(10/16/09)
It means little to reside atop a skyscraper in Batman: the Animated Series. People do it all the time. But when a character is so mad that his particular skyscraper is his envisioned Mt. Olympus, suddenly the summit of the tower grows in volume, and fills itself out with Greek architecture and grand marble furnishings. Maximilion Zeus is a mentally unstable rogue who is not only deeply amusing in his speech of classicalist verse, but who also is perfectly capable of functioning in the real world.
Let me backpedal for a minute. Maxie is deluded. He believes himself to be a god, his lover to be a muse, and Batman to be his brother Hades. This is clear. But his intuition is as keen as ever. He has still managed to successfully obtain the Electron Discharge Cannon, he recognizes that both Batman and the cops are threats, and he has smarts enough to pick up on Yanni Stavros’ meeting with Commissioner Gordon. If people develop psychological disorders to cope with the strain of real life, then Maxie seems to be coping just fine.
No, what is going on here is that the coping mechanism becomes grounds for godhood and superiority. His delusions are not negative as they pertain to his intellect, but as they pertain to his morality. He has alleviated his stress, and perhaps any shred of guilt about his smuggling racket, at the cost of his sense of self. He has lost the individual in favor of the archetypal, the all-powerful. I find it fascinating that we never see him before his descent; we only see the real Maxie briefly at Clio’s beckoning. Perhaps the writers could not fashion a character so individualized within such a short span of plot, leaving us to imagine the man he was.
Fire From Olympus reminds us that the world of Batman is indeed a mythological one. Maxie Zeus is almost a perfect representation of Batman’s best villains. Most of them have lost their complexity by adhering to a stringent psychological identity. Two-Face is no longer Harvey Dent, man of many facets, but a crook that makes all decisions based on the black-and-white judgment of a tossed coin. Maxie refers to him as double-headed Janus, and indeed, he has sacrificed individuality for an archetype. The same is true of the Joker, who, like Maxie, we never see before his transformation. There is insight here.
The overcast skies deviate from the standard night and day shades. They graphically reflect Maxie’s penchant for thunder and lightning. Not only is the top of his tower extravagantly designed, but also the exaggerated height creates a truly epic scope. There are very few times that Batman does not simply grapple up the sides of buildings, but this presents him with a clear challenge. I relish it when the designers take set pieces and stretch them beyond their realistic boundaries.
There are some storytelling issues that get mentioned in every nitpick list created for this episode. They do not detract from my enjoyment, but I find it amusing that so much gusto was put into the direction, only for simple errors to bleed through.
We open with a fantastic confrontation between Stavros, a man supposed to be meeting with Gordon to provide him information about Maxie Zeus, who manages a shipping company. Stavros instead is greeted by an unseen figure that emerges from a vehicle. It’s fairly obvious that this is Zeus, and after he delivers a few words to Stavros about how angry he is with him, we see a flash of light reflected off the walls of the surrounding alleyway. As it turns out, Stavros is now hospitalized. The imagery is powerful and it’s a fantastic way to start the episode.
Now, the proceeding scenes are where I take a bit of issue. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching Maxie in all his insane glory, and watching someone so maddened also double as an intelligent businessman is fascinating, but I really dislike the story involving Clio and her reaction to Maxie’s madness. Now, I know that it’s necessary for there to be some sort of foil to Maxie, and for that Clio serves a worthy purpose, but it’s hard to both understand her pain and sadness at the ordeal because we haven’t seen what their relationship was like before the man went crazy. None of the scenes of her wallowing in despair at what has happened to the man she has loved are very effective at all, and it’s because of this that the episode falls short a few notches. Still, most of her appearances are appropriately overshadowed by the more excellent moments in the episode, most notably the glorious confrontation between Maxie and Batman, whom he believes to be Hades, the god of the underworld (interesting to note that Hades actually becomes a character in the DC Animated Universe later).
The episode’s climax is rather slow, but it’s filled with all sorts of great bits, not to mention Shirley Walker’s powerful musical score. I love Maxie’s delightful revelry as he blasts down a police blimp and ties Clio to the end of his electron cannon. I love Batman’s run in with Maxie’s obstacles relating to Greek myth (although it makes little sense that Batman would even need to enter the penthouse the way he does, when soon after he faces the boar, he grapples to the top of the building). I especially love the end, as Maxie enters Arkham, believing it to be Olympus. Although I have to say, in addition to my parenthetical nitpick I made earlier, I can’t help but fault the episode for the fact that Clio is apparently captured by Maxie’s henchmen, but apparently makes it up later as if she had never been caught.
The animation is well done. This, along with ‘His Silicon Soul’ is a testament to how great Dong Yang got this late in the game. Scenes like the boar that runs straight into the camera and the lightning striking the blimp are beautiful, and this episode is also the first time in a long time that I have been so impressed by an episode’s backgrounds. As mentioned before, Shirley Walker really delivers a powerful score with this episode, fitting appropriately with Zeus’ hunger for godly power. I have to really applaud all the work that went into this episode, as it really seems like a lot of time was spent making it artistically excellent.
Admittedly, this episode has too many flaws that I can’t gloss over: the minor nitpicks near the end, the unnecessary scenes portraying Clio’s sadness, and the slow pace that causes the episode to drop in a few areas. So while I can’t even give it a great score, I still really enjoy this episode a great deal.
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