(8/30/09)
The title card tells us that this will be a werewolf story. So it is no surprise when a massive wolf man mauls the patrolman in the first minute or so. Already the fundamentals of compelling storytelling are violated. There might have been suspense, were Moon of the Wolf to delay the werewolf’s appearance and thus get a delicious reaction shot from his victim. But it fails to take advantage of any of the meager opportunities.
Now that the werewolf has attacked his victim, Batman shows up to confront the beast. In the following scene, Batman talks to Gordon of a ‘man in a wolf mask.’ Even if he did mistake the hulking mass of fur and grisly teeth to be a disguise, did he somehow fail to notice that it was not just the face that was covered? When the viewer is a few steps ahead of Batman, the story begins to play catch-up, leaving us bored and impatient.
Like The Forgotten and Nothing to Fear, Moon of the Wolf is a laundry list of errors and clichés, encompassing the full spectrum of production. There is color inconsistency and rubbery animation. There are plot holes everywhere. Even the music replaces symphonic mood setting with 80s electric guitar riffs. It exists on another plane of continuity as the typical Batman episode, as its logical mishaps and flat characterizations remove it entirely from we have come to expect from even the series’ worst episodes.
Shall we play count the clichés again? There is a ham-fisted flashback set to monologue, a deus ex machina involving a perfectly timed bolt of lightning, and the kind of corny comic book one-liners and insulting exposition that pester the viewer with their lack of originality. Even the ending feels ripped off of better horror material and seems like the obvious note to end on.
Here is a temporal account of the episode’s story flow. Batman is apprehended a little more than a third in, already chained to the ground of the coliseum that will be the arena for the final showdown. So that we must wait for the finale, Milo, whom we may remember from Cat Scratch Fever, plunges into a recount of all of everything that has befallen Anthony Romulus, the werewolf. Even children have seen the story about the fall of men with egocentric ambition told hundreds of times before. It is impossible to care.
And so I’d say that a third of the episode is poorly animated fight scenes, another third is bland exposition and bargaining between generic self-centered rich boy and generic evil scientist, and the final third is minor story details scattered about. Halfway through the series, we reach a decidedly low point, a rotten apple in a mostly ripe batch. Not one installment to follow is as torturous as this.
So basically, Anthony Romulus (clever name, huh?) is an Olympic-level athlete. Of course, since he just has to be the best, he turns to Dr. Milo who gives him a serum that endows him with great athletic abilities. But you know how these serums always work; Romulus begins transforming into a werewolf every night there’s a full moon. As Batman begins investigating, Milo decides that he needs him out of the way, so after Romulus calls Batman to his mansion, he and Milo gas Batman and tie him up in an abandoned area of town where Romulus, as the werewolf, will apparently defeat Batman.
I have several problems with this, the first being that the writer clearly missed the lecture on how to write a good villain. It just doesn’t work to have an egotistical guy strive for egotistical goals in the most one-dimensional way so that he drinks a serum and turns into a werewolf. There’s no characterization, just a bad guy. What’s even more shameless is that the episode goes for the sympathy angle near the end as Romulus begs Milo for the antidote. If we didn’t feel for Romulus before, there’s no way we can accept this sudden desire to be cured.
Second of all, the logical flaws are quite numerous. During the flashback narrative, Milo sometimes tells the flashback as part of the flashback, which makes no reasonable sense whatsoever. In Batman’s fight with the wolf creature, lightning somehow strikes at the most perfect moment that Batman would need it. There are so many coloring glitches too, mostly centered on Milo’s ever-changing shirt color. I don’t know if any of the information about werewolf-ism is correct, but I’ve already forgotten what that was all about anyway.
Continuing along this negative train of thought, the dialogue is abysmal, and this may just Batman at his most talkative, always quipping at the werewolf during their fights. Milo is just a stereotypical evil scientist, no different than he was in ‘Cat Scratch Fever’, and the episode feels so empty. The flashback that is already abundant in illogic is pretty much unnecessary and is forced into the story so poorly. Why would Milo tell Romulus everything he should presumably already know? The episode quite simply makes no sense. The animation is yet again done by AKOM, and this is one of those occasions where the animation severely destroys any possible good that could come out of this episode. The wolf, which is supposed to be scary, is large, clunky, and very clumsily animated.
This review really isn’t very organized, because like a lot of bad episodes, all I can really do is go on about how terrible it was. It’s just good to keep your hopes up as we almost finish through the AKOM episodes, of which there are only a couple of so left.
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