(9/18/09)
On his voyages across the globe to achieve mental and physical perfection, Bruce Wayne met a young girl named Zatanna. They went their separate ways, though Bruce had told her that they would once again meet. Bruce sees her now at a magic exhibition, showing no intention of rekindling an old friendship. But she is framed by an erudite egoist, and Batman finds he must involve himself in her life. We wait to see if she will recognize him or if he will reveal himself to her.
The flashback seems to hint at some romantic chemistry, but Paul Dini loves Zatanna too much to reduce her to the status of a mere love interest. She doesn’t feel synthetic as many female characters in the series do. She is a friend, an old acquaintance, a charming young woman. The contrived sensual sparring between Batman and Catwoman is replaced by a simple adventure yarn between two old friends, one of who may not be aware of her history with the other.
The only problem is that Zatanna is a busy show, relegating very little time to either character. I can admire Zatanna’s non-recycled characterization, but I fail to understand what makes her interesting. Everything else is trap doors and fight scenes, as the pompous Montague Kane makes off with stole loot, and a convoluted hunt proceeds. It is all action cartoon clichés; Kane is self-centered and egomaniacal, and every obstacle he employs comes from the most basic handbook of villainous snares.
What I find to be of interest is what Montague Kane represents. He is rendered in the likeness of a young Orson Welles, replete with his boyish face, albeit furnished with an angular black beard. Even his name stems from that of Welles’ most invaluable contribution to the cinema. As Welles was a magician, one might ask why Kane appears as a debunker of magic. One might recall the film F for Fake, in which Welles the artist deconstructs our ideas of art. Perhaps Kane can be viewed in such a context, given that the film itself draws parallels between the illusory nature of art and the illusory nature of magic tricks. And yet whereas Welles is shrewdly self-deprecating, Kane is wholly self-serving, malevolent without s spark of his counterpart’s whimsy or charm.
The climax involves an aircraft of epic scale, perhaps the first truly spectacular vehicle design in the team’s oeuvre. Though the fight scenes drag, Kane’s massive plane proves an indicator of the large-scale props and set pieces that would become staples of Superman: the Animated Series and so on. Usually when a thug falls out of a plane and into the ocean, the implication is that he survived. Here, however, death is the only likely outcome.
There is something strangely warm about Batman’s final exchange with Zatanna. As Bruce went by an alias when he first trained with her father Zatara, the man has always been a mystery. Even as she understands that the man she once knew is now the Batman, he remains somewhat of a mystery to her. When Batman turns around to find her displaced by a puff of smoke, we get the sense that he feels the same about her.
The story consists of the following: Zatanna, a magician performing at Gotham City, has apparently committed a crime in that she made a pile of money disappear; since it was obviously the fat rich man with the evil-looking mustache that did it, it is up to Batman and Zatanna to go on a long and boring trek to track the man down and clear her name. Unlike many linear episodes, this one lacks any style and fun to it. Zatanna and Batman track down Kane (as if there was any doubt that he was the culprit), and they do nothing more than defeat him, exactly what you’d expect. There’s no big payoff, nothing remotely interesting, just a generic team up between two heroes who take down a stock bad guy.
Now of course, there is the relationship between Bruce and Zatanna that makes the episode somewhat able to sit through, and it’s what I mean when I say that the episode adds scope to the DC animated continuity, as Zatanna pops up again later in ‘Justice League: Unlimited’ and we get further insight into Bruce’s training. What makes their relationship interesting is that she’s not a generic love interest, but rather someone Bruce knew when he was younger, someone who’s father he so revered as to have no hesitation in revealing his identity to her. All of this doesn’t do much though, and only pays off in a very small amount of episodes to come. Still it keeps this episode from being a total snooze fest.
The biggest insult is the villain. The Citizen Kane reference aside, there’s nothing remotely interesting about Kane. He’s not only a boring and rich thief, but also every one of his features, from his voice to his appearance, points him out to be the villain. There is no interesting mystery at hand: it’s obvious from the beginning. It makes for weak drama and a predictable story. While Zatanna’s scenes with Batman take up a fair amount of time, the episode wastes the remainder of the episode with traps and bad action and boring plot points. The fact that the climax takes place on a giant aircraft is the only good part about the main story.
Animation-wise, the episode looks just as poor as the last one. It’s not interesting and there’s nothing exceptional at work; it’s a series of clumsy motion and bland environments. Now granted some backgrounds are stylish, and I absolutely love the design of Kane’s giant aircraft, and the black-and-white flashback is refreshing, but for the most part there really isn’t anything visually appealing about this episode at all. Given how much I love style in addition to substance, the fact that this episode is pretty much devoid of both makes me quite upset.
Some people adore this episode, given that we are introduced to a new character, but I for one find it boring, yet another weak episode of ‘Batman: the Animated Series’.
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