The Batman: Pics, Videos, and Other Awesomeness

DC Universe has removed a lot of their movies from their streaming services. I shake at my fist at the air. It was all stuff I saw before and didn't need to be able to see again at my beck and call.

Still, I don't like it when a service I have gets smaller. That said, they finally released a 2019 movie in their animated Expanded Universe that they have not released.

Wonderwoman Bloodlines which came out last October. Presumably they are releasing it now for cross promotional hype with Gal Gadot's Wonderwoman 1984.

I liked it. I'd by my earlier rating system it's at least a 3.5.

They retconned their animated Wonderwoman 2011 out of the expanded EU by retelling Wonder Woman's origin (quickly) so that Wonderwoman's new origin fit in cleaner with Superman, Batman and all the others meeting her for the first time in Justice League War. I'm not a big fan of retcons in general, but it worked here.

They also built a lot of characterization into this movie. One thing I always thought Wonder Woman stories lacked is meaningful interactions with ordinary human women. Usually Wonder Woman is just punching super villains or if the writer is SJW, Wonder Woman is sticking it to the patriarchy.

Four out of five of the supporting cast, good guys, bad guys, and in-betweens were female. I did not have a problem with that. This was overdue. While there were not a lot of male characters, both the good and evil male characters were portrayed well. They managed to showcase strong women without making all the men drooling morons.

Without spoiling anything specific. This movie good because the A plot (the villain's evil plan) and the B plot (the character arcs) were thematically linked very well. It also had a good mix of seriousness and humor blended well together.

Spoiler: I especially liked this joke at 2:50 of this video clip.

The things I didn't like about the movie were pretty small nitpicks. Mostly it's because I spend way too much time on TV tropes and that are certain tropes that I think are overdone or out of date.

Spoiler: Plot spoilers of my grouses

I do not like mystery villains in animated films. Thanks to Pixar I believe that is way over done and in this movie like most animated movies with a "mystery" villain. The mystery is fairly obvious.

Designated Girl Fight is an outdated trope that needs to die. This movie gender flipped it and arguably averted it. In this movie most of the villains were female and most of Wonder Woman's allies were female but the one male villain was fought by the one male hero. Go figure.

They also gender flipped the high-heel-face-turn. But they had TWO villainous characters see the light, one male, one female. One was played for laughs and the other was part of a full character so I guess it's forgiveable. Nevermind, I guess it's not a misgiving, it's actually a strength. One thing that sets Wonder Woman apart from other DC superheroes is that she is more focused on redemption than most others and occasionally she succeeds.

 

So after a dry spell where DC Universe removed most of their animated movies. They brought a bunch in. Anything with Harley Quinn in it for starters.

Including Batman and Harley Quinn (2017), a movie I had not seen until a few minutes ago. It's unique. It's the most recent installment added to the DC Animated Universe.

Which includes Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series, Justice League, Static Shock, Batman Beyond, the Zeta Project, Justice League Unlimited and a handful of animated movies.

Chronologically this movie takes place after Justice League Unlimited and before Batman Beyond. There is one major difference from previous works in this continuity. A tonal and art shift.




Not 100% sure how I feel about this change in the DCAU

If you are a major fan of the DCAU you probably would enjoy this movie.

If you are a casual DC fan or a casual Batman fan, I would not recommend this movie. The animation and voice acting is good but the plot is propped up by Easter eggs and memberberries for the DCAU. Also homages to Adam West Batman and other DC stuff. They aren't all gimmicky. There is also a lot of self aware parody as they affectionately showcase the cornier and campier aspects of their celebrated past and a hang a lampshade on them.

While the movie had good jokes, good animation, and good voice acting the story construction left me wanting.

It's a watchable movie but it's not a timeless classic for all audiences. If you want an animated superhero movie that is a timeless classic for all audiences, watch Mask of the Phantasm. In my opinion, there is no better DC animated movie.

Related note. DC generally has far better animated movies than Marvel was Marvel generally has far better live action actions but there are major exceptions on both the high and low end of quality.

This was the first DCAU show or movie that included ARGUS. ARGUS has been in the comics for many years and has featured in the live action "Arrowverse" shows. I cannot help but think. ARGUS is pathetic. SHIELD is way better than ARGUS. It's good that SHIELD has contact information for the Avengers, but ARGUS is helpless, helpless without the Justice League.

 

My movie theater has half priced tickets on Tuesday. Ergo, I watched Birds of Prey.

The movie cost me $5.35 and 2 and half hours of my time included travel time to the theater and back and time with my ice scraper on my car.

I am pleased. I was moderately entertained.

I admit I am favorably biased towards most things that have DC slapped on them, but Birds of Prey was okay. The story was fairly simplistic, but the acting and cinematography was good. This was a popcorn movie.

I watch a lot of pop culture news Youtube videos. My Youtube feed is filled with things like "Harley Quinn bombs" and "Birds of Prey Latest to get woke and go broke."

The movie isn't that bad and the movie isn't that woke. If the movie is failing commercially, it's because of a marketing failure. The biggest marketing failure is that I'm not sure who this movie is for.

The marketing was woke making the anti-woke backlashers refuse to watch the movie, but the movie is not woke enough to get the woke audience (what little there is) to endorse this movie.

It's a rated R movie with a lot of stylistic violence but it's got a simplistic plot that seems written for kids.

 

(wrong or right, the critical Drinker is always funny)

 

Nothing Critical Drinker says is wrong, but I think he is overly harsh.

I usually agree with the Razzie awards choices but I think they shouldn't have piled awards on Land of the Lost in 2009. Land of the Lost was a B-movie and the director, crew, and actors treated it like a B-movie. They were trying to be campy and corny so they shouldn't be punished for making a campy and corny movie.

Same thing here. The movie seemed self aware of it's flaws and hung a lampshade on them. I have no problem with self aware B-movies.

 

Thats the mainstay of modern critics about basically everything it seems. One could think it is the only way that can still keep an audience listening.

What I would call reasonable criticism is pretty much dead in many places, everything seems to be either "OMG best thing EVAR!!!11! Everyone involved has to get an Oscar and it will be a timeless classic, starting now!" While ignoring the bad or mediocre parts or "They destroyed the franchise, kill them all!!! This is not real (insert franchise here), fire them all and reboot it using (insert bad fanboy idea here)" while ignoring the good or mediocre parts.

 

The critical drinker is also able to keep a moderate profile.
Proof:

 

Yeah he has his moments. I watch his videos now and then but I rarely finish them.

 

Some people have problems with a 100 pound woman beating up twenty 200 pound men.

I don't have a problem with that given that she exists in a universe that has Superman and the Flash in it. Realism goes out the window.

I would like to see more of this \/



It's not just Batman. If Harley Quinn just beat up 19 men, why does the 20th guy attack rather than run away? Only zombies, robots, and fanatics fight to the last man.

In the Harley Quinn movie, most of the bad guys were random thugs. Random thugs do not normally fight to the last man.

Then again there are situations where sane people keep coming. In the historical real version of the 300 Spartans (and a couple thousand other Greeks) against tens of thousands of Persians, the Persians could not flee because they literally had no where to flee to.

But in the Birds of Prey movie, most of the bad guys could easily have withdrawn. That was especially jarring when there was a mass jail break. The escaping prisoner had a choice between escaping jail and trying to kill Harley Quinn, all of them decided to kill Harley as opposed to escaping.

 

Yeah, people in movies often seem to have ridiculously high morale stats.

That's something many RPG game masters should learn as well btw.
The first few games I did that as a GM my players were confused. But once you think about it: in many many cases the random dudes would run as soon as half of them are beaten, and depending on _how_ they are being beaten the rest might run even earlier.

 

Disney is struggling to keep the Marvel cinematic universe relevant, but for me at least, Warner Brother is picking up the slack with a slate of excellent movies for their animated cinematic universe.

Wonderwoman Bloodlines (2019) was a very enjoyable movie. Superman: Red Son came out a little over a week ago. I'm going to wait for it to be cheaper, ideally free because I have a DC Universe subscription already paid for. The early reviews. I don't trust Rotten Tomatoes 100% score, but more trustworthy review sites rate it positively.

I am cartoon nerd. I like animated films at least as much as I like live action films. Birds of Prey was mediocre, not a dumpster fire, but I'm not optimistic about Suicide Squad 2. My only comment about the movie is one word.



I guess I could go through all the question words.

Why did they make a sequel to Suicide Squad?
Where can they take Harley Quinn's story from here?
When did they start planning this?
How did this get approved?
Who greenlit the sequel to the DC universe's biggest failure?
What is the air speed velocity of an unladened swallow.