The Rabbit Hole

( Assassin's Creed: game to movie to talk. )
( Arkham City: A big Fuck You to Arkham Asylum/Batman fans. )
I think I'm ready to go back to playing Dead Rising 2: Off the Record now. Sure, all the female characters saunter instead of walking, and they all make passes at Frank "I-look-like-my-Mama-took-a-shovel-to-my-face-when-I-was-baby" West, but you know what? People don't say BITCH at or about women all the time. Somehow, the gross objectification of women that you see onscreen is less irritating--probably because it's not onscreen for all that long--than having to endure constant cat calls/threats of rape from NPCs for the hours you play the game.

Here's Catwoman, ladies and gents. Is it terrible? No, it's not, and it's certainly not as awful as the LizardSuperman suit from yesterday. Is it recognizably Catwoman? Also no.


Look, is it really so hard to get Michelle Pfeiffer into some PVC these days? Because I bet you that at 50-something, she'd still rock it hard, and I wouldn't be so confused by latter-day attempts at bringing Catwoman to the big screen. Halle Berry's costume was so bad, I had to look at pictures of my home-made, stretch-pant-and-puffy-paint Catwoman costume from fifth grade to find a worse one. This is so blah, I'm already more impressed by the Black Widow's costume in The Avengers, and you can only see it in a screenshot from her shoulders up and it's on Scarlet Johannson. (Regardless of the inappropriateness of cute-as-a-button Anne Hathaway playing Selina Kyle, she's miles better at this acting gig than Scarlet.)

I'm with the blogger on this one: where are the ears? The only thing that connects her to the Nolanverse is the Batpod. Ridiculous.

While I was griping about stuff that is, aside from the second item, more important in the grand scheme of things, there was a press release about the third Nolan-helmed Batman film.

I'm actually not at all upset about Tom Hardy playing Bane. As several of the commenters at io9 pointed out pictorially, he could pull off the shape just fine. We only have to hope that Nolan uses him in the slyer, smarmier way that he did in Inception (rather than how Joel Schumacher used the character in that film I refuse to believe exists). It could work.

It's Anne Hathaway I remain unconvinced by. Anne Hathaway is, in a word, cute. She's cute, cutesy, pretty, girly, twee, etc., etc., etc. None of these are things I associate with Catwoman. I don't doubt her abilities as an actress, though, again, most of what I've seen her in has generally fit into the label "twee" without spilling over. (Before you tell me, I'll let you all know I still haven't seen her in Brokeback Mountain, in which I hear she was great. I promise I will get on that.)

Perhaps I'm just disappointed that my much-preferred casting choice for the role, Rachel Weisz, didn't get it. Maybe they're saving her for Talia al Ghul? I don't know. But Rachel Weisz is TEH SEX in mind, body, voice, and attitude. Funnily enough, the first thing I saw her in was The Mummy, in which she plays what I would call the Anne Hathaway type--ditzy, pretty, somewhat smart but not overly arrogant. But ever since then, the woman has been made of sex (including in the less-good sequel to The Mummy in which she wears so much eyeliner I died). It's a missed opportunity to have her in the movie.

Still? It's a Nolan Bat-film, so it'll be good, Anne Hathaway or no. I should just be glad that Catwoman has plot immunity and can't be killed off just to make the hero feel ways about stuff like Nolan does in all his movies....right?

I was thinking about my earlier post (in which I objectified at least two men and hinted at a history of doing so to many, many others) and the oncoming onslaught of superhero movies (our taste for which is surprisingly still rapacious). Marvel has no less than a dozen movies already assumed: Iron Man 2 and, very probably, 3; Thor (with Thor 2 less likely but not impossible); Captain America (its sequel potential somewhere between that of Iron Man 3 and Thor 2); The Avengers; Wolverine 2; Deadpool; and some variety of X-Men-related films--the long idle Magneto movie and the more active X-Men: First Class.

DC has, to its credit, tried to step up production of the next Christopher Nolan Batman film and is making noise about another Superman film (though they won't film anything until the lawsuits are settled, I'm sure). And, while they do that, Green Lantern is already filming. (Seriously, someone took a shitty quality photo of Ryan Reynolds on set with what looked like a smudge on one of his fingers and the Lantern fans exploded with paroxysms of glee that he was wearing the ring.) The Flash may be getting another script treatment. Don't ask about Wonder Woman, though.

But, no, wait, let's ask about Wonder Woman for a second. Or, rather, since I don't want to hear the bullshit about how they can't figure out how to make Wonder Woman interesting enough to justify a movie, let's focus on what really bugged me as I looked at the Marvel line-up. Forget DC for a moment. I need comics fans to answer (riddle) me this: Who is Marvel's Wonder Woman?

I'm not trying to pick at wounds here, though it is a sore subject for me, personally. I really just could not think of any grand dame of the Marvel universe who stands on the sort of equal footing with her male colleagues that Wonder Woman does in the DC universe. The best I could come up with were the obviously-derivative-versions-of-male-characters, sometimes-members of the Avengers, like Spider-Woman or She-Hulk. Thinking about female Marvel characters, I immediately thought of X-Men, but they're hardly any of them anything like Wonder Woman. You can think of the iconic Marvel characters without ever touching on any X-Man or X-Woman. So the X-Women cannot be said to be iconic enough to Wonder Woman, for all that they are, by far, the most interesting women in the Marvel universe.

So, comics nerds better versed than I: am I wrong? Is there an iconic Marvel character who is on par with DC's Wonder Woman and I'm just not thinking of her?

As several comments point out on this thread, it would be easier to make a list (that would also be shorter) of Batman: the Animated Series episodes that weren't good. The series was far and away the best animated series of all time, far as I'm concerned. While I have loved many, many animated works with varying degrees of passion, I keep returning to BTAS because it remains entertaining, provocative (and thus, often slightly disturbing), and beautiful. I have seen every single episode multiple times, and I never get tired of watching my favorites over and over.

So, after that rosy declaration of eternal love, what would I admit to being some of the worst parts of that series I adore? ( Here are the few I came up with. )

Take a look at this list of episodes, and you tell me: what are some of the (very few, not really all that) bad episodes of BTAS.

It's been twenty years since Tim Burton's Batman was released.

I'm not the world's biggest fan of that movie, but that doesn't mean that the fact that it's two decades old now isn't a tad staggering. There was a time when Tim Burton wasn't really anybody. When rubber suits weren't as big of a joke as capes or spandex. That time has been over for two decades.

Wow.

Incedentally, I find the io9 meta about the sequels interesting for one reason: there are other people who, like me, infinitely prefer Batman Returns to Batman. feiran and I, in one of our many uncanny bonding moments, have declared that Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman was the A-#1 lesbian crush of our lives. At the time that movie came out, I was, what, ten? And I still thought she was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I got mocked pretty handily, but I went as Catwoman for Halloween in fifth grade. I remember thinking that the black shirt with puffy-paint faux stitches my mom made--to supplement the inferior store-bought costume pieces--was fanastic.

So, I'm biased. I loved that movie to pieces for Catwoman, and I admit that. But overall? Even without Catwoman, I'd still prefer to watch Batman Returns to Batman, I think. It's a lot more Burton-esque of the two Burton Batman movies, and I love his aesthetic even if I don't always love his movies. (Case in point: love these Alice in Wonderland pictures, but I'd love it better if we could just toss out the plot and the movie and pretend this was an intense photo shoot instead.) It's just nice to know that there are other nerds on the internet who agree with me. That doesn't happen often enough.


PS: LEGO Batman is ridiculously adorable. Each LEGO game tries to tweak the formula without really redoing anything major. While LEGO Indiana Jones faltered by trying to branch out from the one character really worth a darn in that franchise--that would be Indy, Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls notwithstanding--LEGO Batman soars because there are so many player characters worth playing with different skill sets that actually make sense. Well, sorta. I mean, it makes sense that Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, and the Joker are immune to toxic waste--Ivy's is a natural immunity that goes with her very poisonous nature, Freeze is safely tucked away in his suit, and the Joker survived a full-body dip in acid, so what could toxic waste really do to him any more? Killer Croc is pushing it though--he may be more resilient to damage in general, but toxic waste exposure isn't like being hit really hard. And It makes zero sense that Two-Face is similarly immune to that sort of exposure. I call shenanigans on that.

Otherwise, I'm in love! Especially the part where you get to play the three-story, five-level-per-story game both from Batman's side and the villains'. Also, Batman has different Bat-suits. Schumaker would be proud. (So would Adam West, surely.)

This is the most adorable Wall-E poster ever. It's not even so much the picture, which is as adorable as all the Wall-E images are. It's the tagline at the top. It says, in French, "What are you doing for the next 700 years?" ::SQUEEEEEEEE::

(And, to be fair, this one is pretty damned cute, too.)

I also just received one of the most thoughtful and sweet commentaries on an old Batman Begins fanfic I wrote. It's really nice to be appreciated. I wish the umpteen-odd thousand words I wasted on Blade: Trinity were as good or as worthy of such commentary. A little smile to brighten my day. Which I need after the dream I had this morning about driving to a motel at night with my parents and listening to Condolezza Rice campaigning to become a Senator in some Balkan country. ('Cause she missed the election cycle in the states, dontcha know.) Members of the former president's administration are not welcome in my dreams, thankyouverymuch.

Because the real news is too depressing!

-While I realize there's a lot of ghoulish fascination at work here, it's also pretty fucking cool: Blu-Ray covers for The Dark Knight. The cynic in me sees the prominent Joker cover as a means of milking more money by wringing it from Heath Ledger's premature corpse. The realist in me recognizes that he was the star of the film and putting him on the cover makes sense in that light. (You can argue that Harvey Dent was the equal twin-star--heh, funny--but no one is saying that Batman was the focal point of the film.) I also love the editing on the back cover. :)

-Kenneth Branaugh directing Thor!? Well, he's in talks, anyway. I...honestly have nothing to say about that. So long as he doesn't then cast himself as the lead the way he did with almost every Shakespeare film adaptation he did, that's fine. (Don't get me wrong, he was good as the leads, but it got old.) Anyone knows more about Branaugh's directorial skill than I do wants to weigh in?

-Iron Man design art! The DVD is out tomorrow, probably with all these on there, but still, FYI. I love how very many of these drawings are pretty much realized exactly in the film. Except--and this is endlessly meta-fascinating--the one of the Mark II armor with the mini shoulder cannon. Because the only way Iron Man works as a sop to Tony Stark's I'm-not-making-weapons-any-more (except I totally am) newfound conscience is if you can't see the weapons. Yes, armor is a recognizeable part of warfare, but it's not a weapon out-and-out to most people. (It's more of a tool.) You have to hide the guns and the energy weapons (inside the wrist plates and as part of the flight stabilizers, respectively) if you want to swallow that fiction.

Seeing as I've already posted one way in which desperate idiots are trying to justify torture, have an article about how the Bush administration tried to justify it.

We need to get new rubber bracelets made. WWJBD?

Another thing about that Sadly, No! thread: someone commented that, once upon a time, we blamed comic books for perverting/destroying the minds of children and bending them to lives of crime. I'm not sure if, given that those kids have grown up and are now using the Batman defense--"If Batman would do it, it's okay"--whether or not those alarmists were right.

Perhaps not. Perhaps it's just supreme irony that people who never would have read comics are using them and other forms of popular fiction to justify their behavior--behavior decidedly worse than anything "juvenile delinquents" ever did because they read one too many stories by William Gaines...

cagexxx was in town and I was seriously tempted to try and go out to the IMAX for The Dark Knight. Looks like we were right in not even bothering to try. Holy shit, $75M!? I mean, it's a 50% drop-off from last week, but last week was almost $160M!!! When feiran, darkling1 and I went out for our former roommate's birthday, someone at the party told me that IMAX was sold out until August. I'm assuming that's on the weekend, since I saw that the IMAX would cheerfully sell us seats to a 2 am showing on Friday morning. Still, given that the ONLY IMAX theater in New York City is at 68th street, that might not be hyperbole.

::checks Fandango::

Um, the 8:45 pm show (the only one anyone can make if they get off work at 5) is sold out until Thursday this week and that's as far ahead as they'll let me look. Jeepers. In fact, the 5 pm show is sold out on Wednesday, too. (I dunno how prevalent it is, but certain sectors of my job have early days off on Wednesday--they're usually out by 3 pm--so are they ALL going to the movies or what?)

::whistles::

On a non-Dark Knight related note, I take pleasure in seeing that Mamma Mia! hasn't dropped off too badly. It's a more reliable measure of how well a film will do when it can continue to take in money after the first week. I expect that when Step Brothers is forgotten next week and people are still trying to get into see The Dark Knight, they'll probably keep being siphoned off to see Mamma Mia!. And now, it's time to listen to some ABBA.