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LIVE AMMO COSPLAY posted:It's funny how the Nolan Batman trilogy kind of flirts with the idea that he has hosed things up but it fizzles out by the third film. It kind of falls into the whole "oh the villain is right about things, so we have to make them do something crazy." Would have been more interesting if Talia and Bane made Gotham into a good place to live and a base for further operations or something, but nope. e X posted:Everybody says the Joker is the best Batman villain, but nobody can name more than two good stories with him. Death of the Family is really good, if you're not already counting it, and I liked how Morrison used him mostly just had him be mad at the black glove, start killing members of the black glove, and then disguising himself as a detective working those murders
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Nov 5, 2021 21:49
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My favourite Batman villain is the Condiment King because in the videogame Lego DC Supervillains, he gets furious at a reviewer bitching about tipping policy at a restaurant and shouts "FOOLS! the Condiment King pays his staff a LIVING WAGE!" So he's okay by me.
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Nov 5, 2021 21:58
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I like Batman.
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Nov 5, 2021 23:07
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Asylum is still the best of the Arkham games (though the others are all pretty good to great and have some fun ideas in them) but it easily has the worst Harley design she's ever had. It's just...bad. I would kill for the Joker to just disappear from Batman media as a whole for several years and then when he comes back is just a crazy, clown-themed mob boss again who does crimes because they're funny, and not, y'know, a crazy mass murderer. Ambitious Spider posted:Death of the Family is really good, if you're not already counting it, and I liked how Morrison used him mostly just had him be mad at the black glove, start killing members of the black glove, and then disguising himself as a detective working those murders Morrison's use of the Joker was fantastic. Having him making GBS threads all over the Black Glove during RIP and telling them how stupid they were for thinking THEIR plan to kill the Bat would work and THIS TIME Batman was going to lose was fun stuff.
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Nov 5, 2021 23:13
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Amazing how many horror movies are fundamentally about capitalism. The Fog: The ghosts don't care that they got murdered, they care that the boss's money got stolen. Jaws: After the initial incident, EVERYTHING is motivated by either supporting small businesses, or collecting bounties.
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Nov 6, 2021 00:24
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jaws is about a shark
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Nov 6, 2021 00:33
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I sincerely believe that if Mark Hamill hadn't brought in his fantastic performance along with the Diniverse's stellar writing, the Joker would've dropped off to be an occasional villain in current times
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Nov 6, 2021 00:40
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Regarde Aduck posted:jaws is about a shark There's a reason ruthless capitalists are called sharks.
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Nov 6, 2021 01:07
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e X posted:Everybody says the Joker is the best Batman villain, but nobody can name more than two good stories with him.
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Nov 6, 2021 01:07
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A Serious House on Serious Earth is good. Arkham Asylum is really good Arkham City is very good. Arkham Knight is pretty good.
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Nov 6, 2021 01:38
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Calaveron posted:I sincerely believe that if Mark Hamill hadn't brought in his fantastic performance along with the Diniverse's stellar writing, the Joker would've dropped off to be an occasional villain in current times I dunno. I feel like we got slammed hard by the Killing joke followed 20 years later by Dark Knight and Heath Ledger passing away. Hard to figure out how to prevent those two from happening just from neglecting the Diniverse
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Nov 6, 2021 01:40
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CharlestheHammer posted:I mean that’s the point of the Asylum. It’s not like general prison it’s a very special prison I meant from the whole series, not just Asylum. Even the Escape from New York one. I know, I know, it's just a video game and not one that explores the concept of nuance in any other way than upgrading the player's ability to maim people. Good people = good, bad people = bad. Ambitious Spider posted:It kind of falls into the whole "oh the villain is right about things, so we have to make them do something crazy." Would have been more interesting if Talia and Bane made Gotham into a good place to live and a base for further operations or something, but nope. 
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Nov 6, 2021 02:38
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The story of Arkham City was a mess. There are a few things that could have been used to explore Batman in a unique way, but I don't think the writers knew what they were doing. The titular City is a civil rights disaster, and Bruce Wayne decides to campaign against it as Bruce Wayne, which is cool. There are lots of criminals in there, but also political prisoners and guys who knew too much about its secrets. However, all the political prisoners are basically crammed into a tiny ignorable shantytown. Everyone else is a thug, so it's okay to beat them up and leave them unconscious in the winter cold during an ultraviolent supervillain gang war. We have to stop Dr Strange from implementing something called Protocol 10, but once Batman gets poisoned and sets off to find the things/people who can cure it, we completely stop investigating Protocol 10 until it happens. No main or side quests involve it except for an occasional message counting down to it on the radio. The protocol itself is the mass execution of all the prisoners via helicopters and missile bombardments, using an armed uprising that Strange himself stoked as pretense. Batman at this point wants to rescue Talia Al Ghul, but Alfred has to tell him to stop the attack on the prisoners. You have to clamber onto these helicopters to get some codes to get into Dr Strange's command center, but can't do anything to stop them from bombarding people. There is an absolutely silly amount of radio chatter talking about how many inmates they're murking while you do so. This could have been something to explore, but they don't at all! There could have examined the competition between Batman's obsessions and principles or something, how he overcomes his bad impulses, or fails to, but they don't. You find out that Dr Strange managed to set up the Arkham City program with backing from Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins. This would normally be dramatic escalation, but it's a complete wet fart for several reasons: You've already encountered and pretty badly beaten Ra's, the revelation comes after you've stopped Protocol 10, and Ra's dies (or appears to) in the same cutscene where this is revealed. See, Batman speculated that Ra's blood would be useful in developing the cure, and so you go to his lair, which Batman already knew was beneath Arkham City somehow. There is no indication Batman thinks there's anything unusual or suspicious about this. People hate on Arkham Origins (Nothing super new, controls were a little off, it was mostly a less stylish version of the same map, villain replaced with the Joker again, the linear upgrade challenge tree), but the story beats followed each other and saw Batman progress within the story. Dr Christmas has a new favorite as of 02:44 on Nov 6, 2021 |
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Nov 6, 2021 02:41
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Dr Christmas posted:it was mostly a less stylish version of the same map Everything else is true, but whaaa I'll take Gotham during a Christmas blizzard over the crapsack grungy "bad guys naturally live in squalor" aesthetic any day.
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Nov 6, 2021 03:12
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Dr Christmas posted:The story of Arkham City was a mess. There are a few things that could have been used to explore Batman in a unique way, but I don't think the writers knew what they were doing. also the part where playing as catwoman the thugs are constantly screaming threats of sexual violence against her
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Nov 6, 2021 03:41
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pentyne posted:also the part where playing as catwoman the thugs are constantly screaming threats of sexual violence against her I have not heard people yell BITCH so much at a character in my life. You encounter a thug who says "I'll make you meow, bitch." You knock him out and move on to a group fight where multiple thugs call you a bitch and yell to kill the bitch. Entering a stealth segment, you overhear two thugs talk about what they'd like to do to that bitch Harley Quinn. But hey, rated T for teen! Kevin DuBrow has a new favorite as of 04:24 on Nov 6, 2021 |
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Nov 6, 2021 04:17
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I forgot just how gross those games were towards women. But now I'm remembering how people reacted to it being called out at the time.
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Nov 6, 2021 04:29
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There's also a really disgusting "joke" about Harley being trans.
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Nov 6, 2021 04:36
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Batman TAS, which I would argue is the platonic ideal of Batman and most of the other Batman series characters, does go out of its way to point out both that Batman is a crazy person, and that he's also a good person despite that and trying to do good both in his insane way as Batman, and in a more grounded way as Bruce Wayne. There's a fair few episodes that show Batman doing good as Bruce Wayne, making sure Waynecorp isn't being lovely, and also one of my faves has him as Bruce Wayne even trying to help a former villain - Scarface - pick up the pieces of his life and get better. Plus the stuff with him never giving up on Harvey Dent and poo poo. I love the DCAU to bits, especially Batman TAS, but yeah, while I love the Arkham games' gameplay and it is always a treat to hear Conroy's Batman, Hamil's Joker, and - for the first game - Sorkin's Harley, the writing was basically just god-awful edgelord fanfic of TAS. Heck, one of the things I found a bit odd/telling of how it was edgy for the sake of edginess and also its views on women was that, you know, Barbara is Oracle in the games, despite the games generally being super devoted to the TAS/DCAU vibe, and Barbara notably *not* getting crippled and becoming Oracle in the DCAU and instead eventually just retiring as Batgirl to become the new Commissioner Gordon instead. I love Batman and I feel like when he's done well - which is sadly rare - a lot of the criticism people associate with the character doesn't apply. But sadly Batman is more often than not sort of written as just the Punisher in a funny costume and with a hangup on actually killing folks. EDIT: A good TL;DR I once used to describe it to a friend is that Batman TAS depicts Batman as both a crazy person and a hero, while most other depictions of Batman are just a crazy person who happens to be punching villains instead of randos. Nolan's Batman never struck me as a fundamentally good or heroic person the way the Batman TAS one does; Nolan's Batman is jut a crazy person who happens to be going after criminals. RoboChrist 9000 has a new favorite as of 04:41 on Nov 6, 2021 |
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Nov 6, 2021 04:39
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Batman TAS, which I would argue is the platonic ideal of Batman and most of the other Batman series characters, does go out of its way to point out both that Batman is a crazy person, and that he's also a good person despite that and trying to do good both in his insane way as Batman, and in a more grounded way as Bruce Wayne. There's a fair few episodes that show Batman doing good as Bruce Wayne, making sure Waynecorp isn't being lovely, and also one of my faves has him as Bruce Wayne even trying to help a former villain - Scarface - pick up the pieces of his life and get better. Plus the stuff with him never giving up on Harvey Dent and poo poo. part of what I felt made Batman Beyond f.e. so good was that the kid who was playing at being the new Batman fundamentally broke hard with O.G. Batman in a lot of ways and methodologies, even if it ultimately led to "he's just Spiderman". It showed a very nuanced understanding that yeah, Batman is no good and will only be a failure on how he exists, and a Bruce Wayne that's incapable of creating societal change will just become a non-entity as other rich people swoop in.
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Nov 6, 2021 05:00
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the DCAU did age well
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Nov 6, 2021 05:00
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Phylodox posted:I figure it's high risk/high reward. The crazier the Gotham villain, the better the pay is. Someone like Black Mask or Penguin pays relatively little, but doesn't go around blowing up warehouses with his own guys in it. Someone like Joker would be very high pay, but you have to get your money and get out before the boss gets bored one day and turns you into a human pinata. Something similar goes with Two-Face in the same game, who's the one who ends up taking over Arkham City in the end after playing the long game- he'd been uniquely recruiting from other gangs by using his old DA campaign material, and a boss who might be super generous 50% of the time is possibly an improvement over some. Couple of key points with the Joker is that not only does he not care about money, but he does not care about how hosed up or weird you are- hell, the more the merrier. So yeah, pretty much all of the above- he pays well, has low standards, and lets you do whatever hosed up poo poo you want as long as you can get away with it. The Joker's goons are noted to be particularly sadistic and have some often lethal initiations (possibly inspired by the Jokerz in Batman Beyond) but there's still little shortage of them. That and the Joker is both near superhumanly charismatic, and has a hobby of driving people into homicidal insanity just for the lulz, a lot of which end up working for him. RoboChrist 9000 posted:EDIT: A good TL;DR I once used to describe it to a friend is that Batman TAS depicts Batman as both a crazy person and a hero, while most other depictions of Batman are just a crazy person who happens to be punching villains instead of randos. Nolan's Batman never struck me as a fundamentally good or heroic person the way the Batman TAS one does; Nolan's Batman is jut a crazy person who happens to be going after criminals. Thing is, while the movies don't really do much with it, that does seem deliberate. Casting Patrick Bateman as Bruce Wayne is almost too on the nose, he's almost like what Bruce Wayne might have ended up as if his parents weren't murdered. Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Cobra is a great example that seems to ridiculous but then correlaries happen in real life and then it gets worse. That does sound terrifyingly plausible. That said, the IDW comics have a lot of issues that go into details about Cobra, how it works and how it recruits, complete with a whole issue that focuses on the grunts and shows how they get recruited- a gang banger looking for the next step up and a way out of poverty, a desperate young woman with student loans, a bored rich kid looking for the next thrill. As well as individual ones about how certain individuals are recruited, like Croc Master being basically peak Florida Man when Cobra comes along and admires his work. (Extra funny since it has Tomax try to recruit him all corporate style saying Cobra needs to expand into ecoterrorism, then Crystal Ball steps in and gives a much more sensible offer; Cobra kills lots of people, Croc Master enjoys killing people, and they both like reptiles) It's also a huge and factionalised organisation, with the Scientology-esque cult wing that uses mundane recruitment methods and also hypnotism, mysticism and mind control, and acts as a key intelligence operation by having its members tell the org about everything they do (including their jobs... and one Joe is a member) versus the corporate wing who makes money through good old fashioned unfettered capitalism.
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Nov 6, 2021 05:02
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Lady Radia posted:the DCAU did age well It has issues here and there, and definitely has issues with male gaze and sexualization, but by and large, yeah. I mean as a mentally ill person, I kind of always found that version of Batman kind of inspirational and oddly positive as a depiction. Here's a guy who's very clearly suffering from untreated mental illness, but he's also still a heroic and good person. Batman's brain is bad, but he's not a bad man. I dunno, just something that resonated with me. That said, the DCAU does have that moment in JLU where by modern sensibilities and understandings, something that's meant as a sort of sex joke/misadventure would be today understood as rape. Well, sort of double rape? I don't know, it's an absurd situation that if you think about it too hard does raise some 'interesting' moral questions, but clearly it was just meant as a joke that aged poorly. The one where the Flash and Luthor switch bodies. The Flash fucks Tala while she thinks he's Luthor, so it's clearly rape since you know, he's having sex with her under false pretenses. But she's also raping him, because he cannot possibly not consent because if he doesn't reciprocate her advances and act like he thinks Luthor would act, then she'd know he's not Luthor and his life would be in mortal peril. She's consenting under false pretenses, and he's consenting under threat of death, and so neither of them are actually consenting and they're both raping eachother in a bizarre scenario out of some dumb Philosophy 101 thought experiment.
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Nov 6, 2021 05:32
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Just imagine if Flash had used that in the scene where he speeds Luthor's robot suit to pieces and dissolves into the speedforce - the last thing he says is aimed at him - "By the way Luthor... I hosed your wife."
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Nov 6, 2021 07:02
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BioEnchanted posted:Just imagine if Flash had used that in the scene where he speeds Luthor's robot suit to pieces and dissolves into the speedforce - the last thing he says is aimed at him - "By the way Luthor... I hosed your wife." I think that was before that occasion. What's more hosed up is that it's heavily implied towards the grand finale that Luthor has Tala set up as a human sacrifice for the magi-tech revival of Brainiac... and it's her dying curse that means it brings back Darkseid, who had died fighting Brainiac, instead. The DCAU really got away with a shitload of sex, violence and death just by not spelling out the implications of what happens beyond you don't see that character again.
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Nov 6, 2021 07:22
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACxMFQG1hVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVkzoeJmdPo
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Nov 6, 2021 08:45
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I liked the Telltale Joker, or at least the version I got and the ending where ]Bruce visits him in Arkham to keep him company.
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Nov 6, 2021 11:12
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https://twitter.com/socialistguy951/status/1455905511363289089 Incidentally, this started with a tweet showing Batman's originally planned final DCAU appearance (before they got another season) which had him comforting a dying child rather than killing her himself, even though she had the power to destroy both him and all of Gotham. Top tier Batman for sure
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Nov 6, 2021 11:52
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Thing is, while the movies don't really do much with it, that does seem deliberate. Casting Patrick Bateman as Bruce Wayne is almost too on the nose, he's almost like what Bruce Wayne might have ended up as if his parents weren't murdered. This is eerily apt.
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Nov 6, 2021 12:55
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Sir Lemming posted:https://twitter.com/socialistguy951/status/1455905511363289089 It's like the clayface eulogy in "Whatever happened to the caped crusader?" 
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Nov 6, 2021 13:25
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think that was before that occasion. What's more hosed up is that it's heavily implied towards the grand finale that Luthor has Tala set up as a human sacrifice for the magi-tech revival of Brainiac... and it's her dying curse that means it brings back Darkseid, who had died fighting Brainiac, instead. My big hits from that universe- DCAU Luthor reverses Grodd's mind control and has him eject himself out an airlock on screen. Miss Martian spends half of Young Justice S2 destroying the minds of any opponent who inconveniences her (though the show does make it extremely clear that this is not okay). A throwaway joke from Artemis after being disarmed about how she feels naked "and not in the fun way" that I cannot understand getting through the censors in a children's cartoon.
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Nov 7, 2021 00:16
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I don't know if Young Justice counts as in the DCAU? Same as I'm not sure if Teen Titans did, I guess, the continuity never felt "established"
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Nov 7, 2021 00:52
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Those shows technically came after the first connected U. The shows in the first wave were Batman, super man, the two justice leagues, Batman Beyond, and static shock
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Nov 7, 2021 00:56
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CharlestheHammer posted:Those shows technically came after the first connected U. Two Batmans, One Superman, Both JLs, Static Shock, Batman Beyond, and THE ZETA PROJECT. :tmyk:
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Nov 7, 2021 01:54
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Static Shock was a retroactive entry, but given it used the same animation style and a lot of the same people that wasn't particularly a problem. Also, The Justice League versus The Fatal Five is the most recent entry. Apparently WB/CN suits thought audiences would get confused (and still did anyway) so there was a bunch of copyright bullshit around Justice League; Teen Titans, The Batman, Young Justice, and such are not part of the DCAU, and the former two meant that nearly all Batman characters besides Batman himself were not allowed to show up in later Justice League episodes, and for a while a failed Aquaman pilot meant he couldn't either. (and og Teen Titans is its own weird thing; about the first show where Robin shows up with zero explicit reference to Batman, though tons of subtext)
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Nov 7, 2021 03:10
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Execs thinking that nerds or kids not being able to keep track of things is projection. iirc one of them for Super Man Returns almost invented Superman but with a marvel Symbiote for some reason.
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Nov 7, 2021 03:40
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Static Shock was a retroactive entry, but given it used the same animation style and a lot of the same people that wasn't particularly a problem. Static Shock did get an outright crossover with Batman Beyond, so it's kind of in the same vein as the Arrowverse and Black Lightning; could be yanked in for crossovers, but mostly doing its own thing. The DCAU also had The New Batman Adventures, which was a continuation of B:TAS, but it gets lumped in with B:TAS for that reason.
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Nov 7, 2021 04:56
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PhazonLink posted:Execs thinking that nerds or kids not being able to keep track of things is projection. Also more recently, a WB exec was going to oppose the ending of Man of Steel saying 'But if Superman destroys the pod, how is he going to get back to Krypton?' The only people in the world who don't know Superman's entire deal are the ones in charge of Superman.
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Nov 7, 2021 06:33
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Also more recently, a WB exec was going to oppose the ending of Man of Steel saying 'But if Superman destroys the pod, how is he going to get back to Krypton?' Yes, but what about a Chewbacca sidekick in Supe's Fortress of Solitude? Or a Giant Spider? (super pro click about Hollywood producers and superhero movies from some time ago, even if you hate Kevin Smith. Hardsubbed in spanish for some reason) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2KB1dEDdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53hMYw8LX60
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Nov 7, 2021 12:52
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Also more recently, a WB exec was going to oppose the ending of Man of Steel saying 'But if Superman destroys the pod, how is he going to get back to Krypton?' I can sort of rationalize that, since one of the earlier Superman movie projects was going to be a trilogy where Krypton didn't explode, and had Superman returning to Krypton to help them avoid a civil war or something - it might have been the McG or JJ Abrams story treatment. I imagine it's hard for the execs to keep these projects separate in their mind.
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Nov 7, 2021 18:29
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