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.