(10/04/09)
The Demon’s Quest is a two-part epic that crams as much riveting action and exotic locales into its forty-five minute runtime as reasonably possible. Almost all fans of the series fall for its contrivances and overblown set pieces, believing it to be a grand masterwork, even in light of faults oh too noticeable.
The most blatant narrative mishap is that a bit of nonsensical logic is the pirouette that transitions from one part of the story to the next. If Ras cannot have Batman as his heir, then presumably he is instantly to enact his plan of achieving a harmonious green Earth. Somehow Batman understands that the plan is to be enacted immediately and that half the Earth’s population is to be decimated in the process. If Ras had never concerned himself with preposterous thoughts of an heir, his plan could have gone off without a hitch and Batman would have been woefully unalert.
More slight lapses of logic adorn the story. If Ras’s primary concern is the well being of the environment, then why does he judge Batman’s worthiness solely on his mental and physical prowess? It is clear that he ardently disapproves of Bruce Wayne’s corporate wealth and the two cannot hold a conversation without an ideological dispute bubbling to the surface. The ritualistic, and perhaps slightly Orientalist depiction of an impractical code of royalty, in which masculine fitness matters more than shared morals, is the ultimate hindrance to Ras's plan, and is The Demon's Quest's most unflattering quality.
Ras’s stilted dialogue is also detrimental. He makes unnatural references to famous historical figures that forcefully pique our curiosity and engages in talk of environmental protection in a betraying conversation that blatantly lays out Ras’ politics and removes all doubt that he is the virulent eco-terrorist mastermind behind the kidnappings. Even though he should by all means stand above generic super criminals, especially with David Warner’s coolly patronizing voice imbuing him with some level-headedness, he still unwisely and egotistically exposits his plan step by step.
Batman is far from the mold of the epic hero; he does not have a flair for the romantic. Instead of forcing him into the mold of the genre, the writers play Batman’s skepticism and coldness for laughs. At the end of part one, when Talia finally makes her appearance, Batman calmly beckons Robin to leave; he has refused Ras's offer and that's all there is to it, Robin's puzzlement at his expectations being dashed intended to self-consciously mirror our own. Unfortunately, part two conforms too much to the traditions of the genre, and as Batman and Talia kiss against a desert sunrise, wind flowing through her hair and dress to music lifted right out of Lawrence of Arabia, it becomes all too clear that the writers are settling for an awkward halfway stop between dramatic gravitas and willful parody.
Not that I don't enjoy The Demon's Quest. The very fact that the animators are skilled enough to handle wide-scale action and moving backgrounds, and that the direction progresses briskly from set piece to set piece, establishing spatial relations between gargantuan structures among other dexterous feats, is reason enough to stand in awe of this two-part show. Be it live action or animation, one can never expect perfection from such ambitious projects. Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is arguably full of pacing problems and an anticlimax, but it remains a masterpiece of sorts for its ambition and Herzog’s willingness to carry through with his vision. I can pick apart The Demon’s Quest, but it remains the most visually expansive piece in the series’ run, and it is impossible to water down its merits by focusing only on its flaws.
TMS doesn’t do its best work, but the animators certainly know how to manage the fight scenes and the color palette. Now that Batman is away from Gotham and is no longer dealing with hoods with guns or wrenches, he is allowed some acrobatic flexibility in taking down his now diversified foes. They come at him with bo staffs and saifs and other such close-combat weapons, and he reciprocates with a demonstrated mastery of these Mid Eastern fighting styles. When the aircraft crashes in part one, a sliver of pink accentuates the snowcaps, and the Lazarus Pit has an otherworldly tone of emerald green.
Though the quality of a stand-alone work should not depend on its greater importance in the scheme of the DC Animated Universe, no work exists in a vacuum and The Demon’s Quest’s historical value simply cannot be swept under the rug. Its visual ambition and fashioning of an epic scope makes it a precedent for several similarly grand adventures later on in other series. Ras Al Ghul is perhaps Batman’s most important villain from a continuity perspective, having a solidified character arc and making appearances in two more series after this one. Background designers and directors were finally getting a handle on leaving the oft-redundant Gotham cityscape and venturing off into new territory.
And so The Demon’s Quest is a masterwork, but only if one accepts that ambition must sacrifice perfection in its pursuit of grandiosity.
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