B:TAS reviews: Batgirl Returns

(1/3/10)

The episode that concludes Batman: the Animated Series is an underwhelming tribute to the eighty-four outings that have preceded it. Batgirl Returns daringly removes Batman from the plot and asserts, as if in anticipation of the series still to come, that the mythos thus far constructed is rich enough to facilitate itself without its star at the helm. It is underwhelming insofar as one expects a dynamic bookend on par with the masterpiece that spawned the series, but as a breezy retrospective on the series’ continuity and kinetics, it is the perfect finale.

Another Batman adventure would be seen through the eyes of the tired, experienced crusader who cannot be surprised or intimidated. The most powerful Batman stories are passively voyeuristic, as the rigid crusader looks on a chaotic world and the human beings trapped by it. Batgirl, in that she is vulnerable and inexperienced, is a more charismatic active participant than Batman. With her as the star, we are allowed a fresh perspective on Gotham City and its many sectors. She has no fleshed out moral code of heroics by which to abide, and so Catwoman, whom she encounters in a recently plundered museum, is able to toy with her. This dynamic places Catwoman in an advantageous and influential position, and for the first time we can follow a more susceptible, and consequently more exciting, hero into now uncharted territory.

On one level of Batgirl Returns, there is the story about Batgirl’s embrace of heroic virtues and her rejection of Catwoman’s moral apathy. We have seen her come into her own in Shadow of the Bat, already full of naive pep and enthusiasm, so this continual solidification of vigilante ethics seems only necessary, though slightly straightforward. What endows it with intrigue is an opening dream sequence, animated with gusto, which suggests a deeply rooted romantic motivation in taking up the Batgirl mantle. It must be remembered that even though the hint of future adventures was obvious, the Batgirl of Shadow of the Bat existed for the simple purpose of investigating her father’s arrest. It is only after we learn that she has a girlish crush on Batman that she returns to crime fighting.

Already the generational gap between the two heroes, aged playboy and college teen, infects this scene with disturbance, a disturbance that further ingrains itself through the glossed superficiality of the fantasy. Batgirl knows nothing about Batman aside from what he looks like and his heroic nobility, and their romantic embrace looks like a hollow Disney construct. Though we are only privy to this suggested infatuation at the start, after which the romantic angle dissipates entirely, Catwoman’s moral grayness and sly temptations can be seen throughout as a counterpoint to Batgirl’s childish idealism, molding this Thelma and Louise caper into a tale of surprising complexity.

But on another level entirety is a riveting romp through obscure Gotham locales that deliberately harkens back to several of the series’ most noteworthy moments. Catwoman’s museum snooping recalls The Cat and the Claw and Catwalk. The Stacked Deck is a shady dive that conceals its own universe of overhanging lamps and shadow-soaked walls, evoking the infinite space of Almost Got ‘Im’s poker hall. There are off-the-cuff references to Clayface and Cat Scratch Fever, and it ends with the adage that closes several Batman installments, that both hero and villain will meet in battle another day.

A kaleidoscope of familiar atmospheres and clichés, Batgirl Returns is both anthological and part of a specific chronology and character arc. It closes the series with a nostalgic fun that directs its gaze to the future, foreshadowing the continuance of the DC Animated Universe in all its varied incarnations.

B:TAS reviews: Deep Freeze

(1/3/10)

Deep Freeze has always been a befuddling experience for me. I would wonder why on earth the intimate, human, and tragic character of Victor Freis would be placed in a plot revolving around cartooned satire and run-of-the-mill apocalyptic vision with banal allusions to Orwell and Genesis conceived by a full-fledged parody of Walt Disney. But now I understand clearly the intention, and while it is a chore to sit through in some regard—the visuals are lifeless, the futuristic cityscape devoid of scope or novelty, and the action jerky—its story appeals directly to the viewer’s perception of tragedy.

From the instant the passive, immobile, ever realistic Freeze is beckoned by the mustached, self-important amusement park proprietor, the character contrast is stark and eye-catching. Grant Walker is a cartoon villain; Freeze is the embodiment of sympathy. Walker wants to preside over a domed utopia and doom the rest of the corrupt world. Freeze wants nothing. When Walker reveals Nora in her frozen stasis, the stakes become higher. Freeze can either assist Walker, make him immortal and help him establish a new world order, or he will lose Nora forever.

And such is Dini’s genius. The smallest tragedy, the lost of a loved one, lies at the heart of the largest tragedy, the cataclysmic murder of billions. Freeze’s individual tragedy is so rich in imagery, feeling, and expression; Nora has a glistening ethereal beauty within her frozen limbo and Heart of Ice has already communicated the extent to which Freeze’s heart aches for her. And because Freeze was not granted a happy ending in that episode, we are implicitly aware that there is no guarantee here, either. But the death of the world doesn’t matter for several reasons. We know Freeze and we are constantly privy to dramatic representations of his wife. The billions that are to be killed are merely numbers, and a single identifiable character matters more than every one of them. The satiric manner in which Walker’s scheme is presented provides further incentive not to care, and the final stroke is the viewer’s knowledge of conventions—the death of so many people cannot happen in a cartoon.

When the dilemma is framed this way, the viewer cannot help but stand behind Freeze’s choice, however obviously selfish and immoral it is. We know that no matter what he does to help Walker, Batman and Robin will save the day. Why should he not choose Nora to an impassive world to which he is indifferent? But Batman, firmly grounded in the world of the story, does not know that he can do anything and everything the writers will him to do, so he convinces Freeze to reverse his actions and dismantle Walker’s Oceana.

The bloated cartoon tragedy, that of a doomsday meltdown, is successfully, predictably avoided. But Freeze’s tragedy remains. I can’t be sure whether Dini intends for us to muse on the curious manipulations of diegesis, but the bitter denouement leaves me thinking about how Batman and Robin cannot be aware of anything that transcends the immediacy of their story. Walker is not a Disney crackpot; he’s a serious threat. The two sit snugly in their Bat Cave coffee lounge, wondering about Freeze but clearly happy about their day-saving heroism. Rarely is the disconnect between hero and spectator more pronounced than when we are offered an exclusive glimpse at Freeze in silhouette against a cavernous blue background, on bended knee before his floating Sleeping Beauty. We are reminded through the power of the iconic image that this has been a tragedy of epic proportions. Doomsday matters little when a man cannot be reunited with his loving wife.

B:TAS reviews: Make 'Em Laugh

(1/3/10)

The title Make ‘Em Laugh at once recalls Donald O’Connor’s marvelous sing-and-dance number from Stanley Donen’s Singin’ in the Rain at the same time it prepares us for what is obviously going to be a Joker spotlight. The cue to what is undoubtedly to be a lighthearted, comedic episode of the Dini variety immediately makes me expect the joyous vitality of aforementioned dance sequence set to the tune of Batman’s more farcical masterpieces. The episode’s shtick gets old, however, and we are treated instead to an intriguing surface exploration of the Joker as comedian.

Dini begins with fiendishly subverting expectations not only by having a crackpot villain known as the Condiment King commit a crime worthy of the Penguin, but also by having Batman pull no punches upon arriving to apprehend him. We find that for whatever reason, the Joker has been brainwashing famous comics to flaunt themselves as bizarre Silver Age monstrosities. Many criticize Make ‘Em Laugh for its over-the-top parade of cartoon villains, but I find these fans stubborn in their unwillingness to concede that this is the kind of wacko cornball scheme that befits the Joker. That Batman responds to every threat with seriousness and tenacity is enough to remove it from the margins of camp.

To go further, their inability to recognize that the more outlandish elements stand out so much because the rest of the Batman universe is kept perfectly intact is their fundamental flaw in criticizing it for not being dark enough, one of those pop criticisms rooted in arbitrary standards or realism that are flung about carelessly. No, the problem is that Dini loves to indulge the corny joke too often, and he keeps his clever ones running a bit too long. Every villain shows up equipped with a repertoire of puns the length of a shopping list, and the Pack Rat’s amusing running gag of discarding valuables for their significantly less valuable containers is repeated throughout a sequence spanning two separate instances of crosscutting.

As a comic script, Make ‘Em Laugh is deeply flawed, so the interest shifts to the Joker’s vying for the title of funniest man in Gotham. As comedy is one of Joker’s specialties that, removed from its source, can be enjoyed by the common man, he has descended a year prior to the level of the cheap entertainer in the hope of wowing the masses with his standup. This rarely glimpsed desperation and the presence of an actual motivation render him uncomfortably human. One’s enjoyment of Make ‘Em Laugh rests on one’s belief or lack thereof that the Joker may overstep his conceptual anarchic existence and possess his own personal passions and aspirations. In its portrait of manic show-biz desperation that quickly turns to nihilistic violence, Make 'Em Laugh finds its roots in Martin Scorsese's masterpiece The King of Comedy.

The Laugh-Off as it is so called is held at a lavish, gold, art deco construct, the kind of glamorous locale one could insert somewhere into 1930s Hollywood. The Joker finally makes his debut, no longer disguised as a commoner. The last of his creations, Mighty Mom, is also the least notable and the biggest throwaway, making unsatisfactory use of Andrea Martin’s comedic voice talents. The big focus here is on a Joker hungry for stardom and notoriety. He is already known for his unpredictable mayhem, but here he yearns for a title that might give him a more unique, distinguished status.

So like Rupert Pupkin, the Joker is afforded his long-awaited stab at mass exhibitionism, but it diverges from Scorsese's subversive text when the mechanics of television kick in to prohibit his success. However, Make 'Em Laugh has its own ironic aplomb that paints an uncharacteristic picture of our favorite nihilistic clown. As Batman often defeats his arch-nemesis with the added kick of an ironic comeuppance, the suited up Joker with golden cup in hand must be inevitably shamed, subject to having his pants dropped and his head stuck in the cavity of his trophy. The question then becomes a matter of our acceptance of such a degraded Joker who claims not even a slight personal victory. If we respect the comic purpose of Dini’s script, then we can relish the conclusion, but if we prefer the Joker to retain his maniacal otherworldliness, then it conversely become an unworthy, cringe-worthy finale.

B:TAS reviews: Lock-Up

(1/3/10)

Lyle Bolton stands at the top of a craggy gothic Arkham spiral staircase, seen as a voluminous silhouette against a dim light behind him. Batman and Robin are in the act of returning the Scarecrow to the asylum when Bolton makes his way down to meet them. He towers over the stick figure Crane, the atmosphere insistently foreboding. I would not mind a flat rightwing nut of a security guard for a villain, if only he remained an ominous inhumane security chief, invoking the frightful implications of the Zimbardo prison experiment. Nestled within Arkham’s thick walls, free to divvy out brutal chastisements as he sees fit, as Batman and Robin, who have never had second thoughts about sending their adversaries to this secluded mental asylum, grow ever uncomfortable and paranoid about the atrocities that may or not go on within. It would be a Hitchcock suspense piece tapping into the fear of the corrupt and unstable public official.

But in the scene immediately following this uncomfortable opening, Bolton is exposed as the inmates’ confessions are played for character-specific laughs. He immediately launches into a tirade against Gotham City’s public officials, all of whom he believes to be too soft and permissive. It is here that Dini removes all suspense and instead nurtures another tired tale of a lunatic seeking revenge. Doubtless he steered the story in this direction in the hope of making an acute commentary on Lock-Up’s similarity to Batman. In associating Batman with Lock-Up, perhaps our hero’s vigilantism might in some way be challenged.

But instead we cannot doubt Batman’s sainthood; his exchanges with Lock-Up become fumbled ideological disputes that whither and die within seconds of their conception. Behind his stylized costume, Bolton lacks the menace he possessed as a hulking security chief with traces of sadism on his sharply angled face. He cannot articulate himself without resorting to the usual vigilante clichés. And even though he wishes to impose a new totalitarian order on Gotham, the fruits of his six-month sojourn neither make any notable indentation on the city nor carry any ominous overtones. His plan consists of imprisoning the icons of order and establishment in Gotham; Mayor Hill represents government, Gordon law, Bartholomew medicine, and Gleason the news media.

This watered down iconography suggests some attempt at a symbolic approach to the whole dynamic. Lock-Up is not really interested in dismantling these establishments so much as he feels inclined the punish the patrons we are most familiar with. It becomes difficult to tell whether he is serious about the effect he is having on the city or if he is out to make a larger metaphorical statement. Yet there comes a point during the cluttered climax when one realizes the episode is clearly beneath such musings.

The ending warrants a comparison to that of Fire on Olympus and The Terrible Trio, each one humorous and inevitable, though all at differing points on a spectrum. Maxie’s trek through the corridors of Arkham is a smile-inducing catharsis that follows a grandiose climax. Fallbrook’s confinement is an attempt at chilling poetic justice. Bolton’s hominess within his newly appointed guard post arrives halfway, aiming for a stamp of thematic finality while still provoking amused responses to his now fully disclosed insanity.

B:TAS reviews: Harley's Holiday

(1/3/10)

Harley’s Holiday is the final installment in the trilogy of Harley screwball adventures. Harley and Ivy treated her relationship to the Joker with the lightheartedness of a sitcom couple, albeit also with a heavy dose of dysfunction. Harlequinade was a much blacker comedy, ironically commenting on the sick grotesquerie of the couple’s relationship through an irrational comic conclusion. Finally, Harley’s Holiday gets rid of the Joker altogether to treat Harley as a person in her own right. The recent theme among episodes has been to explore the idea of reformation, and the hope of reform is no better communicated than in Harley’s individual escapade through Gotham on an admittedly bad day.

The episode begins with her release from Arkham; we are to assume that she has undergone intensive psychological therapy and is freed from the shackles of insanity. She is surprisingly enthusiastic about her newly acquired normalcy, though it doesn’t take long to understand that while she has apparently lost a susceptibility to amoral violence, she has not relinquished her over-the-top idiosyncrasies. The opening scenes communicate a societal rejection of Harley, not because she is believed to be dangerous, rather because she is a nonconformist. Naturally she becomes Harley Quinn again, and yet it is out of frustration at this social divide instead of a willingness to return to chaotic villainy. Indeed, the remainder of the episode has her acting with the best interests of her hostage, Veronica Vreeland, in mind, certainly willing to reject the life of a criminal.

From the moment the automobile chase is conceived, Dini cleverly masks his deft commentary about Harley’s place in society by lathering on the comedy. The running gag of Bullock’s crashing into cars and fire hydrants is classic slapstick fare. General Vreeland careens down narrow Gotham city streets in a comically cumbersome tank. Sharp lines of dialogue and cleverly planted kisses are peppered throughout. And yet the more over-the-top and hectic the chase, the more rational Harley ends up. The wry social commentary that takes root in the department store scene balloons with the rest of the action. As in Fritz Lang’s M, the seemingly respectable social institutions of law and military are associated with that of the mob, each one made out to be irrational and on some level insane.

This domino effect is driven to its naturally inflated, chaotic conclusion, and all the while we recall Harley is a victim of circumstance who never willed any of it to happen. The point seems to be that if the world is this insane, why is Harley the only one who’s going to be locked up for it? And yet Batman and Robin remain the beacons of empathy and sanity that pursue Harley with the conviction that she is not to blame. The Batman and Harley dynamic is no longer adversarial; though she lashes out, he plays the role of her understanding benefactor. The climax takes place amidst a jungle of neon signs that reflect Harley’s internalized confusion and dramatize her potential fall back into criminal madness.

What makes Harley’s Holiday a masterpiece is its ability, through both Dini’s written characterization and Altieri’s visual characterization, to individualize Harley. It is tense in its depiction of a woman so close to mental liberation, tragic in that she returns to lunacy, and yet ultimately optimistic by suggesting a possible deliverance for Harley. It ends without any sense of lamentable defeatism, suggests hope for the future, and is ultimately fulfilling in its stance against the series’ established cycle of villainy.

B:TAS reviews: Second Chance

(12/11/09)

Weighted down storm clouds, a flurry of rain, and a mournful lull of an opening theme begin what is perhaps the most credulous of all of Dini’s villain reform stories. Neither Ivy nor Catwoman, neither Riddler nor Clayface can be dissociated from their complexes, even if those complexes humanize. Two-Face is a rare character that we have seen before his subconscious issue expanded, and whose expressions of original innocence can be glimpsed before the theoretical eradication of his psychosis. Harvey Dent is a good man trapped by his own disorder, and Second Chance reminds us of his existence.

A simple shot of Batman in contemplative disposition implies much about his state of mind, his tragic recollection and unflinching hope that Harvey will be saved. He and Robin stand as guardian angels, passive and intent until something goes wrong. Dini and Kirkland use everything in their power to make us implicitly and effortlessly understand the nature of Batman’s love and sadness for Harvey, and it shows. A newly directed flashback consisting of very little reused animation emphasizes the extent to which the scene has tortured Batman; presumably each time he recalls it the event takes on a more intimate representation.

As soon as disaster strikes the focus jolts from the angelic voyeurism of Batman and Robin to the usual intervention of prototypical thugs who come to snatch Two-Face from salvation. What proceeds are the greatest chase sequences in the series. As soon as Batman and Robin begin their pursuit, the storyboarding becomes the star. A shot of Robin as he launches himself into the air to grapple over an elevated train is a remarkable feat of perspective and timing. As Batman chases his target we are welcome to a frenzy of shots that maintain a particular geography of traffic, as Batman weaves in and out of cars from both visceral horizontal standpoints and aerial perspectives. The best of Batman episodes maintain a balancing act between action and melodrama, and the crew of Second Chance manages this with expertise, letting the former propel the story with tense and dramatic haste while making careful use of the latter for all the effective emotional cues.

The third act, which reveals Two-Face himself as the mastermind, concentrates this alternation into a suspenseful sequence of parallel editing, juxtaposing Batman’s fisticuffs with Two-Face’s obsessive trek through the construction wreckage of the elevated Half-Moon club for a trick-coin he believes to be his own. The barrage of thugs Batman must defeat withholds the outcome, as Two-Face nervously teeters on the edge of the rubble. What might have been a corny Saboteur ledge scene is instead a deeply involved psychological dilemma that rests on Two-Face’s ability to temporarily reject his obsessions.

Almost every other episode that tackles the subject of reformation ends on a tragic note, and while Second Chance returns to square one, it concludes on a note that couldn’t be further from defeatism. Harvey yet again appears, reminding us that, even in the face of anthological conventions, there is still hope for him. The ending also gives Robin a thematic purpose beyond that of the mere sidekick. As Batman has pushed himself relentlessly to pursue and confront Two-Face, Robin fades into the background, only to emerge when Batman needs him the most. Perhaps fitting with the theme of duality, Robin’s support for Batman parallels Batman’s support for Two-Face, and the ending serves as an affirmation of each caped crusader’s intrinsic goodness and determination.

B:TAS reviews: Riddler's Reform

(12/11/09)

Most of Batman’s villains have some underlying psychological dynamic that humanizes them and consequently skews the viewer’s allegiance. In House of Garden, Catwalk, Mudslide, and Heart of Ice, the antagonists become sympathetic and Batman emerges as a cold representation of law and order. The Riddler has his own complex—he is compelled to commit crimes and leave clues—and yet he lacks a basic human drive or a point of origin for his taken-for-granted diagnosis. He seems interesting solely for his concept, his slick costume, and his wry charisma.

In Riddler’s Reform he has a villain-of-the-week appeal, lacking a motive of the sort that drove him to villainy in his previous appearances. He no longer has revenge as a reason, identity deletion an excuse. He can now frivolously commit crimes and his lack of purpose is chalked up to compulsion. A cat and mouse game ensues as Batman hopes to catch his seemingly reformed nemesis in the criminal act, ever on the watch for clues and puzzles that anticipate his burglaries. Since the writers tend to grant Batman omniscience, the game wears thin rather quickly; soon the chase runs out of steam, Riddler forced to resort to a typical deathtrap. It becomes clear, and the ending drives it home, that we are expected to appreciate him as a ‘deep’ character with engaging psychodynamic issues, rather than simply enjoy him as a cunning opponent.

That my favorite sequence is purely aesthetic and independent of plot reveals the episode’s fundamental flaw. Batman attempts to apprehend two of the Riddler’s henchmen as they descend the side of a skyscraper via window cleaning platform. The rain gives the lights of the Gotham skyline a curious glow, as the lightning adds an undeniable feeling of hectic disorientation. Extreme perspective shots behold the scale of the building at the same time they place the camera within the eyes of the terrorized perpetrators. Such a set piece doesn’t need context; it relies on the specific strengths of animation and storyboarding.

And so while people believe they enjoy the intelligence of the story, the structure, the plot twists, and the apparently layered characterization of the Riddler, I think the main attraction is almost entirely superficial. The geometric designs of the puzzles appease some basic visual delight. The black-and-white toy commercials are humorous. Eerie abandoned toy fairs and riveting action sequences are specially crafted and unique. And even though the dichotomy between warm socialite party and cold rainy city streets speaks some volumes about the Riddler’s encapsulation within Gotham’s financial elite, what stands out about that particular gathering more than his comic facial expressions of lustful surprise and arousal?

Outside of the well-beloved ending in which he is driven to madness, does anyone really care about the Riddler’s dilemma or buy that he has the ability to secure himself within the ranks of corporate tycoons while his thugs carry out his dirty work? He’s interesting so far as he creates fun scenarios and carries himself with a sardonic air of superciliousness. But his compulsion stems from nothing and exists for the sake of his conceptual identity. In the way that Baxter casts him in toy commercials for his surface publicity, so I submit that he is similarly cast here as a glossy, colorful, and charismatic concept of an adversary rather than a true character driven by human complexes or desires.

B:TAS reviews: Showdown

(12/11/09)

Showdown sets a certain standard of mythical and narrative complexity for Batman: the Animated Series. It implicitly draws a connection between Jonah Hex, a Western bounty hunter, and Batman, as if to suggest reincarnations of heroic types that persist throughout history. But furthermore, it almost effortlessly achieves a scope unparalleled by any other installment, primarily due to the dynamic between the self-contained heroic quest and the larger historical framework that grounds it.

Clearly, Jonah Hex is not part of Ras Al Ghul’s recorded story, and it is doubtful that Batman hears anything about the man. But as soon as the story enters the realm of the old West, the authors of this tale mold this flashback from dry exposition to a genre story. Joe R. Lansdale, the wordsmith responsible for Read My Lips and Perchance to Dream, infuses his feel for period dialogue to authenticate it, and character actor Bill McKinney adds the final touches, embodying Hex with a natural, rough Southern accent, keeping him far from the realm of Western stereotype. All the while, Altieri stages Hex’s arrival into a dreary ghost town with a feel for timing and tension reminiscent of Leone, and it is no surprise that Hex takes after Clint Eastwood’s trademark nameless loner.

When Hex comes upon Ras Al Ghul’s hidden lair, in which he and several workers are constructing a flying machine with which to wage war on Washington, past and present intersect and the enclosed story of Hex’s pursuit of Arkady Duvall becomes part of the larger narrative of Ras’s attempts at world conquest and eco-terrorism. The viewer can sit back and take in the sheer spectacle of Hex’s adventure, replete with carefully staged fight scenes that have Hex navigating the ship as well as some of the series’ more fluidly animated explosions, but he may also allow himself the pleasure of keeping in mind the historical and mythological context.

It is at the end of Hex’s adventure that a remarkable thing happens; the two temporal modes in which the story is told take on a thematic relation to one another. Hex’s story ends with his wry, “I’m getting too old for this,” which then segues into Batman’s and Robin’s encounter with Ras at the airport. The big revelation is that Arkady is Ras’s son, is still alive, and has now aged terribly. But further than this motif of age, which carries a tragic undertone in both tales, there is a statement on the traditional relationship between hero and villain involving a contrast between Hex’s moral pursuit of the malicious Duvall and Batman’s and Robin’s refrain from such a showdown. Though Hex becomes the outlet for adventure and action suggested for the title, the story’s true significance is that Batman and Robin recognize in Ras the human qualities that coexist with his tyranny so as to peacefully let him go.

And meanwhile, the animation, still by Dong Yang, comes strikingly close to TMS’s work in Superman: the Animated Series. The designs move with more looseness and fluidity while continuing to look more angular and simplified. Hair and clothing take on a wispy quality while shadows flutter about with an invigorating energy.

B:TAS reviews: The Lion and the Unicorn

(12/11/09)

When producing The Lion and the Unicorn, the masterminds behind Batman: the Animated Series made the mistake of assuming that Alfred Pennyworth is an underappreciated character worthy of a forced spotlight. He is already written to be the most charmingly sardonic of characters, ever privy to a droll aside. His sense of humor is impeccable, and it is easy to infer that he is also as noble and loyal as they come. It does not surprise me to learn that Alfred, whom we have already seen piloting the Batwing, used to perform military service, though it does disappoint me that the show’s producers felt the need to dwell on his past life.

Alfred the butler is infinitely more exciting than Alfred the hostage. Clearly Robin is supposed to be a stand-in for the viewer, baffled that Alfred used to live a life of thrills and danger. Yet the end result is that Alfred is locked up with a stereotypical Brit at the hands of a stereotypical European terrorist. The show devolves into an Indiana Jones style adventure serial with less plot and less fun. Ostensibly we are to view Alfred in a new light, but it is difficult to do so when he is presented as little more than an objective in a straightforward rescue mission.

Red Claw’s over-the-top villainy and the spy picture elements contribute considerably to this stripped down adventure serial vibe, and yet The Lion and the Unicorn neither has the courage to do anything serious with its subject nor the self-deprecation to mock its genre trappings. Avatar found a way to accomplish both and as a result brims with style and originality. The Lion and the Unicorn, by contrast, feels tired, by-the-numbers, and lazy.

This tiredness seeps into the art design. The major appeal, more than anything, is the non-Gotham location; this time Batman and Robin have an adventure in London, England. The exterior of Red Claw’s castle outpost is imposing in its density and medieval architecture, and yet the ambitious plotting neglects the alluring atmosphere of the London streets. Kirkland and his staff create a London connoted by the most pedestrian icons: lampposts, Big Ben, double-decker buses, etc. Yet when first we glimpse the streets and alleyways they are devoid of any sign of life save the emergence of two malicious thugs. One gets the impression that this could very well be Gotham if not for the haze. Meanwhile the more time spent within the walls of the castle, the more it becomes a dull series of deathtraps and vacuous corridors than a towering, ominous relic.

Given that we are introduced to not a single London citizen outside of heads of parliament, there are no real stakes. It’s impossible to care for the desolate city and its nonexistent inhabitants. There is no accomplishment as Batman incredulously destroys a missile intended to decimate an entire city, especially when its blast radius falls short of a city block. Immediately after this dull feat of heroism, there is a pan across to the airport and Alfred says farewell to his underdeveloped military friend. As in Time Out of Joint, there is no real denouement, but even worse, what denouement exists is not even earned.

B:TAS reviews: Baby-Doll

(11/26/09)

Neither Mary Dahl nor Matt Hagen can escape from their respective showbiz institutions.  In Mudslide, the latter can only attain a degree of normalcy if he conforms to the shape of an Oscar statue, and the only way he can maintain any kind of human contact is through melodramatic acting conventions.  Hagen’s is a tragic story, peppered with allusions that reinforce his identity crisis.  But Baby-Doll is purely conceptual; a woman with an aging disability that renders her typecast as a lovable little girl wishes to recreate her sitcom existence by capturing her old costars, all of whom have moved on with their lives.

Baby-Doll looks so forcedly cartoonish that even without her grating theatricality it is impossible not to mentally typecast her; it is not necessarily her disability but the design the producers have endowed her that entraps her so.  If the rest of Batman’s rogues have molded themselves into one-note existences, Baby-Doll’s fate seems more predestined.  This almost Kubrick-esque sense of conceptualization and narrative inevitability is far more suited toward a bold artistic statement than a human tragedy.  There is something cold and mechanical about how Baby-Doll plays out, and this is only reinforced by photographic parallelisms and frequency of poetic justice.

She occasionally reverts from her television persona to her more mature self, spouting off soliloquies that are pathetic and almost irreverently so given their banality and the collective “awww” from her prerecorded audience.  She lacks any real stability; clearly she possesses some adult intelligence, and yet when she reverts to her Baby-Doll act her revenge schemes become almost laughably irrational.  Indeed, how could she not have known that cousin Spunky would upstage her; aren’t actors usually required to read a script?  She cries out for attention through her performances and then attempts to evoke some falsely earned understanding through her monologues.

Whereas Mudslide’s allusions carry some thematic force—most can be viewed as both comic references and intertextual metaphors—Baby-Doll’s are no more than in-jokes.  I smile when her Gilligan’s Island themed henchman cause a standoff with the police, and Baby-Doll the sitcom draws heavily from both The Brady Bunch and Dennis the Menace, serving to make light of sitcom conventions but not much else.  The television aficionado will nod his head and move on.  The film buff will watch Mudslide and see something more artistic about the callbacks to the golden age of Hollywood.

The ending is poignant in a way.  It is the first time that Dini allows a real lamentation for her condition, no longer coming across as a cold manipulator and finally shedding his synthetic story progression for a burst of sincerity.  There still remains a disappointing exactness in the closing line, and the funhouse hall of mirrors is the most tired of psychological battlefields.  But in having Dahl reach out to Batman in an infantile cry for security, Dini knows that even the most critical of viewers will feel something for this strange, confused character.

B:TAS reviews: Bane

(11/26/09)

When Bane first makes his appearance in his titular episode, he is preceded by shots of a crimson sky.  Gotham Airlines or whatever is responsible for his arrival continues what is a definite red motif.  Recently having seen Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Flight of the Red Balloon, in which the color red was used as a bright hopeful contrast to the bleakness of both the mise-en-scene itself and the character’s own troubling lives, I find myself interested in its apocalyptic overtones in Bane.  Even though his accent and Mexican wrestler garb compromise part of his menace, his enormous stature and assured upright disposition solidify him as a figure of terror and despair.

Though Bane is at its core a showdown episode, it is directed in its best moments as a horror film.  When Killer Croc evades the dynamic duo by detouring through the sewer, who but Bane shows up to remove his competition.  We see his exaggeratedly muscular arm strike its way through the sewer wall, hear his cry of rage, and we are then left to imagine how exactly Croc was left with multiple broken bones.  As Batman and Robin look on the tattered Batmobile, one gets the impression that Bane really is capable of damage beyond what is allowed by primetime animation.  Bane, a figure so enticing and so intimidating because of his physical presence, is left off-screen for us to form our own mental images of him, as if he were a beast so visually stunning that maximum effect can only be achieved by prolonging his full reveal.

Bane is not at any such level of visual bewilderment.  As already mentioned, his Mexican wrestling outfit diminishes his role as a perfect assassin, and the one thing that makes him threatening, his built, is communicated to us in the opening scenes. But the scenes that remove him from our vision do serve a few not entirely misleading purposes, the first of which is obviously to make us anticipate the level of destruction he is capable of.  The second is to enforce the idea that Batman must form his own mental image and an expectation of what Bane is, what he looks like, and what he is capable of.  We the audience are let in on a few hush-hush conversations between Bane and his cohorts, but when Batman breaks the window of Candace’s apartment because of Robin’s endangerment at Bane’s hands, we know for certain that he expects the worst.

Even though I have seen Bane several times, whenever I bear witness to the first fifteen minutes I feel tension, anxiety, suspense, anticipation and any such similar word that expresses the almost psychological threat that Bane poses.  The final act is inevitably an anticlimax then.  Batman battles Bane on a cargo ship, Robin the victim of a deathtrap.  Bane is slow, relies more on his rage than on his smarts, another facet of him that is communicated to us early on but that doesn’t quite get its due, and Batman defeats him by severing his venom supply, a physical weakness all too noticeable.  The denouement is a shame, presenting Bane as an ordinary fellow whose menace presumably derives solely from his drugs, Batman ever assured in his victory.  Surely there must be something more to Bane, his obsessive drives or his bold intellect, that makes him and him alone a perfect killing machine.

B:TAS reviews: Catwalk

(11/16/09)

Selina Kyle has always been a troubling character due to her close relations with former story editor Sean Catherine Derek’s social agenda.  Never mind the unintentionally parodic feminism, her role as a shrill mouthpiece for animal rights is cloying enough in its political commentary.  Paul Dini does not take a revisionist approach in his explorative piece, Catwalk, but he does take these familiar traits and transforms them from soapbox ploys to representations of Catwoman’s existential crisis.  Her stance on animal rights is now an extension of how she feels about herself; her captivity as it emerges from social conformity mirrors the captivity of her animal brethren.

Her femininity is exploited to greater effect as well.  This is not the insulting female empowerment message of The Cat and the Claw, which did a terrible disservice to that very idea by raising the women to predetermined masculine standards of power and by hammering home that message with a patronizing repetition.  In Catwalk, Dini shoots for an almost transcendent dance between Catwoman’s feminine allure and Batman’s masculine hardness in a luminous dream sequence.  She performs her part with energy and grace; he stands motionless but intimidating and controlling.  The relationship between Batman and Catwoman is so defined according to sexual friction between the two, that both in terms of romance and in terms of their adversarial dynamic, that such opposition becomes a gender battle of sorts; one can read a few things into Batman’s position of control and Catwoman’s social captivity at his hands.

Every episode about the couple needs a third party to generate conflict and stir up trouble.  Dini chooses Scarface, a character whose villainy stems more from psychosis than from the oblique tyranny of Roland Daggett or the archetypal mad scientist traits of Tyger, Tyger’s Emile Dorian.  Perhaps his obvious grotesquerie is meant to foil Catwoman’s moral and psychological grayness.  Though not associated with the inmates of Arkham, she remains plagued by disorder, that of kleptomania, a far less extravagant form of mental instability than dissociative identity disorder.  Because she only skirts the line of moral and existential chaos, she remains the adversary with the greatest chance of being converted to a healthy existence.  But in that Batman is himself far from normal in his quixotic crime fighting quests, it is quite possible that Catwoman’s attraction to this inherently romantic figure is every bit as responsible for her perpetual thievery as her identification with liberated wildlife.

When superhero cartoons, which already have so much to do with the concepts of identity and role-playing, churn out character-charged installments like Catwalk, the potential for critical character evaluation becomes significantly great.  So it is easy to sidestep the frenetic rhythm and springboard plotting that makes this particular episode such a great outing.  The story constantly doubles back on itself and all physical encounters between Batman and Catwoman are infused with an agile gracefulness.  Animation direction matches the real-time story progression for speed and flashbulb brevity.

Over the span of the narrative, each of the three major players opens his or herself up for betrayal, Scarface intentionally for making the first move, Catwoman for risking a shady partnership for her freedom, and Batman for ever holding onto the belief that Catwoman can change, even though the cards that comprise the ideological framework of Batman: the Animated Series always seem stacked against him.

B:TAS reviews: Time Out of Joint

(11/16/09)

Time Out of Joint’s main attraction is not Batman or the Clock King, but a gizmo that persuades Temple Fugate to trade in his ingenuity for a superpower.  Yes, he must fall back on his intricate knowledge of the train system to make his getaway—he has not been reduced to pure gimmick—but his schemes have devolved into assaults and dynamite plantings.  Fugate comes equipped not with his knack for precision, but with an arrogant self-image of invincibility.

This is problematic, especially as it pertains to his peculiar allure.  In The Clock King, we were drawn to the fact that a man identified by an obsession with clocks did not depend on derivative sci-fi technologies.  If one was willing to adopt a state of mind intent on meticulousness, precision, and memory, it proposed, one could render a city helpless.  For all of its faults, The Clock King had a basis in reality that was genuinely intriguing, and if Fugate was to be brought back, perhaps he could use his systematic knowledge to do more than tamper with subway stations and traffic lights.

The device that emerges as Time Out of Joint’s object of interest is not terribly otherworldly; it is rationalized through pseudo-science as having to do with Einstein’s theory of relativity and is the product of an isolated scientist’s noble research.  And yet when it falls into the hands of a vile vendetta-driven man, it becomes a conductor for super powers, and in its artifice appeals to the wandering minds of children, ever seeking some element of the unreal, the fantastical, anything that might heighten the action.  As one becomes more cultured, one does not immediately frown on such elements of science fiction.  But when such action-motivated constructs impede on narrative interest, then they tend to grate.

I already argued that the time manipulating device cheapens Fugate’s character, not by altering his behavior or sardonic attitude, but by giving him a crutch outside of his intellect, something that bestows on him an automatic advantage over his adversaries.  This makes way for perhaps the dullest of action cartoon plot twists, that the heroes are going to borrow their opponent’s weapon and confront him by, as the saying goes, fighting fire with fire.  It’s a rather banal affair that immediately gives Batman and Robin the upper hand as, all else equal, the two with physical dexterity will topple the ordinary man in his ordinary attire.

The brief catharsis that follows the dynamic duo’s victory is not long enough methinks.  Whenever I see the armored police van diminishing in stature as it nears the sunrise, a sigh of relief comes on, as I know that this by-the-numbers action exercise is behind me.  Time Out of Joint digs a hole of formulaic traps for itself out of which it cannot possibly climb.  In its tepid predictability, I find it harder to bear than the series’ more blatant monstrosities, during which I find myself amused by the almost playful barrage of formal mishaps.