC Universe. But that level of fantasy was considered to be too out-of-realm for this series by the production team, not least because they discarded the entity that was supposed to be the main villain of this story, The Gentleman Ghost (an arch-nemesis of Hawkman, incidentally.) No ghosts and goblins for the main dressed as a bat. Much of that disdain for the fantasy end of the comics is reflected in the dialogue, most often delivered by Zatanna ("I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation!" after her illusion ends up losing the money from the Gotham Mint; "This never happens to me in Vegas!" after she's arrested; "Why do you care about some leggy dame in nylons?" when The Batman rescues her from the vehicle taking her to jail; etc.)

But just like last time, the basis of the story is the past. Our hero and Zatanna rekindle their mutual affection developed while the former was training with her father (also an arch-sorcerer in the comics) and she takes a moment to ask what terrible event happened that caused him to put on the mask. The details of the story also might demonstrate why they were reluctant to engage the supernatural because the "bad guys" are, like last time, just the normal thugs of Montague Kane (Michael York) and The Batman shows just how those years of training with people like Zatara benefited him, by easily dispatching all of them who approach him until Kane has to do the "damsel in distress" sequence with Zatarra, which was kind of a jarring reversion to the past after listening to the very modern and self-assured woman for the first 15 minutes of the episode. Some of that bait-and-switch might have been because of the change in director. This episode is the only one of the entire series to credit two directors, as Dick Sebast was at the helm at the beginning but then left the project, so it was completed by Dan Riba.

But the way the entire story was constructed makes me think that it was delivered with intent and the switch in captain didn't really impact things overmuch. The final scene with the battle aboard the giant seaplane by which Kane is subtly exiting the city with all of its money (this after we're told that Kane reveals magicians' tricks because he's utterly familiar with their methods) is fairly mundane, even for just a 1930s-era noir. It reminded me of the final sequence in The Rocketeer, another film set in this time period which climaxes aboard a zeppelin and has similar moments of threat where it seems like our hero and the damsel are going to plummet from the skies. Despite my seeming criticism, I do understand why they would want to tone down the "magical" elements of the world that they've created for their version of The Batman. I was never entirely comfortable with those aspects in the regular books, either, since it steps away from his identity as a master detective/scientist/martial artist, but still a normal man and confronts him with things that no "normal man" would be able to deal with, which he then has to kind of brazen his way through, rather than actually "solve" them. In this case, it's an opportunity for him to exercise the skills that we've seen he developed over years and with the commitment and discipline to do so. It just smacks a little bit of the "you got your fantasy in my science fiction" kinda thing, an opinion that I generally reject, since the story is the story, no matter what genre is assigned to it. Also, I'm kind of a cross-genre person, anyway. There's one nice little tease right at the end, too, when Zatarra departs and leaves behind a note that she couldn't possibly have written beforehand. Is it (real) magic? Who can tell?

Next time we go back to the usual cast of characters and look at another kind of (mechanical) magic.

Batman: TAS: episode #53: Paging the Crime Doctor

This episode is a great example of how some of the best stories have nothing to do with the rogues' gallery. Interestingly, most of those good stories usually involve Dr. Leslie Thompkins (Diana Muldaur), from the Wayne Clinic and Paging the Crime Doctor is no exception. She's a hallmark for Bruce Wayne's past, since she was close friends with Thomas Wayne, his father. That gives the writers room to delve into his primary motivation- avenging the death of his parents -without constantly citing that event in Crime Alley. Unlike many of the other Leslie stories, though, this one managed to embed the surrounding shell firmly in the Batman mythos, as well, since the situation involves another close friend of Thomas' in Matthew Thorne (Joseph Campanella) and his brother, the far better known Rupert Thorne (John "The Voice" Vernon.) Involving Thorne means it's about The Batman, but leaving out standards like The Joker and Two-Face means that it remains on that human level that could have made it a Dashiell Hammett pot-boiler. The semi-tragic ending simply seals that as, instead of ending with the "... and all was well" Hollywood approach, we circle back to our primary motivation, as the only request that Bruce makes of Matthew, already weary of the corruption and glad-handing that is his brother's world, is to have a conversation: "Tell me about my father." That's a human note that everyone watching can relate to.

To fit that less-fantastical level, our hero has to be scaled down a bit, too. Without a super-villain to distract him, most of Thorne's typical thugs aren't going to be a challenge. But if the Darknight Detective is running around with a concussion, that's an extra layer that reduces him to mere human, as opposed to the figments of imagination (and years of training) that make him far more than that, in reality as well as in the minds of his enemies. Of course, there was one beat of modernity added, when a surgical laser somehow becomes a ready weapon that can fire lethal blasts of energy. I suppose the tommy gun animations do get a bit tired after a while. Speaking of animation, whichever studio they used was heavy on frames for many of the sequences. There was constant flow to static structures and "motion lines" attached to the activity of both people and vehicles. That gave it a bit of an old-school feel, which was helped by the full engagement of those noir elements in the visuals, as the use of shadow around both our hero and many other characters was omnipresent and impossible to miss. Indeed, the most fantasy-like element of the entire episode outside the laser was probably the throw of a gas/smoke grenade that one of Thorne's thugs made into the window of an armored car from another moving vehicle.

The Batman stayed in that gas theme later, when trying to deal with one of those tommy guns pinning him in an elevator, as he chose to use a gas grenade to try to overpower the thug, rather than a Batarang to simply disarm him. Another aspect to the concussion, perhaps affecting his aim? Or a director's choice paced on pacing and frames? And, interestingly, despite all of the detachment from the usual cast of opponents, the "Crime Doctor" was an occasional adversary in the comics, first appearing in Detective Comics #77 in 1943. I don't recall any of those stories from my 25 years of reading said comics, but I'm betting that most of them weren't up to the quality level of this one (story by Mike W. Barr and Lauren Bright, incidentally.) Next time, we arc right back to the fantasy, with an appearance by a DC regular.

Sound and fury

I've generally appreciated Alex Garland's films over the years. I'm not a devoted fan, in that I'll run out to see whatever he does. But he hit a high point for me with Ex Machina and adding to that writing the screenplays for 28 Days Later (the best modern rendition of the zombie genre) and Dredd (the only decent adaptation of the legendary OTT British comic series) means I'll generally at least take a look at whatever else he gets involved in. That reputation took a minor hit for me with Annihilation (just another version of The Colour Out of Space) and Men, which I talked about here and an even larger hit with Civil War, which I didn't bother to cover. That review of Men was similar to this one in that, again, it's an interesting premise but there are various flaws which make it something less than a must-see or something I'd be eager to watch again (or own, in the way that I do Ex Machina.) In all of those respects, Warfare is no different.

Garland co-wrote and co-directed the film with Ray Mendoza, a former Navy SEAL, based on the latter's experiences in the Iraq War; specifically, the Battle of Ramadi and a couple of hours that Mendoza and his team spent trapped in a house while resistance fighters tried to extirpate them. On a technical level it is, as Garland's films almost always are, very well done. It's told almost completely in "real time", following every movement of and moment that the squad occupied the house and uses ground-level perspective on all of the characters involved, so that we see and hear what they do, with broader looks at the scene represented only by views of the screens of spotter planes as they track enemy movements around the city. It doesn't spare any of the tactical actions or approaches to the situation (multiple "shows of force" (where an F-16 comes in low enough to make everyone want to duck for cover), proper stacking of infantry, etc.) and it also doesn't spare the effect of those tactical actions. This is one of the films that I would generally refer to as "ferociously violent", like The Northman but even moreso. And that, of course, is all well and good if you lack any empathy whatsoever for the human beings that experienced all of this and were the ones behind the blood and the screams of agony and so forth, which presents us with the real problem in all of this...

The Iraq War was one of the more contemptible and stupid actions in this nation's history (almost surely to be surpassed by the current idiot in the White House any day now, which is saying quite a lot.) It was one of the purest expressions of imperialism ("You're sitting on our oil!") and complete obliviousness to the reality infusing the region. Indeed, we had spent decades supporting Saddam Hussein, not least because he was radically opposed to just the kind of fanatical Islamic tendencies that were unleashed as soon as he was toppled. We had a president who had decided on his own "show of force" and that was to unleash the US military machine on a nation that had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist acts carried out by Al-Qaeda but which made him feel like a tough guy and, therefore, consequences (and millions of Iraqi lives) be damned. Just like other films about the period like American Sniper, this film does nothing to express any of that political reality. It's just an action moment that ends up lionizing the people involved and which will be responded to by much of the American audience with a "Thank you for your service!" obeisance and a complete neglect of the outright crimes committed throughout that period of time. Indeed, it's just a memoir of someone involved in a terrifying moment that doesn't reflect whatsoever on, for example, the terrorizing of the two families that lived in the house that the SEALs occupied. The end of the film even shows the return of members of the unit to that same address as if all is forgiven and now it's just a curio box for former soldiers to remember "those days."

Does it show the brutality of war? Sure does. Does it show the enormous amount of pain, terror, anguish, and trauma that accompanies combat? Absolutely. Does it deliver any kind of message about why any of that should be avoided like in movies such as 1917 and All Quiet on the Western Front? No. It's just an action moment. Certainly, some humans will be spooked by being that close to stuff they've only seen as sanitized news reports before, but just as many will think it's cool to see a JTAC in action and seeing someone hit the clicker to blow the Claymores and so on. In the end, I just don't see the point, despite my appreciation of its technical merits, and my disdain for the central story of this film and the way it's presented is why I still haven't seen things like American Sniper and why my opinion of Garland is continuing to diminish, seemingly with every further step he takes these days.

Batman: TAS, episode #52: Mudslide

In the same way that Clayface's original appearance in the series was a step below the episodes that had come before it, his second (and last) appearance, Mudslide, is also a step down from the three previous episodes that we've seen. As I mentioned before, the character that can shapeshift to be anyone makes for some complex stories that aren't easily adapted to a series that's supposed to be a collection of one-offs. If BTAS had appeared in the modern format of television, where one is expected to start at the beginning and follow the story through to the end, characters like Clayface become much more viable, since their subtleties can be woven into each plot and their threat grows from background details to the headlining event. Without that amount of time and attention, you end up with "monster that forms morning stars from his hands and tries to kill the hero" which is fine as a bog-standard superhero adventure... but it's still a bog-standard superhero adventure and we've seen many of those over the years (and decades.) This was, of course, episode #52, which means one episode a week for a year which is a great deal more than any series produces these days and it's difficult to maintain the quality of something like The Man Who Killed Batman with a schedule that crowded and you could see writers Alan Burnett and Steve Perry reaching for all kinds of angles to make it work. In fact, Bruce Timm mentioned later that the reason Clayface wasn't used more than twice in the whole run was that a) he was too expensive to animate and b) he was too difficult a character to develop a good story around. They only ended up doing this sequel because of fan demand.

As mentioned in Feat of Clay, there were some elements that kind of fused the realities of Clayface II and Clayface III. That was even more the case in this episode, as Matt Hagen (Ron Perlman) is facing the reality that the latter experienced, in which he was falling apart (melting) and needed a specially-designed suit (in III's case, an exoskeleton) in order to keep from disintegrating. In this episode, we also included the constant creation of mass (aka the Incredible Hulk puzzle), as Clayface flings segments of his body around to disable a guard, presumably by suffocation, and leaves other portions behind, but apparently doesn't suffer any ill effects from doing so. After attempting a robbery (somehow, the career actor has also developed safecracking skills), he retreats to yet another cliffside laboratory, which is definitely one of the most popular styles of home in Gotham City, given their regular appearance. After asking Alfred to assist in research to track down the melting man, our hero suddenly realizes that examining Hagen's film career is the answer, which kinda makes one wonder why that wasn't the first analysis. This is reinforced by the writers' decision to drop references to that film career throughout the script, such that the scientist helping Hagen is one Stella Bates (Pat Musick.) Not only does Clayface do the Stella! scene from A Streetcar Named Desire but The Batman also mentions that Dr. Bates used to own a motel that she sold to finance the research to save Hagen. This is on top of Clayface suddenly making movie puns with every other line ("You've upstaged me for the last time-!" "Time to bring down the curtain!") The fact that Clayface in his special skin that keeps him from collapsing also makes him resemble an Oscar statuette is just one more reference that was really overworked to try to make this episode work. Which it mostly didn't.

The final action scene was somewhat horrifying, as Clayface tries to absorb and contain The Batman until the latter suffocated, saying that he could "hear his heartbeat slowing", which is almost more gruesome than anything the first three Clayfaces did (although III turning people to protoplasm is still probably worse.) There's actual tension there for a few seconds, but then it all kind of (ahem) falls apart and we end up with an unusual ending, in that there are no words from our hero, as he's shown simply escorting Dr. Bates(!) back inside as our camera heads for the storm-filled sky. Thankfully, this episode ended up airing as #63, as if the first season had ended on this note, there might've been some questions about its return. But, as it is, we'll be moving on to the next in production order which was, in fact, the final episode of season 1 to be aired.

Batman: TAS, episode #51: The Man Who Killed Batman

One of my longstanding (and most repeated) assessments of The Batman as a character and a cultural icon is that he's often the antagonist of his own stories, since his villains are often more textured and interesting than the force of nature which is our hero. The entertainment is in seeing what kind of insanity (often literal) that the various rogues can come up with that threatens the citizens of Gotham and how the cold, calculating power that is the "main" character can stop them. Thus, it's funny that not only is The Man Who Killed Batman among the few episodes of the series that doesn't feature The Batman as the main character, but it also features his nemesis, the Clown Prince of Crime, who is the person most likely to be vexed by the absence of said main character. The fact that this episode went on to be one of the most acclaimed of the series not only reinforces my theory, but also reinforces the idea that any episode with The Joker is going to be a good one.

Our seeming protagonist is Sid "the Squid" Debris (Matt Frewer.) Right away, I questioned whether the last name ("Debris") had some kind of in-joke about the mess ("rubble") that he managed to make of his situation by his own incompetence, but there's never any indication that that was part of the concept. We also encounter Rupert Thorne (Englehart!) for the first time since episode #21, Vendetta, voiced by the unmistakable John Vernon. But, eventually, all roads lead to The Joker and we discover just how annoyed the clown can get by someone beating him to the punch that he never really wants to land. As he mentions during the test job to see if The Batman is really gone: "There's a certain rhythm to these things: I cause trouble. He shows up. We have some laughs and the game starts all over again!" This is a man wedded to the contest, not the win. Of course, if it ever did arrive at the point of a win, he'd have to be the man to do it. But, even then, there's still an edge to the main (real) villain's attitude that says there's more propelling him than just that. Once he disposes of Sid, his first reaction is: "Well, that was fun! Who's for Chinese?" Mark Hamill once commented that it was this scene (and the line: "Without Batman, crime has no punchline.") that most contributed to him "getting" the character of The Joker. That's significant not just because of the complexity of the villain (again, more interesting than the hero) but also because "the man who killed Batman" is intentionally such a nothing that the highlight of the episode will be yet another "side" character in the form of The Batman's nemesis (yet again, not the hero.)

On that note, Arleen Sorkin once again does brilliant work as Harley Quinn, reacting to The Joker siccing his favored hyena pets (a treat to see them appear) on the impertinent thug, Murphy (Maurice LaMarche) with: "Yawn... I'll get the mop." A story from the studio relayed that Sorkin played "Amazing Grace" on kazoo for Sid's funeral in one take, which was a good thing since all of the cast broke into laughter after that one take and director, Bruce Timm, knew that they would probably never get another one. Harley also delivers with a moment of Sid's intended departure: "You know what's great about you, puddin'? You really put the 'fun' in 'funeral.'" This was another Paul Dini screenplay, demonstrating not only his mastery of all of the characters involved, but also some of the higher level aspects to his writing. At one point, The Joker questions whether they can know that Sid killed The Batman without "batus delecti", a bat-themed pun on corpus delecti, which is the principle saying that a crime has to be proved before someone can be convicted. Your average 20-something isn't going to know that, to say nothing of the presumed audience of a "children's show" and this was a long time before the Interwebs could be used to instantly provide answers. There are also some good references within the framework of the story, where The Joker cites the fact that Sid got lucky, as The Batman probably slipped on the slime trail he left behind, citing Sid's impromptu nickname "The Squid."

On the technical side, there were some good moments, such as the distinct sound of Sid climbing the ladder to act as lookout on the initial job, as well as the phantasmagoric image of The Batman appearing on that rooftop, similar to the way he appears in the opening credits, as a vision of menace, rather than a man. The atmospherics are also excellent in this whole offering, from the title card to the intense storm that Sid is running through to confess to Boss Thorne that he's not the guy. So much screen time for Thorne (and the voice of Vernon) is just another upside. Dumping Sid into a vat of acid is also unintentionally an inside joke, 27 years later, for those of us still cartoon-inclined. Dini's knowledge of character doesn't just stop at the dialogue, either, as we see Harley with her hand firmly planted on Sid's back to push him into the bank when they're attempting to set up the ambush for The Batman. She knows, like The Joker knows, like Dini knows, like the viewers know that there's no way Sid actually did this thing. But until we get to that conclusion, she's just going to follow the clown and play the game the whole way through. This, like the last couple episodes, is really one of the high points of the series. Next time, the return of another classic, but rarely seen (or is he...?), villain.

Batman: TAS, episode #50: Off Balance

With this episode, Off Balance,  we return to being deeply immersed in the mythos. Not only are we plunged right into the action, with The Batman interrogating a source in Twitch (Chick Vennera) about the new gang in town, the Society of Shadows, but we go right from there to an encounter on the dockside involving a special project of Wayne Enterprises which not only introduces the primary opponent, Count Vertigo (Michael York) who's a one-off here since he's usually a Green Arrow opponent, but also Talia (Helen Slater), whose history in the stories of the Darknight Detective is enormously significant since Denny O'Neil first introduced her alongside Bob Brown in 1971 (Detective Comics #411.) Whereas last time we talked mostly about underlying themes and basic elements of the character, this time we're back to being wholly plot-driven as we eventually meet up with one of the main drivers behind much of our hero's existence for the past 50 years, Ra's al Ghul, voiced by the superb David Warner. All of this means that it should be no surprise that a long-time veteran of both The Batman and DC Comics, Len Wein, is once again scripting our tale. By that same token, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that the story is a straight adaptation of the aforementioned Detective Comics plot, written by O'Neil, barring a few minor changes, like referring to the League of Assassins as the Society of Shadows and so forth.

Given that we're diving right back into the mythos, it's understood that this is a pretty straightforward adventure tale. In the original story, Twitch is seeking protection for giving the dirt on Dr. Darrk and the League/Society, but he's still meeting The Batman at the Statue of Freedom just as he is here. The Statue is the thin parallel to New York City's Statue of Liberty, which once again emphasizes the loose connection between the real city and Gotham City, which has only rarely been drawn into the light over the decades in the comics, and which hasn't been referenced at all during our overview of the Animated Series. It's kind of a long-running inside joke that ties Gotham City to DC Comics' and Bob Kane's location of origin, but also gives some level of creative freedom to establish locales like Wayne Manor and Crime Alley that don't require changing our reality overmuch. That said, meeting someone at the torch of the Statue is still shining the spotlight/torchlight pretty brightly on what should be a clandestine encounter. The Society agents also seem to commit suicide at the end of said encounter, only for our hero to confirm to Alfred that they instead "erased their minds", which was an obvious dodge to escape the censors for a "children's show." There's a great history moment here, as we see Alfred actually cleaning the giant penny in the Batcave, but also a kind of goofy moment, when The Batman is narrowing the possibilities of where Count Vertigo's hideout could be only to spotlight the most obvious "evil villain hideout" since Castle Dracula.

But before that, we have the fight at the docks over Wayne Enterprises' "sonic drill" that not only brings in the stalwart Lucius Fox (Brock Peters) but also introduces us to Talia. This is one of the more complex characters in The Batman's history and neither Wein nor Slater are ham-handed about her presence. She's depicted as wholly capable in her own right but also obviously acting in her own (and her father's) interests, even when she and our hero are working toward the same goal of dealing with Vertigo. Again, the decision to use a stock Green Arrow villain, rather than the less-imposing Darrk might've been a choice to step away from the "less superpowered" approach that was the path of O'Neil from the outset, as he and Neal Adams were the pair most identified with trying to bring the main character back from the villain-of-the-week-and-his-gimmicks abyss that he had been condemned to through much of the 50s and 60s and restore that Darknight Detective aspect which, in this writer's opinion, revitalized the character and contributed to much of what followed through the succeeding half-century (Englehart, Miller, Nolan, etc.) The subsequent battle where The Batman and Talia are directly introduced is part of that, where there are some great atmospherics as our hero lurks in the trees before presenting a great shadow moment, as the image of the bat descends on the Society of Shadows. There's also a great scene transition from the use of the sonic drill to incapacitate them to where she's creating ripples in the bowl with the cloth she's using to revive him (and, of course, reveal that she's taken off his mask so that she knows who his other self is.) There's also a great technical moment when she drops the rag back into the bowl and we see water splashing out of it (Realism!)

Despite Talia being fully capable in her own right, we're witness to what we think is the enormous willpower of The Batman getting them through the vertigo effect, only to have it revealed to us that it was just a matter of him closing his eyes and feeling his way through it. This was the monosyllabic segment of the episode, where our hero communicates as simply as possible (Jump! Down! Stop! And, in a later scene, Up!) But we get the more complex aspects to both Talia and her "mysterious" father, as she mentions that Ra's departed company with Vertigo when he "... at last came to recognize the blackness of his soul.", which is perhaps lending more weight than needed to what is, again, the stock villain who suggests that "The entire laboratory has been rigged to destroy you!" Having abandoned the sense of sight to get through said lab, only to use Vertigo's sense of hearing to defeat him with the bells in the tower was a nice touch by Wein, certainly, even if our hero yelling at him while they were still running up the long staircase to the tower was unwise. Similarly, Talia testing the sonic drill while flying in a small airplane was also perhaps not emblematic of her character's noted intelligence. In the end, we finally see Ra's, even if he's not named, and find ourselves subsumed in those elements of character and story that O'Neil was trying to revive at the time with the villain's final quote: "Even in defeat, the detective manages to achieve some small manner of victory." Referring to him as "the detective" as O'Neil (and Ra's) chose to see him, rather than a superhero, bodes well for those of us that like stories with more depth. Given that this episode ended on a cliffhanger without really being a cliffhanger is another good sign in that respect and is another measure of storytelling that's different from last episode, but still quite worthwhile.

Batman: TAS, episode #49: I Am The Night

Right away, this is probably one of the best examples of storytelling in the entire series. Writer Michael Reaves, who authored no less than 18 episodes over the course of the series, including highlights like the introduction of Clayface in Feat of Clay, captured the very essence of The Batman as a human being in I Am The Night. You've seen me talk before about one of the elements that separates The Batman from much of the rest of DC's stable is his essential humanity. He's not just doing what he does as an example of justice for the wider society. It's also quite personal for him. It's about making up for the crime he wasn't able to prevent as a child. Accompanying that, of course, is some measure of vengeance against criminals for that isolated instance, which isn't the best driver for one's life ambitions but, again, we're talking about the base level of a flawed human being, no matter how much of a hero he is, otherwise. This episode starts out focusing on those flaws as it highlights his self-doubts about what he's doing and how effective it is; brooding on the Batcave's version of a throne. When he makes his annual pilgrimage to Crime Alley alongside the always welcome sight of Leslie Thompkins (Diana Muldaur), the two of them end up in a discussion about basic philosophy (How much is too much?), referencing opposing perspectives on Santayana, where Leslie offers a paraphrase of his most-remembered quote ("Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.") and The Batman responds with: "A fanatic is someone who redoubles his effort while losing sight of his goal." Of all the DC heroes, "fanatic" is a label most easily applied to this one.

That "essential question" element of the plot is well-supported by the otherwise basic elements of the action surrounding it. We're shown a plain, old gangster, The Jazzman (Brian George), who doesn't even reference jazz or its usual instruments in his constant musical references to what's happening around him. But he's busted by Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Bullock, and our hero and ends up seriously wounding the former, causing The Batman to question his motivations and actions even further, while Bullock piles on, accusing him of being one of the main causes behind Gordon's injury and crisis. Indeed, Bullock chases him away, yelling: "This ain't over yet, outlaw!", reminding everyone that our hero's actions aren't even legal, despite their generally positive results for society. It's all very 1920s noir, which is at the root of the style of the series, again highlighting the upper level of storytelling present here. There's even a reference to modern times, as The Batman swings by a souvenir shop, festooned with images of him and his famous chest emblem, while later bemoaning the fact that "I've become a cliché!" Given the long merchandising history behind DC's heroes that often outstripped the quality of the comics, this was quite the knife twist and not just to our main character. His highly unusual emotional response to the situation, by trashing the lab in the Batcave, is just another example of this story's will to push the limits of the character.

And, with that, this is one of the best examples of how the series was always playing to two (and possibly more) different audiences. Sure, the action and the cool costumes and the wacky events were there for the kids (and some of us adults) but there were also moments that spoke at a deeper level; an emotional level that perhaps many kids among the audience wouldn't quite grasp, but which were still an essential part of the story and the character and the driving force for the whole picture that is The Batman. That more sophisticated storytelling extended to some of the technical aspects, as while Dick Grayson attempted to convince The Batman that he was not only still needed but also "Only human!", we cut a couple times to watching Jazzman escape from prison in his single-minded focus to take vengeance(!) on Gordon. That switch of pace and progression of story is outside the realm of the usual linear approach that the series takes in almost every other episode (due credit to regular director, Kevin Altieri in that respect, too.) That awareness of pace carried into the main action scene, where our hero strives to prevent Gordon's death as he and Jazzman struggle on a window-washing platform and then inside a hospital room, with Barbara Gordon (Melissa Gilbert) assisting (e.g. only human, needs everyone in this struggle, etc.), producing some genuine tension. At the end, after saving his friend's life and reminding him that he, too, is a hero for the people of Gotham, we find The Batman watching the city from a rooftop, in the light of the moon.

Again, storytelling-wise, this is absolute top shelf, despite it having nothing to do with the "more interesting" characters of the overall milieu. It drills down to the essential notes that make up this heroic figure, examines them, is willing to question them, and then comes out the other side with at least a partial affirmation. There are no definitive answers to either this situation or The Batman's existence as a whole, but this story at least offers rebuttals to those questions, while leaving room for the viewer to make up their own mind. Great, great stuff. Next time, we're back to a classic villain and a classic writer from the old days of the comics.

The severing knife seems to lack a point

We've now watched the first two seasons of Severance. Season 1 was easily the best thing I've seen on Apple+. Everything else has been some combination of mediocre and/or tiresome. But Severance was compelling. It was an obvious metaphor for the disdain that most American corporations actually hold for the people doing the work that keeps them in business, as well as an examination of the ability to separate work lives and home lives, the question of how much work should dominate one's life (especially in comparison to other societies, like much of Europe), and so forth. It was great. It was well-acted. And, even though I'm not really a mystery show person, I was willing to go along with the hidden elements because it seemed like they were all leading toward some reasonable conclusion. Enter Season 2...

From the very outset, the plot left reason and progression at the door in favor of the bizarre. Not only was it no longer really a metaphor for modern work life, but it also seemed to be grasping in different directions at the stranger corners of said life, such as cultish religions like Scientology. Suddenly, the founder of Lumon didn't just inspire Steve Jobs-like devotion, but was instead this messianic individual whose words were followed like commands from the gods and who had created this miraculous invention that would be the saving grace of humankind as long as those same stupid humans didn't get in the way of its immaculate conclusion. And that's all well and good, as long as you're actually trying to tell a story and not just provide set pieces for being weird. Instead of telling a story that seems to have some kind of sense attached, we were just shown episode after episode of people talking about dire consequences and impending doom, along with side jaunts into basement meadows filled with young goats for no discernible purpose. As I said, I'm not really a mystery show person, so I'm probably not the target audience here. I am OK with weird things happening, as long as said mystery seems to be progressing in a positive direction. That is, to say, progressing at all.

Without that direction, we're going to end up with something like The Killing, which was an American attempt to duplicate a successful Danish TV show about a murder and the subsequent investigation. But the first season was a series of red herrings which meant that the story didn't develop, most of the characters involved didn't develop, and the season finale left everyone watching feeling like they were robbed because what most assumed would be the tedious Agatha Christie-style resolution wasn't even that but yet another massive teaser for the second season, which most viewers largely and rightly abandoned, myself among them. Showrunner Veena Sud then insisted that the fact that people hated the ending of season 1 was a good thing because it meant people were talking about the show. That sounds like a great example of marketing, rather than actually telling a story and there's some of that feel to the end of this season of Severance, as well.

Don't get me wrong. I understand and appreciate a lot of the work that's going into this. The character conflict between Mark's two halves and Dylan's emotional trauma with his wife's attraction to his innie and the halting relationship between Irving and Bert and all of the other quirks of humanity that the actors and their stories are bringing to this are things that I appreciate. But it also feels like all of the strangeness is just there to bring window dressing to outwardly-realized internal conflicts. It's like trying to tell a personal drama by dosing someone with LSD every couple days and seeing if they can figure out what's real and what's delusion; what emotions are genuine and what's just the drugs talking. I can see that our various characters are going through changes and I appreciate that, but I don't feel like the story itself is going anywhere. Again, it's reminiscent of The Killing, in which each episode was about localized emotional trauma but all of those set pieces didn't add up to an actual game, to put it in football terms. (That's not supposed to be another slam against Ted Lasso, but feel free to read it that way, if you like.) This feels like what people tell me Lost turned into: an excuse to keep the mystery going and not actually bringing anyone to a conclusion that they'll feel was worth the effort of keeping up with the non-story. Unlike the end of season 1, I'm not compelled to sit down in front of season 3 at all and that's unfortunate because I felt like the first season was actually saying something and not just an excuse to run to Reddit and talk about everyone's pet theories about what the goat and Brienne of Tarth really represent.

Batman: TAS, episode #48: What is Reality?

Virtual reality was a huge thing back in the early 90s and became either an aspect or the central premise of any number of TV shows and films and BTAS was no exception with this episode. Instead of going back to the typical approach of The Riddler (crimes and deathtraps that can only be solved by working through his riddles) in the real world, writers Marty Isenberg and Robert Skir decided to maintain the approach taken with the villain's first appearance (If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?) and stay in the electronic realm, as former programmer Edward Nygma decided to enter what was then the future-present in What is Reality? Now, it's fair to argue that my disdain for The Penguin, rooted in his lack of menace and general triviality, could easily be applied to The Riddler, as well, given that the whole identity of the latter is essentially a gimmick. But it's the nature of the obsession that makes the character more interesting than the odd bird. It's not quite as dire as Two-Face, but it's still present and The Riddler is perhaps the case example of the entire rogues' gallery's desire to match wits with the super-sleuth who is our hero. The fact that this story was borderline stereotypical for the time, in films like Disclosure and The Lawnmower Man (the latter coming from a Stephen King story that had precisely zero to do with virtual reality) makes one's teeth grit a little bit, but it is difficult to take what is, again, a largely gimmick villain and make him into a threat without retreading the same ground over and over, so this was the difference at hand.

One point of innovation, however, was the attempt by Nygma to erase the rest of his identity, not only from electronic records, but also from his usual physical realm. I think it's fair to question just how effective that would've been, since there were so many people who knew his identity after he was first captured with the self-given nom de guerre, but he was clearly attempting to solve at least a major part of that issue by eliminating Commissioner Gordon, along with those paper files. This is part of his transition to being just The Riddler, which was brought to even greater fruition in later series like Gotham. But one interesting aspect to the presentation of the whole story was the use of the color red. That's the chromatic opposite of the color usually representing the villain (green) and the latter is also the typical color associated with computers. This is a call back to those of us who remember monochrome monitors, which were almost always green. Of course, in most visual presentations in the Western world, red is the color of threat (road signs, waving the cloth in front of a bull, fire trucks, etc.) so it's understandable that it might have been considered less "dangerous" if the whole internal world of Riddler's server was his usual green. But I think the latter color is also a good example of cold/unfeeling/alien, which is a form of threat on its own, so I have to question their deviation in that respect. That color theme was carried through the whole episode, such as the point where The Batman detonates The Riddler's nitroglycerin trap and the resultant smoke is a deep shade of scarlet.

There were a lot of other cultural touchpoints in this episode, such as when Robin brags about beating "Baxter's Box" (a Rubik's Cube stand-in, which hadn't been popular for about a decade at that point) in 37 seconds and implies that he used a sledgehammer to do so. This might've been an oblique reference to the Gordian Knot, a famous ancient riddle which the direct thinking of Alexander the Great supposedly dealt with. There was also attention brought to the out-of-time nature of the whole series, in which references to modern technology are made, but the architecture and cars are clearly 1930s-era. In this case, despite citing "the computers", a "computer vandal" (known more commonly as a "hacker" even then, but maybe not to the production team), and having a plot centered around virtual reality, the Gotham stock market still showed someone reading a ticker tape which is, again, 1930s-era tech, at the latest. Even more interesting was the use of the long-hallway-of-plain-doors scene inside The Riddler's trap, which would show up much more prominently in later stories about virtual reality like The Matrix. We also had a chess battle scene as part of the overall puzzle, which was no surprise given the popularity of Battle Chess at the time. Technique-wise, it was also interesting to hear the villain refer directly back to his previous appearance, rather than treating each episode as an isolated instance, which wasn't common even among regular characters in the series. Indeed, his last riddle (and probably the best of the episode) was directed at that situation: "If the world was fair, I'd still have my old job.", which was a reference to his hideout at Gotham's World's Fair Exposition.

Next time, we center back around our main character's mental trauma in I Am the Night.

Got slipped a Mickey

It's hard to come up with something innovative in the sci-fi world these days. There are a lot of easy comparisons, especially if one is engaging in the "exploration of strange, new worlds" theme. It's even more difficult if the story you're trying to tell only has SF trappings in order to deliver a message and/or metaphor, since you're mostly serving the message in that case, rather than trying to spin a somehow new tale about space travel, aliens, and the future. It's easy to fall into the "been there, done that" realm. That's, unfortunately, what happens with Mickey 17, Bong Joon Ho's first film since the masterful Parasite.  There's a brilliant absurdist premise in the first third of the film, but it then degenerates into bog-standard lessons about alien interactions, facsimiles of current politics, and an adventure story that really lacks adventure.

That brilliant premise is the idea of Mickey (Robert Pattinson) being what is known as an Expendable: a worker whose entire mental and physical imprint are stored in machines so that he can be cloned and returned to life after engaging in whatever lethal situation is deemed necessary by the corporatist/nationalist overlords controlling humanity's venture into deep space. Mickey volunteers for this duty because of mistakes made back home and then ruefully accepts his fate as a societal loser who regularly dies in increasingly gruesome ways. It's that idea- the casual disposal of crucial labor by massive corporations -that not only provides incredible (morbid) humor to the first act, but which created a foundation to build upon that I think might have produced something worthy of memory if Bong had decided to continue with it. But about halfway through act 2, we suddenly pivot to the alien encounter, such that Mickey's societal status becomes virtually irrelevant to the plot and the film is taken over by Mark Ruffalo's pointedly Trumpian performance as right-wing politician, Ken Marshall, who rants about the aliens as a threat, despite their clear lack thereof, and preens for the camera in the hopes that everyone will continue worshipping him. I mean, I can see that just by watching CNN for an hour. Despite Bong's protestations that Marshall was intended to be a representation of "authoritarian figures throughout history", it's a bit too on-the-nose to make any 2025 audience think of anyone else.

And that's part of the problem, in that that character isn't that interesting and neither is anything going on around him. The absurd situation of Mickey constantly being tossed into an almost literal meat grinder and simply shrugging his shoulders and getting on with it was a far more interesting scenario and more potent metaphor for our current circumstances. Instead, we spend a lot of time with CGI-rendered alien hedgehogs and attempts to communicate with them and understand their society and protect them from the depredations of corporatists and yadda, yadda, yadda. I went from cackling with glee for the first 45 minutes to confused for the middle 45 and finally to really wanting it to be over for the final third. We went from wondering how this could possibly continue and where it might end up to yawning at predictable action scenes and wondering how our meek, put-upon, sympathetic main character had transformed into Stock Action Hero. I mean, I guess it's still considered character development if your character goes from painfully human with obvious failings to cardboard cutout with Teflon skin, but it's probably not the kind of development most intelligent viewers really want to see. Meanwhile, interesting characters like Dorothy (Patsy Ferran), the only sympathetic scientist among those maintaining Mickey, get left behind with the (ahem) Expendable plot, and plot device characters like Timo (Steven Yeun) become more central. And this is to say nothing of characters that don't seem to serve any purpose whatsoever to any of the plot lines, like Kai Katz (Anamaria Vartolomei), who might have been a second love interest or a target of Marshall's idiot cult or a challenge to Mickey's newfound role as prime communicator with the aliens, but turns out to be none of these before she disappears from view.

Bong insisted that he had final cut of the film, but I'm not sure he wants to claim that too loudly, because it means that as writer, director, and editor, he's solely responsible for a story that blew away in the breeze halfway through his film and then tottered along on the most overused legs since A Trip to the Moon for the rest of it. It's not a bad film and might be worth seeing just for the humor of the first act. But it's not something that should have any staying power at all because it's mostly just recycled, like Mickey.