The Batman: Pics, Videos, and Other Awesomeness

DC Universe released debuted a new live action show without much fanfare. Stargirl. I'm going to to give it a shot.

I am ten minutes in and it is clear this not a contemporary show, it's set in a historical era. The mid 1990s.

Wait to make me old Warner Brothers....

Also, I think the 1990s were not a good time for pop music.

 

It's only the pilot, but I like Stargirl so far.

It's clear that this show has a lower budget than the other live action shows DC has released lately, but a high budget does not always mean something is good and a something with a low budget is not always a bad.

I've never heard of the actress before but that's because the protagonist but she seems like a good actress. The supporting cast is solid. The villains are intriguing. The writing is good, there are four or five subplots that can be milked all season, some mystery, some rivalry, some opportunities for character growth.

After the show hammered in that the show is set in the 1990s the soundtrack stopped using 1990s pop songs. So that's good.

When I was growing up there was a joke that high school dramas on TV always had 25 year old high school students with 33 year old parents. This is a step in the write direction. The lead actress playing Courtney Whitmore/Stargirl is a 20 year old high school student with 45ish year old parents. I guess that's fine. Real teenagers just don't have the acting chops as young adults. They also, by law, cannot work as many hours as adults actors in most places. The teenaged characters are believable teenaged characters. Not like Ender's Game which I thought was a subpar movie because of poor casting choices.

Luke Wilson was the star of Idiocracy and he is good at playing a beleaguered good natured everyman. He is playing Courtney's stepfather, Pat, and Stargirl's reluctant mentor/partner, Stripes. I guess this makes him the deuteragonist. Including him in this movie was brilliant casting. He's goofy and socially awkward but his character is also smart and brave proving you can have a strong female lead without making all the male characters amoral morons.

I really like his backstory. He has the scrappy underdog thing in spades.

Spoiler: Spoiler for the first seven minutes of the pilot episode

For ten+ years he was a sidekick to a great super hero and was the junior member of America's greatest super hero team in the 1960s and 70s. He is proud of what he did, but is also aware that he was punching above his weight class when he fought along side the super heroes. And of course he was the only survivor of the Justice Society of America when they were wiped out by villains in the early 80s.

One thing kind of bugs me but so far, every single high school drama made in the United States or Canada has this so I cannot fault this show. There is a clique of popular kids who are jerks and bullies.

I don't get this. If this is the norm, I must have attended the nicest public high school in the country in the 1990s. In my school, the most popular kids were popular because they were nice to people. The bullies were socially ostracized because they were bullies. There were still cliques, don't get me wrong, but it's not like the different cliques were locked in a Cold War.

One thing that might have helped was that a strong majority of the student body was either in band or orchestra. The music teachers were strict when it was time for a concert or marching band season but they were lax disciplinarians for much of the school year. Sometimes band class felt like recess. The band and orchestra also got to go on a lot of fun trips. In this way students learned the names and developed social bonds with students outside of their immediate cliques.

Maybe in high school, things are rougher for girls than boys and the Mean Girls drama is accurate. Maybe Hollywood keeps the myth alive so they have B-plots when writing scripts for teenaged dramas.

According to imdb, and some Easter eggs in the pilot. Artemis Crock and her father Sportsmaster are going to be major parts of this show. Over most of comic history, these characters were kind of underwhelming but my favorite show Young Justice elevated both characters to new heights so I'm looking forward to see where this is going.

Here is the official comic book story for Stargirl if the character is unfamilar to you. The live action show is similar but far from identical to this.

 

This is something I would like to see more of, but I don't think it would translate to live action. Very few actors and actresses have the chops to play a mute character with depth and nuance. I've been reading a lot of old comic books on digital PDF and I noticed a fair number of mute characters.

I certainly cannot picture the CW making a show about a mute super hero.



If WB axes Amber Heard from Aquaman 2 (which I hope they do), and they decide not to recast Mera, they could introduce Dolphin. Dolphin was an Atlantean mutant who could not talk but was very empathetic and could conjure lights and illusion. Her relationship with Aquaman had a more brother-sister vibe but fans have shipped them because fans ship everyone.

 

Both Cassandra and Dolphin seem cool characters, but from a cinematic pov, probably dolphin would be easier to insert in a film based upon a mute hero.

 

Stargirl is not a 1990s period piece. It's set in the present. However I don't know if the producers have a low opinion of small towns in the American midwest being culturally behind or if the director just has an odd taste in music.

The show has lots of flaws, mostly involving high school cliches, but overall I enjoy it and look forward to when new episodes come out.

 

Superman: Red Son is a very good movie. I cannot go too deep into the description because its built on shocking twists and inversions.

It's an alternate universe where Kal-El of Krypton lands as a baby on Earth and he happens to land in the Soviet Union reaching adulthood in the early 1950s.

A lot of other DC characters are dramatically different as well, but in it's own way, most of the characters keep the spirit of their original versions.

 

I've got the comic book. Is it different ?

 

I just binge read the graphic novel series which is in PDF form on DC Universe and I can now answer your question.

It's very similar. Most of the few changes are clearly made to adapt the story from comic book to animation and the changes are well implemented. It keeps the spirit of the original. I would say the animated film has more emotional punch than the comic books because it has very good voice actors.

It's pretty par for the course. When Bruce Timm adapts a classic comic book he keeps the spirit of the original and improves the emotional resonance. Exception is The Killing Joke. I am a really big fan of Bruce Timm and I would say he is Midas touched when he helms an animated film or TV show but The Killing Joke movie is an abomination. I don't get it. Great director, great original comic story, and seasoned voice actors with a beloved pedigree but somehow they created a turd sandwich...

I would say that the animated Lex Luthor is slightly less of a dick than the comic book Lex Luthor.

Spoiler: Explanation, contains spoilers

In Superman: Red Son, Lex Luthor and Lois Lane are married. In the comic book, Lois Lane is basically a (psychologically not literally) battered house wife with Stockholm Syndrome. In the animated film, they have their relationship has their bumps due to Lex being married to his job, but Lex Luthor is a reasonably devoted husband and is kind to her.

90% of the base story is the same but the animated film differs sharply from the comics at the very end. It has a very different ending. I think I like the film better.

 

Oh, interesting...
Now i really need to see the movie.

 

They had me at Batman Beyond live action movie. I really like the idea of Michael Keaton playing old Bruce Wayne.

Rumor, but still. Don't you want to see this in live action?

 

The problem is The Batman, a very good show, followed Batman the Animated Series, arguably the greatest animated show of all time.

Also The Batman had a different tone, supporting cast and meta plot arc for every season while BTAS was pretty consistent until the last season.

 

I consider Western Animation and Japanese Anime to be separate enough genres that apples to apples comparisons are not feasible.