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.