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"The Joker has sex with a bunch of prostitutes to celebrate breaking out of Arkham" is exactly the sort of pointless faux-edgy thing that Extra Mature R Rated Animation for Matures seems to invite and which is actually about as developmentally advanced as a thirteen year old boy's notebook scribbles. Which sounds like the whole first half of the movie, really. Yikes.
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Jul 26, 2016 18:55
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Also, it seems like in trying to make the movie a standalone story, the literal only way they could think of to get the viewer invested in Barbara before the Bad Thing was to turn her into a love interest. Like, they literally couldn't see any way forward but making the story far MORE refrigerators-y. That is mega sad.
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Jul 26, 2016 18:58
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Franchescanado posted:I don't think that exploring sexuality in the Batman universe is even a major offence, if done well with sincerity and thematic meaning, but NOT in the context of The Killing Joke. Nothing in the story, besides implications, really necessitates it. Yeah I mean, if done well, it seems like a touch-and-go risky thing but I'm not necessarily opposed to the concept in itself. There's probably a story out there somewhere you can tell where Batman Has Sex is germane and moving. This though feels like a case of wrong story, wildly wrong tone.
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Jul 26, 2016 19:20
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Timeless Appeal posted:I said this before, but my read on The Killing Joke is that's it's more of a story about how we cope with the world. Batman exists less as a character and more of a coping mechanism. He's the part of our brain that is trying to find order in the world to keep ourselves sane. The Joker on the other hand is eroding that in all of his forms. Chris Sims talks a lot about how Batman 66 is about the villains trying to prove Batman's fallible. It's something that I think has been lost, but that's exactly what the Joker is trying to do. He's trying to prove that given the right circumstances that Gordon can break too; abandon order. He's trying to prove that Batman and him are the same thing, opposite and equal reactions from the same action. This is a really good point. The story fundamentally isn't about Barbara Gordon at all: it's about Batman, the Joker, and her father. I don't think that's a problem you can fix without, as you say, fundamentally rewriting the climax of the story. It's a climax where all the story's principals meet and their values clash into each other in a big, colourful display of argument - life, justice, injustice, sanity. Barbara isn't one of those principals, and within the context of the story, she has no philosophy that could form a part of that display. The Killing Joke is all in the climax, and Barbara isn't an actor in it in any sense - she isn't there physically, and her own view on the existential issues the story grapples with is considered generally unimportant by the writing such that it doesn't play a role. Oracle Year One sounds good as hell and looks it from the pages posted here. My personal feeling is that the best course was always to let sleeping dogs lie and just make lemonade out of the perhaps questionable decisions made re: Batgirl in the original story.
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Jul 29, 2016 17:58
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As ImpAtom says, the story is in large part about Gordon's victimisation. It isn't about Barbara's. Barbara is written as an extension of her father, and her suffering is written as a trial for him to overcome. This is the issue from a feminist perspective - the fact that Barbara has been assaulted and traumatised is key to the story, but this does not result in any kind of focus on her, writing for or about her, etc. Her suffering is a tool to motivate and draw out the emotions of her dad, Batman, and the Joker - and it's only that. The story frankly couldn't care less how Barbara Gordon herself feels about what she went through. I personally think that her being an established character hardly matters. If she was a new, nameless female character introduced for the purposes of The Killing Joke alone, it would just as cheesy and suspect that her only purpose in the story was to serve as violently maimed character grist for our male protagonists. It's a good comic. But this is all fairly evident.
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Aug 1, 2016 20:50
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I don't think the general consensus is that The Killing Joke is lovely. In fact, I don't think there's a single person in this thread saying that. It is possible to like something for one reason and also criticise it for others. Even very good things can have major flaws that are worth unpacking and discussing. I don't think it's controversial to say that this is one of those cases, and it's particularly relevant to this thread because those flaws, rather than being redeemed in transition to an animated feature, were instead amplified by some tone-deaf decisions on the part of the adapters.
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Aug 2, 2016 07:46
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Young Justice season one is really superb. The characters are really rich, developed really well, and there are some episodes that are genuinely heart-wrenching to watch. I actually watched the Joker episode you mention first, wrote it off as not for me, then went back later at the insistence of a friend and watched from the start. To anyone on the fence, the whole season works much better watched as a whole. You can't really watch individual episodes at random in the same way as you can with B:TAS or JLU - the whole thing is one big ongoing plot with characters that change and grow on a per-episode basis. It's very satisfying, and probably the most successful a DC cartoon has ever been in doing something like that. Sadly though, I think season two overreaches in a big way. The timeskip is the least of its problems: it uses that timeskip to introduce like six or seven new characters, most of whom are never developed at all beyond "here's their name and their powers", and it's a tragic shame because you get excited about like, "oh cool, Batgirl is in the show now!" but then it turns out she has no personality, motivation, or character arc. Same goes for characters like Nightwing, Wonder Girl, Tim Drake, etc. It's a very stark contrast from the attentive character writing of the first season.
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Aug 14, 2016 14:06
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Also, they told the story of what happens during the timeskip, much of which ends up being plot-important to season two, in a tie-in game for the Wii. It's just a bad look all around.
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Aug 14, 2016 14:07
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Pure speculation, but maybe it was a marketing thing? Famously, executives around the show were worried that boys weren't buying toys. Maybe they thought they'd buy a game instead.
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Aug 14, 2016 15:19
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Technically, it told the story. There were cutscenes. It just didn't tell it very well, and the cutscenes were Warcraft III-esque "two character models run cycle into place and talk at each other".
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Aug 14, 2016 16:52
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Seven seasons? Yowza. Speaking seriously, I don't know if the issues with Season 2 were caused by executive fiddling, but Season 2 had issues in a big way that would have made me kind of leery of the show continuing anyway. Like, there were some great moments in S2 - the stuff with Blue Beetle, Artemis, Black Manta, Sportsmaster - but a lot of it was very, shockingly weak compared to the tightly-written strength of S1 (I'm looking at you, Arsenal and Lagoon Boy and the god drat Kroliteans). Hard to say if S3 would have been worse or better. Anyone who hasn't should check out Young Justice season one, though. It's legitimately fantastic and probably doesn't get enough love.
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Aug 14, 2016 18:59
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Yeah, that's true, I know a lot of kids' action figures sales practises rely on phasing out old characters for new. In light of that, the suddenly massively bloated, underdeveloped cast in S2 might make a bit more sense.
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Aug 14, 2016 20:30
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Bad Blood had some pretty smooth animation at points.
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Aug 26, 2016 00:13
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teagone posted:The Wonder Woman/Big Barda vs. The Furies fight scene in Superman/Batman: Apocalypse was pretty well done imo. The animation is pretty good and all, but what is with one of the Furies literally saying, "surrender, or the bitch gets it!" as she holds Big Barda hostage? Like, man, I get that DC wants to be edgy and adult or whatever, but even so, it's a line that feels totally out of place in the far-flung Kirby sci-fi setting that's being being plied here. Also Granny Goodness' voice acting is abominable. Sheesh.
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Aug 27, 2016 15:20
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In general, I've felt that recent DC movies' attempts to be adult have been more embarrassing than anything else. They usually amount to someone calling someone a bitch two or three times a movie and maybe some blood. It's like, would Batman Beyond have been improved if Terry occasionally called Inque a bitch? That's the approach being taken here.
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Aug 27, 2016 15:27
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Yeah, it's a shame. Having lowlife criminals in Gotham say it is at least slightly less tone-deaf than having cosmic Kirby demi-gods bandy it about in a space coliseum, but it's fairly bad either way.
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Aug 27, 2016 16:48
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There's also something to be said on an artistic level for shorter runtimes necessitating less filler and tighter boarding/writing. A lot of older kids' cartoons just had nothing to say for 21 minutes, but ran to the time because that was how long they had to be.
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Aug 29, 2016 23:00
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cant cook creole bream posted:How many spiderpeople are there in this ultimate spiderman cartoon? I watched a few episodes and in each of them another one appeared. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcrc4VdoueE
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Oct 10, 2016 23:33
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Samesies. Exciting news for sure, now let's hope they nail it.
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Nov 8, 2016 00:26
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Sounds really grim unless they actually focus in on a few characters this time. There were plenty of cool-sounding character adds in S2 (Batgirl! Wonder Girl! Tim Drake! Static!) that ended up amounting to nothing because they had thin characterisation and no real relevance to the plot. That's right, Static was in that show. Did you forget? I almost did. But yeah, unless they relegate some of that cast bloat to the serious sidelines and make the new members the actual focus, it's gonna be a cavalcade of cool-sounding Batfamily characters with about half a character arc between them. Hope they shape it up.
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Dec 9, 2016 10:41
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The Hello Megan thing is actually really important to the plot and is just disguised as an annoying running gag. It's good.
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Dec 12, 2016 01:35
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Like, you're purposely meant to think "what an inane running bit" and then it turns out to have significantly deeper meaning, and to be dumb and cheesy on purpose. It's a smart subversion of expectations.
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Dec 12, 2016 01:36
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I mean, to be fair, Lagoon Boy is pretty insufferable. It chafes more because he gets so much screen time despite being both incredibly dull and actively difficult to like.
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Dec 12, 2016 01:39
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Yeah, I sort of felt like they wanted me to hate him because "he stole Superboy's girl!!" but I didn't dislike him on that basis, more the fact that he was consistently boring to watch. Meanwhile there are bunches of characters who are potentially more interesting and get tiny scraps of screentime, vs. Lagoon Boy who is dull, vaguely obnoxious, and is very consistently featured episode to episode. Like, I'm pretty sure he gets more screentime than Nightwing, and he definitely gets more than Batgirl, Wonder Girl, etc. They don't really make him either likeable or interesting enough to justify that, I think.
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Dec 12, 2016 02:36
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It also hurts that this all happens after a timeskip where several of the major, painstakingly developed characters from last season are missing or on the sidelines, so you're like, "where's Aqualad? Artemis? Kid Flash?" and the show is just like, "they're gone now, have another episode with eight minutes of Lagoon Boy." This pays off later in the season when all these characters get to do something, but it takes a really long time for that to happen.
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Dec 12, 2016 02:39
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ArmyOfMidgets posted:This is my exact opinion of Girl Martian. It's not really comparable. You might dislike those characters, but there's something to them. Miss Martian has a really elaborate story, personality, character beats, plot relevance, etc. That can land for you or not, but it's inarguably there. Lagoon Boy is just there, on the screen, repeating the same bit of shtick over and over again.
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Dec 12, 2016 03:46
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Yeah, I thought they did a good job. Then again, I guess it depends on how annoying you find "Hello Megan," in the first place, which in my case is not very.
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Dec 12, 2016 14:34
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Jack Gladney posted:And yet they were allowed to make a white Harvey Dent. Unless Warner's wasn't saving Billy Dee for a sequel by that point. BTAS Harvey never seemed very white to me.    In brighter lighting his skin looks paler, but I'm pretty certain he's not supposed to be a white guy.
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Apr 7, 2017 00:53
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The first season is very good, although it takes two or three episodes to warm up. It's a well crafted season with a consistent overarching plot and a lot of character development, plus some good one off episodes. Up there with the all time greats in superhero animation for sure. Unlike JLU/BTAS though it doesn't reward picking out episodes at random to watch, it's structured more like a serial with an ongoing plot and developing characters. Back when it was first airing I watched the Injustice League episode just to see what the show was all about and, in isolation, hated it, but that episode is totally good in the context of the stakes and characters that have been set up in episodes that ran before it. Worth watching it in order. The second season is a mess with some good bits that suffers from huge cast bloat and weak characterisation. Probably not worth it unless you're curious. The first season rules though.
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Apr 25, 2017 18:11
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Timeless Appeal posted:But it's not the real justification for not killing the Joker. The real justification is that Batman just doesn't kill. And I get why that notion doesn't mesh when you have Joker killing swathes of people every time he shows up. But the solution to fixing that problem isn't breaking Batman, it's fixing the Joker. My post was more mocking the attempts at trying to be logical and tactical in a story about a man who seeks out to eliminate all crime. Yeah, this is it. The solution is just to edge Joker back from "gruesome spree killer with vague 'jokes!' theming" and into "criminal comedian who will do horrible things if it's funny". There are so many Joker stories now where he just slaughters people with knives or poison gas or whatever and the only nod to his raison d'etre is that they have him laugh or maybe make a pun while he does it. The jokes angle should be primary for him, not secondary to him wanting to kill a bunch of people.
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May 2, 2017 12:00
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Longbaugh01 posted:Man, those Countdown panels have some of the worst dialogue I've ever seen. Now that's funny! You're right, it's truly dire. Jaw droppingly abominable.
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May 4, 2017 09:13
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ArmyOfMidgets posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t4EuOMiKSQ I'm surprised people are bagging on the animation here, it's actually really fluid for what it is. Like, these are detailed semi-realistic characters, and normally when you do that on a cartoon budget you get super stiff animation because more detailed objects are hard to render moving around in interesting ways. See for ex. all the Marvel cartoons in the past eight years or so. You can see where the corners are being cut but there's also a lot of intricate animation in this clip. Looks heavily influenced by anime, but like, modern action/slice of life anime and things in that visual style rather than hyperstylised shounen stuff. I'm impressed. I love Spider-Man having a running commentary, too. I feel like that's actually key to the essence of the character, the "narration box" style panic about how he's going to get out of this one, and bringing it back captures a large part of what makes him a charming underdog hero.
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Jun 3, 2017 23:25
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Looks terrible, sadly.
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Aug 26, 2017 20:36
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Teen Titans Go is a pretty good silly animated cartoon for kids. It's not stupid or lazy, it just isn't serious. It reminds me of a more anarchic Spongebob more than anything else.
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Sep 16, 2017 15:07
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Claremont's 70s/80s run on X-Men is so good for so long and it's a super bummer when it runs up against Secret Wars II, things get weird for a few issues, and you can sense the omen of the big crossover event bonanza that will eventually consume these characters. Claremont's style is also more heavy on characterisation and drama and on making sure characters have texture in every issue than most modern comics. I share some of HIJK's complaints with the majority of cape stuff being printed - on a per issue basis you're just supposed to know what the cast's deal is and root for them without being told why. The classic X-Men run doesn't do that and I love it.
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Oct 31, 2017 15:34
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Looks visually really interesting. I like Miles' voice, too.
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Dec 10, 2017 00:18
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Magneto has historically been more of a "leader of a rogue state/political terrorist" than a mass murderer. iirc the guys in that sub died during the events of Uncanny #150, when he issues an ultimatum to the world to cede political control to him or be destroyed. The USSR responds by sending a nuclear submarine to launch missiles at his island base, and Magneto disarms the missiles and sinks the sub. He then uses an earthquake machine to destroy a Russian city in retaliation - but he gives them a few hours' warning to evacuate first, and no-one dies in the city's destruction. This is actually also the story where Claremont revamps Magneto as an anti-hero rather than a straight villain. It ends with Storm convincing him of the folly of his tyrannical approach to seeking peace and then he straight up doesn't appear for dozens of issues before returning, having reformed and seeking reconciliation with the X-Men. He would only heel turn again much, much later. For a long time his redemption was played as totally genuine, and marked a sea change from the "retro" X-Men era, where straightforward heroes fought simplistic villains, to Claremont's superhero soap opera, where characters had inner lives and dramatic motivations.
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Jan 18, 2018 13:08
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All the nuclear weapons stuff isn't super bad though. He's never actually used his nukes, just tried to use them as a bargaining chip to get people to accept his agenda. The sub he sunk was about to launch a nuclear missile at his home base, so he's reasonably covered on self defense/act of war there. I'm sure in his fifty+ years of publication Magneto's done some awful things, though. He's a mess of a character by now if you try to take everything as canon in the same way as, say, Charles Xavier (who lusted after Jean Grey and got a secret team of X-Men killed and did various other shady things across the full breadth of his publication history) and Scott Summers (who abandoned his wife and newborn child to go pal around with X-Force without telling her where he was) are.
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Jan 18, 2018 14:57
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Seriously though, I've never gotten over how X-Men canon just skates over Scott being a deadbeat dad who walks out on his wife and his new baby without even telling her his whereabouts, and spends his time away from her hanging out with his old pals and mooning over Jean Grey, without even so much as calling his wife (who doesn't know where he is or why he's been gone for so long). That pretty much forever ruins Cyclops if you don't glaze over it.
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Jan 18, 2018 15:03
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Halloween Jack posted:I'm confused about everything where Magneto appears as an antihero, because I only ever remember him being a creepy genocidal maniac. The first X-Men I read was the Claremont run where he puts Moira MacTaggart in a skintight metal gimp suit. Read Uncanny #150. It's the first time seeds for his future anti-hero credentials are ever established and a good comic generally.
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Jan 24, 2018 17:38
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