Neil Sharpson's Blog, page 11

Trouble in the Hood

Hi all, sorry, the Hoodwinked! review is going to be a little late this week because I feel…like…death. Hopefully just a 24 bug but it’s laid me flat on my tail. Review should be up in a few days. Thanks for understanding.

Mouse.

“You’re just jealous, because I’m a genuine freak and you have to wear a mask!”

Funny story. Back when my brother and I were doing our YouTube channel we had an impression-off where we had to pull random characters out of a hat.

I pulled “Charlie Kelly from It’s Alway Sunny in Philadelphia” which I had never seen before. However, my flustered confused, panicky, high-pitched rambling attempts managed somehow to translate into a near pitch perfect impression of a character I knew absolutely nothing about.

Segue. Tim Burton’s Batman.

Somehow, despite neither reading, understanding or even particularly liking Batman, Tim Burton’s sensibilities as a director were such a perfect fit for the character that he created probably the most influential depiction that there has ever been.

And it was huge, a box-office, critical and merchandising golden god that conquered all before it. Now, Burton had not enjoyed his time directing that film, so Warner Brothers offered him the one thing no Hollywood director can refuse; pure uncut Grade A coc…I mean, COMPLETE CREATIVE CONTROL.

“Whatever you want, Timmy Baby, you got it. You want to rewrite the script, you rewrite the script. You want Jon Peters demoted to executive producer? We can have him killed if you want ha ha ha! (seriously though, we have ways…). You want Kim Basinger gone? Kim who? Never heard of her. JUST MAKE US ANOTHER BATMAN TIM. JUST DO IT AGAIN, FOR UNCLE WARNER.”

And he did do it again for Uncle Warner, and what he did remains probably the most divisive Batman movie of them all. You probably either love it or hate it, there’s very little inbetween.

Whatever your opinion, I think we can all agree: It’s a Tim Burton movie.

In fact I would argue that it is THE Tim Burton movie.

So. Christmas in Gotham City. In stately Cobblepot manor Tucker and Esther Cobblepot are appalled when their infant son Oswald is born with flippers for hands and an unquenchable hunger for cats (the first few months are always rough).

What with creche fees being what they are, they decide to dumb the baby’s bassinet in a river where it floats into the sewer and is found by a flock of sewer-dwelling penguins.

Flashforward 33 years later and Gotham we meet Max Shreck, played by Christopher Walkin cos-playing as Christopher Lloyd.

And named, of course, after cinema’s original Batman .

Look, apologies, we’re going to have to talk about Donald Trump for a moment. I’ll try and keep it chill, I promise, I just think this is interesting. See, to the audience watching this in 1992, Shreck is an obvious stand in for Trump, at least how he was perceived back then; a big city businessman who was ruthless and greedy but also smart, canny and politically savvy. Now, because Trump’s public persona has changed so much between his ageing and, y’know, everything it’s not as immediately obvious to a 2023 audience that that’s who Walkin is parodying. But THEN Shreck’s son, Chip, shows up and you’re just:

Oh, well OBVIOUSLY that’s Eric Trump.

But, eh, Eric Trump was eight years old when this movie came out so this is completely unintentional. I just think it’s funny that parodies have similar genetics to their inspirations.

Anyway, Shreck is trying to strong arm the Mayor into approving his new power plant but the Mayor refuses, saying that Gotham gets all the power it needs from all its factories full of giant vats of radioactive clown goop. They’re interrupted by Selina Kyle, Shreck’s secretary played by Michelle You-Will-Never-Spell-My-Name-Right-So-Why-Bother-Trying. Shreck casually humiliates Selina and then he and the Mayor head out to the lighting of the tree.

The tree ceremony is then attacked by the Red Triangle Gang, a gang of criminal circus performers led by the Penguin. And this just does my OCD in. Why does the Penguin have clown henchmen? What next? Is he going to start sending people riddles and stealing ancient Egyptian cat statues? Stay in your damn lane Oswald! Also, this was a perfect opportunity for the triumphant return of the G.O.O.N. squad and the movie blew it.

“There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.”

So during the attack, Commissioner Gordon orders the Bat Signal to be lit and Batman arrives to do what Batman does best: FUCKING MURDER. Whereas in the previous film Batman gunned down criminals with cold efficiency, that’s apparently not doing it for him any more and he’s taken to burning people alive with the Batmobile’s jet engine.

He takes a break from burning clowns alive to save Selina Kyle from one of the Red Triangle gang and she then takes her attempted assailants tazer. Meanwhile, Shreck is kidnapped and taken to the sewer where he meets the Penguin, played by Danny DeVito in the most skin-scrawling, unnerving, disgusting, gloriously revolting performance of his career. Prior to 2005.

I eventually watched it.

The Penguin shows Max all the incriminating documents, evidence and dismembered former business partners that he has on him, and Shreck agrees to help the Penguin re-enter society and uncover his roots.

Meanwhile, Selina has to return to the office and discovers that Shreck’s proposed plant will, instead of providing energy, actually drain it, much like a holiday with young children.. Shreck, who’s been having a very stressful day all things considered, finds her and makes with the menacing scooching. He backs her up against a window while she whimpers: “How can you be so mean to someone so meaningless?!”

And man, it is a good thing that this movie is absolutely stacked with fantastic actors otherwise the dialogue might sound really bad. Seriously, the amount of times an absolute clunker of a line is saved by awesome delivery and sheer megawatt screen presence is staggering.

Anyway, Shreck pushes her out a window and she falls to the snowy pavement below. Alley cats crawl over her and start licking her until she wakes up and staggers, half comatose, back to her apartment.

And then we get….ho boy. The “Hell Here” scene.

“Honey. I’m home…”

This scene fucking traumatised me as a kid. I mentioned in the Batman review when discussing the scene of Joker in the surgery that Tim Burton is a phenomenally effective director of horror when he wants to be and this scene tops that and then some. It’s brilliantly staged, mesmerisingly acted and Danny Elfman’s nervy, nightmarish score makes my skin crawl. It also brings the point of this Catwoman across. This is not a subtle movie. At ALL. In fact it’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer. But I think it is effective in what it’s trying to do, at least when it’s not relying on dialogue.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

But THIS scene? Look, I can only speak from my own perspective but I remember watching this movie as an eleven year old boy and thinking. “Oh wow. Being a woman is kind of awful.”

Hey. Sometimes you need a sledgehammer.

Anyway, the next day the Mayor’s baby son is kidnapped and then rescued by the Penguin. The Penguin instantly becomes the new hotness in Gotham and, with Shreck’s help, launches a bid to become Mayor. Hey, I’ve seen this one!

The Penguin also digs into the city’s records and discovers his name, which must have been a real rollercoaster of emotions.

Batman, however, suspects the Penguin is up to something for literally no reason. The next day, Bruce visits Shreck to tell him that he’s going to oppose his power plant and that he knows that Cobblepot is actually the leader of the Red Triangle Gang but that he “can’t prove it yet”. Which is something that someone who’s not Batman would definitely say.

“Prove it? Bruce…you’re a businessman. Why are you investigating crimes? Should…should I be investigating crimes?”“You’re not investigating crimes?!”“NOBODY TOLD ME I HAD TO DO THAT, I DON’T KNOW!?”

They’re interrupted by Selina who just swans into the office to show Shreck that he sucks at defenestration and Bruce ends up asking her out on a date.

Now, if you’re going to do a Catwoman story you’d better have chemistry between your Bruce Wayne and your Selina Kyle and thankfully this movie has it in spades. In fact, it’s probably the only live-action Batman movie where the romantic relationship feels central to the story rather than just an adjunct. I mean, inevitably. The only way an actor couldn’t have chemistry with Michelle Pfffiefffer is if he was literally made of a noble element like Xenon or Argon or…

“Helium?”“That CAN’T be right!”

Catwoman takes to the streets and saves a random woman from being raped…

And then she blames the intended victim for “making it so easy”.

That’s…that’s really bad. That is very very bad. You go away, movie, and you think about what you’ve done.

Anyway, the Penguin orders the Red Triangle Gang to cause havoc in the streets of Gotham and Batman and Penguin finally come face to face in a scene that makes me question whether I even matter.

What I mean is…does writing even matter? Because this scene is at once fantastic and…kinda terrible? I mean, let’s just look at this on the page.

: Admiring your handiwork?

: Touring the riot scene. Gravely assessing the devastation. Upstanding mayor stuff.

: You’re not the mayor.

: Things change.

: What do you want?

: Ah, the direct approach. I admire that in a man with a mask. You don’t really think you’ll win, do you?

: Things change.

[Catwoman backflips into the middle of the confrontation. They stare at her, momentarily nonplussed]

: Meow.

Now, it’s not entirely terrible.The “man with a mask” like is actually pretty fine. But most of this is circular fluff. Why shouldn’t Batman think he’ll win? This is literally their first meeting and Penguin hasn’t beaten him any time before now. Which means that Batman’s echoed “Things change” is equally nonsensical. And yet, the performances, the staging, the direction, the score are all so effective that it actually does feel like an epic and momentous meeting of old arch-nemeses and not a scene that was shoe-horned in to make it easier to market the video game tie-in.

“Oh yeah?! I’ll buy your game Mr Penguin, and prove you wrong! How do you like that!?”

They’re interrupted by Catwoman, who’s just blown up one of Shreck’s department stores. Batman chases after her, they engage in a little BDSM masquerading as a crime-fighting and she escapes.

Later, she shows up at the Penguin’s mayoral campaign headquarters in probably the worst scene in the movie. You know that bit in Batman where Vicki Vale wakes up and finds Bruce literally sleeping upside down…because that’s what bats do? Yeah, this is just a scene of Catwoman and Penguin doing bizarre cat and bird shit for no reason. Catwoman wants to ally with Penguin to destroy Batman…because that’s her kink. I’m not joking. She literally says she wants to play a role in his”degradation” and that that makes her feel dirty. Anyway, the Penguin reveals that his goons are planning on planting a bomb in the batmobile (man, these sewer clowns are technically adept). Catwoman doesn’t want to make Batman a martyr and instead proposes that they frame him.

So, Oswald holds a press conference challenging the Mayor to re-light the Christmas tree. He then kidnaps the “Ice Princess”, the model who was going to light the tree, and leaves a bloody batarang in her dressing room. He lures Batman to a rooftop and then causes her to fall to her death while unleashing a massive swarm of bats from the Christmas tree.

Batman then chooses this moment to turn his cape into a pair of bat wings, and escape by flying over all the people being terrorised by bats.

Dude. Think about the optics of that.

Catwoman isn’t happy with Penguin killing the Ice Princess so Penguin tries to kill her with a flying umbrella. The Penguin then enacts like his third of five master plans in this movie, using a remote control device to hijack the batmobile and cause it to go tearing through the streets of Gotham. Batman, however, gets the last laugh, as he’s able to record the Penguin’s gloating about how he “played this city like a harp from Hell” before deactivating the remote control.

At the Penguin’s next press conference, Batman hacks the audio system and plays the Penguin’s own words over the speech, which causes Gotham to turn against him and pelt him with rotten food.

Okay. That’s a good line.

So, like any good improv comic, Penguin simply moves to his next master plan: killing all of Gotham’s first born children. At Max Shreck’s Christmas party, Bruce and Selina dance and realise who they really are which leads to another great line; Selina’s stunned: “Does this mean we have to start fighting?”

They’re interrupted by the Penguin who crashes the party and tries to kidnap Eric Trump but his father selflessly offers himself in exchange (real comic book logic here). Back at the Penguin’s lair, Cobblebot awaits the arrival of the children of Gotham only to receive a polite note from Batman telling him his evil plan is foiled. But, like a matryoshka doll of villainy, Cobblepot always has an evil plan inside his evil plan, and now he straps a load of missiles to his penguins and sends them out to destroy Gotham. Fortunately, Alfred is able to use butler hacking skills to override the Penguin’s signal and send them back to the Penguins base, blowing it up. Batman and Penguin fight and Penguin is knocked to his eventual death through a roof by a swarm of bats that Batman controls.

This is actually a recurring visual motif in Batman films that signifies “the director read one Batman comic and it was written by Frank Miller.”

Catwoman shows up to kill Shreck and Bruce begs her to forgoe this life of bondage themed vengeance, she says “nuts to you”, Shreck shoot her four times but she tanks the shots because she’s a cat who’s got nine lives and this world just runs on fairy tale logic. She then uses her tazer to electrocute Shreck and seemingly herself but Bruce is only able to find his body which means that she is absolutely still alive and will spend over a decade in development hell before being replaced by Halle Berry.

***

Okay, okay. I’ve poked a lot of fun at this one. But, if you’re a fan, as I am, of Tim Burton. If, like me, you find his movies to be beautiful and even artistically vital. If you would genuinely rank him among the Great American Directors then this is about as pure an expression of his work as you can find. It’s a gorgeous film. Dark, sexy, atmospheric. Often hilarious. Sometimes intentionally so.

True to Batman? Not really. But absolutely true to itself.

The Dark Knight Detective

So I had this idea that Keaton’s Batman was an after-thought in this film, completely over-shadowed by the villains but that’s not entirely the case. Batman is somewhat divorced from the main action of the film but it’s not like he doesn’t get anything to do. I actually find myself liking Keaton’s Batman a lot more in this than in the previous film. His Bruce Wayne is cooler now and with a kind of low-key charm that makes it very plausible that Selina Kyle would be interested in him. He just seems like a really nice, chill guy. There’s also an element of compassion and empathy in his performance, directed at Selina and even Oswald. When he says “I hope he finds [his parents]” you can tell he means it, because he sees something of himself in this strange outcast freak. As for his Batman, the suit remains awesome and Keaton absolutely brings the presence needed.

His Faithful Manservant

Michael Gough IS Alfred Pennyworth.

That Pompous, Waddling Maestro of Fowl Play, Master of a Million Criminal Umbrellas!

You know who doesn’t get enough credit as an actor? Danny DeVito. I mean, everyone loves him, but I don’t think people really give him his props as an honest to God Capital A Actor. On the page, the Penguin is a complete fucking mess here. A veritable Madlib of weird elements that have no business going together (clowns? sewer penguins? umbrellas?), a constant shifting of motives and schemes and just some of the…worst…dialogue…

“I was their number one son! And they treated me like number two!”

And DeVito takes all that garbage and makes it WORK. He is an instantly arresting, deeply unsettling, utterly, gloriously grotesque creation.

The Queen of Criminals, the Princess of Plunder

I mean…what am I supposed to say? What can I add to this?

Perfection.

Our Nefarious Villain

Christopher Walkin is Christopher Walkin at his Christopher Walkinest.

The Comish

Pat Hingle’s Commisioner Gordon has a sorry trajectory from somewhat competent cop to completely ineffectual buffoon. But here’s there’s not really enough of him to say one way or the other.

Our Plucky Sidekicks

Plenty of fun supporting characters here, particularly in the Red Triangle Gang.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

Okay, if you’re ever asked “what was that movie where Batman burned a man alive” it’s this one. This is the movie where that happens. He also blows up another henchman with his own bomb and smiles like it’s NOTHING.

Jesus.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

Batman uses a programmable Batarang that takes out several mooks before it gets taken out by a poodle. I guess he didn’t have any Poodle Repellant Bat Spray.

“Tsk. Rookie.”

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

I didn’t really get to talk that much about the Burtonverse Batmobile in my Batman review so let me do that here.

I want this thing inside me.

This Batmobile was built from scratch for the film and was based on racing cars from the early 20th century. It’s still probably the most iconic and influential depiction of the Batmobile over thirty years later.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: 01 June 2023

NEXT TIME: Anne Hathaway. Glenn Close. Xzibit. Together at last.

John Carter (2012)

Hello everyone. Recently I decided to get back into acting and I’m going to be appearing in a production of Comedy of Errors in two weeks time as Dromio of Ephesus aka the best Dromio.

Dromio of Syracuse is trash and you all know it.

Also, Spouse of Mouse is on a business trip leaving me with two orphans crying plaintively for their mother night and day.

Also, I have a really tight writing deadline to meet this week.

Ergo, review short. Soz.

***

Normally, a film like John Carter is exactly the kind of movie that I dread to review.

It aroused no strong feelings in me. I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. But honestly, the more I watched it the more I realised…this is kinda good? I mean, the elements are really strong. For being a decade old, the effects hold up a lot better than most of what Disney is putting out today.

The cast is full of actors I love or at least have no ill will towards (I like Taylor Kitsch, y’all are just mean). The script is nothing spectacular but perfectly solid. There was clearly a lot of thought and love and creativity and subtle world-building that went into the design of its fictional Martian setting. And there’s some strikingly beautiful cinematography. Like this scene where John Carter is fleeing on horseback across the Arizona Territory pursued by Union Soldiers:

Just gorgeous, old fashioned film-making. There is a lot to like in John Carter.

And yet, and yet…something isn’t working here. Some wheel just ain’t clicking.

Okay, history time.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of Tarzan, wrote the Barsoom series in the nineteen tens. These books predominantly feature the adventures of John Carter, an American Civil War veteran from Earth who is transported to Barsoom (Mars) and becomes a Conan the Barbarian figure, fighting wars, defeating monsters and having proper sex with girls.

“Refresh my memory, Mr Carter, which side of the Civil War did you fight on?”“Oh well, you know. The chaos of war. Who can even remember?”

Yeah, we’ll get to that.

Anyway, the Barsoom books are in this weird place in terms of broader pop culture. On the one hand, not only is John Carter not that well known, he’s not even the most famous creation of his author (that of course being Jimber-Jaw the caveman. And Tarzan, I guess).

But on the other hand, these books are, no joke, some of the most influential science fiction ever written. I mean, you have to work damn hard to find a piece of American sci-fi that isn’t at least indirectly influenced by Carter. For starters, Superman has a whole load of Carter’s DNA and that’s pretty much the entire superhero genre in his debt right there. Likewise, Star Wars, Dune, Warhammer 40k, Avatar…I could go on and on but I think you get the point.

The problem is…okay, personal aside. I, somehow, managed to make it to my twenties without ever listening to the Beatles. I know, I don’t understand how that happened either. And the thing is, when I finally sat down to listen to them my first reaction was “that’s it?! That’s the greatest band ever?!”

It’s the old “Seinfeld is Unfunny” trope. Pop culture has been rifling through Old Man Carter’s pockets for so long that there’s virtually nothing left that hasn’t been done elsewhere and probably better. Which is doubly unfair when you consider that Hollywood has been trying to make a John Carter movie since the thirties. If only one of those projects had gotten off the ground, the whole history of science fiction cinema could have been radically different. Instead we got this, a movie who’s only claim to fame is how few people saw it and how little of an impact it left.

Anyway, the film begins in 1881 with Edgar Rice Burroughs (yes, that one) attending the funeral of his uncle, John Carter. Carter’s body is laid to rest in a tomb and Carter’s attorney gives Burroughs his uncle’s journal which should take him approximately 130 minutes to read (less if edited for terrestrial).

So, flashback to 1868 in the Arizona territory. John Carter is a prospector who gets press-ganged into the Union Army by one Colonel Powell to fight the Apaches. Okay, so, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. In the novels, John Carter is a former Confederate soldier. Knowing this going in, I was expecting that the movie would either switch Carter’s allegiance to the Union or simply gloss over it all together and not mention it. To my surprise, the movie does neither. Now, the only thing I can imagine that would be more uncomfortable than an unrepentant proud, Confederate Carter would be a weepy, so-damn-sorry Carter. I want to watch a movie about a woke Confederate about as much as I want to watch a movie about a racist one. Actually, probably less, at least the latter would only insult my ethics, not my intelligence. But how the movie deals with this problem is actually, I think, really smart. We get a genuinely fun scene where Powell tries to recruit Carter only for Carter to keep trying to escape mid-sentence which ends with Powell giving his pitch with Carter locked in a cell:

POWELL: And in the eyes of Uncle Sam, a necessary man for the defence of the Arizona Territory.

CARTER: No.

POWELL: Son, we are up to our chin-straps in Apaches.

CARTER: Not my concern.

POWELL: I do believe it is your concern, Captain. Folks are being attacked in their own homes, slain.

CARTER: You started it, you finish it.

POWELL: Ohh! You gone native, have you?

CARTER: Apaches can go to hell too. We’re nothing but a warring species. And I want no part of it.

Carter has indeed severed his allegiance to the Confederacy, but only as a side-effect of severing his allegiance to the entire human race. He is just done with everybody‘s shit. The entire species can jump off a cliff as far as he’s concerned. I like this for two reasons; it feels more realistic and it’s also a good starting point for a story about a man who finds new purpose on an alien world.

Anyway, Carter escapes by pissing through the bars of his cell which attracts the guard who gets knocked out and his keys stolen. Carter rides off on Powell’s horse. Powell and a gang of soldiers tear off after him until they come face to face with a band of Apaches. It goes exactly how you’d expect and in the ensuing shoot-out Powell is wounded and Carter turns back to rescue him…which flies completely in the face of everything we’ve been shown about this character up until this point. I don’t even know why it’s in the script other than Powell is a character in the original story and apparently that’s justification enough for him to tag along.

Anyway, fleeing the Apaches, Carter and Powell find themselves in a mysterious cave full of gold. In the cave, a mysterious bald man appears and tries to stab Carter. Carter, having brought a gun to a knife fight, shoots the dude. He then touches the guy’s medallion which instantly teleports him to the surface of Mars.

Man. The Curiosity Rover was lying through its teeth!

After a neat scene of John getting use to the lower Martian gravity, he discovers that he can jump around like Mario. He gets captured by Tars Tarkas (Willem Defoe), a four armed green alien who is king of a species called the Tharks. And there’s a running running gag where, because Carter introduced himself by mentioning his home state, the Tharks insist on calling him “Virginia”. It’s cute.

“My friends call me “Ginny”.

Alright so. Here’s the setup. As well as the Tharks, there is a species of human-like Red Martians. There are two Red Martian cities, Zodanga and Helium. Zodanga is cruel and Helium is noble (in which case, it really should have been called “Argon” or “Xenon”.)

“Helium’s a noble gas too.”“What?! Since when?!”“Since the birth of the universe, sweetie.”

The things you learn living this blogging life o’ mine.

Okay, so. Helium and Zodanga are at war and the Tharks want nothing to do with it. The ruler of Helium, Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds) desperately agrees to wed his daughter, the Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) to the ruler of Zodanga, Sab Than (Dominic West). She ain’t having that and tries to escape and is rescued by Carter when her ship is shot down by Sab Than’s forces over the Thark’s lands.

The Tharks are so impressed by Virginia’s fighting prowess that Tars Tarkas proclaims Carter to be “Dotar Sojat”.

Carter tries to refuse but Tars Tarkas is all “nice princess you got there, shame if something happened to her” so he has to accept. Carter is obviously anxious to get chatting to the only woman round here who doesn’t lay eggs and when he starts talking about oceans she assumes he’s mad. We then get a scene where Dejah draws a map of the solar system in the sand and Carter realises that he’s not on Earth, but on Mars. Oh, and then he stands and looks up at the two moons in the sky.

See, Johnny, I kinda feel you should have been able to figure that out without help.

When Carter tells Dejah how he came to Mars via a medallion, she tells him that he must be a “Thern”, a mysterious race of messengers for the goddess Issus. She takes him to the Tharks temple and, by reading some ancient inscriptions, Dejah discovers a map to the Gates of Iss which supposedly is how the Therns travel to and from the planet. She offers to guide him there in exchange for Carter helping her escape from the Tharks. Now a female Thark named Sola, who has befriended Carter tries to warn them against entering the Thark’s temple but all three of them get arrested and sentenced to death. But, it turns out that Tars Tarkas is actually Sola’s father (Tharks think families are cringe and don’t normally acknowledge familial bonds) so he frees all three of them in the night and they escape with the medallion.

On the way, there’s some shenanigans where it turns out Dejah was actually leading them to Helium, hoping that when he arrived there Carter would be so bowled over by the rightness of her people’s cause that we would join the fight against Zodanga. Carter snarls that “everyone thinks their cause is just!”

“Even when it really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really isn’t!”

Finally she breaks down and admits that she just doesn’t want to marry the Prince of Zodanga because she thinks he’s a douche and he’s all “okay, that I can respect”. She agrees to take him to the Gates of Iss for real this time and in return he promises to consider joining the fight against Zodanga. She does this even though she admits that the Thern’s aren’t real and she doesn’t really believe that he’s from Earth, just that he’s a very bouncy lunatic.

Now, turns out that Therns are real and they are secretly guiding Zodanga and one of them is Matai Shang, who is played by Mark Strong because this movie was made in 2012, right smack bang in the middle of that period where he was in absolutely everything.

Shang has brough an army of Warhoons, who are like Tharks but even nastier, to recapture Dejah so that she can be married to Sab Than which is all part of the Therns Master Plan. As the horde attacks, Carter tells Dejah and Sola to flee and he takes on this entire army single-handed while having flashbacks to burying his dead wife and child after their farmstead was torched during the war.

And it. Is. EPIC.

I mean. Fucking hell. No notes.

Sab Than then shows up in his airship along with Dejah’s father, who explains that Sab came to him to tell him that she’d been taken prisoner by the Tharks. Zodanga and Helium have made peace and she is told she must marry him to secure the alliance. Dejah thinks Sab Than is a fucking SNAKE because look at him:

Sab Than, you are a gaping asshole. We both know this.

But, Carter desperately needs medical care so she agrees.

Carter wakes up in Zodanga and gets taken on a tour of the city by Shang who reveals his eeeevil scheme to have Dejah assassinated once she’s married Sab Than and unified Barsoon. He explains that the Therns feed off the death of worlds and that they are guiding the history of Mars to an eventual apocalypse.

Carter escapes and meets back up with Sola and the two of them return to…okay, apparently it’s called “Tharkville” but that sounds like something dreamed up by Doctor Seuss.

All the Tharks down in Tharkville loved Christmas a lot. But the Thern who lived just north of Tharkville did not.

Tar Tarkas has been overthrown after letting Carter, Dejah and Sola escape, however, so Tars and Carter are both thrown into an arena and have to fight two massive white apes. Carter beats them, takes over the tribe and leads a massive army of Tharks against Zodanga’s forces. Sab Than’s killed, the wedding’s prevented and Carter and Dejah Thoris get married.

Happy ending?

Not quite. Shang ambushes Carter, and teleports him back to Earth. Carter spends the next ten years on Earth fighting the Therns who have infiltrated Earth society just like they did Barsoom’s.

Now, here’s where it gets really complicated. It turns out that how the teleporter works is it creates a copy of you on Mars while your body remains unconscious on Earth, seemingly dead but in a state of stasis. Carter finds another teleporter on Earth but warns his nephew in the journal that using it will mean that his body is vulnerable to attack from the Therns on Earth.

Back in the present, Edgar Rice Burroughs rushes to his uncle’s tomb to prevent the Therns from destroying Carter’s body…only for Carter to show up, very much alive, and gun them down.

Carter explains to his baffled nephew that he was only pretending to be dead and that NOW he intends to return to Barsoom for real, now what he knows Eddie boy is willing to guard his body until the day he dies so that Carter can continue having hot sex with his beautiful Martian princess wife.

Cheer up. It’ll give you plenty of time to write your novels.

***

Many have blamed the historical failure of John Carter on an apparently abysmal marketing campaign. I can’t really speak to that as the only ad I ever saw for it was the teaser that made use of Peter Gabriel’s My Body is Cage.

And, clearly, anything that makes use of Peter Gabriel’s My Body is Cage is one of the greatest ads ever made.

Renaming it from “Princess of Mars” or “John Carter of Mars” to plain old “John Carter”?

Yeah, okay, that probably hurt it some. But I think I’ve figured out why, even though I do like quite a lot of John Carter, I can’t really seem to convert my love of the parts to a love of the whole.

Mostly, the plot is just too generic to engage. Yes, obviously the princess is going to recruit Carter to her cause. Of course Carter and the princess are going to end up together. No doy, Carter is going to rally the Tharks and lead them into battle against Zodanga. These tropes were, if not new, at least less used in Burrough’s time but because the Barsoom books have been such a foundation for so much modern sci-fi and fantasy it feels really, really familiar.

Now, that’s not necessarily a death sentence for the film. Not every movie has to be The Prestige. In fact, there are real advantages to a familiar, well-worn plot structure. Take for example, The First Avenger.

Was there a single moment in that film where you thought “damn, I did not see that coming?”

Of course not. The plot is pure boilerplate.

What makes it work is all the stuff that hangs on the completely rote plot. The music, the performances, the characters, the period detail etc etc which are all top notch and elevate the movie.

And to be clear, none of the equivalent elements in John Carter are bad. They’re just…not…quite…good…enough.

That said, I really hope there are people out there who have fallen in love with this film and are willing to champion it.

I just can’t quite bring myself to be one of them.

NEXT UPDATE: 18th May 2023

NEXT TIME: The bird, the bat and the cat…

Freddie as FR07 (1992)

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Some of you in the comments have noted that I’ve been a little, shall we say, down on the movies I’ve reviewed this year.

And some of you likewise professed that you enjoyed my review of Batman ’66 purely because it was nice to see me actually praising something for once. I get it, I do. Negativity can be draining.

But, if it helps, this review will be less “negative” than “absolutely incredulous”.

What. The. Fuck. Is. This?

You know what’s weird? I remember seeing trailers for this movie! I remember thinking it looked quite good!

This was not some obscure direct to video release, this was in theatres! With a pretty top-tier cast!

This is not an amateur production, this clearly had a lot of money behind it and was released in the early nineties, an absolute golden age for feature animation where even lesser known (or, to be frank, lesser quality) films still have passionate fanbases of ageing elder millennials desperately clinging to the nostalgia of their fading childhoods in the face of an increasingly bewildering and terrifying present (no judgement, we’re all in the same boat).

And THEN I learned that this is the first and only film written and produced by Jon Acevski, a British businessman who decided to make an animated film based on stories he told his son about his toy frog (his son’s toy frog, I mean. I don’t believe Mr Acevski has a toy frog and if he does it is none of my business). And that’s sweet, that really is.

But…

See, the thing about making movies is, they’re very expensive. And the people who back movies usually give their money to people who have demonstrated at least some competence in their field. But every so often, every so often, someone comes along who has no experience with writing, directing or anything really to do with the film-making process. But they do have money.

And when that happens? Oh, my friends, when that happens. That’s when you get the shit that makes my life worth living.

Watching this movie is like shepherding a hyper-active three year old with sticky hands through the world’s biggest toy shop: No! Stop that! You can’t do that! That’s not allowed! PUT THAT DOWN YOUNG MAN! This movie just has no idea of what it’s not allowed do.

The first thing we see is a fuzzy, indifferently drawn Paris skyscape and then the movie helpfully tells us what kind of movie we’re watching:

I….have never seen that before. I have NEVER seen a movie that tried to be its own hypeman. It’s not technically lying, I suppose. It’s certainly the first “secret agent who’s a giant immortal frog with magic powers” movie that I can recall seeing, and it is amazing that this thing got made but still, this is just gauche.

Then we get the title which is, again, completely incompetent. “Freddie as F.R.O.7.”.

That’s not a title. That’s a credit, that goes at the end, you silly film. This was the easiest part and the movie failed.

Over the credits we hear Keep Your Dreams Alive sung by George Benson and Patti Austen and it’s one of those late eighties/early nighties adult contemporary ballads that sounds like having cough syrup ladled into your ears. While this happens, Freddie, our main character, drives around Paris in an anthropomorphised green car that…um…is clearly horny for him.

It’s a new mania, Mole! MOTOR-MANIA!

This is literally the first scene and I already have so many questions.

Why this song?Why did you think it was appropriate for a fast paced driving scene?What is the purpose of the driving scene? It has nothing to do with the following film. Why does the car want to fuck him?Answer 4 first, please.

I will get the positives out of the way. The animation is wildly inconsistent but quite nice in places. Particularly in this scene, the car zips around around the streets with a nice, smooth zippiness that impressed me. Also, the designs are…I mean, they’re not exactly breaking the mould here:

But they’re pleasing to look at, they’re expressive, they convey the essence of the character well. I didn’t need to tell you that the second image is of the villain, did I? Well there you go. That’s solid design. Give this animation team a better script and concept and I could absolutely see them making a good cartoon. Okay, so we get what would, in a sane world, be the start of the movie with a flashback to the magical ancient kingdom of…France. The king of France is apparently a wizard and has a son, Prince Frederick who he has taught his magic to. The king also has a sister.

Yeah, you know exactly where this is going.

So this is Messina, who is voiced by FUCK OFF NO SHE IS NOT. BILLIE WHITELAW?! LEGENDARY STAGE ACTRESS? FOREMOST INTERPRETER OF THE WORKS OF SAMUEL BECKETT? HOW THE FUCK DID THEY GET HER?!

“Money. They paid me money. That is how it works.”

Okay, well as you’ve already guessed, Messina kills Frederick’s father and then tries to kill him. What you did not guess is that she turns the kid into a frog, turns herself into a snake, chases the frog into the sea where he meets the Loch Ness Monster who is chilling in France, for some reason, and who helps him escape from his evil snake aunt.

“I guessed that.”“That’s because you’re an opium fiend. You chase the dragon, that’s why.”

Messina declares that one day she will destroy Freddie and “rule the world”. I’m guessing there are some intermediate steps to that plan but if there are she elects not to tells us.

Freddie finds a community of jazz-playing frogs in a swamp and lives with them for a few years and then grows to human size for some reason, gets some clothes and joins the French secret service. All perfectly standard boilerplate, but here’s where the movie gets a little odd.

In London, Nelson’s Column vanishes in a strange blue light.

Then, we see two American ravens flying into the Tower of London to visit their “British cousins”. The tower disappears, leaving all the ravens very confused. And all the ravens, regardless of whether they are American or British, speak with fake African-American accents that would make the crows from Dumbo cringe. It’s so bad this whole sequence had to be re-dubbed for the American release.

After Buckingham Palace gets taken too, the British secret service snaps into action and the Brigadier played by WHAT, WHAT?!

Nigel Hawthorne?!

HOW?!

“Well, you see, while any practitioner of the noble thespian arts strives at all times to choose work which advances the state of the craft, challenges one as a performer and enlightens the audience as a whole, certain, shall we say, pecuniary considerations must also enter into the complex web of motive and interest which ultimately inform ones choices as an actor.“You mean money?”

“Ha doy!”

Sorry, massive tangeant here but I’ve just noticed that WordPress has included a new AI feature that can…write blog posts apparently. I decided to test this out by asking the bot to write a paragraph continuing on from the previous sentence. This is the result:

BEGIN

Yes, you read that right. Sir Nigel Hawthorne, star of The Madness of King George and Yes, Minister, lends his talents to the role of the Brigadier in Freddie as FR07. It’s the kind of casting that makes you do a double-take and ask, “Wait, is that really him?”

Hawthorne brings a sense of gravitas to the role that elevates the whole film. It’s not often you see an actor of his calibre slumming it in an animated comedy about a frog spy, but he throws himself into it with gusto. His scenes with Freddie are a delight, as he tries to wrangle the impulsive frog and keep him on task.

But let’s be real, we’re not here for the plot or the voice acting. We’re here for the comedy, and oh boy, does Freddie as FR07 deliver. The humor is slapstick and silly, with a healthy dose of puns and wordplay thrown in. Some of the gags are cringe-inducing (did we really need a song about frogs being “soulful”?), but more often than not they hit the mark.

If you’re a fan of ’90s animation and don’t mind some cheesy jokes, Freddie as FR07 is worth a watch. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but it’s a fun way to spend 90 minutes. And if nothing else, you’ll get to hear Sir Nigel Hawthorne say lines like, “I’m going to have to put you on a leash, Freddie.” What more could you want?

END

Well, that settles that. AI does not have a soul. Or, it is into some weird, weird shit.

Moving on, having no available spies of their own, the British ask for aid from the French secret service.

This is, without a doubt, the single most unrealistic part of this entire movie. Immortal frogs? Fine. Loch Ness Monster? Okay. Horny athropomorphic cars? Practically scène à faire. But the idea that the British government would willingly seek the aid of the French before mass suicide is gibbering lunacy and I hope this movie realises that it looks like a fool.

Anyway, Freddie arrives and we get the funniest exchange in the whole movie:

: Sir, F.R.0.7. has just arrived, in an incredible automobile.

: Ah! Good. Show him in.

: Um, yes sir, just to warn you, though… he’s a frog.

: That’s no way to talk about our loyal French allies!

: No, sir, what I mean is, he’s green.

: Nonsense! He’s their most experienced man!

Yeah, I know. But it’s at least coherent. I understand the joke it’s trying to tell. That’s impressive feat for this film. Freddie is voiced by…

“Ha! I’m sure you’re surprised…”“Not in the slightest.”

Although, I’m not entirely sure they had Sir Ben Kingsley for that long. His line readings in this are so goddamned weird. When he’s introduced to Scotty, the weapons expert, he says “I’m afraid…the only weapon…I…use…is…my thoughts” and it sounds like they chopped the line together from existing recordings like that one episode of South Park where they killed off Chef.

He also meets Daphne “Daffers” Fortescue, the gadget expert. Freddie turns down the gadgets, but does take the time to compliment Daphne’s tits (I wish I was making that up, I am not). Oh, and then she flashes him.

Yeah, you didn’t believe me, did ya?

I swear to God, if you drew a Venn diagram of the kid’s cartoons that are terrible and weirdly horny it would be a circle.

Freddie agrees to take the case (no shit) and he, Daffers and Scotty head to Ascot because he heard that’s where all the criminals go. At the horse races Freddie is jumped by some thugs and proceeds to non-violently kick the shit out of them with his thoughts. The leader of the thug (named “Leader” because of course he is) puts in a call to his boss, El Supremo who is voiced by OH COME ON! HOW?!

“MONEY!! THEY PAID ME MONEY! GORDON’S ALIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!”

So El Supremo is allied with Messina who is a) still alive and b) still a snake and weirdly never actually speaks except during her big villain song. Also, it’s implied there is some kind of sexual relationship between El Supremo and Messina who is, as already mentioned, a snake. El Supremo tells his goons that their next target is “BIG BEN” and he says it so loudly that it is overheard by Freddie as well as, I presume, most of the Western Hemisphere. Messina then gets her villain song, “Evilmania”, which you’re just going to have to watch because you will absolutely not believe if I have to describe it to you.

Oh, and Messina’s singing voice was provided by NO WAY, GRACE JONES?!

“Money.”

Fair enough. Freddie, Daffers and Scotty hide in Big Ben which is then abducted by El Supremo’s flying snake fortress.

Well. SOMEBODY’S compensating.“Well ACTUALLY, Big Ben is the name of the Bell. The tower is now called Elizabeth Tower and at the time the movie was made was called the Clock Tower.”“ACTUALLY you’re not even a nit, you’re an adult louse, now shut up!”

The snake fortress tractors tower inside the snake fortress and our “heroes” are brought face to face with El Supremo and Messina. He reveals his master plan which is…oh boy.

His plan is to shrink all of Britain’s greatest tourist attractions and then use the tiny attractions as batteries to power a sleep ray which will put the whole nation to sleep and allow his army to take over. It is a brilliant plan, no notes.

El Supremo takes Daffers to brainwash her into being his slave, gross, and leaves Freddy and Scotty trapped underwater surrounded by ferocious sea monsters. And Scotty has to decide whether to drown or let Freddy give him the “French kiss of life”.

Why are you looking at me Freddie? Is this what gets you off? Having an audience? It is, isn’t it, you sick fucking frog.

Anyway, he doesn’t actually kiss him (because THAT would be too far for this movie) and he calls on Nessie who rescues them. They sneak back onto El Supremo’s island, free Daffers, couple of fight scenes and they finally defeat El Supremo by using his own shrink ray that he used to shrink others to shrink him.

Britain is saved until 2016 and our heroes get a call from Washington that Messina is over there and trying to take over.

And they head off for the sequel!

They were never seen again.

***

If you’re a fan of ’90s animation and don’t mind some cheesy jokes, Freddie as FR07 is worth a watch. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but it’s a fun way to spend 90 minutes. And if nothing else, you’ll get to hear Sir Nigel Hawthorne say lines like, “I’m going to have to put you on a leash, Freddie.” What more could you want?

“What? I’m lazy.”

Scoring

Animation: 08/20

Real “lions led by donkeys” situation here. There were clearly some talented animators and artists working on this.

Lead: 02/20

Ben Kingsley is an Academy Award Winning actor and one of the all time greats. He is also utterly shameless and I’m pretty sure he would fuck a pig on camera if a movie producer paid him enough.

Villain: 04/20

How amateurishly bad is the writing in this movie? It has BRIAN BLESSED as a Bond-esque supervillain and Billie Whitelaw as an evil snake-witch AND THAT’S NOT ENOUGH TO SAVE IT.

Supporting Characters: 01/20

Terrible. Terrible. Terrible.

Music: 06/20

The original songs are awful but there’s some Boy George, Asia and Grace Jones on the soundtrack.

FINAL SCORE: 21%

NEXT UPDATE: 05 May 2023

NEXT TIME: Am I going to go on long tangents about early 20th century sci-fi? Maybe, reader, maybe…

“Hand me down… the shark…repellent…Batspray!”

“Inexplicably popular” is a phrase that gets bandied around a lot. There’s plenty of books and movies and so on that achieve monumental success despite being, by any fair assessment, fucking terrible. But what about things that are inexplicably unpopular? What about those works that attract passionate, fiery loathing despite being very, very good indeed?

Because the Adam West Batman series is just the tops. It is genuinely one of the best tv comedies of its decade. It’s smart, it’s funky and it just captures the vibe of the sixties so well.

No, no, no. Not THOSE sixties. THESE sixties.

There, much better.

And yet, for the longest time it felt like the Adam West series was loved by everybody but Batman fans. And sure, having to listen to the millionth tired joke about “BIFF BAM KAPOW!” and shark repellant got real old, real fast, but that wasn’t the show’s fault.

Less forgivable was the frankly toxic level of vitriol that a subset of the Batman fandom had towards this show. Not quite Phantom Menace levels but close. And this rejection of everything that even vaguely resembled Batman ’66 was, I would argue, a big reason why the nineties in comics were so fucking try-hard and asinine, as the medium went through its angsty adolesence loudly proclaiming that comics are ACTUALLY REALLY DARK AND MATURE, MOM.

Thankfully, things seem to have turned a corner. As comics became mainstream and lost their stigma, the show has undergone a reappraisal as younger generations have discovered the series and realised that

a) It’s fucking hilarious.

b) It’s supposed to be fucking hilarious.

c) This shit is meme-tastic.

So remember The Clone Wars?

No, not that one.

Not that one either.

Yes, the CGI movie that preceded the 2008 series. The ’66 Batman was originally intended to be the same thing only slightly less camp and not terrible.

Yeah. I know the series became great. Doesn’t change this.

The movie was originally intended as a launch for the TV series. However, the studio told the creators that they wouldn’t pony up the budget for a whole seperate movie. Instead, the movie ended up being a kind of feature length finale for the first season of the TV show, albeit one that was shown in theatres. The script was written in ten days and…honestly that shows. Not that it’s not hilarious, but it very much feels like a series of incidents strung together rather than a single cohesive whole. It also absolutely feels like a TV episode padded out to feature length. Let’s take the opening.

We open on a shot of a yacht with the narrator (producer William Dozier) telling us that this boat is heading to Gotham with some kind of amazing scientific invention but that Batman has received an anonymous tip that the yacht is in grave peril. So we get shots of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson driving towards Gotham (I don’t know if the series even attempted to pretend that this isn’t California, it could not look less East Coast if it tried), arriving at Wayne Manor, changing into their costumes, getting into the Batmobile, driving to an airport, getting into the Bat-copter (which apparently has a full time staff working at the airport who just look after this one helicopter for Batman) and then we get shots of the Bat-Copter flying over the city towards the yacht. Was all that needed? No. Is it padding to puff up the runtime and also allow the producers to show off their cool new Bat-copter? Yes.

But it also provides some invaluable word-building. Every version of Batman has to make a choice; how does society feel about Batman? Is he a mere urban legend? Is he a recognised superhero with the somewhat wary respect of the police? Is he a wanted outlaw? And as this sequence makes clear, in this universe, Batman is not simply out in the open, a recognised ally of the police and government. He’s basically a super scientist hero king to all humanity. He’s Jesus with pointy ears. Just look at how these cops react to seeing the Bat-Copter flying overhead.

These men will never wash their eyeballs again.

Our heroes fly over the yacht and Batman prepares to board the ship when suddenly the vessel disappears and Batman is attacked by a shark.

Still more realistic than Jaws.

This of course leads to the best line in the movie, and indeed, in fiction, with the caped crusader ordering his young ward to provide him with a bat-themed aerosol specifically designed for the deterrence of carcharadons. And Adam West didn’t get an Academy Award for this because the Oscars are bullshit. In the nick of time, he’s able to repel the shark and it explodes.

We cut to a press conference in Commissioner Gordon’s office which Batman has apparently called just so he can refuse to answer any questions about the vanishing vessel or the exploding shark. One of the journalists is a Russian named Miss Kitka, and with a name like that you can probably guess which of Batman’s rogues she actually is.

Oh go to Hell!

So this is Catwoman, played by Lee Merriweather replacing Season 1’s Catwoman Julie Newmar who was unavailable for the movie. Fun bit of trivia, in the comics continuation of this series, the depiction of Catwoman randomly switches between Julie Newmar, Lee Merriweather and Eartha Kitt and they never explain or even acknowledge it. Kitka asks the dynamic duo to take off their masks so the good people of Russia can see what a smile looks like but Gordon is shocked at the suggestion, saying that disclosing their identities would “completely destroy their value as ace crimefighters!”

“Holy hurtful, Batman!”

The press conference over, Batman, Gordon, Robin and Chief O’Hara (oh faith and begob ’tis himself) discuss the recent attempt on Batman’s life via exploding shark. I love that I got to write that sentence. Batman reveals that while he and Robin were being lured to the vanishing yacht, the real yacht containing the invention and its inventor, Commodore Schmidlapp, were captured. Batman asks Gordon what “super criminals” are currently at large and they learn that Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman are all currently on the lam. This then leads to…look, just see for yourselves:

It makes just as much sense as the detective work on Sherlock, these guys are just honest about it.

We cut to the Benbow Inn, where the four villains have set up a cosy little Legion of Doom called United Underworld. Riddler angrily berates Penguin for the failure of his exploding shark and Penguin replies “how was I to know they’d have a can of shark-repellant bat spray?!” which…I feel he’s answered his own question there. Who else would have a can of shark repellant bat-spray? We also learn that the group have kidnapped Schmidlapp and are keeping him the basement, having convinced him that he’s still on board the ship and that they’ve just been waylaid by fog.

Meanwhile, Batman and Robin have deduced that the vanishing yacht was a hologram (“similar to the common desert mirage”) and find the projector on a floating bouy. Unfortunately, they’re unable to get any fingerprints due to “salt and corrosion! The infamous old enemies of the crimefighter!”. Suddenly, the bouy becomes magnetised and they’re pinned by their utility belts.

The Penguin shoots torpedoes at them from his war-surplus “pre-atomic” submarine (the movie keeps reminding us that it’s pre-atomic and I have no idea why). Batman is able to destroy two of the torpedoes with his radio-detonator but then…

Fortunately, this Batman has the kind of plot armour that would make even Grant Morrison blush, and the pair are saved by the noble sacrifice of a porpoise literally throwing itself in front of the torpedo to save his life.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE. IT IS THE BEST MOVIE. PERIOD.

They take the Bat Boat back to the Bat Shore and contact the navy to learn that they recently sold a war-surplus submarine to a Mr. P.N. Gwynne who didn’t even leave a forwarding address.

So in case you were worried, it’s not just the police, the military in this universe is also basically helpless without Batman.

The villains come up with a fiendish plan, to kidnap a millionaire and lure Batman to their base where he’ll be finished off with an exploding octopus (okay that’s three ocean animals in this movie that die from heavy explosives. Who wrote this thing?).

They choose, of course, Bruce Wayne. Disguised as Kitka she goes to Wayne Manor and he ends up asking her out to dinner because, for all his reputation as a stuffy square, sixties Bruce Wayne is smooth AF.

Batman asks Robin to help him deduce another riddle; “What has yellow skin and writes?” which Robin immediately answers “a ballpoint banana!”

“Well, I think it’s…”“Nobody asked you, Forties Robin!”

They deduce from the riddle that the villains are going to make an attempt on Miss Kitka’s life so he has Alfred and Robin tail him on his date with her and forces them to watch has them as back up. Unfortunately, so incensed with jealousy no, actually that’s the only way to read this, so incensed with jealousy that he turns off the video feed, Robin misses Bruce Wayne getting abducted by the villains.

They take him to the United Underworld headquarters but Bruce escapes his bonds and just goes HAM on all of them and escapes through the window and dives into the sea. He returns to Wayne manor where Commissioner Gordon and Dick Grayson are hard at work rescuing him by pacing around the room looking concerned. Bruce and Dick change back into Batman and Robin and head over to the United Underworld headquarter looking for Miss Kitka. Instead they find a bomb which leads to Batman running around the wharf to find a safe place to dispose of it.

“Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb!”

Robin is stunned that Batman risked his life to save the drunks of this slum (because Sixties Robin feels about drunks the way Forties Robin felt about Asians).

They get waylaid by the Penguin, transparently disguised as Commodore Schmidlapp and decide to take him back to the Batcave to verify his identity. However! It transpires that the villain let himself be captured because he knew they’d take him to exactly where he wanted to be to enact his devious plan!

Nolan didn’t invent shit.

See, it turns out that Schmidlapp’s device is a de-hydrator capable of sucking all the moisture out of a human body and turning them to sand, which can then be re-hydrated elsewhere. Penguin uses water from the Batmobile’s supply to reconstitute five goons. Unfortunately, the water he used was radioactive which causes them to vanish the second Batman and Robin punch them. As Batman sombrely tells Robin, they won’t be coming back “in this universe” which I think is the superhero equivalent of telling your sidekick that his dog has gone to live on a nice farm upstate.

Batman pretends that he believes that Penguin really is Schmidlapp and they drive him back to town. Penguin gasses them and steals the Batmobile and drives off. Batman and Robin, however, were actually inocculated against the knock out gas have the Bat-Cycle stashed nearby. They ride to the airport and then take to the air in the Bat-Copter, tracking the Batmobile.

On the submarine, the Riddler fires off another clue rocket over Joker and Catwoman’s objections and here I must pause to comment on just how damn perfect Frank Gorshin’s Riddler is. There’s a moment earlier when the villains think they’ve killed Batman and they’re celebrating, but the Riddler just looks stunned. As if he can’t believe the game is over and he doesn’t know what to do now. And this line he gives when the Joker (of all people) tries to talk him out of giving Batman any more clues:

“Oh, but I must, I must! Why, outwitting Batman is my sole delight, my heaven on earth, my very paradise!”

Don’t tell me this movie isn’t accurate to the comics. Don’t even try.

The Riddler launches his rocket which causes the Bat Copter to crash…onto a massive pile of foam rubber and Batman and Robin are able to deduce from his clue that the villains are attacking the United World Organisation.

“Mom, can we have the United Nations?”
“We have the United Nations at home.”

They’re too late to prevent the villains from dehydrating the UWO Security Council consisting of the ambassadors of Japan, the U.S, the U.S.S.R., Israel, France, Spain, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria.

“Dude, what the fuck?”

Batman and Robin chase the Penguin’s submarine in the Batboat and fires a laser at the sub, forcing it to surface. We get a big BIFF BAM KAPOW fight on the deck of the submarine and the villains are defeated. But, to his horror, Batman discovers that Catwoman was actually Miss Kitka the whole time.

Now cracks a noble heart.

The dynamic duo recover vials containing the dehydrated ambassadors but Schmidlapp barges in demanding tea and knocks the vials over and it’s all “You got the Ambassador of West Germany in my Ambassador of Japan! Well you go the Ambassador of Japan in my Ambassador of West Germany!” basically it’s a mess.

The world waits with bated breath as, in the Batcave, Batman and Robin labour to seperate the grains of Ambassador grit into their constituent parts. This tone, they head back to the United World Organisation and rehydrate the vials.

It…mostly works.

I mean, they’re all talking different languages and are now effectively entirely different human beings but. Y’know.

This is a far better result than anyone could reasonably have expected.

Batman muses that this may actually do more for world peace than anything the not-UN has been able to achieve so far and they quietly leave through the window.

***

The Dark Knight Detective

Let’s face it. He is the best Batman. If you had to choose an onscreen version of Gotham city to live in, I know which one I’d pick. The one with the sunny beaches, throngs of girls in bikinis and no serious crime. West’s Batman isn’t really all that different from the “Bat-God” of many modern Batman stories; hyper-competent and supernaturally prepared. As for Bruce Wayne, one of Adam West’s stipulations for the movie was that he get to spend more time out of the cowl as Bruce Wayne to show off his range and boy does he. Perhaps unexpectently, West nails the “playboy heart-throb” aspect of the character better than any live action actor apart from Bale.

I mean. I’m just gonna say it.
This is a Batman who fucks.

The Boy Wonder

Give Burt Ward his due. To this day, his portrayal of Robin is the most iconic and influential take on the character there has ever been. Plenty have tried. Chris O’Donnell. Joseph Gordon Levitt. Brenton Thwaites.

They try. Oh how they try.

His Faithful Manservant

Unfortunately, while the movie is overall a very good showcase of the strengths of its parent series, it regrettably gives very little for Alan Napier’s Alfred to do. But rest assured, ’66 Alfred was a fucking BOSS.

The Comish

In many ways, Commissioner Gordon is the Watson to Batman’s Holmes and often with the same results. Whereas in the comics Gordon is usually a heroic cop so badass that he’d be the hero of any other story, Neil Hamilton plays the commissioner as a kindly but dim patrician who couldn’t tie his shoe-laces without Batman’s help. But he does it so well.

The Clown Prince of Crime

The first movie appearance of Batman’s arch-enemy is frankly bizarre to a modern comics fan. Joker actually teaming up (and others being willing to team up with him) is odd enough. But the fact that he’s clearly the junior member of this partnership (and the least crazy by far) is just weird. Plus, Cesar Romero refusing to shave off the moustache and forcing them to just paint over it looks gross. It always looked gross. He doesn’t want to shave the moustache to play the Joker? Maybe he doesn’t get to play the Joker then, how about that?

The Prince of Puzzles

The Riddler is one of the most famous Batman villains and that’s entirely down to Frank Gorshin, whose manic, gonzo, portrayal took an obscure villain with around three comics appearances and rocketed him into the A list of Batman’s rogues. It kinda makes me wish he’d played the Joker instead as he’s simultaneously funnier and scarier than Romero’s Joker.

That pompous, waddling maestro of fowl play, master of a million criminal umbrellas!

Penguin fans, enjoy your moment. It was never this good again. If you never read a Batman comic but only knew the character through the sixties TV show and movie (and, let’s be frank, that was probably the case for the vast majority of Batman fans between 1966 and 1989) you would be forgiven for thinking that the Penguin was Batman’s arch-enemy. In the United Underworld, Catwoman is the femme fatale double agent, Riddler is the ideas-man, Joker is…honestly just a lackey who brings the hostage his tea. But Penguin is the leader. The Penguin is one of the most malleable of all the main rogues. Catwoman, Riddler and even Joker remain broadly consistent across depictions but the Penguin will frequently be taken apart and rebuilt from the ground up in any new Batman continuity. Sometimes he’s a disgusting sewer monster. Sometimes he’s an old money WASP. Sometimes he’s British, sometimes American. Now he’s a radical anarchist preaching class warfare, later he’ll be a semi-respectable nightclub owner. But Burgess Meredith’s Penguin is a capital S Supervillain. He’s got gadgets, an army of lackies, a submarine headquarters and a plan that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Roger Moore era Bond movie. I actually remember being genuinely scared of the Penguin as a young child, but that was probably because he bore a passing resemblance to the Child-Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

The Queen of Criminals, the Princess of Plunder

It’s one of the eternal questions: who was the best sixties Catwoman; Newmar, Merriweather or Kitt? Personally I think Newmar was the best at portraying the character’s sexual charisma, whereas Eartha Kitt was better at bringing out Selina’s swagger and ego. Merriweather is more of a well-rounded Jill of all Trades. She’s probably the weakest of the three but make no mistake, she’s still a fantastic Catwoman.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

It is with regret that I must report that we have our first and second confirmed killings by Batman onscreen. Neither his fault, to be sure. He didn’t know that the springboard he knocked that goon onto would catapult him into the arms of the Penguin’s exploding octopus. And, he wasn’t to know that the Penguin re-hydrated that goon with heavy water which caused him to become atomically unstable and turn to anti-matter at the slightest impact (I really appreciate that all the science in this movie is airtight). But still. There it is. Batman has blood on his hands. Hopefully this was a once off.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

So many gadgets! The Batboat! The Bat-Copter! The Shark-Repellant Bat-Spray! And of course, most importantly, the Bat-Ladder!

Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to see a comics accurate Bat Ladder onscreen?

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

Finally! A Batmobile that actually looks like a mobile that would be driven by a bat. The sixties Batmobile had a (not) surprisingly epic backstory. A one of a kind concept car built by Ford, the Batmobile began life in 1954 as the only Lincoln Futura ever built. Its sleek body was (according to the Batman wiki which I have decided I trust totally) was fabricated by Ghia of Italy, whose artisans hammered the car’s panels over logs and tree stumps (I mean honestly, how ELSE would Batman’s care be built?). When the time came to create the Batmobile, legendary Hollywood customizer George Barris bought the Futura from Ford for a princely $1 and remade it into the Batmobile. Unfortunately, because the car was a prototype and by this stage over a decade old, it frequently malfunctioned, with the engine overheating, the tyres blowing and, (I swear I’m not making this up) the batteries frequently dying.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: 20th April 2023 (need to focus on some writing, sorry folks)

NEXT TIME: Obscure British animation? Legendarily terrible? One of the biggest flops of all time? Is it my birthday?!

“T’Challa was truly noble. Are you going to be like him? Or are you gonna take care of business?”

Goddammit.

Look, how do you think I feel?

No one wanted it this way. Marvel didn’t want to make a Black Panther without Chadwick Boseman, we the audience didn’t want a Black Panther movie without Chadwick Boseman and I certainly don’t want to give a bad review to a Black Panther movie without Chadwick Boseman.

His loss was first and foremost a human tragedy and if this movie succeeds at anything it’s in bringing across just the sheer, crushing grief of everyone involved in this. It’s not a fun time. It should not be a fun time.

Is it a good movie? I’m sorry, no it’s not.

But, it has good moments and I’ll be sure to highlight those.

It also has plenty of flaws and, well, I’ll be mentioning those too. But rest assured, I will feel like a complete asshole.

“Well. That’s the important thing.”

The movie opens with its strongest two scenes with Shuri working flat out in her lab to re-create the heart shaped herb to save T’Challa. Queen Ramonda enters the lab and tells her that her brother is gone.

I mentioned back in the Civil War review that, counter-intuitively, sometimes off-screen deaths are the most effective and I think that’s very true here. T’Challa’s funeral procession through the streets of Birnin Zana is beautiful and mesmerising. It’s excellent.

Unfortunately, this is the high water mark of the movie and we haven’t even got to the titles yet.

Alright, a year later Ramonda has become Queen Regnant of Wakanda, thereby skipping the scene of Angela Basset standing in a lake and beating Winston Drake half to death with a stick for the right to rule. The movie I’m imagining in my head is way better, and that’s never a good sign. Anyway, Ramonda is addressing the United Nations in Switzerland (apparently the UN has branches, like Arby’s). We continue this series’ tradition of diplomats just treating the Wakandans like snooty deans in an eighties slobs versus snobs comedy, chiding Ramonda for not sharing Wakanda’s vibranium. In response she brings in some captured mercenaries who recently tried and failed to rob a Wakandan power facility only to get their nuts handed to them by the Dora Milaje. And who was this nation engaging in shady illegal neo-colonialism in Africa? Would you believe, France?! I know.

Crazy! What wild fantasies will those mad dream-weavers at Marvel come up with next? Who could ever have predictied…

“Oh you think you’re so funny, don’t you?”

Meanwhile, the Americans have sensibly decided that if they can’t get vibranium from the Wakandans they’ll just find their own, under the sea. They use their fancy new vibranium detector to find some on the sea floor, but their exploration team gets got by some mysterious blue fish people.

Back in Wakanda, Ramonda drags Shuri away from her lab to perform a ritual to mourn T’Challa. But, they are interrupted by…(deep, weary sigh) Namor.

Okay. I have a confession to make. I hate water based superheroes. Atlantis as a concept leaves me completely cold. I think stories set underwater are dumb.

And yet, and yet, I fucking love Namor the Sub-Mariner. He’s technically Marvel’s oldest superhero. He’s as OG as it gets. He is a complete and utter prick and I love him. And this movie, somehow, thought that doing In-Nameor-Only here was going to fly. Well, he doesn’t fly. Or at least, he doesn’t fly in a way that doesn’t look fake as hell (damn the CGI in this is rough).

Let me be clear. This is not Namor:

THIS is Namor:

Okay, technically it’s Mr Nimbus from Rick and Morty but it’s probably the most faithful rendering of the character we’re ever going to get. Namor is supposed to be fucking crackling with the power of a bisexual god. When Namor is the room, the question is not “will he fuck my wife?” the question is “when will he fuck my wife and if I’m a good boy will Daddy let me clean up after?”

Namor in this movie doesn’t have sex with anyone’s wife. At all. That’s like Captain America not having the shield. It’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit! This movie did not understand the greatness of Namor the Sub-Mariner and it will go to movie Hell for that! Movie Hell I say!

Oh God. What are they going to do to Doctor Doom?

Anyway…this slab of sexless haddock tells Ramonda that, because Wakanda is out of the closet, his own Vibranium-rich nation, Talokan, is having to fend off greedy surface dwellers. He says that they’re using new vibranium detecting tech to find Talokan’s stash so he wants the Wakandans to find the scientist who designed the machine because…that will…you know how when you kill a scientist everything they ever invented vanishes? Yeah. Anyway, he wants the Wakandans to do that for him or else he’ll attack Wakanda. It makes no sense and it’s contrived as fuck. Ah well, at least it’s comics accurate. Comic Namor would definitely bully another nation in doing his dirty work for him.

Oh wait, no. Comic Namor is a MAN.

Ramonda convenes the council of Wakanda which brings in the movie’s MVP: M’Baku. Winston Duke just kills every scene he’s in, he’s a riot. The council wants to give in to Namor’s demands and hand over the American scientist to him and M’Baku (who is the best) very sensibly points out that giving in to Namor will only encourage the blighter and instead suggests the obvious course of action: kill this Namor and reveal that he was actually Trevor Slattery all along, doing a piss-poor impersonation of the ACTUAL Namor. But instead, Ramonda sends Okoye on a mission to find the American scientist.

So…I hate this. This is terrible.

First, as M’Baku explicitly points out, Namor threatened Wakanda and Wakanda (supposedly a major global power), just agreed to launch a hostile action against another global power after a threat from a half naked fish man. And secondly, it makes Ramonda look hypocritical as fuck. France invading Wakanda to steal some metal? Unforgiveable! Wakanda invading America to kidnap a human being and deliver her to certain death? Well, they’re just protecting their interests.

So they visit Everett Ross and guilt trip him into giving them the location of the American scientist and, out of loyalty to T’Challa, he gives this incredibly sensitive information to some foreign agents. He pleads with them not to let anyone know he’s done this because, y’know, treason and Okoye dismissively says “we will be very careful”.

Spoilers. They will not be very careful.

They travel to MIT and meet the scientist, college student Riri Williams who needs to FUCKING ENUNCIATE. Jesus, I don’t know if the actor just wasn’t miked up properly but goddamn. So, here’s where everyone’s motives just become completely inscrutable. Ramonda, upon learning that Riri is just a kid, orders Okoye and Shuri to bring her to Wakanda for her protection, even though the US government is coming to ask her to build them a new vibranium detector which will mean a) she’s set for life and b) is probably going to be doing just fine in the security department.

This sets off a chase between the Wakandans and the FBI that gets interrupted by the Talokans who attack them on a bridge beside a canal.

There’s a weirdly inert fight scene with awful green screen and minimal music and the Talocans defeat Okoye and make off with Riri and Shuri.

So, we know get an excellent scene where Okoye briefs the Wakandan council on what happened and we get to see Angela Bassett shake some dust off the ceiling with some old-school capital-A Acting. And Danai Garira’s stunned, tearful reaction is very good. Plaudits all round. Anyway, Ramonda has clearly been sitting on some grudges because she lambastes Okoye for betraying T’Challa in the last movie and now losing her daughter and strips her of her rank and kicks her out of the Dora Milaje.

Ramonda goes to Haiti where Nakia has been living as a teacher since the Blip and recruits her to find Talokan and gently chides her for missing T’Challa’s funeral.

Actually, fuck, I’ve just realised that T’Challa was blipped. Wakanda had to mourn the death of the king twice. Actually, three times counting T’Chaka. Four times if you’re a Killmonger loyalist it’s been rough for the Wakandan royals, is what I’m saying.

Meanwhile, Namor fills Shuri in on his backstory and the history of Talokan. Short version, they’re Mayans who retreated under the sea using magic to escape the Spanish. He then shows her the magnificence of Talokan:

Well, props for accuracy I guess. A city under the sea would be murky and underlit and pretty unimpressive. That said:

That’s the DCEU’s Atlantis. Which looks more visually interesting?

This is where we’re at folks, I’m drawing unfavourable comparisons between Marvel and the DCEU. Surely the end times are nigh.

Namor proposes an alliance with Wakanda against the rest of the world. I…think it’s supposed to be played seductive. Like, Shuri will be so hot for this guy she’s willing to turn against the rest of the human race but…nah.

Nakia manages to rescue Shuri and Riri and brings them to Wakanda and Namor retaliates with a tidal wave attack that kills Ramonda, who drowns saving Riri’s life. The Wakandans flee to the Jabari mountains, because is it even a Black Panther movie if M’Baku doesn’t save everyone’s ass?

Shuri throws herself into replicating the heart-shaped herb and takes it. However, instead of seeing her ancestors she sees:

Save us, Killmonger.

Goddamn Michael B. Jordan is so fucking good in this role. He says that Shuri chose him to appear to her because she wants revenge. Horrified, Shuri wakes up and refuses to tell Nakia what she saw. Instead, she dons a new Black Panther suit and rallies all of Wakanda’s remaining forces to strike back at Talokan, reinstating Okoye and giving her a new power suit.

They all set off on a Wakandan navel vessel.

“Avast! It’s the good ship SS Final Fight Scene Location”

There’s a big green screen fight, Shuri and Namor battle, she’s about to kill him but her mother visits her in a vision and she spares the big haddock. The war is over and Okoye returns to America where she rescues Ross, who was arrested for helping the Wakandans. And she greets him by saying “The coloniser in chains? Now I’ve seen everything.”

“Please help me. They tortured me for days.”

***

I can pretty much promise I will never watch this movie again, and it’s not because it’s the worst movie in the MCU. Given the death of their star and Covid it’s actually pretty remarkable this film made it over the finish line.

But…it’s bleak as hell. It’s a punishing watch. It feels like the day after a funeral.

Scoring

Adaptation: 10/25

A war between Wakanda and Atlantis should shake the very world. This just feels small and drab.

Our Heroic Heroes: 11/25

Yeah, Boseman’s absence is a big gaping hole in the heart of this thing.

Our Nefarious Villain: 05/25

The biggest waste of a fantastic character since Black Widow botched Taskmaster.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 14/25

By the end of this, I was honestly wishing M’Baku had been made the new Black Panther.

The Stinger

Shuri visits Nakia in Haiti and is introduced to her nephew…Prince T’Challa.

And the audience went…

Any names of comic book characters clunkily worked into dialogue that no one would ever say in real life?

“A Spanish man of faith cursed me as he died by my hand. He called me El Niño sin Amor, “the Child without Love”. And I took my name from there, Namor.”

Are there X-Men yet?

Um…yes? Yes? Technically? Namor is acknowledged onscreen as a mutant and the character has been a member of the X-men so…yeah. Bit anticlimactic really.

FINAL SCORE: 40%

NEXT UPDATE: 30 March 2023

NEXT TIME: Some days, you just can’t get rid of a bomb…

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #61: Strange World

“Welcome mes amis! Please to be seated. I ‘ave called you ‘ere so zat we may solve zis murder!”

The facts of the case, they are simple. Strange World, the youngest heir of a very long, very respectable line of animated features, went missing from the box office in the winter of last year. A few months later, it was found, face down in a cold stream of content. There are many possible suspects. The movie boasted Disney’s 98th first gay character. Perhaps this was a hate crime? Or perhaps Covid 19 was to blame? But no, I believe there can be only one killer. Monsieur Disney, J’ACCUSE!

“What! How dare you! This is preposterous! I loved Strange Journey!““Strange World.”“Gah! Such a bland, forgettable title! How was I supposed to market him!? I’m the victim here! ME!”“I knew it! You killed him, just like you killed my brother!”

(Man, I have GOT to write a Knive’s Out style murder mystery with sentient Disney movies, I have to do that.)

***

You’re all asking the wrong questions, you know.

The mystery is not “Why did Strange World flop?” I can tell you that right now.

Last year I sat down to plot out my review schedule for the next decade or so (I will never, ever, ever auction reviews off again. That was stupid. I was a stupid Mouse).

And this was an honest to God chain of thought I experienced:

Oh hey, I should probably put aside a slot to review the next canon Disney movie.Oh damn, what even IS the next canon Disney movie?Oh shit. Strange World? I haven’t heard anything about this. When is it coming out?Oh fuck. It’s in theatres NOW.

Yeah. I’ve been reviewing the Disney canon since Obama and I both still had black in our hair and even I knew nothing about this thing. It didn’t fail because it as too gay or not gay enough or because every time Disney tries to make a sci-fi animated movie the monkey paw exacts a terrible price, NO. It failed because Disney didn’t market it and bad word of mouth delivered the coup de grace.

But what I can’t really get my head around is why Disney buried this so hard. I mean, it’s definitely bad, but it’s a kind of bad that Disney can and have managed to sell before. To take the most recent examples, Raya and Wreck It Ralph 2 ate the box office alive and those are both, I remind you, hot effing garbage.

Was it really the fact that the main character is gay? I’ve always found that line of thinking flawed and conspiratorial. If a studio doesn’t want to release a movie with a gay main character, they can just, y’know, not make the movie and save the estimated €180 million dollars. But in this case…I dunno, maybe? It definitely feels like Disney has dropped bigger turds than this and yet was able to convince a sufficient amount of the population that it was selling them chocolate ice-cream. And hell, the reviews for this were actually very positive (not from me, I’m gonna dance on this thing’s fucking head) but most mainstream critics dutifully cooed “representation”, dropped a handful of stars and clocked off for lunch. It really was the audience reaction to this that was sharply negative. Maybe that was a homophobic backlash? Or maybe it was just the burgeoning realisation that most of Marvel/Disney/Pixar’s recent output has been trending worse and worse and people are now treating the brand less as a mark of quality than a warning label.

I don’t know and I’m not going to try to guess. I am DONE trying to game this kind of stuff out. Back in my Raya review I said that the age of Disney movies being big, unifying cultural events was over only for Encanto to come along and be that exact thing. I cautiously mused that Encanto might be the Disney ship righting itself only for Strange World to come along, cough once and die on my carpet so fuck it. I am just going to review the damn movie and leave the big pronouncements to people who actually know what they’re talking about.

The movie begins with our introduction to Avalonia, a bucolic nation sealed off from the outside world with a small civilization still somehow ethnically diverse enough to be marketable to a global audience. And, I’m sorry, am I the only one who’s becoming increasingly worried about Disney’s obsession with bucolic nations sealed off from the outside world etc etc? Frozen 2 had one, Shang-Chi had one, Black Panther, Encanto it’s getting old is what I’m saying. So the people of Avalonia have long wondered what’s on the other side of the mountains that surround their nation and their greatest adventurer, Jaeger Clade, has made it his life’s ambition to cross them.

This opening sequence is honestly the best part of the whole movie, and that’s not the damning with faint praise it probably sounds like, I genuinely like it.

This is the part of the movie that feels like it knows what it wants to be, a fun riff of old pulp serials like Doc Savage. The animation, while still CGI, is done in a convincing enough faux-traditional mode that’s quite appealing. Also, Jaeger is the one character in this thing whose design doesn’t feel phoned in. He’s a clear tribute to the work of French artist Albert Uderzo.

Plus, his theme tune is kind of a bop.

Anyway, accompanying Jaeger on his quest to climb the mountain is his teenage son Searcher voiced with an amazingly anonymous performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. On a hazardous trek through a cave, Searcher finds a plant called “pando” that gives off an electric charge and wants to take it back to Avalonia. But Jaeger is dead set on crossing the mountains. After a big row, Jaeger gives Searcher his compass and leaves his son to continue on his own.

Flashforward 25 years and pando has completely transformed Avalonia by introducing electricity. This, as a helpful exposition-spouting extra tells us, has allowed Avalonia to develop electric lights, radio and FUCKING HOVERCARS which seems like a bit of a leap.

Plus, I am deeply disturbed by Avalonia’s racial diversity.

No, no think about it. These people have been isolated from the outside world for…well probably since time immemorial unless those are somehow new mountains. Even if the original settlers came from all over the world by this point in their history they should be thoroughly intermarried and the genetic table more or less evened out. You know how you still have this much ethnic diversity after all that time with zero inward migration? ANTI-MISCEGENATION LAWS. Until recently, Avalonia was Apartheid Era South Africa on steroids.

I kid, but really the world-building in this movie is so fucking thin. It all just feels so contrived, there’s zero sense of this as a place where people actually live. It’s a bunch of disparate elements that were either necessary for the story or someone thought could be a cool visual with no sense of how it all forms a whole. Avalonia’s defining feature as a nation is that it’s…nice.

Okay so Searcher is now married to a lady named Meridian and they have a son called Ethan. Ethan doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps into agriculture even though that’s where you find the cutest guys.

Animation wise the movie’s pretty enough. Actually, there are shots that are downright beautiful.

But, you know what? Who cares? We live in an era where I can type a couple of key phrases into an AI and get something similar. And Strange World feels like AI generated art. It’s a fucking pod person of a movie. Outwardly resembling one but inside it’s hollow. There’s a scene where the Clade family are dancing while cooking dinner together and it just felt so damned familiar. Then I found this video on YouTube and it all clicked (credit IconicallyNia)

And that’s my problem. Strange World feels like an ad. A glossy, big budget ad with lots of very talented people working on it, but ultimately not a piece of art.

Anyway, the Clades are paid a visit by Callisto Mal who was one of Jaeger’s expedition partners and is now the president of Avalonia. She tells Searcher that pando is dying and they need to go on a quest to the source of pando in the mountains to save it. You see pando is not actually a species of plant but a single organism, and all the pando plants are actually connected by a single root system DUMB.

THAT IS DUMB.

They uprooted these things. They brought them back from the mountains. They planted them in their fields. If they are just one super organism they would either have died when seperated from the main organism or started a new super organism in their new environment, their roots wouldn’t just stretch all the way back to the mountains that’s so fucking stupid I hate this movie. When I finally get around to ranking all the Disney movies based on correct botanical science, this one one will be DEAD LAST, right behind Fun and Fancy Free.

Leaves are the wrong shape, also several miles too tall. Zero stars.

So, Searcher says “yes”, Ethan says “me too”, Searcher says “stay here and watch the farm, son”, Ethan’s all “Waa waa I hate you I’m going to my room”.

Searcher boards the president’s airship, the Venture, and they fly up to the mountains (oh yeah, despite the fact that they have aircraft now they still don’t know what’s on the other side of the mountains yet. Must be on the to-do pile). There, the Avalonians discovered a massive hole in the ground that all the pando roots lead down into. So they fly on down. However, Meridian follows in the crop duster to warn them that Ethan stowed away on the ship with Legend, the family’s three legged dog/happy meal bait. So the entire Clade family is now on the Venture thanks to some needless narrative busy work but suddenly they’re attacked by weird pink pterodactyls. Meridian has to take over piloting the ship after the Venture’s gets eaten alive (a character death so quick and unremarked upon that I didn’t even realise it happened on my first watch through). Meridian is able to bring the Venture in for a landing but Searcher and Legend fall overboard and find themselves in world that is strange.

Searcher gets attacked by a creature called a Reaper which is basically the kind of thing you have nightmares about after a plate of expired calamari and is rescued by a mysterious hermit oh who could it ever be?

Yes, obviously it’s Jaeger but the movie goes through this whole song and dance of having him hooded and masked when really the only way you wouldn’t guess it was him is if you’d literally never seen a movie before. That is, this movie’s ideal target audience.

So Jaeger tells Searcher that he’s STILL trying to cross the mountains but that he gave up on going over and has now decided to go under the mountain, presumably stopping to plant a flag upside down in the ceiling at the lowest point.

Meanwhile, Ethan runs off from the Venture crash site and goes to look for his Dad and he meets up with his father and grandfather. They get chased by some monsters before being rescued by the crew of the Venture. Searcher starts getting self-conscious because his Dad is like a rock star and everyone on this boat is in awe of him, including his own son. In order to deflate the tension, Ethan suggests they play a game of cards. Unfortunately, this is more of a Eurogame than Ameritrash and Searcher and Jaeger can’t get to to grips with the idea of a game with no conflict and no villain which causes Ethan to storm off in a huff.

Alright, I know I said in the intro that I’ve given up on making predictions but… I’m going to make a prediction. This scene, one day, will be one of the most famous scenes in an all of Disney and for all the wrong reasons. This moment, right here, where Ethan Clade pissily yells at his father and grand-father (and implicitly, the audience) for DARING to think that villains are important? Future film historians are going to look back on this scene as fucking emblematic of the weird mixture of arrogance and ineptitude that has been the hallmark of the current era of Disney movies, especially when you consider that in the same time period Dreamworks created a phenomenal comic baddie, a layered and complex tragic antagonist and straight up one of the most terrifying and charismatic movie villains of all time and, oh yeah, all three of them were IN THE SAME MOVIE.

One of the best animated movies I’ve ever seen was a Dreamworks sequel to a spin-off of a Shrek movie and life has no meaning now. NONE.

They continue on their journey underground…well, I mean, technically this is all underground so underunderground. They make it past a river of acid and the ship gets attacked by more Reapers which the Clades are able to fight off with pando which shocks the Reapers.

Okay, I suppose it’s time to say something positive just to stop this review being a complete downer; I like the next scene.

Nice atmosphere, the dialogue actually sounds like something humans would say. It’s just a quiet little scene where Searcher and Jaeger find some common ground and it’s nice.

They finally reach the heart of pando and see throngs of Reapers and Pink Pterodactyls attacking it. They come up with a plan to essentially crop dust the pando with more pando to kill the creatures with is kind of like protecting your wheat harvest by spraying it with breadcrumbs but whatever. But Ethan reveals that he doesn’t want to go back to the farm when they’re done and wants to stay with Jaeger and explore the strange world. Searcher and Ethan have a big row and Ethan runs off, followed by Searcher. But, they find their way through the mountains and on the other side:

So, they discover that the entire world they’ve lived in their entire lives is actually a giant turtle (sex unknown) and that the Strange World was actually the creature’s body. Ethan realises that the creatures were actually the beast’s immune system and that the pando is actually an infection that is killing it. I’ll admit, cool concept. Needed better writing to bring it to its potential but it’s not bad at all.

They run back to the Venture and tell Mal that she needs to let pando be killed so that the world can survive and she’s all “it’s an election year and you want me to send the world back into the stone age are you nuts?”

“Can’t we just announce that we’re aiming to reduce pando usage by 40% by 2050?”

Jaeger refuses to believe that there’s nothing beyond the mountains but ocean and that he’s been living on a giant turtle all his life (some people are so closed minded). The crew lock up the Clades to stop them destroying all of civilization (the finks), but are freed by Lengend and Splat, a little immune cell that they adopted and that I haven’t mentioned because it was wasn’t necessary. Fine, here’s Splat.

There. Ya happy? Ya happy now?

Then Searcher and Ethan cut a path to the heart of pando to allow the turtle’s immune system to reach it. Jaeger shows up to help. Meridian manages to convince Mal to change her mind because this is 2023 and having an actual villain is just so gauche and yeah they win. They win, it’s all good we’re fine now.

Hell, even Avalonia’s sudden loss of electricity turns out to be fine, they just switch to wind power.

That is the end of the movie.

***

Ultimately, I don’t think we need to resort to conspiracy theories to understand this movie’s sorry fate. Sometimes, crazy as it sounds, movie studios realise when they laid a turd. And they laid one here.

The vocal performances are bland and unmemorable, the dialogue is just awful, clanking, functional boilerplate. There’s a few good ideas, but no real vision. It doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be.

Sometimes movies are bad. And sometimes bad movies fail.

Case closed.

Scoring

Animation: 14/20

So competent yet mercenary and soulless it could have been animated by Boba Fett.

Lead: 04/20

Perpetuates the harmful stereotype that gay people are boring.

Villain: N/A

No, no. You don’t need villains. I mean, look how well you’re doing without them.

Supporting Characters: 03/20

Oh, they gave the dog three legs so I’d feel sorry for him and give the supporting characters a good score. Well guess what! The dog isn’t real! He’s a CARTOON CHARACTER! HE NEVER HAD FOUR LEGS! IT’S ALL LIES!!

Music: 11/20

Jaeger Clade! Jaeger Clade! Stopped this being the crappiest Disney ever made!

FINAL SCORE: 40%

NEXT UPDATE: 16 March 2023

NEXT TIME: Okay, the Disney Canon’s a dumpster fire again, how’s the MCU doing?

Once Upon a Time: Episodes 1-3

Hey kids, know what time it is? It’s “Mouse uses his folklore degree” time!

I know, I know, I’m excited too.

So, do you want to know what the difference is between a myth, a legend and a fairy tale (or “wonder tale” as the cool kids call them)?

A myth is a narrative relic from a now defunct religion. Thor, Odin, Zeus etc were all once worshipped, so any stories relating to them are myths.

A legend takes place in a real place and time, and may feature real historical figures but is nonetheless fictional or even fantastical. So, Saint Patrick casting out the snakes from Ireland is a legend. He was a real person, Ireland is a real place (I mean, I hope) but the events described are fictional. That’s a legend.

And lastly, a wonder tale takes place in a far off land in an unspecified time and is wholly fictional. Anything that begins with “Once Upon a Time, in a Land Far Far Away” will be a wonder tale. So Snow White, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, you get the idea.

” So what’s Pinocchio?”“Glad you asked. Pinocchio is something called “A FUCKING NOVEL”.”

Pinocchio is a book. With an accredited author. Published just a century before I was born. It is not a piece of ancient world folklore. So when Pinocchio and Gepetto showed up in Once Upon a Time, a series puportedly about “fairy tale” characters, I was a bit confused because they have about as much in common with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as Hermione Granger. But of course, we all know why they’re actually here. Because this is a Disney show (well, an ABC show) and Disney made Pinocchio in 1940 (AND WISELY NEVER TRIED TO MAKE IT AGAIN).

And look, I’m sorry, I’ll get into the merits of the show in a bit, but something about this makes me deeply uneasy. Okay, here’s the premise of Once Upon a Time:

In a magical Fairy Tale Land, Prince Charming wakes Snow White and they get married. But the Evil Queen puts a spell on them that pulls them all into the real world and places them in a town called Storybrooke (sigh) where they spend decades living the same lives and never age. Only the Queen’s adopted son, Henry, seems to know the truth, as he has a magic book of fairy tales and has been able to piece together which fairy tale character everyone in town actually is. So what’s my problem?

Well, let’s take Grumpy. Grumpy is just one of the seven dwarves who we see in the background as Snow White’s story plays out. Now, this is very clearly not the 1938 Disney Snow White. The characters all look different, sound different, are costumed differently.

This is not based on the movie but a new version based on the original folk tale, right? All the elements we see here, Snow White, the Prince, the Queen, the magic mirror, the dwarves, are all from the original story. I mean, that’s the clear implication. But here’s the thing.

Grumpy is a Disney character. They created him. In the original story, the dwarves don’t have individual names or personalities. The famous names we know today were all Disney’s invention. And by including original Disney characters like Grumpy and Jiminy Cricket it feels like Disney are trying to Trojan horse them in to the canon of European folklore. It feels like an attempt to make Disney’s Snow White the ONLY Snow White, subtly implying that their version is the definitive one. And yeah, I know that it probably wasn’t intentional. I know the creators probably just thought “hey, we have the rights to Elsa from Frozen let’s use her”. But when has giving Disney the benefit of the doubt worked ever out well for anyone?

Anyway, let’s look at the show

Episode 1: Pilot

The first episode begins with the marriage of Snow White and Prince Charming which is rudely interrupted by the arrival of the Evil Queen. I briefly got excited, thinking we might actually get an accurate re-telling of the original Brothers Grim version of the story.

“Guards! Seize her and get me some red-hot iron shoes! This bitch is gonna DANCE!”

Hey, they weren’t called the “Brothers Cheerful”.

No, the Prince tells Snow not to sink to her level. The Queen then warns the whole kingdom that she will take their happiness away and the Prince throws his sword at her because apparently it’s fine when he sinks to her level and the Queen vanishes in a puff of smoke.

Meanwhile, in modern day Boston, a ten year old kid named Henry is reading the story on a bus. He’s on a mission to track down Emma Swan, a bail bondswoman who’s Henry’s biological mother and who gave him up for adoption when he was born. Emma is spending her 28th birthday alone and is understandably a little rattled by her son’s sudden appearance but she agrees to take him back home to “StorybRooke” Maine, a little town that’s like Twin Peaks but where the supernatural beings are less up their own asses.

In fairy tale land, Snow White is so freaked out about the Queen’s curse that she talks the Prince into letting her visit Rumpelstiltskin, who’s being held prisoner in a dungeon beneath the castle.

Well, I see no possible way he could escape from here.

In exchange for learning the name of their unborn child, Stiltsy tells Charming and Snow that the Queen will trap them all in a prison of time but that their daughter will come to rescue them on her 28th birthday. He then asks them for the name and Snow reveals that its “Emma”. Oooooooh yeah obviously.

In Storybrooke, Emma learns that Henry believes that everyone in town is actually a fairy tale character and the Evil Queen is actually Regina Mills, the Mayor of the Town and Henry’s foster mother. She also learns that Henry is in therapy because he believes that everyone in town is actually a fairy tale character etc etc.

Emma meets the mayor who is hanging around with the Sheriff who is played by Jamie Dornan and who she is obviously fucking. So obviously, in fact, that when the show later revealed they were fucking and acted like it was a shocking reveal I was shocked that I was supposed to be shocked. Anyway, the Mayor thanks Emma for bringing her son back and then tells her that her kid has enough problems without the birth mother who abandoned him hanging around so kindly am-scray. Am-scray Emma does but on the road out of town she almost hits a wolf, swerves and crashes into a sign.

Back in Fairy Tale world, the Prince and Snow White decide to put their baby into a magical cabinet carved by beloved figure of world folklore, Gepetto (yes, I am still salty, yes it matters, no I will not shut up about this). The cabinet is designed to protect one person from the curse like a fridge protecting against a nuclear blast. As the Evil Queen’s curse closes in on the kingdom, the Queen’s army invades the castle. Don’t ask me why, I mean, this is all going to be wiped out by the curse anyway. Maybe she just wants to get one good invasion in and go out with a bang. Anyway, the Queen’s off-brand Nazgul attack and Charming has to fight his way through them with a sword in one hand and a baby in the other.

This show was huge on Tumblr, the devil you say.

He’s injured but manages to get the baby into the cabinet.

Back in the real world, Emma wakes up in a cell in the sheriff’s office because if you find an unconscious woman in a wrecked car obviously you would assume she was up to no good and sling her in jail. And not. Y’know. Some kind of medical facility. Mayor Regina shows up to tell the Sheriff that Henry’s run off again and Emma offers to help find the kid. Emma pays a visit to Henry’s teacher, Mary Margaret Blanchard (why so coy? Just call her “Blanche Neige” and be done with it). Mary tells Blanche that she was the one who gave Henry the storybook and suggests she try looking for Henry in his castle, which turns out to be a castle themed playground. Emma finds Henry, tells him that his mother may be a hard-ass but she does love him and takes him back home. Regina tells Emma to get the hell out of her town, going so far as to threaten her. Emma decides to stay for awhile, partly to keep an eye on Henry and partly, one suspects, to fuck with Regina’s head. She books a room in a Bed and breakfast run by a woman named “Granny” and her grand-daughter Ruby (who are, obviously, Humpty Dumpty and Bluebeard). Emma then meets the mysterious “Mr. Gold”, who owns the entire town.

He got out of his cell? But how?!

Episode 2: The Thing You Love Most

Once Upon a Time was created by two writers who worked on Lost and it follows the same basic structure that show did. Most episodes focus on one character, contrasting their adventures in the present day with flashbacks to their time in the fairy tale world. The second episode gives the Evil Queen the once over. After crashing Snow White’s wedding, the Queen returns to her own palace and consults with the Magic Mirror and her valet. She tells them that she’s going to enact “The Dark Curse” and they remind her that she traded the curse away to…sigh…Maleficent.

Madam? I knew Maleficent. Maleficent was a friend of mine.

After some of the clunkiest, most exposition heavy dialogue I’ve ever heard the Queen demands the curse back and Maleficent refuses. They fight a magical dual and the Evil Queen beats Maleficent (FUCKING WHAT) and leaves with the curse. The Queen gathers a cadre of evil magic users and they try to enact the curse but it doesn’t work.

Meanwhile, in Storybrooke, Regina shows up at the Bed and Breakfast with a basket of apples for Emma because that’s her whole gimmick

She’s like an apple-themed Batman villain. The Appler!

Emma tells Regina she’s still going to stay and Regina replies that she doesn’t need to worry about Henry because she’s got him in therapy. Emma decides to pay a visit to Henry’s shrink, Doctor Hopper. She’s all “hey, I know patient confidentiality is sacrosanct and all…” and he’s all “nah, just take his file, it’s fine, you got an honest face”. This had me face palming until the show pulled the twist that Regina actually made Hopper give Emma the file so that she could frame her for stealing it. This is not a smart show, exactly, but it’s at least smart enough to know when something would be really dumb and subvert your expectations so, points for that, I guess.

In Fairy Tale land, Regina’s valet advises her to go to the person she originally bought the curse from, which turns out to be Rumpelstiltskin. She visits him in his incredibly secure dungeon and he tells her that for the curse to work she has to sacrifice the heart of the thing she loves most (hey, that’s the name of the episode). It turns out that’s the Valet, who is actually the Queen’s father (I’m sure they explain how that works later on).

Mary Blanchard bails Emma out of jail who then chainsaws one of Regina’s apple trees in revenge. In our final flashback to fairy tale land we learn that the Queen’s father’s name was Henry.

Episode 3: Snow Falls

This is the episode where I finally realised that this show was not for me.

This is our “Snow White and Prince Charming” episode, where we learn how these two crazy kids met. Now, translating a character like Snow White for a modern audience while remaining true to the basic essence of the character requires skill and finesse. Or, and hear me out here, you could just make her Catwoman.

Because that’s what they did.

Charming and his fianceé, Princess Abigail, are travelling through the woods when they get straight up robbed by a mysterious hooded figure who turns out to be Snow White. And okay, it could have worked, maybe. I can see it maybe working with a different….everything. With all apologies to Ginnifer Goodwin who is a charming and versatile actor, “badass outlaw” is not in her wheelhouse. Secondly, this version of Snow is just such a complete 180 from the Queen Snow White we saw in the pilot, or the Mary Blanchard version that it feels like a completely different person who happens to be played by the same actor. Anyway, she steals the wedding ring that Charming is supposed to give to Abigail and he swears that he will find her.

In Storybrooke, Mary Margaret finds Emma sleeping in her car because she can’t stay at Granny’s any more because she now has a criminal record. She offers to let Emma stay with her but Emma refuses because she doesn’t do roommates.

In “Henry’s Cray-Cray” News, Henry has got it into his head that a “John Doe” coma patient in the hospital is Prince Charming and convinces Mary to read to him from his book. This causes John Doe to take her hand but when she runs to get the doctor he tells her that Doe’s condition is completely unchanged. But when she goes, he calls Regina to let her know.

Back in fairy tale land, Charming captures Snow in a big net like a common Wookie and threatens to turn her in to the Queen unless she returns the ring she stole. And she tells him that she already sold it to some trolls.

Hah! No. Wow. Can you imagine if the trolls from Frozen just, like, showed up in this show? Man. Man, that’d look terrible.

So they team up to get the ring back from the trolls.

Mary Margaret goes to read to John Doe again only to be told that he’s run off which is impressive for a guy who’s been in a coma for years but also not really medically wise. Regina is also at the hospital because she’s apparently John Doe’s emergency contact as she was the one who brought him into the hospital years ago.

Meanwhile, Snow White and Charming fight some trolls, get the ring, he saves her, she saves him, enemies become friends, friends discover that they have crazy sexual chemistry.

They part company and Charming tells her that his name is actually James.

In Strorybrooke, Mary Margaret, Emma, Henry and the Sheriff find John Doe in the forest, drowned in a river. Fortunately Mary Margaret is able to use Magic Hollywood CPR to bring him back to life (for what is Magic Hollywood CPR if not True Love’s Kiss?).

They bring John Doe back to the hospital and he and Mary Margaret seem to have an instant connection but then Regina shows up with a blonde lady and is all “Hey guess what, I found his wife, don’t all thank me at once”. Emma thinks that Regina suddenly finding Doe’s wife is super sus but Regina tells her it was possible because of what Emma’s own investigation turned up. And the episode ends with Emma accepting Mary Margaret’s offer of a spare room because her hatred of Regina has finally become stronger than her hatred of room-mates.

***

So, I got real mixed feelings about Once Upon a Time. On the one hand, I really like all the Storybrooke stuff. I know Jennifer Morrison got some flack for her portrayal of Emma Swan but I think she’s really good. She brings across the idea of this woman who never had a normal stable upbringing and so still feels like a kid in an adult world, hoping that no one sees through her disguise. She’s an interesting lead character and I dig her a lot. I also think Lana Parilla is flat-out great as Regina Mills, bringing real soap-villain energy in some scenes while also showing real humanity and hurt in others. Ginnifer Goodwin is honestly perfect as a modern day version of Snow White, managing to be sweet and kind without being a smiling doormat. And Robert Carlyle is effortlessly creepy as Mr. Gold.

The problem is, ALL these elements (with the exception of Emma who’s just a baby) also exist in the Fairy Tale world and there… they kinda suck. The Evil Queen is a Power Rangers villain, Snow White is (as discussed) apparently Catwoman and Carlyle is playing Rumpelstiltskin like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun after he fell in a vat of Joker Acid. He’s AWFUL. And I know he’s a fantastic actor, hell, he’s fantastic in this show as Mr Gold but his Rumpelstiltskin is an over-acted, gimmicky atrocity.

Then there’s the Fairy Tale land itself which just looks so damn cheap. And I know, it’s a network TV show, I shouldn’t be expecting Game of Thrones level sets, costumes and special effects. What I do think is a fair criticism is the dialogue. Dialogue is so goddamn important in creating a sense of place and time and every character just talks like a 21st century American. And I’ve got nothing against 21st century Americans as long as they stay away from our women but what’s the point of setting a story in two different worlds if you’re not going to take the time to make them feel distinct?

Despite that, I’ll confess there is something very moreish about Once Upon a Time. Spouse of Mouse and I were constantly ripping on it but we did end up binging most of season one so it’s clearly doing something right.

No!

Maybe.

Shaddup.

NEXT UPDATE: 02 March 2023

NEXT TIME: What if they made a Disney movie, and nobody came?

Cover Reveal for Knock Knock, Open Wide!

Hey, hey, check out this absolutely gorgeous cover Knock Knock Open Wide, featuring artwork by the amazing Greg Ruth!

“Saying “sorry” is stupid! When you do something wrong, learn from it! Then you won’t make the same mistake again.”

Thank GOD for Rifftrax.

I keep doing this, y’know. This is like when I reviewed the Universal Dracula and Frankenstein, and just assumed that because they were both horror movies made in the thirties by the same studio they must be roughly equivalent in quality.

Not so, dear reader. Not so.

Now, The Batman, the first big screen outing of the caped crusader, was not a good film. Even looking past its use of yellowface and a stance on the internment of Japanese Americans that could charitably be called “a bit unwoke”, it was very much a movie serial of its time: cheap, poorly paced and of interest to the modern viewer mostly as a curiosity. But hot damn, compared to its sequel it is a masterpiece.

Take it from me, the gap in quality between The Batman (1943) and Batman and Robin (1949) is on par with that between The Batman (2022) and Batman and Robin (1997).

So much so, that I genuinely needed to resort to watching the Rifftrax version to even make it through the damn thing.

So, whither this crapitude?

Well, to answer that we need to look at the history of film serials as a form. The heyday of the serial was actually in the silent era, with multiple studios producing long-form series that often ran to over a hundred episodes. Serials thrived because they were popular with audiences but also because they were very cheap to make. But, then, The Jazz Singer had to come along and ruin everyone’s fun.

As well as the day of any blogger trying to cover this topic without getting cancelled.

The transition to sound crushed many of the smaller studios outright and only a few studios (such as Republic, Columbia and Universal) were able to afford to continue producing serialised stories. Serials had gone from being reliable cash cows to potential loss makers. Six years is not a huge amount of time between a movie and its sequel, but a lot had changed in the interim between The Batman and Batman and Robin. In 1943, serials were struggling to remain profitable. But by 1949 the form was facing imminent doom, tied to a railway track while a locomotive with the letters “TV” painted on it barrelled towards it. Serials made near the midpoint of the 20th century were cheaper than the jokes at a roast hosted by Seth McFarlane. If The Batman was made on a shoestring budget, Batman and Robin has no shoes and goes a-running barefoot through the street. It’s for this reason that stately Wayne manor is now a modest suburban home.

Bruce Wayne has been reduced to poverty, and yet insists on retaining his butler. It’s downright Chekhovian.

So our story begins in Gotham, a city at the mercy of roving bands of white dudes in fedoras.

I’m white AND male and I can’t tell these guys apart.

The only thing standing between the citizenry and this menace is Robin, terror of the night, and his tender boyish sidekick, the Batman. Seriously, this is the first Batman and Robin pair where I would rather meet Batman down a dark alley than Robin. Batman’s actor, Robert Lowery, had a long and successful career spanning 1936 to 1967 and appeared in over 70 films. For this reason I can only assume that he had serious dirt on somebody because he is, hands down, the worst onscreen Batman I have ever seen. Whereas Lewis Wilson played Bruce as a pampered dandy to deflect suspicion of his true identity, Lowery’s Batman has apparently hit on the ingenious tactic of playing Bruce Wayne as somebody too damn boring to ever be the Dark Knight. By contrast, Johnny Duncan’s Robin…you know when you just can tell when somebody has taken a human life? Like, maybe it was an accident but they definitely know what it’s like to look into someone’s eyes and see the light fade? Yeah.

So Batman and Robin are summoned to a military base after a device created by Professor Hamill is stolen by white dudes in fedoras. As the base commander briefs the dynamic duo and Comissioner Gordon, Hamill shows up, his wheelchair being pushed by his valet, Carter (remember the porter, good sirrahs). Hamill is played by William Fawcett, a man who has clearly been told by his director “imagine you’re playing a villain”. Hamill simply came by to tell them that they’re idiots for losing his machine and that whoever stole it is not doubt too clever and handsome to ever be caught by them. Then he peaces out and Batman’s all “hey, did you actually tell him about the theft and everyone’s all “no, why?” and Batman’s all “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenteresting.”

Pictured: the world’s great detective.

Batman then asks the base commander to tell him about the device that was stolen “if you’re free to tell me?”

Okay, so any aspiring actors out there? Here’s a tip on playing Batman. Never act like the time of the person you’re talking to is more important than yours. Because it never is. Because they’re not Batman. You are.

It’s revealed that the device is a remote control, capable of taking control of any vehicle and piloting it wherever the operator desires. And later, it’s even used to take control of devices like…a fucking crowbar.

It is so important to keep your crowbar’s malware up to date.

Anyway, the machine is powered by…diamonds…

There are two movies. Named Batman and Robin. That both have diamonds being used as a power source. Yeah, we’re in a simulation. No way that just happens.

So Batman tells the commissioner to guard everywhere in the city that sells diamonds, even if he has to hire “special” police.

“That sounds a lot like a vigilante mob.”
“Don’t go soft on me now, Gordon. You’re already in too deep!”

We now meet our villain, appropriately named The Wizard, because the machine he uses is basically magic.

Imagine what his voice sounds like. Wrong.

The next fourteen episodes…

Sorry I typed that wrong.

The next FOURTEEN FUCKING EPISODES essentially consists of Batman and the Wizard competing to see who is the worst at his job. It’s a very close contest, to be sure, and I’m not going to recount every twist and turn because it would bore you to tears. It’s the usual serial format jogging in place until we get to the climax. This series really brought home to me how much Batman needs to be an urban, nocturnal hero. Move the action to drab desert locations in the middle of the day, and suddenly the sight of a grown man dressed as a bat punching random mooks starts feeling, dare I say it? A little silly.

Despite the padding and repitition, there are a few important sub-plots. It turns out that one of the wizard’s white dudes in fedoras is Jimmie Vale, the brother of Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend, gal reporter Vicki Vale. Ask a Batman fan today about Vicki Vale and they might say “oh yeah, the character Kim Basinger played in the 1989 movie” but Vale was actually a major character in the comics until around the sixties, basically acting as the Lois Lane to Bruce’s Clark Kent. In this serial she’s played by Jane Adams and she’s hands down my favourite part of the whole affair. Unlike all the other heroes, she’s not purely reactive, snooping around and surreptitiously snapping photos with a camera the size of an elephant’s head. She also outsmarts Batman a few times (that would be more impressive with literally any other Batman but I’ll takes what I can get).

Like all serials, Batman and Robin makes heavy use of cliffhangers. But these cliffhangers are less exciting, suspenseful, hooks and more a chilling recreation of the experience of living with a psychologically abusive partner.

Chapter 2 ends with Batman and Robin trapped in a burning plane. And then the plane blows up!

Chapter 3 begins with Batman and Robin trapped in a burning plane. And then they open the door and run to safety. And then the plane blows up!

“Wait a minute, that’s not what happened!”“Yes it is. You’re just a crazy bitch.”

The most egregious of these little bits of narrative gaslighting is the sad tale of Jimmie Vale. The Wizard’s men have Vicki imprisoned. Batman tries to rescue her but gets instantly zapped by an electrified door knob and and knocked unconscious. Jimmie then finds Batman lying on the floor like a drunken hobo and unmasks him, and is shocked to discover that he’s Bruce Wayne.

“Golly! It all makes sense! They’re never in the same place and they both suck!”

We next see Batman running down a corridor where he gets into a fight with some of the Wizard’s goons and knocked out a window where he falls to a quick and bloody end.

The NEXT chapter begins with Robin witnessing Batman’s death, only for Bruce Wayne to run up and casually explain that Jimmy stole the Batsuit…for reasons….and then ran around with it (presumably humming “denananananananana Batman!” under his breath) before being made into pavement pizza. Did Jimmie think “boy oh boy, this sure will make a great fakeout for anybody watching this” because that is literally the only reason for him to do that. And DON’T tell me he put on the Batsuit for the psychological advantage in combat because to that I say:

The only advantage from this costume is the pity of your opponent.

Robin tells Batman that Vicki has already driven off. We then get the single coldest line of dialogue ever spoken by any Batman:

“She doesn’t know about her brother. Well, there’s nothing we can do for her now, let’s go!”

Like…damn.

The other big sub-plot, of course, is the Wizard’s identity. Unlike The Batman, which did not play coy with who the villain was (the answer being “all Asians, everywhere”), Batman and Robin tries to string us along with the mystery of just who is under that big black bag. We get thrown a few possible suspects. Is it Professor Hamill? Journalist Barry Brown who seems to know of all the Wizard’s schemes before the police or Batman? That shady private investigator? Is it all Asians, everywhere? No, you’ll never guess. So, remember Carter? The inoccous valet of Professor Hamill who had access to all his scientific secrets and was hiding in plain sight? That’s right! It was Carter’s…previously unmentioned twin brother.

Brilliant!

***

How bad is this serial?

Batman and Robin has a chapter entitled Robin meets the Wizard in which Robin and the Wizard never meet.

The Dark Knight Detective

To be fair, it’s not entirely Lowery’s fault. While he can’t match Wilson’s performance (which, let’s be clear, wasn’t Olivier or anything) he does at least borrow something from his predecessor; his costume. Downside of that is that Lowery and Wilson were very different builds and this bat costume looks even worse when it doesn’t even fit. Ultimately though, Lowery just isn’t there. He’s a void where an actor should be. In scenes with three or more actors he just disappears. While dressed like BATMAN. That’s honestly impressive.

The Boy Wonder

How can I articulate this sensitively? Whenever Johnny Duncan’s Robin is onscreen, I expect him to ask Batman when they’re getting a farm so that he can look after the rabbits.

His Faithful Manservant

Eric Wilton plays Alfred in an uncredited performance. He plays it with all the passion and effort that implies. He’s not bad. He’s just a glorified extra.

Our Nefarious Villain

Apparently you can have a good villain in yellowface, or a villain who sucks without yellowface, but not both.

The Comish

After an inexplicable omission from The Batman, one of the single most important characters in the entire franchise makes his onscreen debut. Veteran actor Lyle Talbot as Comissioner Gordon is one of the best things here. Which means he’s a notch above “passable”.

Our Plucky Sidekicks

Jane Adams gives a spirited performance as Vicki Vale, appearing a mere year after her print debut.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

True, Lowery!Bat doesn’t kill anyone onscreen. Onscreen. But there is a sequence where Batman and Robin track the wizard’s hoods with irradiated dollar bills. During a fight, some of those bills fall on some dry straw and burst into flames. Because they’re irradiated, you see. Now, I’m no doctor. But I’m pretty sure if those bills were radioactive enough to start fires then ALL those men have the really bad cancers now. Also, he makes his aged man-servant dress up as Batman and run around a warehouse filled with armed criminals. It’s not murder, but that’s just blind luck.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

We get the first appearance of the Bat-signal onscreen (or the “Batman” signal, they go back and forth). This serial at least understands that Batman is supposed to use gadgets. He gets a bat blowtorch and portable respirators. And of course a geiger counter to track those bills that are apparently more radioactive than Chernobyl Reactor 4.

Again, it’s the villain who gets the best tech. As well as the remote control, he can broadcast messages on a television screen, which Batman smashes in a vain attempt to prevent the death of the serial format.

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

The Cadillac Series 70 may not have been the most impressive vehicle to ever play the Batmobile, but it was at least a good looking car. By contrast, Batman and Robin has millionaire Bruce Wayne driving…a 1949 Mercury, one of the most inexpensive cars on the market.

Unfortunately, the car handled so badly that it was frequently damaged during stunts. On the plus side, it was so cheap they were able to swap in a new car whenever one was damaged. Gadgets? Eh…it has lights and a working motor? Oh, and it has a fake police siren to scare off criminals. Seems like that’s kinda something BATMAN should be able to do himself but what do I know?

Oh, remember I joked about people in Gotham just accepting that Bruce Wayne lets Batman use his car? Well, that’s actually addressed in this serial when Vicki asks Batman if Bruce Wayne knows he’s using his car and Batman’s all “yes, of course” and she’s all “well, okay then”.

These people are idiots, is what I’m saying.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

God, even this movie’s bat emblem is embarassing.

NEXT UPDATE: 16 February 2023

NEXT TIME: Look, I’m juggling deadlines left right and centre, I need something light, okay?