Fandom Articles Catch-Up

Tragically, blogger-bros, I don't have anything new for you right now. (Writing schedule has been busy.) But I haven't forgotten about the blog, I'll try to keep you in the loop better. If you want to follow along with non-blog articles, make sure to follow me on Twitter (@BlueHighwind) if you haven't already. As you can see, I haven't been lazy, just... distracted.

There's also a Facebook page that's even more barren than this place.

Anyway, here's the articles that have come up in about the last month or so:

‘Sonic 3 & Knuckles’ Was the Best Ending to Sonic’s Golden Age - Published 8/8

Weird Watch: ‘The Spirit’ - Published 8/20

A Look at ‘Overwatch’ Hero Memes - Published 8/22

Crash Course: Dragon Quest - Published 8/31

The Failure of Final Fantasy Movies - Published 9/5 (For some reason people really seem to like this one.)

Fall Movie Preview: Movies for Nerds - Published 9/12

Metroid Fans Still Want Metroid Games, But Does Nintendo? - Published 9/12

Batman's Trouble With the Ladies - Published 9/17.

Also, got a press pass to New York Film Festival this year! Haha.

Can Anybody Tell Me Why I Liked Suicide Squad?

At the moment things are not going too well for Warner Bros' last-minute race to catch up with Marvel. Actually things are not going too well for the entire film industry in general. This summer has been a disastrous wasteland. Ever since I wrote up my list of the Best Movies of 2016 So Far, it feels like nothing at all has come out. Sure, there have been huge blockbuster movies, but does anybody care about a new Jason Bourne? Did anybody really care about "Ghostbusters" once the controversy died down? Did you even know a fucking Tarzan movie came out? I didn't. And to nobody's shock, the box office is hurting.

"Suicide Squad" was released last Friday to reviews that ranged from "OH MY GOD, MY FACE IS ON FIRE" to "OH MY GOD, THE WORLD IS ON FIRE". This coming just six months after Warner Bros farted out "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Possibly the Worst Movie of the Decade". It is not good for anybody at Warner Bros or the industry. "Man of Steel" was Strike One, "BvS" is Strike Two. In order to save this ballgame, DC needed a grand slam. Instead they got "Suicide Squad", a movie everybody hates. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the movies - fuck you, 27% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you ever needed evidence that you should have just stayed home and finished "Stranger Things", this was it.

I'm not going to mince words. Why should I? People are going to be a lot meaner than me when it comes to this movie. "Suicide Squad" is a mess. It was clearly torn to pieces in editing. Director David Ayer seems to have had a gritty Tarantino-esque superhero movie by way of crime thriller in mind. But the studio wanted a new "Guardians of the Galaxy"... oh wait no, they wanted a new "Deadpool". The results are clear. The movie is half flashback. Then those flashbacks are followed by exposition that explain the flashbacks. There's a desperation in the editing as the soundtrack goes from one Top 100 Hit of Yesteryear to another in a truly sad attempt to inject fun in the proceedings. And Jared Leto's Joker is shit.

So can anybody explain to me why I liked "Suicide Squad"? Could you explain why I'm even going to give this movie a recommendation?

Broodman v Supergrimdark: Dawn of Misery (Rant)

I'm not even going to try to post this review on any other website. Nobody is going to want to publish one of my rants. But I'm mad and sad and depressed and I have a lot to talk about. So I'll dust off this blog and use it again. To talk about sad things. I'm sorry the first real post in a long time has to be about this. But hopefully it will be fun for you to read.

I think a lot of the reason I really stopped writing reviews was because I'm just... tired. After five years of watching any awful shit that came out of Hollywood I'm tired of doing this to myself. I looked at 2015's slate of bad comedies, bad superhero movies, and after things like "Age of Ultron", I just don't have the energy to say the same things over and over about the same kind of mistakes in the same kind of movies. Ironically I've seen a lot of really special, amazing, and original movies since I basically retired, "Room", "Anomalisa", "Hateful Eight", "Sicario", "Midnight Special", "The Boy and the Beast", "The VVitch", and I'm not writing about any of them. As a matter of fact, I think I'm just too old to watch shit anymore. I'm old enough to realize that life is too damn short to get hung up over the "Green Lanterns" of the world. One of these days I'll be dead and certainly nowhere on my list of regrets will be missing "Fantastic Four".

So here's my recommendation for "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice": don't see it. Don't do it yourself. There's nothing here. Trust me. I only saw this movie last night because a friend from high school wanted to hang out and why not see a superhero movie? I was on the fence about seeing it at all before that. I gave you a list of half a dozen great movies, watch those! Or see "The Revenant", "Trainwreck", "Turbo Kid", "Ex Machina", "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl", or "Krampus". Your life can be enriched, it can be improved, you can learn new perspectives, see new things, experience new emotions. Don't see "Batman v Superman". In the great cosmic scale of positives and negatives of entertainment, this is pure negative. It's a hateful, depressing, dreary movie that has a bold new vision for superheroes: mainly that superheroes are not fun anymore. And it's boring.

On Thursday I was tired of Marvel and didn't want to see "Civil War" and thought it was just all too much. On Saturday I am a Marvel fanboy. Bring it on, Disney. They make colorful and fun movies where people crack jokes. They're not perfect, but they're trying to entertain. They're not... this. It's so awful. It is corroded with misery. It's like a funeral. I've seen cancer movies with more joy than "Batman v Superman". I've seen Holocaust movies with more joy. You could make a Holocaust cancer movie that ends in a funeral and it would be more fun than "Batman v Superman". Just don't. Really. I can explain more after the pagebreak, but please, trust me even if you've never trusted me before. Don't.

(Also this is Batman Movie Batdown: Week 1,000 or something. It is also the very first time I have not enjoyed a Batman movie. Yay...)

Batman: Arkham Knight - Almost the Ultimate Batman Game

There is only one superhero awesome enough to break the curse of licensed games, and that's Batman.  Screwing around in Lex Luthor's rings on the Nintendo 64 is for Superman, Batman on the other hand has been the star of one of the greatest video game franchises of modern gaming, the Arkham series.  That includes "Batman: Arkham City", one of my favorite experiences to come out of my old PlayStation 3.  Rocksteady has promised that this new game, "Batman: Arkham Knight" for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the PC* will be their final Arkham game, an epic and exciting conclusion to their grand Batman saga.

...Now before you put too much stock into that claim, remember the loophole-friendly words Rocksteady used.  They said this would be the last Arkham game, not the last Batman game, or even the last game in this particular continuity.  The "Arkham" part of the title has been having less and less relevance to events since "Arkham Asylum", to the point that "Origins" and now "Knight" have nothing to do with Gotham City's most infamous H.P. Lovecraft-reference medical facility.  So really the next Batman game - and trust me, there will be more Batman games - will only have dropped an anachronism from their titles.  Yeah, the game opens saying "this is how the Batman dies", but if you actually believe that promise you're probably the same gullible sort who did not guess this game's twist identity reveal a whole year ago (spoilers).

So "Arkham Knight" may not be a grand ultimate conclusion to all things Batman, but at least it can still be a decent Batman story.  And while "Arkham City" was one of my favorite video games, even I can admit that Rocksteady still had a long innovative way to go before they could create the ultimate Batman game.  Most of that particular innovation in "Arkham Knight" has been focused around the new Batmobile which has proven to be a controversial choice.  Gotham City is still empty aside from criminals and supervillains, so the town does not feel alive other than as a playground to be a bad dude kicking ass.  Still Gotham has never been bigger or more beautiful, gameplay has never been more varied, and there are few games out there that can rival "Arkham Knight"'s storytelling sophistication.  This is a game that truly knows what being Batman is all about, and even if "Arkham Knight" cannot be the definitive Dark Knight experience, it is a good one.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Superhero Movies)

The arthouse scene seems to be having a small crisis of identity over the rise of superhero films.  Hollywood is riddled with movies ending in "-man":  "Spider-Man", "Iron Man", "Batman v. Superman".  To cinephiles who believe that the superhero fad is an invasion of "low media" (comic books), the future must look worse and worse.  Just one ridiculous costumed hero kicking absurd quantities of ass after another.  If you've built your career on small, quiet movies about simple human emotions, all of this crimefighting must be an unstoppable nightmare.

Earlier this week I saw "Clouds of Sils Maria", an otherwise good movie about an aging French actress, Maria (Juliette Binoche) struggling with the next phase of her career.  Much of the film is a back and forth between Maria and her young assistant, Val (Kristen Stewart*), as they prepare for a new role, while the shadow of the superhero machine looms over them.  Maria and Val go to see a new alien hero future starring a young rival actress.  "Sils Maria" presents this movie as a hideous gaudy chrome-filled nightmare:  lurid sex, bad wigs, and CG violence.  It goes past parody to real hatred for the modern blockbuster, and everything it represents.

"Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" tries for a more meaningful discussion between drama and action.  It stars Michael Keaton as Riggin Thompson an actor who has bet everything - his career, his ego, and his daughter's house - on a grand comeback as a Broadway star/director in an adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story.  Riggin Thompson once played a superhero back in the 90s called "Birdman", and is looking for a comeback.  Michael Keaton once played a superhero back in the 90s called "Batman" and has been using 2014 as a launch pad for his flagging career, what with roles in awful crap like "RoboCop", surprisingly fun crap like "Need for Speed", and now this.  "Birdman" is a war between artistic credibility and popcorn movies, about working out those sides of your ego and developing a final clear statement of yourself.  And it is a gonzo madhouse of psychic powers, lesbian kisses, and hallucinations.

What I've Been Reading: Rainy Season, 2014

The theme for this month is comedy and horror.  One of the books I read is a tale of two young men discovering the edges of reality, and realizing their world is nothing more than bubble surrounded by an insane universe of darkness.  It is hysterically funny.  Another book takes place during the darkest period of human history, the second World War, where the entire planet erupted into violence and savagery.  But that story has its own subtle sarcastic tone.  Then there's a story about a clown running around, just trying to impress an old friend with increasingly elaborate gags.  That's a grotesque nightmare.  We have horror transforming into comedy, and comedies transforming into horror.   The face of things cannot be trusted.  All you have to do it cut off the facade, and see what's really lying under the skin, to find the truth.

Batman: Death of the Family by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV

"Batman: Death of the Family" is the latest trade paperback collection of the New 52 series of DC mainstream coninuity comic books from its "Batman" comic series.  Confusingly this is not the only comic book featuring Batman, as there is also "Detective Comics", "Batman: The Dark Knight", and "Batman Incorporated", which are four redundant titles all starring Batman.  But if you think that's a bit much, there's also "Batman and Robin", yet another Batman series, but this one featuring Batman's newest Robin, his son, Damian Wayne.  Oh and Batman is also in the Justice League, so there's all of those comics too.  And beyond that, Batman's various allies get their own comic books, such as "Nightwing", "Batgirl" (who is also in "Birds of Prey"), "Batwoman", "Batwing", and "Red Hood and the Outlaws".  This book collects five issues of the presumably main Batman storyline, which you would think would be enough to tell a full tale.  However, because all thirty-five other Batman comic books had to have their own tie-ins to sucker fans into buying them all, this means the trade paperback I read held only a fraction of the full "Death of the Family" arc.  Some of those tie-ins might have been important, some might have just created huge plotholes, and others were certainly giant wastes of time shoveled out to sell more comics.

And then I sometimes wonder if I'm being too harsh on comic book fans when I tell them their favorite medium is a goddamn mess.  Unfortunately every time I try to get into the main continuity of a superhero comic, I'm met by this huge wall of tie-ins, references, cameo appearances by characters from another series who are never explained, and then a bigger wall of continuity and prior history, which ironically the New 52 series was supposed to fix.  Luckily though, "Death of the Family" is a garbage series anyway, so if you choose to skip all of this nonsense, you're really not missing much.

Batman: Arkham Knight Launch Trailer

Yesterday came a major news announcement:  "Batman: Arkham Knight", the final game in the Rocksteady Batman Arkham tetralogy (if that is a word), coming later this year for two systems I do not own:  the PS4 and the Xboner.  Here is the trailer below:

As a trailer, this is lousy.  It looks cool, but all it is a promotional FMV, probably not even made by Rocksteady themselves.  If any of these specific scenes end up in the video game exactly as they are shown here, I will relaunch this blog as a "My Little Pony" fan forum.  And not the modern "My Little Pony", but the 80s "My Little Pony".  Essentially we can see nothing of what this game will be, aside from a few facts:  1) it takes place after "Batman: Arkham City", 2) old Batman Rogues are coming back to do wicked deeds on the streets of Gotham, and 3) the Batmobile is in it.  So possibly "Batman: Arkham Knight" could be a huge innovation in this series... or maybe it will be "Arkham City" again just with the Batmobile.  Time will tell.

34th Golden Raspberry Awards Worst Picture Winner - Movie 43

This Sunday all of Hollywood's hottest stars, most venerated artists, most powerful producers, and most beautiful people all gathered to celebrate their year with an award show.  The 34th Golden Raspberries was not that show.  While the Academy Awards were there to reward the greatest in movie making magic, the Golden Raspberries had a different purpose:  to wallow in the worst of woeful filmmaking.  Two years ago to celebrate its win of Worst Picture, I watched "Jack and Jill", the double-dose disaster of Adam Sandler.  Last year the winner was "Twilight 5", which I had already watched, so no March special review was required.  However, this year, the winner is a movie simply called:  "Movie 43".

There have been times when the Golden Raspberries have been a little unfair and given Worst Picture to a few movies I feel were honestly misunderstood.  "Showgirls" is a masterpiece of intentionally awful filmmaking, "Rambo II" was a classic 80s action film, and I know I'm going to get heat for this, but I think "Freddie Got Fingered" is honestly a hilarious movie - it helps I saw that movie when I was ten.  When on Sunday the Razzies announced that "Movie 43" was the winner, my veins filled with frozen fear.  Already within a single year, "Movie 43" has become a legend of truly awful comedy.  I knew what was I getting into when I watched "Jack and Jill".  I had not read any reviews for "Movie 43" beyond that threatening Rotten Tomatoes score:  4%.  This was not merely going to be a bad movie-watching experience, watching this movie was going to be honestly threatening to my health.

Before I watched the movie last night, I had to prepare myself.  "Movie 43" was on Netflix, so easily available to be watched at any point.  However, this was a journey that needed to be taken properly.  When you're in a movie theater, there is no escape, you must focus on the movie, nothing else.  At home, you have ten billion different kinds of entertainment facing you in every direction.  I had to put away all those temptations of video games, honestly good movies, human interaction, and the Internet.  I had myself locked away in a room, tied down with ropes, and made sure my assistants would not come to my aid no matter what I said.  The experiment of Blue Highwind watching "Movie 43" had to happen with no interruptions, no distractions, and no chance of salvation.  I needed to stare directly into the abyss, into the pure illogical madness that is the truth of our universe, all summed with a single nightmarish failure of a comedy.  These are my findings:

The LEGO Movie

I, like all boys who grew up in the 20th century who did not need to fight in depressing African civil wars, spent my childhood playing with LEGOs.  For that reason, I was inevitably going to love "The LEGO Movie", as I suspect so will all children and former-children.  So there's really no point to writing a review at all.  The movie has LEGOs in it, therefore we love it, THE END.  Once upon a time we all built a garish multicolored spaceship out of spare parts and cannibalized bits from Star Wars sets, and now that there's a movie about those toys, we are going to have fun, no matter what.  Luckily this movie is not a pretty LEGO model of an "Episode II" Jedi Starfighter that looks amazing for five minutes and then immediately collapses*, but rather a brilliant piece of engineering that will legitimately entertain its entire audience, no matter the age.

"The LEGO Movie" is filmed entirely in CG animation made to look like stop motion modeled off of LEGO bricks.  This movie is built out of 3,863,484 digital blocks and objects, with every single character and effect created out of computerized LEGOs.  The characters walk with the jerky impossible motions of a little human without knees, moveable elbows, or fingers.  Every figure has little thumb-prints, dog-chew marks, realistic wear and tear, and natural fade on their painted faces.  Fire is made out of flat red plastic shapes, the water is blue blocks, smoke is white blocks, and the food is little circles.  It makes for a dazzling visual effect of an entire world made out of blocks.  There have been LEGO cartoons and video games before all playing off the natural humor of these characters living in a world made entirely out of toys, but they have never managed to reach the beauty of this movie, with whole cities, no a whole universe, made out of a Danish miniature construction set.  The only things that are not LEGO in this movie are a variety of real-world objects set to scale with the rest of the people, such as the villain's superweapon, a tube of Krazy Glue.

Most of the plot and comedy is a lovingly satirical mix of energy, character, and visual puns, similar to that of the "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" movies.  That should come as no surprise, since "The LEGO Movie" is directed by those movies' main creative team, Phil Lord and Chris Miller.  So again we have a loveable loser being thrown into a manic world of constant humor and very subtle parody of film tropes, just enough to make the movie feel fresh while still being loving towards its material.  The entire movie is just one constant attack of entertainment, which even the nastiest and most embittered grouch could not resist.   I cannot say that "The LEGO Movie" is superior to "Meatballs 1", but I am certain this latest creation will end up again fondly displayed on Hollywood's mantelpiece, a fun adventure that will please everybody.

Batman: Night King

We haven't had a Fanwank Corner in a while, have we?  I need to correct that.  Here's a Batman sketch:

So after writing so much on Batman that I could probably publish all of those posts as a short novella, eventually my mind starting swirling around this concept Batman.  Unfortunately I have this bad habit of mine that somehow when I think about something long enough that I start to formulate stories in my head.  Its an entirely uncontrollable process.  So somewhere between reading "The Dark Knight Returns" and watching Moviebob's review of this movie, I had an epiphany.  "Warner Bros should totally make a 'Batman 4' starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, man.*  It would be totally lame if they just rebooted Batman again in like 2015 in some crappy Superhero movie starring Channing Tatum or something, they should move in this new direction here."  Then somehow that idea moved into it being a "Batman Beyond" movie (which we've already done here), then somehow that idea just kept on warping until finally I had no idea what I was dealing with, but it kept on moving.  Fermenting, evolving, changing, until somehow it became this, something totally new, something cool.

A few months ago Moviebob was typically complaining about Master Nolan's influence on superhero movies he always does, he mentioned how the Nolan storyline of Batman films seemed so medieval - this part of his long running issue with Batman because he's "right-wing".  Medieval because it seemed like Gotham City was this ancestral noble territory that Bruce Wayne had inherited from his parents and that he had to step up to save it by virtual divine right.  The Nolan films treat Gotham City has the Wayne family responsibility, a burden of the ruling nobility, of which Bruce Wayne is the heir to.  It isn't merely revenge on the system of social corruption that killed his parents, its a Princely duty.  Bruce Wayne is the Prince of Gotham City, and he's fighting a war to win it back from the forces of crime and insanity.

So how about this:  make Gotham City a fallen kingdom.  And Bruce Wayne the prince of the lost dynasty.  And set it in THE FUTURE.

The Dark Knight Rises

Having spent the last eight weeks living and breathing the life of Batman, writing endless reviews and trying my best to 100% "Arkham City" (and failing), and even once dressing up in a cape and actually beating up local criminals, it would have been a terrible shame if it all was for naught.  If all that effort and dangerous obsession was all to lead up to something less than one of the best movies I've ever seen.  I made sure to be reasonable with my expectations, to lower my sights to just another fine Master Christopher Nolan film.  If it was just mediocre but enjoyable like the recent "Spider-Man" movie, I was ready.  Though in that case, I would have fallen into an existential crisis about just what the heck my whole life had been about.

Right now, I'm not in an existential crisis.  I'm not even merely satisfied.  I'm gleeful, I'm ecstatic, I'm bouncing off the walls in idiot joy.  "The Dark Knight Rises" is not merely a good movie, it doesn't merely wrap up Master Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy in a grand flourish, and it does not merely ante up the stakes of this Batman adventure to an unprecedented desperation and bleakness, its also one of the best goddamn experiences I've ever had in a movie theater.  I mean, I'll have to quantify the fact that I've been eagerly awaiting this movie for weeks, that I was sitting with a cheering crowd full of Batman fans*, but - and I feel like an absolute crazy person for saying this - this may be the best movie I've ever seen in my entire life.  I don't say that easily, I don't say without embarrassment, but I simply cannot think of a movie I have enjoyed more.  It was everything I wanted out of "The Dark Knight Rises" - all of my wildest dreams come true and still somehow more.  Its at the point that I am 100% certain that this is the best movie of 2012, without any possible hope of real competition in any way.  This is THE Batman movie, its a whole new league.  Before when Tim Burton said that his movies look like "Batman on Ice", I thought he was just sucking up.  Now I know, he was right.  I still love Batman on Ice, but "The Dark Knight Rises" is THAT good.  Holy shit.

This unfortunately is where the non-spoilers are going to end.  I really only had the vaguest idea what was going to occur during "The Dark Knight Rises", and I really could not have guessed the sheer magnitude of the final product.  This isn't merely a superhero adventure, this is a war movie.  Imagine the biggest most impossible odds for Batman to overcome, multiply by about one hundred, then you might have a brief clue as to what "The Dark Knight Rises" is actually about.  But I don't want to spoil anything - WATCH THE MOVIE.  WATCH IT NOW.  Then come back here, and you can read the rest of this review.  The less you know about whats going to happen, the better.  You will be pleasantly surprised.  "The Dark Knight Rises" is going to knock your asshole insideout, it will grow tumors of pure awesome inside your brain, and then it will go back in time and punch Hitler in the face in case you have any lingering doubts.  This movie is simply incredible, fantastic, amazing, holy fucking shit this movie rocked!

Batman Movie Batdown Week 8 - The Dark Knight

"The Dark Knight" is the biggest, boldest, hugest, and most Batmanest movie ever made.  Its also one of the most successful films of all time, singlehandedly making more than a billion dollars worldwide - a figure that absolutely dwarfs the previous record held by 1989's "Batman", which only hit 400 million.  Today if you go on the Internet and hear a reference to something Batman-related, nine times out of ten its going to be a "Dark Knight" quote.  "He's not the hero we deserve, but he's the hero we need."  "Some men just want to watch the world burn."  "WHY SO SERIOUS???"  This is the Batman movie that has defined the current generation, and probably will remain for decades a classic.

In many ways, "The Dark Knight" dwarfs the other Batman films, because its just so big, so amazing, that its hard to remember that the other Batman films have even happened.  Even Tim Burton admitted recently that his Batman films feel like "Batman on Ice" compared to Master Christopher Nolan's epic.  And epic is indeed the term to use for "The Dark Knight", more than any other movie, this is the story that really drives Batman to the very wall.  Its not merely the biggest Blockbuster spectacle, its a brutal story that shoves Batman beyond his limits, where Bruce Wayne loses the only links he had to a normal life.  No superhero movie before or since has ever tested it protagonist so deeply, forcing them to almost abandon their capes and mask, and then lose everything.  If you're wondering why I was so disappointed with "Iron Man 2" or couldn't call "The Avengers" a timeless classic, its because "The Dark Knight" raised the bar.  This is a new class of Blockbuster, chillingly bleak, frightening in how it pushes its hero right to the very wire.  And above all, well-crafted, inventive, and constantly exciting.

You really cannot deny the simple fact:  "The Dark Knight" is the best Batman movie ever made... for now.  In a few hours, that fact may change forever.  The new interpretation Master Nolan began with "Batman Begins" was truly perfected in "The Dark Knight", to the point that this film actually transcends simply being a Blockbuster or a superhero movie.  Those terms are too pedestrian for a movie like this.  "The Avengers" is just fanservice with a plot, "The Dark Knight" is brutal.  It doesn't want to just give comic book fans the same stories they have been reading for decades, it wants to test the Batman idea, to place him in the most extreme circumstances conceivable and see if he can survive, to see if Gotham can overcome the full force of a supervillain on the loose.  The Joker isn't a cackling bank robber, he's a terrorist, trying to destroy everything he sees.  What is the Batman if not a costumed guardian of civilization?  Order vs. Chaos.  For that reason, this is really the ultimate Batman movie.

Batman Movie Batdown Week ∅ - Batman B-Movies

Yeah, there are still more Batman movies!  It never ends, does it?  You thought we would be quite nicely finished with just the Batman film serials, didn't you?  You thought that was the bottom layer of the weirdness?  You thought wrong!  There is no end to Batman weirdness.  Considering that Batman is one of the most popular fictional characters of the 20th century, there is no way that Batman's film career would simply end thanks to copyright and intellectual property laws.  Just because DC Comics owns the rights, that doesn't mean they can stop random film companies from creating their own artistic visions of the Caped Crusader.  Oh no.  Before I even think of hitting "The Dark Knight" tomorrow, we need to go over the strange, embarrassing, and sometimes downright terrifying history of B-Movie Batman.

Unfortunately, these being B-movies, they're very rare.  At least one has been outright lost to history entirely, and the others are very difficult to find.  Because of this fact, sadly, "The Wild World of Batwoman" is the only unauthorized Batman movie you can legally own today - and there's a whole long story behind that.  This also means, tragically, that "The Wild World of Batwoman" and "Alyas Batman en Robin " are the only unauthorized Batman movie I've ever seen.  And this is not from lack of trying, I desperately researched through the night, had a very unsuccessful battle with a torrent download, and eventually had to give up.  There were some very sketchy download sites that I'm sure would have given me many very entertaining viruses, but not one Batman film.  So for now, I'm running off what little I could learn from various Wikipedia pages, Youtube vids, and other lazy levels of research.

Just so that you know that I'm not terribly lazy, the big problem here is that five out of the seven Batman films are made in the Philippines and in Tagalog.  These movies are so obscure that I don't think they've ever been translated into English, let alone released in any form anywhere in the English-speaking world.  "The Wild World of Batwoman" is an American film, and was featured on an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000", so finding it takes thirty seconds.  I think less people than the average readership of this blog have heard of "Batman Fights Dracula", and its made even more impossible to find because it shares nearly the same name as "The Batman" movie, "Batman vs. Dracula".  So for now, this is an admission of defeat.  Maybe one day I'll be able to enjoy every one of these films.  Maybe one day.  Anyway, B-Movie Batman:

Batman Movie Batdown Week 0 - Batman Serials

I did a great disservice to the history Batman in film by starting my Batman Movie Batdown in 1966 with "Batman: The Movie".  Because that was in no way the first time Batman had ever appeared on film, Batman's history goes back easily another twenty years, all the way to the middle of the Second World War.  And if we're really going to prepare ourselves for the glory that will be "The Dark Knight Rises", we need to look all the way back, to the very beginning.

Since serials haven't been shown in movies for about sixty years now, I guess I have to explain what they are.  Technically film serials are not really movies, they're just the prototypical form of the modern television shows, but instead playing at your local cinema before a real movie would begin.  Back then, movie theatres were only the kind of motion pictures available, so they would come complete with news reels, Golden Age cartoons, and various other kinds of entertainment, including the serial.  They were almost always adaptation of pulp fiction stories or comics, usually marketed for children.  The most famous serials still beloved today are probably "Buck Rogers", "Flash Gordon", and "Dick Tracy", and the art form was the direct inspiration for George Lucas when he created Star Wars in 1977.  Of course, being low budget, they don't feature a great deal of variety in sets, they often use stock footage and sound effects, their are rarely large casts or very impressive spectacles.

I haven't seen many serials myself, but they were clearly an important part of American culture in the first half of the 20th century.  So that means that the very first adaptation of a superhero comic was in serial form, specifically 1941's "Adventures of Captain Marvel", a show based on the most popular superhero of the time, Captain Marvel.  Since the early Fourties were exactly the peek era of superhero popularity*, film companies like Republic, Columbia, and Universal would produce about a dozen superhero serials based on characters like Superman, Captain America, and eventually, Batman.

There were actually two very different Batman serials produced:  1943's "The Batman"**, and 1949's "Batman and Robin".  These productions were put together when Batman was a very new cultural icon, having only been created by Bob Kane in 1939, only a handful of years prior.  Its as ancient as you could ever get with the Batman mythos.  Obviously being low-budget affairs, neither were in color, but there's a clear variety in quality here.  The 1949 serial shows a great deal of improvement over its predecessor, and is decent for a curiosity's view back to the Golden Age of the Dark Knight.  The 1943 serial is... just entirely terrible, frankly.

Batman Movie Batdown Week 7 - Batman Begins

In 1997 "Batman & Robin" destroyed the first Batman franchise.  In 2005, "Batman Begins" built a whole new one.  And for most of the world, we haven't looked back.  Christopher Nolan, Modern Master(TM), was tapped on to revive the franchise, and what a revival he did.  In a sea of mostly mediocre superhero films, Master Nolan's Batman films were simply a set above, utterly excellent action films that show the world what superhero films could be at their very best.  Just compare "Batman Begins" to "Fantastic Four", the other big superhero film of 2005.  Then you'll see the magnitude of what has been achieved here.  If you're wondering why I'm doing all this Batman madness, the answer lies somewhat in childhood memories of the old Burton-Schumacher films, somewhat in the Batman cartoons, but mostly in how completely awesome Master Nolan's movies are.

The funny thing, of course, being, is that in 2005 I purposefully avoided seeing "Batman Begins".  My logic was that "Batman Begins" made no sense - how could Batman begin when he already began in 1989's "Batman"?  This was the first example of a reboot that I can personally remember, fourteen-year-old me assumed at the time that this was yet another pointless remake in a time where there were dozens of pointless remakes, my mind going back to the rather pathetic 1998 American "Godzilla" movie or the hideously awful 2001 Tim Burton "Planet of the Apes" or to really dig to the bottom of the barrel, 2004's nonsense remake of "The Stepford Wives".  I don't have a very high opinion of remakes personally, especially remakes to perfectly fine movies like "Batman", my thoughts being that if Warner Bros wants more Batman films, they should just make a sequel.  What I didn't understand at the time was that Master Nolan actually had a new and very awesome take on the Batman story.  When you're dealing with a character as eternal and archetypal as Batman, you should let new visions and new voices come in and tell their stories, especially when they might be a goddamn genius like Master Nolan.  Unfortunately well... Hollywood's gone a bit insane with reboots lately, but that's another story altogether.

Honestly if every new incarnation of the Bat is as innovative and brilliant as "Batman Begins", I hope Warner Bros keeps making Batman movies until the day I die.  After that they can start making Green Lantern, I won't care particularly, I'll be dead.  I'll be watching movies in Heaven, which as we all know, are nothing but endless John Ford marathons*.  But that's all looking into the deep future, for right now, "Batman Begins" was a fantastic movie, and led the way directly for the even more fantastic "The Dark Knight".  Even without its indomitable sequel and the upcoming third one, "Batman Begins" would still be one of the best Batman films ever made.

Batman: Arkham City

At some point when you're reviewing so much Batman material, you slowly realize what Batman is.  Batman is a child fantasy where you can be A) hot millionaire playboy, B) superhero, C) badass grizzled action star, and D) the world's greatest detective.  So you're sexy, rich, a genius, and walking death on two fists - all that plus a sweet ass ride.  Chicks dig the car, man.  Also, if you're into that sort of thing, a lithe and limber couple of teenage sidesicks who will serve your every whim.  Being Batman is awesome, every bit of social awkwardness of sexual frustration can be blasted right on the Joker's face.  All superheroes are fantasy lives, but I think Batman's takes the cake.  His outfit even is one of the few superhero costumes that holds up to modern fashions, until say, poor Billy Zane here.  This is everything an adolescent fantasy could need, it comes complete with the free check to be as brooding as you want.  So at this point I'm tired of writing about Batman, I've decided that I need to be Batman.

"Batman: Arkham City" is currently the best Batman simulator on the market.  I figure that as long as I'm obsessing to an unhealthy degree over Batman, I should actually play a video game about the Dark Knight.  Luckily right now Batman isn't just at the peak of his popularity thanks to the good work of Master Nolan, but also because Rocksteady Games has been kicking some serious ass with their Arkham Series.  "Arkham Asylum" was a very successful game from a few years ago, and "Arkham City" is its even bigger sequel from last year.  Basically this is the second-biggest game of last year, right behind "Skyrim".  While "Arkham Asylum" was tightly focused on a single adventure in Gotham's infamous madhouse, "Arkham City" is a far larger and more impressive beast for me.  Basically you're Batman, and you're locked off in an "Escape From New York"-style crime quarantine zone.  And you have to punch a lot of people to get out.  So you're now given the full run of Batman powers, batarangs, gliding, detective powers, lots of weird gagets, and of course, street brawling.  If you're looking for a way to be Batman, "Arkham City" is your best bet.  Even better, the Batman you're pretending to be is the REAL Batman, the Kevin Conroy Batman, not one of those fake Batmen voice actors that appear in the DC animated movies every few months.

Of course, that means that "Arkham City" is a great game.  It gets pretty close to being a "Grand Theft Batmobile: Gotham City" since you're given an open sandbox John Carpenter-esque super prison to explore.  This means that you're free to continue your mission, or rescue victims, or complete sidemissions, just like Batman would do while flying over his city.  And you can ninja your way through groups of armed enemies, taking them down one by one.  Its that perfectly delicious feeling of BEING Batman, of living that fantasy out.  Basically this game equals, in game-form, the badassary that Master Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy offers in movie-form.  Its just incredible, and I really loved this game.

Batman Movie Batdown Week 6 - Batman & Robin

I was dreading this one, honestly.  "Batman & Robin" is an infamous film, easily the most notorious Superhero movie ever.  Superhero films aren't exactly a genre without its share of stinkers either:  "Spider-Man 3", "X-Men 3", "Superman 4", the lost Roger Corman "Fantastic Four" movie, and "The Spirit", but for some reason "Batman & Robin" stands alone at the top... or well, bottom in this case.  On the Internet there are a few movies that you have to hate:  the Star Wars Prequels, the later "Alien" movies, "The Matrix Revolutions", and "Batman & Robin", by far the most detested Batman movie ever made.  So right there that means I'm going to have a difficult time of this review right here, because I actually kinda like "Batman & Robin".

The development process of "Batman & Robin" was one of the most cutthroat committee-designed processes for any film in history.  "Batman & Robin" was something of an experiment, since it was not primarily made to be a movie, but instead was made to be a two-hour advertisement for Batman toys.  "Batman Returns" had previously threatened the mechanizing industry by being too dark*, and "Batman Forever" had rebuilt that empire and even included even more money by throwing Robin dolls into the mix.  Finally, "Batman & Robin" would be the ultimate victory of toyetic filmmaking, not to be topped until the Star Wars Prequels.  "Toyetic" is a term that means "suitability for merchandising purposes" - which curiously I've only ever heard used to describe "Batman & Robin".  Its fitting really, because this is a soulless movie made to sell crap to children.

Naturally we 90s kids loved this movie and bought the crap.  Even as a kid I always loved "Batman & Robin" better than "Batman Forever", mostly because this movie is completely out of its damn mind.  It was one of my favorite films as a kid.  Here is where the franchise stopped trying to make sense, or even be good, or even really make movies at all.  Director Joel Schumacher liked to yell during production:  "remember people, we're making a cartoon!"  That really set the mood here.  This is the movie where Batman and Robin surf metal doors down from an ice rocket like they're riftboarding in "Eureka Seven" - and Robin does a Cutback Drop Turn.  Mr. Freeze decides to freeze Gotham, Batman rides in a Batzamboni, there's a chase scene over giant stone biceps, this movie is one of the most ludicrous things ever put to film.  Nobody gave a crap about even the slightest attempt at making a real Batman movie, instead they just threw every wild idea at the wall, and as long as it involved lots of colors and flashing lights, it was in the movie.  So on the one hand, that makes for an actively terrible Batman movie, but it also makes for a really entertaining ride.  Its a train wreck, but an entertaining trainwreck.  Its so silly, how can you really stay mad at it?

All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder

Oh God...

Frank Miller's "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder" might have seen like a brilliant, groundbreaking storyline in Frank Miller's own head.  Yet another excellent Batman comic that would revolutionize the Batman mythos once again just as his previous "Dark Knight Returns" and "Year One" had done back in the Eighties.  However, to the rest of the human race, Frank Miller's new Batman tale appeared to be more like a nightmare, an insult, or just a plain old prank.  The fact of the matter is that nobody has the slightest clue what Frank Miller was thinking when he wrote this horrible comic, which is without a doubt the worst Batman related product ever released, and possibly the worst superhero story ever*.

DC's "All-Star" line began as a rather admirable idea, I think.  Back in the mid-2000s, DC decided that they would create a whole new series of brand new Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman comic book series that would be out of continuity of the goddamn confusing mess that is their DC universe, so that new readers would able to get into comics without needing to memorize eight decades worth of stories, exactly how the Ultimate Marvel Universe did.  They also wanted these new stories to be written by the very best authors money could buy.  "All-Star Superman" was written by Grant Morrison... who I assume is a very good author of comics.  And "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder" was written by Frank Miller, who was then considered an absolute genius, perhaps the most famous comic book author in the world.  Unfortunately whatever genius Frank Miller had rolling around up there seems to have been replaced with total madness and "All-Star Batman" was a total disaster.  Worse for the All-Star line, their other two projects, "All-Star Wonderwoman" and "All-Star Batgirl" never got made at all, so I guess we could say that this entire ambitious project was a failure.  "All-Star Superman" apparently is really really good, and I might have to read it one day, but its success was balanced out by the vile terribleness of "All-Star Batman".

I feel almost ill-equipped to review "All-Star Batman and Robin" because like the rest of the world, I have no idea where Frank Miller was coming from writing this story.  The story is so bad on so many levels, and is fact downright disturbing, that you almost can't believe that Frank Miller is playing this straight.  You cannot believe that he actually thinks what he's writing is effective storytelling.  Is this whole comic written by the Joker?  That's really the only explanation, Frank Miller is the Joker.  Its a comic where everybody is insane, where Batman talks like a seventh grader, where Frank Miller gleefully mocks a great deal of superhero mythos, and where the fanservice is so blatant and shameless that I'm surprised this isn't anime.  And then, ten issues later of atrocious dialog and cringeworthy plot points, it all just ends, with no resolution.  The comic was never finished, its last issue came out four years ago.  The story barely reaches its second act.  And maybe, that's for the best.  For it just to end.

Batman: The Long Halloween

I suppose I'm deviating from the Batman Movie Batdown plan just the slightest bit.  Its occurred to me that Batman actually is slightly more than just the movies that have appeared in cinemas, he actually does appear in comic books every so often.  In fact, some comic books that are rather good.  At some point during this Batman adventure I went completely mad and started becoming more than a little obsessed with the Caped Crusader.  Which may be a problem after the 20th when I have to return to normalcy, but until then, I'll breath Batman air, drink Batman water, and run around everywhere talking in the Batman voice.

In 1987 Frank Miller wrote the fantastic comic, "Batman: Year One", which detailed how Batman and Jim Gordon came together to fight the rotting urban slime that was Gotham's underground.  "Year One" was a huge success that masterfully defined the Batman even more than Miller's previous smash hit, "The Dark Knight Returns".  And as with all things, "Year One" needed a sequel.  Unfortunately, this being the world of comic books, there are now approximately fifty seven different sequels* all made by different writers, artists, and in varied styles, tones, and ultimate success.  "The Long Halloween" is just one sequel - the best sequel - written by Jeph Loeb with art by Tim Sale.  Now usually I wouldn't review a comic book ever unless it was either one of the greatest things ever written or one of the very worst, something so amazing that I believe that my little slice of the Internet needs to tell its readers about it, so "The Long Halloween" immediately is that good to pass that standard.  Its just that special that I cannot ignore it.  And neither could Master Christopher Nolan, who used this comic along with "Year One" and some other comic book called "The Man Who Falls" as his primary inspiration for "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight".

"Batman: The Long Halloween" tells the story of Batman's second year fighting crime, where he has teamed up with Commissioner Gordon and DA Harvey Dent for a full-on assault against the Falconi Crime Family.  This is an incredibly dangerous assignment since Carmine "The Roman" Falconi rules Gotham City and is virtually untouchable.  Somebody, however, has found a way to make Falconi touchable - by murdering members of his crime family with a .22 caliber pistol on every major holiday.  This criminal, known as "Holiday" takes the city by storm, because nobody knows who or what he is, or why he's after Falconi.  "The Long Halloween" essentially is Batman's war on traditional crime, a war he wins, but not without casualties (I think you can guess who falls to the Dark Side here).  Worse still, a new class of criminal is beginning to rise in Gotham City, the Freaks.  All in all, "The Long Halloween" is an excellent Batman story, perhaps the best one I've ever read/seen/experienced with fantastic artwork, a great detective mystery plotline, and an all around beautiful set-up for Batman's endless crusade against the forces of evil.  This is the best Western comic book I've ever read in my life...

...and I've only read about ten altogether, so take of that what you will.

Batman Movie Batdown Week 5 - Batman Forever

Well, here we go again.  "Batman Forever" returns from the deep to haunt me once more.  I actually reviewed this movie many years ago back on those strange high school afternoons when I had nothing better to do but write a blog even more amateur than this on the FFWiki.  Why did I write reviews of Batman movies on the FFWiki, an encyclopedia dedicated to a subject entirely unrelated to Batman?  That's an excellent question.  Moving on.

I could just come out here and start tearing 1995's "Batman Forever" a new much deeper hole in up its ass, but I don't really want to jump at this from that perspective.  "Batman Forever" is not a good movie, and even at that standard, it isn't a very admirable failure.  This was a movie made by a studio mostly to fill a room full of gold bars, nobody in the production actually seemed to have any particular passion or interest in Batman as a character or even in making this movie.  Rather, they wanted to sell toys.  Lots and lots of toys.  The results speak for themselves, its a far more lazy, loveless movie than the previous two live-action Batman movies.  It has the worst Batman performance of any movie, and a host of dozens of other problems.  However, I'm going to try to say that "Batman Forever" and even "Batman and Robin" are not entirely wretched movies.  They're bad, really bad, but they're a special kind of entertaining bad that's worth not merely dismissing out of hand.

The biggest problem, I think, that most people have with the Joel Schumacher Batman movies is that they're ridiculous and silly and cartoony, almost as if these movies were not made for the fans of gritty dark Batman and instead for kids.  "Made for kids" is not an excuse I'd usually buy for a movie like this, but as a kid, I loved "Batman Forever" and its sequel.  This was probably because my parents misplaced or hid my VHS copy of "Batman Returns" and for about seven years these were the only Batman movies I could watch at all.  I could just outright dismiss this movie altogether (like I did in my first review) and just call eight-year-old me a moron for liking this movie.  I'm pretty sure that eight-year-old me would just respond by throwing a Godzilla toy at my face and calling me a "giant moron times infinity", crushing my ego, and then he would sit right back down and continue watching it.  He's definitely seeing something in this movie that I'm not.

Yeah, "Batman Forever" isn't showing me what I think Batman should be, but that's one thing we need to accept:  there isn't one Batman.  There are tons of Batmans, playing up all kinds of tones and styles.  Batman doesn't need to just be the Frank Miller psychopath rolling on rooftops taking sadistic glee in beating up hoodlums, he can also be a 1930s adventure serial for boys about "the World's Greatest Detective", and he can be this:  a ridiculous colorful movie full of more flashing lights than substance.  On its own merits, "Batman Forever" is actually kinda entertaining.  Mostly because of Jim Carrey.