Given the unsophisticated formatting of my blog and ridiculously lengthy posts, here’s a collection of all the posts in my Frederik vs the Franchises series for easy reference.
Superhero Fatigue
Part 4 – Batman :
Showing posts with label DCEU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DCEU. Show all posts
17.1.24
F vs the Franchises: Superhero Fatigue (Part 4c - In the Shadow of a Man Dressed As a Bat)
Click here for Part A of my Batman discussion, covering Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy.
Click here for Part B of my Batman discussion, covering The Batman and Batman in the DC Animated Universe.
Tim Burton
Each of Burton’s Batman films have jarring scenes that needlessly break their illusions. In the first it’s when Batman homes in with guns and missiles on a defiantly stationary Joker, only to miss despite apparently sophisticated computer targeting. As if this isn’t bad enough, Batman manages to get shot down from the single shot of an implausible gun there’s no way the Joker could have been keeping in his pants. The terrible choreography of the scene makes for an empty and pointless spectacle. What good are tools that don’t work as intended? Granted, the film would have been over if Batman had successfully killed the Joker on that first pass with the Batwing, but that’s an argument for replacing that scene with another that actually works. Batman Returns offers a more puzzling than jarring scene when the Penguin’s goons use plans of the Batmobile to hijack the vehicle. Where did they get the plans? Ebay? The follow-up question is: who engineers a car with a skinny mode just in case it needs to squeeze through a narrow space? Isn’t that a cooler version of keeping shark repellant in the utility belt, just in case?
In the bigger picture, though, these amount to quibbles in films that are, in my view, the best live-action Batman films to date. Obviously, gloriously gothic and German expressionist production design is a contributing factor, as few films in or out of the comic book genre can boast such iconic visuals. But the films also succeed as Batman stories, offering a synthesis of the character’s various interpretations that is remarkably coherent both in itself and in relationship to the fictional Gotham setting. In Burton’s and screenwriters Sam Hamm and Daniel Waters’ Batman we see influences from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, and Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which is to say that this version is quite brutal with hints of psychosis. Yet the character is kept from being overly grim by drawing on more classical depictions of the characters, such as his detective skills, engineering abilities, commitment to defending Gotham’s citizens from terrifying threats, and charmingly eccentric Bruce Wayne. From a narrative standpoint, the scripts by Sam Hamm (Batman)and Daniel Waters (Batman Returns) aren’t burdened by dead-ending topical references, as Nolan’s trilogy is. Both films keep it simple with Batman as a vigilante acting (reacting) in the absence of effective public institutions to confront rampant crime and corruption, notably oversized villains. It’s in the characterizations that we find material for rich interpretations, and the strength of both films, especially Batman Returns, is the extent to which the characters and the city of Gotham, itself a character, both feel like symbiotic extensions of each other.
However impressive Heath Ledger’s Joker is, within the limits I’ve discussed, Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman remains my favorite live-action interpretation. (Jared Leto’s version in Suicide Squad is more interesting than people give him credit for, but with so much of his performance and role in the story cut, according to David Ayer, it’s hard to form a decisive opinion.) Notably, he’s no less terrifying for having a biography of sorts, one that doesn’t give us a sob story about a bleak childhood or asks us to sympathize with him as a tragic figure. When we are first introduced to Jack Napier, it’s as the right hand to Jack Palance’s crime boss Carl Grissom. Later, we learned of his earlier role as a small-time hood mugging people, like Thomas and Martha Wayne, for petty cash and jewelry. Already established as ruthless and cold-blooded killer, his transformation into the Joker is chillingly believable: his disfigurement by the acid removes the thin layer of civilization necessitated by his position within an organized criminal organization. Without the restraints that comes from social hierarchy, Napier is freed to act out on his murderous impulses on a larger scale, and with a warped sense of humor, as the Joker. Although it doesn’t seem to me that Batman purposefully drops Napier into the vat of acid, and both screenplay and novelization apparently support the view that it’s unintentional, the scene itself has enough ambiguity that whatever actually happens, the outcome creates symmetry between Joker and Batman. Napier killed Bruce Wayne’s parents, leading to Batman’s creation, while Batman in turn has a role in Napier becoming the Joker. Stripped of ideological posturing and grandiose mythologizing, the antagonism between two classic opponents is refreshingly straightforward with, in my opinion, a greater visceral impact.
Surpassing Batman and, indeed, all other live-action films is, of course, Batman Returns. With greater freedom, Burton and screenwriter Daniel Waters craft a film whose story is operatic in scope and delivered with even more expressionistic gothic design. What makes the film stand out is the extent to which settings and characters reflect and influence each other, painting a dystopian urban portrait with its own insular, grotesque logic. We have Danny Devito’s Penguin embodying the outcast as both victim and threat, the alienating and atomizing effect of a city without community. Representing the corrupt business elite, we have Christopher Walken’s Max Shreck to encapsulate the failures of capitalism. Michelle Pfeiffer’s iconic Catwoman presents a radical feminist revolutionary bucking both system and social order as defined by patriarchy. And in the volatile mix is Bruce Wayne, an uneasy and problematic counterpart to these antagonists, especially when acting as Batman. Literal realism is far from the point to the film, and the story – simultaneously thrilling, disturbing, sublime, and silly – is all the better for it. By recognizing the inherently fantastical notion that is a Batman story, our ability to layer interpretations on the film is all the freer for not having to quibble with attempts at social commentary beyond the abstract.
If there’s a question that hangs over Burton’s films, though, it’s that of Batman’s frequently deadly violence, sometimes purposeful (as in his blowing up a Red Triangle gang member), sometimes oblivious (setting a Red Triangle thug on fire with the Batmobile’s fiery exhaust), and sometimes as collateral damage (e.g. from blowing up Axis Chemicals). The famous “no kill” rule clearly doesn’t apply. In fairness, the rule isn’t consistent across all versions of Batman, as Mark Hughes explains in his overview of the subject at Forbes, and if there’s a trend it’s that the moral use or rejection of lethal force is not so much an argument but the outcome of storytellers manipulating scenarios to make whatever argument they want to make. For example, if you want to justify Batman killing, make him choose between saving the lives of innocents or preserving the life of a villain, out of a principled commitment to avoid any killing, at their expense. But there are cheats. You could make kid-friendly fare in which villains aren’t sufficiently homicidal, sadistic, or generally dangerous for Batman to consider a deadly approach to foiling them. You could also draw on Batman’s engineering brilliance to give him gadgets that let him effectively stun his opponents. However you manipulate it, the question of Batman’s use of lethal force is inextricably tied to the question of how Batman actually deters crime and prevents recurrent threats? Hughes might be satisfied with the idea of a Batman who perpetually fights villains he refuses to kill out of principle, but I have to ask what good it does when public justice and mental health institutions are incapable of resolving the challenges of crime. It’s one thing if Batman catches the villains on behalf of an incompetent/corrupt police force and the public system helps confine and/or rehabilitate them. But when nothing works, Batman’s fundamental purpose is, to me, dissatisfying and pointless. The comics don’t tend to address the repair of public institutions, of course, focused as they are on keeping Batman in perpetual conflict with one antagonist or another, and the movies follow suit.
My own view is that, realistically and without resorting to tech gimmicks, while Batman shouldn’t murder people when he can avoid it, the reality is that in life and death situations someone is bound to be seriously injured if not killed. And seeing that it’s not going to be Batman, that means his criminal opponents. However, if Batman is to be a credible perspective on crime, stories also need to pair Batman’s vigilantism with Bruce Wayne’s ability to influence Gotham for the better.
Insofar as Burton’s films are concerned, I can’t help but wonder to what extent Batman’s deadliness is the product of glib choreography rather than purposeful characterization. It doesn’t really matter, though, since we get what we get. So in my view, Batman’s disturbingly cavalier violence does work in context of Gotham’s overall character. Burton’s Gotham is fundamentally a capitalist dystopia in which social dynamics are mediated (and corrupted) by money and violence, not public service and civic engagement. However much Batman is committed to protecting the innocent, and however ethical he is in his business dealings as Bruce Wayne, Batman is ultimately as much a symptom of the city’s dysfunction as he is a reaction to it – the projection, like its villains, of a damaged urban psyche. With lethal violence arguing for Batman as antihero more than hero, it serves to distance us from him even as we root for his success against destructive terrors like Joker and Penguin who are far beyond common street crime that, by the film’s logic, getting killed is an unsurprising outcome. Burton’s films are almost a deconstruction, since without being able to unreservedly romanticize Batman as a hero we are made to ask whether we want Batman so much that we’d also want the nightmarish Gotham that gives him life.
Ben Affleck & the Snyderverse
Michael Keaton delivers a singularly distinct interpretation of Bruce Wayne and Batman, one so tailored to the universe Tim Burton creates, that he can be argued to be in a class of his own. But among the Bat-actors who aren’t Michael Keaton, my favorite is Ben Affleck. His ability to blend charm and dry humor with intensity and pathos not only gives him an assertive screen presence as Batman, but also as Bruce Wayne. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t get the chance to have a story to himself, instead of existing on screen in relationship to Superman, the Justice League, the Suicide Squad, or the Flash. At least Snyder’s vision for his Batman was a redemptive one and a highlight in his films. If all we had gotten was Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, the missed potential would have been much worse.
8.12.23
F vs the Franchises: Superhero Fatigue (Part 3 - The DCEU Lays An Egg)
DC is home to characters that are not only global icons, but archetypes – the standards by which superheroes are judged. Superman, the benevolent protector. Batman, the embodiment of justice (or revenge, depending on your point of view). Wonder Woman, ambassador for love and peace. All tap into very fundamental psychological aspects of the human condition when distilled to their essences. As the anchors for a roster of characters that, personally, I find more interesting than the MCU’s, these three mythological figures, along with many other interesting characters, should have been easy subjects for a DC cinematic universe. Yet it’s clear that Warner Bros was its own enemy and studio interference, at least partly due to a desperate need to compete with the MCU, perpetuated repeated acts of creative malpractice. David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, whose director’s cut may never see the light of a theatre (although there is hope), is a prime example. Ostensibly intended to focus a mission against a global threat around Harley Quinn’s emancipation from the Joker (among other plot intentions), the theatrical cut instead offered a tonally confused and creatively compromised vision of the film – a far different experience than I anticipated from the director of the excellent WWII drama, Fury. (I do think that Suicide Squad was serviceable enough as a film to be enjoyed in the moment and then more or less forgotten, a mostly harmless sideshow to the DCEU’s main continuity.)
It’s impossible to hand-wave away the failure of the Snyderverse, however, although I think that the criticism leveled against Snyder often rests on inconsistently applied criteria. I’d argue that Snyder is not only a skilled director, but a visionary filmmaker with a strong instinct for the cinematic. From production design to direction and cinematograph, his films demonstrate panache as well as purpose. Watching Henry Cavill’s Superman in Man of Steel, whether taking flight or fighting against Zod and his minions, I remember being impressed by how visceral an experience Snyder created. More so than any MCU film, I could really believe his characters are superheroes and not just special effects.
Of course, it’s his storytelling more than his direction that is controversial and divisive. But like it or not, it’s clear he did have a storytelling concept – that is, a trajectory to guide his characters from their introduction to their teaming against a formidable threat. With characterizations rooted in a far less idealized, idol-worshipping attitude than we find in the MCU, the arc of his films moves his characters from doubt, uncertainty, even cynicism to inspiration, heroism, and teamwork. The extent to which his vision was compromised is well known by now, with Joss Whedon’s takeover of Justice League effectively ending the momentum of his multi-film narrative. Though a tad overstuffed, Snyder’s cut of Justice League nevertheless offers a much more coherent plot with richer characterizations than Whedon’s version. Before that, we saw the effect of studio interference in the difference between the theatrical and director’s cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: the director’s cut also offers a more coherent story and deeper characterizations than the theatrical version.
Yet it’s not hard to see why Snyder’s approach received a mixed reception. A gloomy Superman, with a dour adoptive father prone to giving morally ambiguous advice, is too drastic a departure from the sunnier version embodied so memorably by Christopher Reeve. A brutal, Frank Miller-esque Batman, while not an unfamiliar depiction, is too unabashedly cynical in his lethality. The problem isn’t so much that Snyder may feel that deadly violence reflects the reality of superheroes. He has a point, within reason, insofar as the realities of violent conflict are concerned. While the scene was contrived, Superman killing General Zod in Man of Steel made sense given the circumstances. The Joker being alive and on the loose in Batman’s corner of the world, in both Suicide Squad and Snyder’s Justice League, seems philosophically inconsistent, especially after Robin’s murder, but otherwise it’s entirely plausible that people who try to kill Batman might be the ones who get killed instead. In any case, I’d say the problem is that Snyder presents a rather narrow conception of heroism, one focused on bravery in battle and the willingness to beat up bullies rather than serve as positive role models. Despite returning to Jor El’s speech about Superman being able to “give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards” and helping them “accomplish wonders,” the Snyderverse doesn’t explore how Superman actually inspires change for the better. Even Batman’s inspiration to do better following Superman’s sacrifice at the end of Batman v Superman doesn’t come close to exploring how his redemption could positively impact Gotham. And Wonder Woman? For all that she has a kinder disposition, she’s nevertheless a warrior whose valor is demonstrated by beating up the bad guys. Whatever version of Justice League we go with, the culmination of Snyder’s arc is not how the superheroes inspire humanity to defend themselves or just generally be better people, but something more reductive: the equivalent of a special ops team going on a secret mission to defeat violent invaders. I wouldn’t even rate it as a “deconstruction” of the characters. The Snyderverse is rather straightforward in presenting emotionally ambivalent characters whose personal dilemmas are overcome to get them to exactly where they need to be within the conventions of superhero stories: ready to beat up the villains!
As to whether Snyder should have been allowed to finish his arc or not, well, I have mixed feelings about it. Personally, the planned story of Superman falling victim to Darkseid and the Anti-Life Equation (a concept equally stupid, if not more so, than the Thanos snap) doesn’t appeal. The “Evil Superman” schtick, already done within the comics, just doesn’t resonate with me. The prospect of time travel being key to unravelling the Knightmare future strikes me as a disappointing cheat. And with recent revelations of a planned trilogy of Flash films, culminating in the revelation of Reverse-Flash as the ultimate evil master mind engineering events, I am even less enthused at what the DCEU would have ultimately offered. It’s enough to wonder, along with Giant Freaking Robot (https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/zack-snyder-worst-thing-dc.html, why Snyder’s vision was chosen as the blueprint for the DCEU.
But while I won’t mourn the excellent decision to chart a new path for the DCU under James Gunn and Peter Saffron, I do think it’s unfortunate that Snyder couldn’t at least bring his story to a conclusion. Perhaps he should have just been given one movie and a smaller budget, but whatever the approach, at least Warner Bros would have had a complete story to sell on streaming and DVD for people to enjoy if they’re so inclined. The DCEU wouldn’t then be a room full of baggage to burden future movies. Regardless, the lesson points to Warner Bros lack of trust in their filmmakers, whose films might not have scored with critics but could have at least fulfilled their intention to entertain the fans.
Looking beyond the Snyderverse, around which other DCEU films orbited, I find the results more compelling. Shazam! and Aquaman might not challenge genre conventions, but at least they work well within them by offering interesting characters in fun adventures. Despite a disappointing third act culminating in the usual boss battle, Wonder Woman offers an overall hopeful tone that is a welcome contrast to Snyder’s cynicism. (I can’t comment on Wonder Woman 1984, which I haven’t watched, but going by the plot synopsis at Wikipedia it seems the film does take the character in an interesting, convention-defying direction. It’s a shame I find Gal Gadot rather unremarkable in the role.) And James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad not only makes up for Warner Bros’ botching of David Ayer’s film, but stands out for its blend of heart and brutality in an energetic covert ops action/adventure plot.
Then there’s The Flash, which bombed at the box office and met with heavy criticism from the pop-culture trades (e.g. The Escapist, ScreenRant, Inverse) who view it as a weak, even cynical whimper to end the DCEU. To a large extent, The Flash was doomed to fail. Not necessarily because of Ezra Miller’s unfortunate troubles, although they certainly didn’t help generate enthusiasm, but because the film was burdened with too many expectations related to financial performance, ability to wrap up the DCEU, and generally just offer something fresh in a genre whose bar has been set by the MCU. It’s hard to see how the film could have succeeded in satisfying both comic fans and general audiences when success depended on fulfilling so many criteria. For my money, I think The Flash is actually one of the better DCEU movies – even one of the better superhero movies. It offers some delightfully bonkers action spectacle like the opening “baby shower” scene, features an exceptional performance by Ezra Miller as two similar yet distinguishable versions of Barry Allen, and gives us a character arc with emotional heft. The Flash is also surprisingly subversive in its hero’s journey in comparison to the MCU and Snyderverse films. Where these openly embrace the use of superpowers, celebrating exercises of force, The Flash argues in favor of caution and restraint through a story on the necessity of making peace with the inevitability of death. Allen may have incredible superpowers, but learning when not to use them is just as important, if not more so, than knowing when they can be truly helpful. As for the cameos? Despite all the hemming and hawing over whether any given cameo was cynical pandering, nonsensical, or what have you – I have no vested interest. Personally, they were all fun and the film’s core drama wouldn’t have changed with different cameos. And as far as ending the DCEU goes, I think it succeeds it setting up the DC multiverse without bludgeoning us with a hard continuity reboot. I find it rather annoying when time travel movies ask us to invest in characters and situations, only to erase them so that the same characters are reset for a different story – as in Donnie Darko, for example. The Flash establishes the existence of a multiverse with all its many DC stories, setting the DCEU as one of its many branches but not requiring Gunn to specifically use Snyder’s version of the characters moving forward, even with retconned histories.
Then, there’s the Arrowverse, of which I can only say that, exhausted, I gave up on all the shows I was watching – Flash, Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow – long before they reached their end. They all became mired in the worse, most exhaustive soap opera impulses of comic book storytelling, from endlessly returning or revived villains to nonsensical fantasy that is rarely anything other than arbitrary no matter how often it’s labeled “science.” The (melo)dramatic core always reduced itself to a duel between homicidal megalomaniacs with personal vendettas against our heroes, which became repetitive and dull – the one-note Reverse-Flash being a particularly irritating example. I also found the use of superpowers to be very shaky, with villains often made to seem more powerful by making the heroes weirdly dumb or weak. Case in point: Captain Cold, who is somehow a formidable threat despite the fact that he can’t, logically, unholster let alone fire his special gun faster than the Flash can disarm him. While I get that narrative logic, mature drama, and the usual expectations of plausibility are generally beside the point for the Arrowverse (as in comics), suspending disbelief in a story in the name of fun adventuring shouldn’t be an act of faith. By the time I called it quits, the Arrowverse was beginning to feel like a multi-car pileup in a freeway accident.
When all is said and done, I’m perfectly fine with leaving the bulk of DC’s media output behind. But I do harbor a cautious optimism that James Gunn, who has so far delivered among the best superhero films to date, can deliver a DCU that fulfills the superhero genre’s potential to tell meaningful stories with heart as well as thrills.
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