TV/Movies Megathread

[Neil]

Batman messed up Darkseid years ago.  Didn't defeat him but gave him a working over and impressed Darkseid enough to give him a quick death.

I remember him using trickery against Darkseid during the jailbait Supergirl arc, but actually physically fighting him?

[Ed Anger]

I'd rather watch the Robot Chicken Dc comics special.

[Ideologue]

I think maybe Wags might be referring to the Morrison JLA Rock of Ages story, where in a possible future, Darkseid has conquered Earth, and a small resistance of superheroes, including Batman, fights against the Apokoliptian gods.

Batman is killed in seconds.  It's actually Green Arrow and the Atom who physically defeat Darkseid.  Although I think maybe it was Batman's plan?  Anyway, the Atom gets shot on a flash arrow, and rides a photon into Darkseid's optic nerve and then into his brain, where he zaps shit till Darkseid dies.  It was really cool.

Or maybe he meant Final Crisis, where Batman shot Darkseid with a gun.  GET IT?  Final Crisis is awful.

Or maybe he meant one of those things that happened in Morrisonbat comics that I largely didn't read because every time I did they were largely terrible.  Seriously, I wanted to like them.  I eventually came to the conclusion that Grant Morrison had wasted the last five or six years of his life.  It was actually pretty sad.  Though I must give the man credit in that he did something irrefutably new with the character, which basically had not been done in, being charitable, twenty-five years, and more realistically, about seventy.

P.S.: Neil, did you ever read the Supergirl series that came after the Jeph Loeb Batman/Superman abortion?  It's mostly written by Joe Kelly with some assistance from Greg Rucka, and taken with the Jeph Loeb story, it is easily and by far the worst comic book I have ever read.  It's just this constant authorial and editorial train wreck, with whole plots just getting dropped, really bad dialogue constantly, complete flips on the premise every ten or so issues till it gets just totally weird (Supergirl starts growing crystal spikes like Space Godzilla, she starts hallucinating, and there are Phantom Zone ghosts or something that's barely explained).  It's worth looking at it (for free, to be sure) as a cautionary tale in how an ongoing serial should under no circumstances be written, and it has some value as a thousand page joke.

[Neil]

I tend to avoid things written by Grant Morrison.  Xorn is Magneto?  Fuck off.  The guy also fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between Scott Summers and his wife.  And the problem was that the New Gods creating hell on Earth could have been a cool idea, if it wasn't so fucking Morrisoned.

I read the Superman/Batman arc with Supergirl, but I couldn't bring myself to want to know more about the character.  My main DC readings were anything with Ted Kord, Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and the Power Girl monthly.I also tried to follow the various old-school JLA members, which is to say guys like Fire, Ice, Booster Gold and the Elongated Man.

[11B4V]

Finally seen Warrior. Good flick. I thought Nolte was fantastic.

[Eddie Teach]

Anyway, is Batman Returns the best Batman movie?

Ok, I get that you don't buy into Nolan's attempts to make the comic book hero more realistic, but how on earth can you like Batman Returns better than the original? 

[11B4V]

 

[Neil]

Anyway, is Batman Returns the best Batman movie?

Ok, I get that you don't buy into Nolan's attempts to make the comic book hero more realistic, but how on earth can you like Batman Returns better than the original? 

I got the impression that he really likes the Penguin.

[Ideologue]

It's really only better than Batman (which I watched last night) by a nose.

I did like DeVito's coarse, deeply unpleasant, but fundamentally tragic Penguin.  I also enjoyed Burton lifting his 15-minutes-of-weirdo-fame trope from Edward Scissorhands and modifying it for a much darker character.  Cobblepot's mayoral run is no way believable, but in a Tim Burton movie, it works.  And all those scenes are a lot of fun, and run surprisingly blue, which I find interesting in a movie presumably aimed at kids and teenagers.  And when his pets pallbear his corpse into the water it's pure cinema, dudes. 

I also really liked Pfeiffer as Catwoman, for many reasons including the more prurient ones.  I thought her (not) death scene was very cool, in fact all of her scenes are pretty cool, and I was extremely impressed by Pfeiffer's ability to sell completely what is, to be honest, some really ludicrous shit.  And let's not forget Walken's Max Shrek.  Combined, I think they beat Nicholson's Joker, if not individually, then in the aggregate, in terms of entertainment value.

I'm surprised it's not CountDeMoney's favorite Bat-film, too.  Thirty cats save a woman's life and turn her into a leather fetishist.  Although it's possible that the movie loses its lustre if you have an involuntary orgasm in the first thirty minutes.

Eddie, if you want a ranking of the modern theatrically-released Batman films, I think they'd go:

1)Batman Returns
2)Batman
3)Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
...noticeable drop in quality...
4)The Dark Knight
5)Batman Forever
6)The Dark Knight Rises
..........
....
...steep drop in quality...
.....
..........

7)Batman Begins
8)Batman and Robin

I'll concede that DKR may actually be better than Forever.  But it's been a very long time since I've seen Forever.  I recall it being a lot of fun, but I was pretty young, and certain aspects of DKR, not least its scope and certainly the breaking of the Bat, make it hard to call it worse.

I tend to avoid things written by Grant Morrison.

Well, with latterday Morrison, that's not unreasonable, but I think you're missing out if you haven't read (or at least tried) The Invisibles, The Filth, Flex Mentallo, and All-Star Superman, and his runs on JLA and Animal Man.  And his Doom Patrol was OK.

[Ideologue]

Just to briefly add and clarify, my ultra-favorable response to Batman Returns may have something to do with having gone on a major Tim Burton kick the past week.  I've watched Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in addition to his two Batman features.  So I think I've gotten really tuned in to the Burton dark comedy/gothic nonsense/charming bullshit frequency, and Batman Returns is really probably the weirdest and Burtoniest of them all.

P.S. if you've never seen it, do please watch Ed Wood.  Even if you don't like Tim Burton.  It uses many of his well-worn tools, but reaches out and transcends his ordinary bag of tricks.  It's no doubt a bit of a whitewash of the real Edward Wood, Jr., but that's not important.  What is important is that Ed Wood, the character, is one of the most beautifully conceived and acted I've ever seen, inspiring and uplifting even though it's a story of repeated failure.  It's also tremendously funny.  What's that?  Pulp Fiction?  Close, but this was surely the best movie of 1994.  True A+.

And I just finished Rashomon, too.  I give it an A+.  Katmai gives it a Fat Minus.

[Barrister]

Ideo, you're generally full of shit in your movie reviews, but Ed Wood was a damn fine movie.

[Josquius]

Just watched a BBC documentary called The Trap.
Its weird and freaky stuff. About how cold war game theory infiltrated political thought and how messed up the world is. It.....really is rather scary. Lots of it rings true.

[CountDeMoney]

I did like DeVito's coarse, deeply unpleasant, but fundamentally tragic Penguin.

What was so "fundamentally tragic" about him?  How does the Penguin embody tragedy?  How and when exactly did he fall from grace?  What display of misguided yet good-hearted hubris was his downfall?  What compelling qualities did he possess that still allowed for the possibility of redemption?

Think, Clarisse.

[Eddie Teach]

Just watched a BBC documentary called The Trap.
Its weird and freaky stuff. About how cold war game theory infiltrated political thought and how messed up the world is. It.....really is rather scary. Lots of it rings true.

Should have been a documentary about the making of the prequels. 

[Grey Fox]

On that Zombie show, I haven't watch the latest episode yet but

Woohoo! Now that's a death I can get behind.