The Killing Joke: Comic vs. Film

* spoilers *

The Killing Joke comic book is a streamlined, disturbing story about the relationship between Batman and the Joker. Batman realizes that it can only end in one of their deaths and wants to make amends, but the Joker is already off trying to hurt him in more and more extreme ways. A criticism of the comic is that the Joker's violent attack on Barbara Gordon resulting in her paralysis was used to hurt Batman without any thought to the victim. This is completely true, but I don't find it misogynistic in itself because it was planned through the eyes of the Joker, a villain. He literally objectifies her and refers to her as an undesirable book with a broken spine and a torn jacket. His view of Barbara Gordon is not the view of the writers or of Batman, as seen in the hospital scene. I don't find the comic as amazing as others do, but it's a good, very dark Batman story.

The filmmakers claimed to try to empower Barbara and give her a bigger part in the story in the film version of The Killing Joke. While the thought is a nice one, the execution is simply awful. The first half hour of the film is dedicated to her while she goes to school during the day and fights crime under Batman's tutelage. He is horribly controlling and refuses to hear any other perspectives. I enjoyed Batgirl's journey as she navigates a dicey situation by herself while challenging Batman's authority and makes some mistakes. I rooted for her to stand up to him, but I was disappointed to see the culmination of that scene led to her sleeping with him. Before that scene, she is enamored by him, but it could have easily been dismissed as a crush. He refuses to communicate with her afterwards. Later, she pathetically begs him to continue as before and then quits being Batgirl altogether, which I thought was completely moronic.

I'm not sure if the filmmakers thought defining her by her relationship with Batman was "empowering," but the result is even worse than The Killing Joke on its own. This new story only made the Joker's attack on Barbara more devastating to Batman as it added more drama and emotion. Batman was so flat in the first half hour that he was practically a caricature of himself. It's fine in The Killing Joke comic, but felt out of place and weird compared to Barbara's nuanced characterization. The tone of the added story also didn't match the rest of the film. It is also woefully out of place in almost every way.  A scene was also added at the end of the film to show her wonderful life post-paralysis and her start as Oracle. This was probably the most empowering thing they made about her to show that her life didn't end with this violence.

The rest of the film is a faithful adaptation of the comic book with small changes here and there. The plot of the Joker's revenge has his origin story mixed in which illuminates why he truly hates Batman so much. His plan is so incredibly cruel and disturbing. The end in comparison isn't the big explosive fight that was expected, but it was a perfect, slightly awkward scene. The animation throughout is disappointing. The backgrounds tend to be beautiful, but everything in the foreground is flat and not very detailed. The art from the Batman Animated Series is better than this film. The performances are amazing, particularly Mark Hammill as the Joker. He captures just the right amount of madness and sinister glee. Tara Strong does a great job of infusing emotion into her performance as Barbara, but the material she worked with was lacking. Overall, the parts from the source material are well done (except the animation) and everything else could have been completely removed.

My rating for the film: 2.5/5 fishmuffins

My rating for the comic: 4/5 fishmuffins

SDCC 2016: Panels Part 2: Bunches of Them!

Because Luke Cage was in Ballroom 20, I got to see quite a few panels that I wasn't super interested in. So I will smoosh them all into one post and talk briefly about each of them.

* Teen Wolf

I'm barely getting my hearing back after all of the high pitched squealing and screaming from this panel. I've never seen the show and I had no idea it had such a big following. It was announced that this next season would be their last, so there were some tears as well. The panel as a whole was fun even though I had no idea who anyone was. The cast gave some surprises, joked around, and fondly talked about their time together. The plot of some of the seasons seems kind of ridiculous. I'm not sure how ghostriders that steal souls figure into it all.

* The Strain

I've read all the books of The Strain series and have seen none of the show. They debuted a cute video with the stars dancing and singing a rap song called Vamps BOOM. Then a clip was shown of the new season with a brand new opening. I don't recognize much of the characters and it seems like the show has deviated a lot from the book. The clip itself was way more overdramatic than I expected. It was cool to see David Bradley who I know as Filch from Harry Potter or Walder Frey from Game of Thrones. It's interesting to actually see him as a good guy. The only really intriguing part of the show was Richard Sammel who plays a villain on the show and how they depict the Master.

* MacGuyver

I remember enjoying this show as a kid and I didn't think it would translate well as a modern show. First, the new MacGuyver is super young, portrayed by Lucas Till (who honestly seemed pretty bored throughout the panel). I think it made sense that he was older in the original show because his knowledge of solutions to impossible tasks comes from experience. This new guy just seems to be a genius which just feels a bit cheap and of course his youth is supposed to draw in a younger crowd. Second, the scenes shown of the show are pretty cheesy and more akin to James Bond than MacGuyver. I was surprised to see that James Wan, director of Saw and The Conjuring, is executive producer and the director for the first episode. I personally won't be watching, but those who like the CSI shows will probably love it.

* Batman Unlimited: Mechs vs. Mutants

This is an animated Batman movie that has the Penguin and Mr. Freeze amassing other villains (Bane and Killer Croc) to make them Godzilla size and take over Gotham. Of course Batman and Green Arrow just happen to have mechs already made to combat them. The dialogue is cheesy and the plot isn't the most coherent. I'm sure kids would love it. The only really funny part is when Batman is asked if he had fun on a theme park planet (???), he says in a super serious voice "It was entertaining.) I had no idea there would actual be people to talk about it but John DiMaggio (who I LOVE) and Roger Craig Smith spoke about the film and gave away merchandise and signed posters.

* DC All Access: No Boundaries

This panel was an overview of the DC comics coming out in their Rebirth series following the Batman vs. Superman film. Some of them seemed interesting like the Batgirl series, which is continuing in the same vein as the previous one, and the Supergirl series, which is being rebooted after years. Others seemed kind of awful (Harley Quinn). The Cyborg comic had some pretty cool art in it. The writers and artists were fun to listen to and even talked about their heroes' hobbies.

More posts to come!

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice

* spoilers *

Bruce Wayne vows vengeance upon Superman for the havoc he wreaked in the battle against Zod, Superman just wants to save people whenever it's convenient for him. Lex Luthor wants to throw everything into chaos and reap the profits by pitting Batman against Superman. The government is trying to contain Superman and restrict him to their rules. You would think the film would be straight forward with such simple story lines, but you would be very wrong.

Full disclosure: I did not enjoy Man of Steel and I went into this film knowing I would also not enjoy it. I did like some things about it, but there are fundamental problems that make it a bloated confusing mess. The best thing about the whole film is Wonder Woman. At first, she's an enigmatic character kind of like Catwoman whose motivations are murky. Her fight scenes bring to mind Snyder's 300 that was his strength: a fighting movie with very little plot and a lot of cool visual effects. I look forward to seeing more from her character, especially since she used to fight with the humans and gave it up due to perhaps disillusionment. Alfred is my other favorite character. He's a sassy, tech-savvy drunk who is tired of Bruce's shit, not the obedient formal butler of the past. I also enjoyed Ben Affleck's Batman for what it was, but I had more of a problem with the writing than his portrayal. It was nice that he actually used his detecting skills and thought critically about the situation.

Now for the bad stuff which way outweighs the good stuff. I didn't like the pacing, the tone, the "heroes," and the convenient coincidences. The pacing is horrible. First, the film is way too long at two and half hours and it feels like an eternity. Second, if all the terrible and unnecessary dream sequences were cut out, it would be at least a half hour shorter. All of these Bruce Wayne dreams were over-long and had something laughable in them. One had young Bruce lifted into the air by bats. Another had a Mad Max style future with Superman logoed Gestapo. It way slowed down the film and took time creating ridiculous situations that didn't even mean anything. The set-up for later films also takes up time and stalls the plot. The two second cameos of Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg were mildly interesting, but needed to be cut. The title fight didn't happen until well into the film and it wasn't even the main fight. 

The tone problem is consistent through most DC films. They focus on being dour, humorless, and angsty. Even the colors are incredibly muted. I like films with some humor to cut into the drama and some actual color. I prefer Marvel movies because they have levity along with the superhero drama, color, and actually value human life (which I will get to later). Suicide Squad seems to be a step in the right direction, but it still looks dour and monochromatic. DC is obsessed with appearing gritty and realistic, but they are never rated R to keep the wide audience and end up being more unrealistic and cartoonish than their Marvel counterparts. If you're going to be gritty and realistic, then do it, but they are half-assing it and want the best of both worlds with disappointing results.

The "heroes" of this film aren't real heroes at all. Batman is up front with this admission and says he's not a hero. He does save people from the Zod fight, but then sets his sights on taking down Superman exclusively. When stealing the Kryptonite chunk, he doesn't hesitate to open heavy artillery fire on people and of course vows to kill Superman. His critique makes sense, but he ceases to really help innocents in his quest for vengeance. Superman, on the other hand, only seems to care about humans directly related to him or sleeping with him. Everyone else is expendable. It was painfully apparent in Man of Steel that he didn't care about anyone in the buildings he was smashing to oblivion. He saves a girl once in the film to further shove the messianic imagery surrounding him down our throats. The character is a wet blanket of a person and seems to have no critical thinking skills at all. Even the villains are underwhelming. Doomsday looks like a Lord of the Rings cave troll with a skin problem and Lex Luthor was a sloppy, crazed child, a huge departure from his usual character.

These two characters' conflict is solved by the shared name of their mothers in a bizarre mood change for Bruce and suddenly they are best pals. Because of the criticism of Man of Steel, it is explicitly stated multiple times that the buildings being crushed by our heroes are completely deserted. Even ones that are business buildings in a tightly packed city...Just no. There will always be people around a metropolis at all hours of the night. Then Batman has the great idea to have the main actual villain follow him back to the city to endanger even more lives. There are so many lapses in judgment and weird decision making. I'm not sure what exactly the writers were doing, but they need to hire new ones for the next films. 

Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice is a bloated mess of bad writing, dour tone, horrible heroes, and weird reasonings and coincidences. The ending is especially stupid because the audience is supposed to believe that Superman is dead despite the fact that we know the Justice League franchise is just starting. It's insulting and no one is fooled. The false emotion is wasted and again just wastes even more time trying to get the audience to feel bullshit feelings. I went in expecting horrible and that's about what it gave. I have hope for future movies, but not much. I have more hope for X-Men , Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Deadpool. DC is too busy trying to be gritty without losing profits and mimicking Transformer fights to make quality films. 

My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins