E.R. Torre's Blog, page 128

Thoughts on Suicide Squad (2016)

Haven’t watched Suicide Squad yet so no review (belated or not) to offer, just my observations regarding the reaction to the movie’s debut:

Critics hated the film, at least according to Rottentomatoes.com.  At this point, the film has a pretty terrible 26% approval overall from critics.
On the other hand, audiences like the film to the tune of 72%, again via Rottentomatoes.com.
The movie made a ton of money, breaking all records for a premiere at this particular time of the year…
On the other hand, there is some indication that the film may fall hard in its earnings after a very robust debut.
People appear to be divided into two camps: Those that enjoyed the film and can’t understand why all the hate is directed toward it and do not feel it deserves such a low overall critical rating.  There are others who feel the film is a big mess and is another huge DC disappointment.

No, you are not experiencing deja vu.

Each of these five points could -and have been!- applied to Batman v Superman.  The critics hated it?  Check.  Audiences liked it considerably more than the critics?  Check.  The movie made a ton of money?  Check.  Afterwards, the film lost steam, revenue-wise?  Check.  People dividing into two camps, one hating hating hating it while another defends the film?  Check.

I don’t know what to make of this.  I certainly don’t believe the whole “critics hate DC movies and love Marvel movies” some have professed yet I can’t quite understand the extreme differences in opinion.

I’ve stated before I really liked Batman v Superman and feel over time the film will be reassessed and recognized as a very ambitious work.  Did it succeed completely?  No.  Even in the “Ultimate Edition” there were a few things I felt the movie came up short on.  For example, I feel Bruce Wayne/Batman’s apocalypse dream sequence could and probably should have been removed from the film.  Mind you, there was nothing wrong with the sequence itself, it just didn’t much matter in the context of the story being told and had it been left on the cutting room floor (or presented as a bonus sequence on the DVD/BluRay) I don’t think anyone would have minded.

I will eventually catch Suicide Squad, though I don’t know if it will be while its still in the theaters.  Will my reaction to this movie mirror Batman v Superman?

Time will tell.

Absolutely fascinating…

Stumbled upon this article, written by Robert Krulwich and presented on nationalgeographic.com the other day regarding the following:

Historians and archaeologists have, of course, worked hard to find and document lost human history.

Their work, to me, is fascinating and surprising and I have to admit this article had high levels of both.

Honestly, I never considered the idea of who is the first person in history whose name we actually know, and this article offers the answer to that question as well as several other very early historical names.

I don’t want to give away the information as I truly believe the article is worth reading, but not only the names presented are interesting, but so too are their stations in life.

That much I’ll give away:  The name was found on this tablet which was, in turn, found in Iraq:

The tablet describes a shipment of barley and the first person in history whose name we know acknowledges receipt of this shipment and “signs” for it on the tablet.  Get this: The first person in history whose name we know was essentially…an accountant.

The article goes on to describe the second, third, and fourth oldest names ever found, also on a tablet found in Iraq.  The people named on this second tablet are a slave owner and the names of his/her two slaves.

But enough of me offering a Cliff’s Notes version of the article.  Click on the link and read what the oldest known, as well as the second, third, and fourth oldest names, known to us!

Clint Eastwood…

If you had met me in the 1970’s, 80’s, or 90’s and asked my opinion of Clint Eastwood, I would have said something similar to what I’d say now:

He’s one of those very few actors with a screen presence so magnetic/electric that no matter how bad the film he’s in is, his mere presence makes it better.

Looking over my digital films, I suspect I have more Clint Eastwood films in my collection than films featuring any other actor.  I have almost all of them, from his “Man With No Name” trilogy to Where Eagles Dare (a criminally underrated WWII action fantasy) to Kelly’s Heroes (a criminally underrated WWII…comedy?!) to his Dirty Harry films to The Eiger Sanction (Mr. Eastwood doing an “American” James Bond) to High Plains Drifter to The Outlaw Josey Wales to…

Well, I could go on and on but hopefully you understand: I’m a HUGE fan of Clint Eastwood, actor.  And while I may not like all his directed works quite as much, he’s proven to be at the very least a good -and at times great- director as well.

But what my younger self probably never would have conceived of is the fact that as he’s aged, Mr. Eastwood, the individual, has become the living embodiment of the cranky “get off my grass” old man.  Or, as the Simpson’s so ingeniously put it:

“It will happen to you”.

It seems to most certainly have happened to Mr. Eastwood and it seems to have started a few years back, when he famously tried to bash President Obama at the Republican Convention nominating Mitt Romney for President by speaking to an empty chair…

The speech, which Mr. Eastwood later stated was intended to be absurd humor, instead landed with a wet thud and, reportedly, Ann Romney, Mitt Romney’s wife, was furious as the speech was happening as she knew it would be -along with Mr. Romney’s campaign- ridiculed.

I suppose those were the good old days when it comes to Mr. Eastwood as he’s given an interview to Esquire magazine and some of the things he says are…jeeze…how to put it?  Weird.  Strident.

Ed Mazza for Huffington Post (yes, a for the most part liberal publication so take that as you will) highlights some of Mr. Eastwood’s comments:

Clint Eastwood rips “pussy generation”, says he’ll vote for Donald Trump

Among some of the highlights of what Mr. Eastwood said:

“You know, (Donald Trump)’s a racist now because he’s talked about this judge. And yeah, it’s a dumb thing to say. I mean, to predicate your opinion on the fact that the guy was born to Mexican parents or something. He’s said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. But everybody—the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist,’ and they’re making a big hoodoo out of it. Just fucking get over it. It’s a sad time in history.”

First, Donald Trump hasn’t just stated one insulting thing against one judge.  He has offered multiple racist statements.  While “both sides” say dumb things, Donald Trump specifically, has made multiple inflammatory comments regarding Mexicans and Muslims.  So far the worst I’ve heard from Hillary Clinton against Mr. Trump was that he was “ill tempered” to be President (something I agree with, btw).  Meanwhile, Mr. Trump and his crowds that have called her a “bitch”, someone who should go to jail, or, in at least one case, labeled her the “devil.”

This quote, also presented in the above article, is even more illuminating:

“(S)ecretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a pussy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist. And then when I did Gran Torino, even my associate said, ‘This is a really good script, but it’s politically incorrect.’ And I said, ‘Good. Let me read it tonight.’ The next morning, I came in and I threw it on his desk and I said, ‘We’re starting this immediately.’”

Curious how he mentions Gran Torino in the article.  While I enjoyed the film and thought it was intended to be a “final” Dirty Harry film in all but name, what I found most intriguing and disappointing about it was the fact that it didn’t have the “guts” Mr. Eastwood seems to imply it has to “go there” with political incorrectness.

What I’m referring to is the fact the character of Walt Kowalski is presented as an old generation person who, like Mr. Eastwood in real time today, bemoans political correctness and is perfectly fine spewing racial epithets yet curiously never once says the biggest racial epithet of them all.

You know, the one referring to black people that starts with the letter “n”.

I wondered why this “politically incorrect” film would, in Mr. Eastwood’s vernacular, “pussy” out of doing that.  I mean, the character was meant to be a gruff, politically incorrect “old school” man who didn’t give a shit about all that stuff, yet at no point in the film does Clint Eastwood have his character say the “n” word.

Why?  Its only too obvious.

Racism, like many things in the world, is tolerated by some as a matter of degree.  For Mr. Eastwood, people like Donald Trump can get away with calling a woman a “bitch” or a “devil”.  He can get away with labeling Mexicans “murderers” and “rapists”.

But even someone like Mr. Eastwood who decries “political correctness” knows there’s this bright line drawn when calling black people the “n” word.  Suddenly, the stark, revolting reality of racism is apparent for all to see.

I suspect had Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino said such a word even once during the course of that film audiences might well have turned on his character.

Instead of finding Mr. Kowalski a crumudgeon with a “heart of gold”, we’d might well have cast him as a vile racist.

Nobody knows…

One of my all time favorite quotes comes from noted screen writer William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) which goes:

“Nobody knows anything…Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for certainty what’s going to work.  Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”

While the quote was intended to offer insight into the movie making process, it relates to almost every artistic endeavor out there.

One could make a very long list of writers, for example, who lived their lives in poverty and/or obscurity, releasing works that would, unfortunately for them, be considered classics long after they were dead (offhand, people like Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Robert E. Howard are but three examples).

It amuses me to read the latest negative reactions to Suicide Squad and see people write something along the lines of “Why can’t DC make a good movie?”

As if they’re trying desperately to make a bad one?  If anything, Suicide Squad may prove a great example of a studio trying desperately -and with too little time to do so- make a film based on the negative reactions to a previous one, Batman v Superman.

Moving away from that, there are plenty of examples of artistic creations the artist making them didn’t think all that much about but which blew up on them and became signature works.

For example, its been stated the members of Nirvana were not happy with the released version of their seminal album Nevermind, that they felt the production made the album sound too vanilla.

I point these things out because I’m absolutely fascinated by these stories and, while listening to the radio the other day, I found another delightful example of just such a thing.

On the radio station I was listening to they played a snippet of an interview with Rod Stewart.  Now, I’m not a huge Rod Stewart fan.  I know plenty of his songs and consider some of them quite good but his work never really thrilled me enough to pursue.

Anyway, in that snippet of the interview Mr. Stewart talks about what is perhaps his biggest, most well known hit, Maggie May, which first appeared on his 1971 album Every Picture Tells a Story.  Here’s the song for those who don’t know it:

Anyway, I can only paraphrase what Mr. Stewart said, but it went something like this:

Mr. Stewart noted that when he was making Every Picture Tells a Story, he recorded the song Maggie May last and was ambivalent as to whether to include it in the album.  He presented it to friends to get their opinion as to whether to include it or not and these friends said he shouldn’t include the song, that it “meandered” and didn’t have a “hook”.

(Interestingly, I believe his friends were correct, the song does indeed not have a “hook” and it does meander.  Yet even I, an admitted not-very-big fan of Mr. Stewart, nonetheless believe it is a terrific song anyway.)

Mr. Stewart then states that because the album was so very close to being released and he had no other songs ready to put into the album to replace Maggie May, he wound up including it in the album.

In that snippet of the interview Mr. Stewart then laughed and said something along the lines of “Good thing too as I wouldn’t be here today if I had cut the song out!”

As I said, nobody knows nothing.

Hmmm….

So the early reviews of Suicide Squad are out aaaaaannnnnnddddd…

Critics aren’t loving what they’re seeing.  Forrest Wickman and David Canfield over at Slate.com offer a mix of critical reactions to the film:

Here’s What Critics Have to Say About Suicide Squad

Over on Rottentomatoes.com, the film is scoring a not very good 33% positive among critics (24 of 48 critics so far have enjoyed the film).

Reading through some of the negative reviews, the main thing I’m getting from the critics is that the film presents far too much in too messy a fashion.

I suppose that makes sense.  The film is a team movie and it presents many of these characters for the very first time, though it appears they do so at the expense of a tighter storyline.

While negative, these same critics offer praise for Margot Robbie (who plays Harley Quinn) and Will Smith (who portrays Deadshot).  There also seems to be a general consensus that Jaret Leto’s Joker was both a cameo performance and ultimately extraneous to the story.

I haven’t seen the film so I obviously have no opinion one way or another.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

I find myself in the curious position not unlike many who were predisposed to not like Batman v Superman.  In the case of BvS, I saw only one film directed by Zach Snyder before that one, Dawn of the Dead, and therefore came into the film with far fewer negatives than others who had seen -and not enjoyed- more of his films.

With Suicide Squad’s director , I have seen more of his works and, frankly, his career has been kind of hit and miss for me.  He’s written some good works (especially Training Day) but his two films previous to this one, 2014’s Fury and Sabotage, were to my mind a) only ok and b) a real missed opportunity.

Of these two films, the one I most looked forward to was Sabotage and, based on the trailers, found the And Then There Were None concept applied to testosterone fueled uber-agressive drug hunting cops an intriguing idea…but after a decent start the film simply didn’t have much of a payoff, IMHO.

Fury, as I said above, was in my mind a decent film but when all was said and done it didn’t really add all that much to the voluminous WWII film genre, despite some great effects and for the most part very good acting.

I will see Suicide Squad, though I’m not sure if I get a chance to do so in the theaters.  At this point I want to catch Star Trek Beyond and Jason Bourne and its been hard to find the free time to see one of those films, much less all three.

We’ll see.

Shackled skeletons…

Fascinating article found on (of all things) japantimes.com concerning…

Mysterious shackled skeletons found in ancient Greek mass grave

What really intrigued me was this photograph, found in the article, which shows these skeletons:

Eerie, no?

The article offers theories archaeologists have regarding the identity of these corpses, believing they might have been on the losing side of a political uprising and were rounded up and executed for their actions.

Is their theory correct?  It certainly is possible but what I find most intriguing is this points out one small pocket of human history concealed from us…until now.

Makes you wonder just how much more history awaits our discovery, buried beneath layers of dirt.

You make your bed…

Yes, I’m getting into politics again.

Run for the hills.

For those still left, the situation with Donald Trump is perhaps one of the more fascinating to come around in recent times.

Terrifying, I’ll grant you, but fascinating nonetheless.

There were many, IMHO, highlights in the Democratic Convention from last week, from the emotional and beautiful Michele Obama speech to Cathy Giffords.  But there was one speech that reverberated above almost all others, that of Khirz Khan and his wife, who lost their son back in 2004 while serving in Iraq…

Bizarrely, or, sadly, perhaps expectedly, Donald Trump went after Mr. Khan and his wife.  Thus far (its Monday, August 1st), he hasn’t backed down.

However, as I said above, that is to be expected.  If nothing else, Mr. Trump is an attacker.  He will attack anyone that tries/dares to go after him in any way.  Many of these attacks helped him win the primaries, especially the way he brilliantly took down party favorite Jeb Bush by calling him “low energy”.

However, we’ve now moved beyond the primaries and, as is often the case, when you move past the party’s most faithful and start to the address the country in general, things that may work on the smaller scale can certainly malfunction on a larger one.

It appears this may well be happening to Mr. Trump.

Suddenly, he has to answer questions regarding the world in general and, at least so far, his “answers” regarding, in particular, Russia, have been troublesome.  Further, while Ms. Clinton is certainly a prime target to fight, going after people like the Khans is beyond the pale.

Sadly, many “big” names in the Republican Party have been very reticent to criticize Mr. Trump’s more outlandish comments.  While Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan criticized Mr. Trump’s comments, they did so without mentioning the highly important fact that they came from him.  Which gets those cynical with politics in general shaking their heads.

The Republicans (and Democrats in their own way) look after their own, even if they have to hold their nose while doing so.

All is not lost, however.  This morning, John McCain becomes the first high level Republican office holder to not only criticize the comments of Mr. Trump, he mentions him by name:

John McCain: Donald Trump defamed Khan, does not represent GOP

Lockout vs. Escape From New York…the final judgment…?

Last week Friday and after a few months, a French Court hearing an appeal by Luc Besson, producer and “original story” creator of 2012’s Lockout, decided the man had indeed ripped off John Carpenter’s 1981 film Escape From New York.  The original judicial judgment was for €80,000 but this new decision upped the penalty to €450,000.

Read all about it here in an article by Germain Lussier and presented on i09:

A French Court has officially deemed Luc Besson’s Lockout a rip-off of Escape From New York

So, not only did the appeal fail for Mr. Besson, it failed pretty damn spectacularly as his original penalty judgment was upped nearly six times.

 

Here’s where perfect 20/20 hindsight comes in: I suppose in retrospect Mr. Besson should have just taken that original judgment and accepted it then simply moved on.

I wrote twice before about Lockout, first offering a review of the film in which, among other things I stated this with regard to the “similarities” between the film and Escape From New York:

My younger, more strident self (as opposed to the more mellow person I’ve since become) might have been furious that Mr. Besson (who is also listed in the credits as having the “original idea” of this film!!!!) would so cavalierly rip off another person’s concept.

Later, when the initial case was brought before the French Courts and Mr. Carpenter won, I also wrote about that and had this to say:

…with Lockout vs. Escape From New York, there is very little doubt that one inspired (or, as the French court ruled, “ripped off”) the other.  Whatever you may think of Lockout, good or bad, if you’re familiar with John Carpenter’s film, you instantly see the similarities…and they are quite significant.

As I writer, I have my own ideas regarding “original” story concepts.

There are those who say there’s no such thing as an “original” story and that any form of similarity between stories is worth nothing more than a shrug.

I disagree.

Copying a story concept is a question of degree.  You can isolate all the individual elements in Escape From New York and Lockout and decide nothing in the film is original.

For example, you have a lone borderline villainous anti-hero in both films (been done, see Kiss Me Deadly to Fistful of Dollars to The Road Warrior)

You have an impenetrable/unescapable prison where the protagonist has to escape from (been done, see Escape From Alcatraz, The Great Escape, etc.)

You have a mission which must be accomplished by a certain time or else (been done, see Mission Impossible movies and TV shows, Wages of Fear, Smokey and the Bandit, etc.)

You have questionable allies helping your hero do his thing (been done, see Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone…hell, most of the movies based on Alistair MacLean novels)

You have a strong, flamboyant villain and his even more flamboyant right hand man (been done, see almost every James Bond film)

You have a very important person you have to get out of there (been done)

I could go on but I think I’ve made the point of many of those who do not feel Lockout is a rip-off of Escape From New York.

HOWEVER, what Lockout did which many other films did not is take these individual elements found in Escape From New York and present them in pretty much the same order and way but with one cosmetic change: Setting the story in space.

Otherwise, they are essentially the very same works.

And that is a step too far.

Now that the conventions are over…

…the real campaign for Presidency, obviously, begins.

I’ve made my opinion of this Presidential race pretty clear and don’t want to dwell on too much of what went on these two weeks (there are people far more eloquent than I all over the internet and TV to offer fascinating opinions) but I will say this much: The Trump convention looked like a cheap carnival show compared to the far more polished, optimistic, and buoyant Clinton convention.

Just my opinion.  Whether these conventions frame the race to come, we will see.

There were so many interesting moments -good and bad- from both campaigns and I could go over them but instead choose this one tidbit of absurdity, presented on syracuse.com and written by Geoff Herbert:

Bradley Cooper at DNC: American Sniper fans upset actor is not a Republican

The upshot of this article is that some people were upset to see Bradley Cooper at the Democratic Convention, especially since he played the lead in what many feel is a red-blooded “Republican” film, American Sniper.

To them I say: Jeeze.

Comic Con part deux…the not so good

Yesterday I posted what I felt were some of the highlights of this year’s San Diego Comic Con, all related to upcoming movies (and I didn’t focus on the plethora of TV and *gasp* comic book related material!).

As fascinating as so much of the stuff released and teased was, there was one noticeable negative to emerge, and that involved the panel focused on the as of yesterday, July 25th just released The Killing Joke, the animated DC feature adaptation of the controversial Alan Moore written, Brian Bolland drawn graphic novel from 1988.  This is the cover to that graphic novel…

Over at i09.com, the i09 Staff offer a very good article concerning the panel and how it went so very wrong…

The Killing Joke movie is a disaster, right down to its Comic-Con panel

I don’t want to step too hard on the article’s toes (you really should read it) but the bottom line is the panel revealed additions were made to the original graphic novel story as it was only 48 pages worth of material, in order to make it a full length animated film.

To many in the audience, these additions didn’t go over well.

In the original Alan Moore penned graphic novel, readers learn possible aspects of the Joker’s origin while wrapped around what I considered then, and still do now, one of Mr. Moore’s darkest -and most perverse- stories, if only because it features such comic book icons (take that haters of Batman v Superman!).

I nonetheless say this with considerable regret because up to about that point, Alan Moore was an author that, in my mind, could do absolutely no wrong.

I got into Alan Moore’s writing earlier than most people on this side of the pond for I was one of the very few buying Saga of the Swamp Thing, his first American work, as it was released to newsstands.  In fact, I recall many snickering when I told them the book was really, really good.

I still recall the thrill of reading “The Anatomy Lesson”, Issue #21 of the book which brilliantly framed the beloved character in a whole new light.  So blown away was I by Mr. Moore’s storytelling that I hunted far and near in those pre-internet/pre-Amazon days desperately searching for more of Mr. Moore’s works.  Imagine my thrill when I got my hands on issues of Warrior Magazine and was exposed to MarvelMan (later MiracleMan) and V for Vendetta.

My point is this: I was a HUGE fan of Mr. Moore’s writing.

And then things changed.

While Saga of the Swamp Thing started so incredibly well, I found the series lost steam as it went on.  Sometimes the stories Mr. Moore presented were really out there and while this worked in some cased, in others it didn’t.  Part of the problem, I suspect, was the grind of releasing a book on a monthly basis.  Because of the time crunch, Stephen Bissette and John Totleban, the magnificent main artists during Mr. Moore’s run, were unable to keep up that schedule and there were more than a few “fill in” stories presented now and again.  Some worked (Issue #28’s “The Burial”) while others…didn’t.

I also noted that as good a writer as Mr. Moore was, his strengths lay in “single issue” stories and in initiating longer stories and not so much in providing a strong conclusion (the “American Gothic” storyline, IMHO, started strong and then kinda limped to its end).

Having said all that, Mr. Moore would go on to write Watchmen, one of the greatest superhero deconstructions ever made, before going on to write The Killing Joke.

When the graphic novel was announced, I was very hyped to see it.  An Alan Moore written, Brian Bolland (one of the greatest British artists to come, ever!) drawn Batman graphic novel?  One focused on Batman’s arch-enemy, the Joker?

I mean, come on!  What was not to love?

As it turned out, quite a bit.

In Mr. Moore’s story, the Joker pushes Batman to his limits.  He does this by ambushing Barbara Gordon, ie Batgirl while she’s in her civilian clothing in her apartment.  He shoots her, she falls backwards through a glass table, then he strips her and, as the cover of the book shows, starts photographing her nude while in her injured/bleeding state.  While it isn’t outright stated, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Joker hadn’t raped her as well.

But wait, there’s more!

Afterwards, when she’s in the hospital, we learn Barbara Gordon was crippled as well.  Later still, Commissioner Gordon, her father, is captured by the Joker who tortures him by showing off those nasty nude photographs he took of Barbara.

Incredibly, incredibly nasty stuff…and what made it all worse is that the story, for all its bleak perversity, just wasn’t all that good.

In looking back, the release of The Killing Joke may well have been the moment I really started questioned Mr. Moore’s writing.  While there was always a dark edge to his works, it seemed he went too far.

Mr. Moore would leave DC comics soon afterwards and the split was far from amicable.  Mr. Moore swore to never again write for the company, a promise he’s kept to this day.  He produced more comics, some which featured a softer tone while others were just as -if not more, dark, but these independent works never appealed to me quite as much as his 1980’s output and, with a couple of exceptions (From Hell, among them), I haven’t read most of his post DC stuff.

When I heard Warner Brothers was working on an animated version of The Killing Joke, I was curious yet harbored doubts this was a worthwhile project to tackle.  Well, the movie was made and, incredibly, it appears to be even nastier than the graphic novel.

In the movie, panelists at the Comic-Con found, the story was expanded to include Barbara Gordon and Batman “getting it on,” this despite the fact that she’s the daughter of his biggest ally!  Further, the movie then presents her as a jilted lover, pining for the return of her beloved Batman, when the Joker comes-a-callin.

And then there’s this tidbit of something that happened during the panel, as presented in the article linked to above:

It was during the Q&A that things got dicey. A Joker cosplayer asked the writers why they would downplay Barbara Gordon, such a strong female character, and make her story more about the men in her life. According to Bleeding Cool reporter Jeremy Konrad, the writers insisted she was still a strong female character. Konrad, who’d already seen the film and didn’t agree, himself sarcastically shouted, “Yeah, by using sex and then pining for Bruce.”

That’s when co-screenwriter Brian Azzarello seemed to put it all out there. “Wanna say that again? Pussy?” he asked.

Now, I wasn’t there and who knows what the mood and emotions were like in that panel up to that point.  I’ve been a guest at conventions and know that sometimes the pressure can get to you. Regardless, if Mr. Azzarello said what he said…come on, man.  Control yourself.

Regardless of all that, the bottom line for me is this: The Killing Joke graphic novel was, to put it kindly, a very flawed product to begin with and the animated film and the additions it makes to an already flawed story are just as, if not more, questionable.

In the long run, however, this is but one Batman animated film -and graphic novel- out of tons of them so for those who find the whole thing icky, just get it out of your system and ignore the movie.

Certainly another, better one is to come.