Bat-Extravaganza Part 2: Mask of The Phantasm

This post must begin with an acknowledgement of the terrible news of the shooting at the cinema in Colorado on Friday. This was a senseless, shocking and unfathomable act of violence, and my thoughts and sincerest condolences go to the victims and their families. Christopher Nolan has responded to the tragedy in a far more sensitive, articulate and poignant way than I could, so I have left a link to his statement here.

After weeks of intense anticipation I saw The Dark Knight Rises on Saturday, and have just returned from seeing it a second time. There are plenty of reviews already available, ranging from the exultant to the disappointed, but on this occasion I'd like to add my own voice to the mix. A nice, full review of The Dark Knight Rises will be forthcoming sometime in the next week, hopefully before the end of the week. Most reviewers have been careful to avoid spoilers but there are a few issues I'd really like to discuss where spoilers can't be avoided, so consider this an early and very major spoiler warning for the next post. If you want to know whether I liked it or whether you should see it, then my initial reaction was that I loved it, and it was a great end to the series, though I had one or two minor issues with it. And yes of course you should see it: it's Batman 3 for Chrissakes!

So, on to the subject of today's post: Batman: Mask of The Phantasm, the all-but-forgotten but quietly brilliant 1993 animated feature. Mask of the Phantasm was released in cinemas following the success of the 1990s TV show, Batman: The Animated Series, which ran for two seasons in its original incarnation from 1992 - 1995. The show itself won many critical plaudits and awards, and is widely regarded as one of the best adaptations of Batman ever produced. The Animated Series is easily one of my favourite TV series, animated or otherwise, combining a beautiful, art deco-influenced aesthetic, mature storylines, a great central performance from Kevin Conroy as Batman, and a terrific supporting cast which includes Mark Hammill as the Joker. Mask of the Phantasm continues the style and mature storylines of the series as a feature, and boy, does it deliver as a full-blown Batman film. The plot revolves around a masked, seemingly invincible spectre that arrives in Gotham and who starts systematically killing mob bosses. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is confronted by the reappearance after many years of his lost love, Andrea Beaumont. The action jumps back and forth between Batman's investigation of the mysterious Phantasm as he offs more mobsters, and the flashback scenes in which Bruce's romance with Andrea blossoms. In these scenes, we are presented with a young Wayne, preparing himself to take up the mantle of the crimefighter  that will eventually become Batman. However, he meets Andrea, and in the most emotional scene of the film, questions whether he really wants to fight crime any more. The bare skeleton of the plot of Phantasm seems like pretty standard superhero stuff, particularly with the conflict-from-romantic-entanglement angle, but it's in the execution of these well-worn tropes that Phantasm truly shines, and succeeds in offering emotional maturity and focus that few live-action superhero films have achieved. Audiences familiar with Nolan's superb Batman Begins may find many similar story beats in Phantasm: Bruce's early fights with crooks before he dons the batsuit, for example, and his reasoning behind using a bat as a symbol of fear are prevalent in both Phantasm and Begins: both films are heavily and explicitly influenced by the superlative Frank Miller / David Mazzucchelli Batman: Year One, often regarded as the greatest Batman graphic novel ever written. 

In my view, Mask of the Phantasm is second only to Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy as the best feature-length Batman film. The Animated Series and Phantasm both took their visual aesthetic cues (as well as their music theme) from Tim Burton's stylised and visually striking Batman and Batman Returns, both of which are very good Batman films in their own rights. But where Burton's films sacrificed emotional depth and narrative coherence (particularly in Returns) for visual splendour and spectacle, Mask of the Phantasm gives us all the stylistic trappings of Batman, and an emotionally compelling and focussed narrative to boot. All the familiar visual cues remain; as well as the suit, the Batcave, and the Burton-era Batmobile, we see Bruce lay the iconic red roses at his parent's grave, complemented by the sky that burns red as a perpetual reminder both of Bruce's anger and of the darkness that he inhabits. Indeed, the depth that the visuals convey is frequently disarming and quite beautiful. For example, the first scene that we see Bruce Wayne (as opposed to Batman), he has slunk off from a party, and his humorous, sociable facade has dropped. In his study he looks up mournfully at a portrait of his parents, tears brimming in his eyes. In a moment of silent reminiscence and grief, Alfred walks in on Bruce as he stands with his back to the door:

The frame presents us with a remarkable amount of characterisation. Firstly, the camera is up high and away from Bruce, giving us full access to the room. Bruce is a tiny figure, away from the centre of the frame and dwarfed by the room he is in, appearing small and vulnerable. The walls are practically bare, save for the portrait of his parents: a constant reminder of their murder when he was a child. The window frame casts shadows in harsh, chiaroscuro lines that are reminiscent the black and white lines of film noir, and refer both to the shadow of murder and grief that forever hangs on Bruce, as well as to the comic-book origins of the Batman, when Bruce Wayne originally saw a bat at his window, vowing to adopt its image as a symbol of fear against 'cowardly, superstitious' criminals. Alfred stands at the doorway, light flooding in from the party as his shadow is cast on the floor. This sudden influx of warm orangey light contrasts with the cold blue dimness of the rest of the frame, and emphasises not only Bruce's emotional and physical location in the dark, but also that he is there alone, isolated from the external world. Bruce's mentor Alfred remains at the door's threshold, and even the audience's viewpoint is kept away up in the ceiling, reminding us of that separation. Later, in a flashback scene, Bruce proposes to Andrea, and she accepts. Bruce knows that if he is going to have a life with her he will have to give up his career as Batman before it has begun, and he has already chosen to do so. Because the scene is in flashback, we know ultimately how this is going to end for Bruce and Andrea, but in that moment it seems as is if there should be no reason that it won't work out for them. Just as they embrace in the sunset, a mass of bats erupts out of a crack in the rock, swirls around them and flies into the twilight sky reminding us of the inevitability of Bruce's fate and his doomed relationship with Andrea. Not only is this is a visual callback to Batman: Year One  Mask of the Phantasm packed with this kind of rich, visual sensibility, augmented by a very good script that, especially in the flashback scenes, gives Bruce gravitas and depth.

A title page from Batman: Year One

A visual nod to Year One in Mask of the Phantasm

In the scene where Bruce chooses Andrea over a life of fighting crime, he visits his parents' grave to beg forgiveness for the promise he's about to break. Framed by gothic thunder and lightning, and a huge stone gravestone, the most effective part of the scene is where Bruce tries to explain that 'it just doesn't hurt so bad any more'. It's a succinct, emotive line than really humanises Bruce as a young man, beset by a terrible tragedy, who simply wants to get on with his life. For all the nuanced character analysis in Nolan's Bat-series, this scene in Phantasm really encapsulates the ongoing tragedy at the centre of Bruce's life in a way that no other Batman film has achieved. It's all the more sad because we know, at some point, he does become the Batman, and ultimately leave behind any semblance of a normal life. 

Bruce's fate is sealed when Andrea absconds, leaving him her engagement ring. This is what finally convinces Wayne to don the suit and become the Batman, and it's nice to see a new take Batman's origins, complicating the story by having Bruce Wayne's life getting in the way of a promise he made as a child. Back in in the present, the police believe that Batman is behind the mob killings, and before long his old enemy the Joker becomes involved in the fray. Here, the Joker plays as a secondary, though key, villain to the Phantasm, and although you'll probably spot the identity of the Phantasm a mile off, it doesn't diminish the impact when he is finally unmasked. The finale takes place in an abandoned museum of the future, which Joker has made his hideout, which not only makes a great location for some great pyrotechnics, but also provides an ironic setting in which to explore Bruce's inability to escape the past, tortured both by his parents' murders and his lost love. Just like the empty study, Bruce can't leave the decayed, traumatic world of the past to join the living world of the present. It's no surprise then, that he adopts an image of the night, of death, as his symbol. The batsuit, tied as it is to Andrea leaving him, becomes emblematic of Bruce's inertia. What is brilliant about Mask of the Phantasm is that, Nolan's films aside, this really is the most complex presentation of the Bruce Wayne / Batman dual identity we have ever had on screen. Moreover, despite being primarily aimed at a young audience, the emphasis is on nuanced character analysis, not on action. The violence that the film does have is there in service of the story, and while never graphic, is often quite gritty and never feels hamstrung by the film's target family audience. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm really is one of the best Batman films, and offers a unique, compelling and emotive take on the character. With the release of Nolan's final Batman film, it's a great time to find a copy (you can get it on the 'net for a couple of quid) and check out what is in many ways the most faithful, and even definitive cinematic adaptation of Batman.

Next time it's the review you've all been waiting for: The Dark Knight Rises, with plenty of spoilers, so watch this space!

Some Days You Just Can't Get Rid of a Bomb: Bat-Extravaganza Part One

Full Disclosure: I love Batman. I love The Dark Knight Returns, I love The Killing Joke, I love A Serious House on Serious Earth, I love giant pennies, I love the fifth dimension. I love Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. I love Adam West, I love Michael Gough, I love Michael Caine, I love Gary Oldman, I believe in Harvey Dent. I love Batman Begins, I ADORE The Dark Knight, and I have never, ever been as excited for a new film as I am about the release of The Dark Knight Rises tomorrow. To put it mildly: I fucking love Batman. Admit it, you love Batman too. Everyone does. Batman's easily the most bankable superhero, with The Dark Knight earning a staggering $1bn worldwide at the box office, the recent Arkham video games receiving widespread critical acclaim as well as commercial success, not to mention Bats' original comic form, in which he has remained in print for over seventy years. Batman is old enough to be your Grandad, and he's still cooler than anything at the cinema this month.  

With the new film about to be released, it might seem an obvious choice to do a retrospective on the previous Batman films, but, as I mentioned last time, that's already been done by better men than I. It goes without saying that Chris Nolan's about-to-be-completed Batman Trilogy is one of the most popular and successful film franchises of the last twenty years, and many remain fond of the idiosyncratic 1989 and 1992 Tim Burton films Batman and Batman Returns. The follow ups, the Joel Schumacher-directed Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, are widely regarded as two of the worst comic book movies ever made. When we think of the 'Batman' films, these are the seven that spring to mind, for better or worse. But there have actually been a total of eleven theatrical, feature-length Batman movies over the years, not including the numerous straight to video animated releases.*

This is not cool.

This is cool.

Over three very special Bat-posts, I want to discuss three of those theatrical films, beginning with the oft-derided-but-pop-culturally-brilliant 1966 Batman: The Movie. Secondly, we'll look at the 1993 Batman: Mask of the Phantasm: the only animated Batman feature to have been released in cinemas, and almost completely forgotten by mainstream audiences. This is a terrible shame, as it's amongst the very best of the Batman films. Following Mask of the Phantasm, I'll round off Bat-Extravaganza with a full review of The Dark Knight Rises. So without further bat-ado, here is:

Batman: The Movie

This may just be the finest magazine cover
I have ever seen, and testament to Batman's cultural impact.

Batman: The Movie is a masterpiece of camp, technicolour silliness. I find it bizarre that when people talk about the 'Batman films', this one is often left out, despite the huge pop-cultural impact it had as a TV show and, later, as a motion picture. Indeed, the litmus test of something being irreversibly ingrained into public consciousness is how often it has been parodied in The Simpsons. Parodying the 1960s iteration of Batman is something that The Simpsons has become particularly adept at. The reason for The Simpsons' multiple bat-parodies is that Batman: The Movie is awesome, and has affected our perception and expectations of comic-book movies more than you might think. The common reason cited for the failures of Batman Forever and Batman and Robin is that they became too camp, like the 1960s version of Batman. Unfortunately anyone who finds themselves repeating this popular but simplistic mantra are wrong, and as a result have missed the fundamental reasons that make those films terrible. I've got news for you, kids: it ain't the camp that makes Schumacher's bat-films crap. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are vacuous, commercial turds made only to sell toys to kids without a shred of heart or creativity. It's not because they're camp. In fact, Batman Forever is less camp than you remember. Admittedly, it did introduce the infamous nipples on the batsuit, was the first Batman film to feature Robin, and included the some of the hammiest villains ever in Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face and Jim Carrey's Riddler. But amongst all the seizure-inducing neon was a lot of Val Kilmer brooding away as Bruce Wayne, tension between Bruce and Dick Grayson and a (relatively) complex love interest in fetishistic psychiatrist Chase Meridian, played by Nicole Kidman. In fact, part of the reason Batman Forever fails is because of its identity crisis. It doesn't know if wants to be a fetish-psycho drama or silly toy advert for kids. These problems with tone don't trouble Batman and Robin: it's just a straight-up pile of dog shit. The writing is crap, the sets are cheap, sub-sy fy channel quality, the constant changing of Bruce and Dick's costumes (steady) is wearying and cynical, and the villains alternate between boring and annoying. But these problems are not because they are camp. It's because they're crap: Batman Forever and Batman and Robin both fail on the levels of camp entertainment and as kids flicks because they're shoddily made, cynical cash grabs with both eyes on the merchandise and none on the script.

Following the disaster of Batman and Robin there has been a tendency in popular discourse to use 'camp' and 'ironically crap' as synonyms, but we really need to cut that shit out, because it gives crap films a free ride on the back of irony, and levels unfair and unjustified criticism at good camp films. Want more evidence? Sam Raimi's first two Spiderman films are rightly regarded as high watermarks of their genre, but you can't get much camper than a man in a green Power Rangers on a flying skateboard, or a fellow with four metallic arms that talk to him and tell him to do bad things. For all its flaws, Spiderman 3** had a killer theme for Spidey's black suit: a brilliant composition in a minor key with everything thrown at it: horns, strings, percussion, woodwind and choral elements. It brilliantly underscores and gives personality to the black-suit sequences, and it's probably my favourite piece of music in the whole franchise (and that's high praise, given how great Danny Elfman's original theme is). But it's also camp as fuck. Listen to it:

Compare that to the Joker's theme in the 60s Batman and try to tell me they're not similar:

When the horns come in on the Spiderman theme they sound an awful lot like the Joker's theme, no? Not convinced? Try this one on for size:

Are you telling me the theme for Batman Forever's Two Face doesn't remind you of Spidey's black suit theme? No, of course you're not because it totally does. Primarily, character themes like these tell us something about who they represent, so with three very similar characters it's unsurprising that their music should resemble one another's. Of course, they're all comic-book movie villains, and two of them are Batman baddies at that. But more importantly, they're all a particular type of villain. You don't associate this kind of music with, for example, Darth Vader, or, tellingly, the Joker in Nolan's The Dark Knight, because those villains are not the same type of camp, dastardly foe found in Batman Forever, Spiderman 3, or indeed, Batman: The Movie. The Dark Knight's Joker is a terrifying, psychotic murderer, and we feel uneasy every time that he is on screen. In contrast, the Joker in Batman: The Movie is deliciously evil, gurning and cackling his way through absurd and comical devilish plans to undo the caped crusader. We revel in his pantomime wickedness, and his music reflects this. What is so absolutely great about the combination of panto-villain performance and music in Batman: The Movie is that its influence is still felt in modern superhero flicks. The reason that the dastardly-villain-music trope still works in something like Spiderman 3, where it's used not to identify a bad guy, but rather, to emphasise an emotional shift in the hero, is because it is already familiar to modern audiences as a trope of bad-guy-music. Using this musical trope alerts audiences to the emotional and narrative development in the scene. Spiderman 3's narrative is largely a disaster, but, here at least, the movie shines with an economy of characterisation and story telling. In the scene where the black-suited Spiderman fights the Sandman in the sewer, everything we need to know about the character, the narrative and the emotion of the scene is given to us in a few bars of music. Everything in that scene works because of a convention for which Batman: The Movie is largely responsible.

The reason that the same musical trope doesn't work in something like Batman Forever isn't because of the camp: it's partly because the tone in that film is all over the place -  moreso even than Spiderman 3. Check out Tommy Lee Jones' performance and you'll see it's far more over the top than anything Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith or Frank Gorshin did in Batman: The Movie. More importantly, it feels out of place for a film that otherwise seems to want to explore some (relatively) interesting psychological themes. In contrast, everything in the 60s version is camp and silly, and so the silly villains and music themes work in context. It's the same reason that the scripts for Spiderman 1 and 2 work well despite being, at times, extremely overwrought and on the nose: it's all to do with tonal consistency. Where Batman Forever is all over the place, the utter silliness of Batman: The Movie is nothing if not consistent.

The plot of Batman: The Movie finds Batman up against four of his infamous rogues gallery, in which the Joker, Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman have a weird ray-gun thing they use to dehydrate the members of the council of the United World (a transparent  parallel of the UN) into dust. This, apparently, is the best way of kidnapping the council and thereby taking over the world. The fearsome foursome are hiding out in a submarine, which is inconspicuously disguised as a giant penguin, complete with yellow rubber flippers. The villains spend most of the film alternating between skipping around gurning at each other, blowing up sea creatures and sending Batman and Robin riddles, generally in the form of rockets that can write in the sky. In one of the film's most hilarious scenes, Batman finally realises that the woman he has fallen in love with (over the course of a single evening, mind), 'Miss Kitka' (Kitka, geddit?), is really Catwoman. In a moment of paralysing grief, he stares bong-eyed into the middle distance as distant music plays, before he gathers himself, burying his grief and declaring, 'It's just one of those things in the life of every crimefighter. It means nothing. Snap on the batcuffs'.

Holy heartbreak, Batman! Adam West gives it his all in the film's most emotionally charged moment.

One can only assume this is the expression Bruce Wayne exhibited when as a boy his parents were brutally gunned down in Crime Alley. Batman's boyish vulnerability is juxtaposed with the silliness of, well, everything. Adam West plays the scene absolutely straight, with the whole thing coming together as a wonderfully crafted piece of comedy. This scene, I think, encapsulates precisely why Batman: The Movie works so beautifully. Absolutely everything in the film is daft, silly and funny, from Batman's painted-on eyebrows, to Cesar Romero's joker moustache, the brilliantly ridiculous punning riddles, and of course, this magnificent sequence:

If these things don't bring joy to your bat-heart, then I really think you need to wipe that dull, grey scowl off your face and get a fucking clue. Batman: The Movie is a wonderful, hilarious, thrilling pleasure, and I mean that without irony. Let me be clear: 1966 Batman is not a so-bad-it's-good-movie: it's a brilliant movie. It's just a different kind of brilliant than Burton's gothic aesthetics or Nolan's existentialist grumbling. Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are hideous, cynical, heartless cash grabs, made as a marketing ploy to sell toys, and it's utterly unfair to lump Batman: The Movie in with them. Even on a technical level, Batman: The Movie is far superior: the cinematography is sharp and bright. The whole film is colourful and snappy, brilliantly evoking its 1960s era. For those who complain that this is the Batman that destroyed the character's grim and gritty origins in favour of camp pop art, I direct you to 1) pull your heads out of whatever orifices they are inserted, and 2) check out the sci-fi-centric Batman comics of the 1950s, which at times make Batman: The Movie look like an episode of The Wire. If you still cry foul, the episode entitled Legends of The Dark Mite, from the deceptively smart animated show Batman: The Brave and The Bold, should succinctly point out your embarrassing error in judgement.

Every scene in Batman: The Movie involving the villains is full of over-the-top Dutch angles, and as we already know the score is fantastic. The performances are uniformly brilliant: by turns intentionally hammy, dastardly and heroic. In contrast, the Schumacher Batman era is characterised by obnoxious, neon-infused  visuals that add nothing to either the art-deco gothic architecture of Burton's films or the technicolour spectacle of the 60s version. The performances, particularly from the villains, are terrible. Jim Carrey, for example, clearly draws inspiration from Frank Gorshin's 60s version of the Riddler, but while Carrey aims for camp and funny all he hits is irritating in that distinctive mid-90s Mask / Ace Ventura / Dumb and Dumber flavour of grating. Where the sets of Batman: The Movie are full of sight gags, colour and iconic design, Schumacher's sets are crammed with ugly neo-gothic vomit and an overabundance of glow-in-the-dark paint and blacklights. Adam West's Batman inhabits a world of bright colour schemes and composition; a visual style that complement the narrative content. The aesthetics in Schumacher's films are the visual equivalent of a migraine: bright lights flashing at you that serve only as a nauseating visual distraction from the confused and incoherent narrative.  

Although the plot of Batman: The Movie is really a by-line to get the dynamic duo into a series of scraps with the Penguin, Joker, Catwoman and Riddler, the pacing of the film is great, bouncing from exposition to action with a quick and engaging sense of rhythm. The script is hilarious, full of preposterous, alliterative declarations, which are a marvel to listen to. The absurdist 1980 film Airplane! is often credited with cramming more gags into its running time than any other film, but consider that almost every line in Batman's script is written with perfect comic precision. It's really difficult to beat corkers like 'Kindly activate the remote control Penguin magnet', 'Batman, we're helpless in this monstrous invisible grip', and my personal favourite, 'Gosh Batman, the nobility of that almost-human porpoise [...] it was noble of that animal to hurl himself into the path of that final torpedo. He gave his life for ours'. These three whizzbangers are all delivered in the space of four mere minutes. The scene that immediately follows has Batman ring up the navy to bollock Admiral Fangschliester(!) for selling a 'pre-atomic' submarine to a certain 'P. N. Gywnne'. It begins, as every scene should, with the line 'Hello, Batman speaking', as the Admiral and his perky assistant are interrupted playing a game of tiddlywinks. In just ten seconds they've made a visual gag with the tiddlywinks and gotten in another cracking line from Batman, before concluding the scene with another of Riddler's baffling, nonsensical riddles written in the sky by a missile, 'from that submarine, no doubt', as Batman cunningly deduces. Not a single moment or line is wasted in the effort to keep the story ticking along and the jokes flowing. You might not notice it, but the economy of the whole thing is brilliant, and it really shows up Schumacher's Bat-entries for the flabby, shoddy productions that they are. More to the point, where Batman Forever and Batman and Robin are remembered largely for the fact they buried the Batman film franchise for almost a decade, Batman: The Movie, along with the TV series, remains an iconic piece of pop culture. Nicholas Cage did a great impersonation of Adam West's performance in his role as Big Daddy in  Matthew Vaughn's 2010 superhero spoof Kick-Ass, and even Nolan's Batman series has been influenced by the 60s iteration. Despite Heath Ledger's terrifying take on The Joker in The Dark Knight, there is undoubtedly a touch of Cesar Romero's mania in Ledger's rendition of the Joker's iconic laugh, and check out Anne Hathaway's Catwoman costume and compare it to the 60s version:

Julie Newmar looking very slinky
in a still from the 60s TV series. 

Anne Hathaway in The Dark 
Knight Rises. Look familiar?

In short, everyone remembers the swinging, technicolour Batman, immortalised by Adam West's brilliant performance, terrific theme tune and score, memorable, manic villains, and iconic set designs and art direction. Pointing out that Batman: The Movie is hammy and camp is as redundant as pointing out that Batman Begins is dark. Just because something is camp doesn't mean it isn't good, and Batman: The Movie is a fantastic, unique and blisteringly entertaining addition to the cinematic Bat-canon. Long may it be remain so!

Next time at Magnificent Tramp:
In the next post, which will be appearing in the next few days, I'll be looking at another of the 'forgotten' Batman films, the 1993 animated feature Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, followed closely by a review of Batman's latest derring-do in The Dark Knight Rises.


What can a Batman spin-off from a kids' cartoon possibly offer a modern adult audience? Can Christopher Nolan's new film hope to live up to the Elevated Expectations of the Maleficent Magnificent Tramp? Find out in the next exciting instalment of the Tramp's Bat-Extravaganza, same Bat-Blog, same Bat-Time!

* The complete canon of Batman films released in cinemas, if you're interested, is thus: Batman (1943), and Batman and Robin (1949) - these two were released in cinemas as fifteen-part serials; Batman: The Movie (1966); Batman (1989); Batman Returns (1992); Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993); Batman Forever (1995); Batman and Robin (1997); Batman Begins (2005); The Dark Knight (2008); The Dark Knight Rises (2012). If you're still interested, there have also been loads of animated films and crossovers with Superman and other characters from the DC comics. The non-theatrical films and shorts featuring only Batman are Batman and Mr Freeze: Subzero (1998); Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000); Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (2003); The Batman versus Dracula (2005); Batman: Gotham Knight (2008); Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010); Batman: Year One (2011). 

** I promise that one day I'll stop bringing up Spiderman 3 in every single article I post. It's just that's it's so rich as an example of a film that potentially had so much going for it, yet went so utterly wrong. Spiderman 3 is a fascinating disaster because it tries until its sticky little gives heart out, but still fails at almost every turn.

Spiderman Returns: In Defence of Reboots

The Amazing Spiderman is out on Tuesday, and while it continues to receive mainly good reviews, currently scoring 79 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, a central problem that many have had leading up to its release is its similarity to Sam Raimi's 2002 take on the origin of Spidey. Reboots have become a regular fixture of blockbuster season, with Mark Webb's new Spiderman next month, followed quickly by Christopher's Nolan's concluding chapter of his Batman reboot (which is sure to be rebooted itself within the next few years), before a new version of Total Recall is released in August. 2009 saw a re-worked version of Star Trek, which with some time-travelling trickery managed to tick the boxes of sequel, prequel and reboot, ensuring big bucks at the box office. Next year we'll get to watch Zack Snyder butcher Superman in The Man of Steel, Supes' second reboot in six years after Bryan Singer's underrated Superman Returns, and there are rumours of a Green Lantern reboot following last year's disappointing effort. 

With Zack Snyder at the helm,
can the new Superman possibly be any good?

As The Amazing Spiderman  demonstrates, reboots are often greeted with wearied groans and accusations of creative laziness and inertia. In many instances, this is true: do we really need another Spidey origin tale so soon after Raimi's version? Why do we need to see Superman fight Zod after he already beat him in 1980's superb Superman II? However, I argue that many reboots are full of new ideas, or at least improve upon old ones. Possibly the best example of this is the film that in many ways is responsible for the term reboot: Batman Begins. Batman Begins is a reboot rather than a remake, in the sense that it tells Batman's origin story without replicating the plot in Tim Burton's 1989 version. Of course, those films share unavoidable story beats, like the murder of Bruce Wayne's parents, and recurrent themes like fear, obsession and trauma. But their stylistic approaches and overall narratives are wildly different. The same can be said about JJ Abram's Star Trek reboot, which is successful for the singular reason that it distances itself so greatly from the rest of the franchise. Abram's approach really did mean that this was not your father's Trek. Rather than stifling creativity, Abram's and Nolan's films were two of the most original and exciting blockbusters of the last ten years, precisely because they were reboots. Moreover, who would complain at the 2008 reboot of The Incredible Hulk? Flawed, yes, but a vast improvement on Ang Lee's tedious 2003 attempt at bringing the Hulk to the big screen. In this instance, the reboot serves as a pseudo-sequel, clearly set in a different continuity, but continuing and expanding upon Bruce Banner's story, rather than simply repeating it. 

Without a reboot, this horrifying spectacle would have been the last Batman film.

What I find particularly interesting about the main objections to reboots is that they are the same as those levelled at remakes, which despite their similarities, are very different beasts. By definition, a remake attempts to tell the same story over again, either with minor or major modifications. In contrast, reboots often (though not always) try to tell new stories using characters and scenarios that already exist in the popular consciousness. Comic books have been at this sort of thing for decades, so it's no surprise that it's comic book adaptations that are the franchises being rebooted seemingly ad infinitum. I think a lot of the disapprobation levelled at reboots stems from a confusion over reboots and remakes: there continue to be plenty of rushed, badly thought out remakes that are for some reason labelled as reboots. Last year's Conan the Barbarian is one example, as is the above mentioned Total Recall. Neither of these are really reboots because they are essentially telling the same stories as their originals. Clearly, rebooted franchises are just as susceptible to poor writing, generic direction and stunt casting as any other type of blockbuster, but if reboots are poor it's not because they're reboots: it's because they're crap, just like loads of other crap films that weren't reboots. With tripe like Battleship or Transformers: Dark of the Moon clogging up multiplex screens, it can often feel as if creativity in Hollywood has ground to a halt, but this is not the result or fault of the modern reboot. In fact, reboots frequently offer opportunities to inject vitality into otherwise moribund franchises: we only need to look as far as Star Trek, not to mention the brilliant Bond reboot, Casino Royale, to see the staggeringly positive effects they can have on film series. If we abandon reboots, we have to abandon Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Star Trek, the best bond since Sean Connery, and while we're at it, the best parts of The Avengers. At their best, reboots do what remakes can't by offering new stories and perspectives on familiar concepts. In one respect, reboots conceptually function as an ideal cinema, by making the familiar unfamiliar. Of course, reboots don't necessarily always attain that level of originality, but to level accusations of creative narcolepsy at a film simply because it's a reboot misses the creative potential of reboots altogether. When Spiderman opens on Tuesday, if it fails (and fail it might), it won't be because it's a reboot. If anything, it's got that in its favour.

Where Does He Get Those Wonderful Toys: The Magnificent Tramp Returns!

Well, it's been almost three whole months since I last updated, but here I am, with about a dozen things I want to talk about. And when I say a dozen, I mean two. Can you guess what they are? Well, one of them is a science fiction film full of Freudian psycho-sexual imagery, and the other one's about Alien. This one will be a clearing away of some of the things I've wanted to post about since April but haven't got around to. It won't be one hundred per cent cohesive, but that's okay because it will all be one hundred per cent fascinating:

1) Prometheus

Prometheus: I GET IT RIDLEY

I suppose this is the big one (and by one, I mean disappointment, and by big, I mean baffling). Everything relevant about Ridley Scott's latest has already been said at this point, particularly here, here, and especially here, so I'm not going to waste time repeating the same observations. Suffice it to say, as it's a Ridley Scott sci fi film it looks gorgeous, but the plot doesn't make a lick of sense, the characters are too numerous and for the most part terribly written and developed, the ending was stupid, and the score was generic, out of place and boring. There has been debate over whether Prometheus' incoherence is the fault of Scott or with the film's writer, Damon Lindelof, but I think they're equally culpable, and many of Scott and Lindelof's recurring problems with narrative coherence and focus surface in this film. To the film's apologists: I really couldn't care less about your lists of  classical and religious references that the film makes. Yes, everyone knows who Prometheus was. Yes, we've heard Ridley say that Jesus was a space jockey (seriously, check it out). I don't care. References to other texts without context or internal logic are meaningless. Grafting cultural imagery on to a film which is fundamentally broken (and boy, is Prometheus broken) will not fix its problems, nor will it imbue the film with any Deep Meaning if there's no meaning in the first place. References only work to enhance meaning in texts, not to add it where it is otherwise missing, and any sense of internal logic or cohesive sub-text is sorely lacking in Prometheus. And to the feeble defence that the sequel will answer all the unanswered questions I say simply this: that's too late for me - I go to the cinema to see a complete film, not an extended trailer for a sequel that may never arrive anyway. Even if it does, will it explain why nobody seems to care when people die? Or that Shaw violently cuts out a horrible squid-monster baby? Or why Charlize couldn't run left? Or a bazillion other crazy behaviours the 'characters' of Prometheus exhibit? No, no it won't so please just admit that it was all a big disappointment and get on with your lives.

2) Batman!

Joel Schumacher:
The bane of Batman's life, geddit?!

And by get on with your lives I mean career with reckless abandon into a new swirl of excitement and anticipation over the other most-hyped film of the year, Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. I initially wanted to do a retrospective on all the theatrical Batman movies leading up to TDKR release, but since MovieBob has reached into my mind and nicked my wholly original and not predictable at all idea, I'll just do this little paragraph instead, and maybe something in a couple of weeks on some of the lesser-known / celebrated Bat-flicks. If Nolan pulls this one off, he'll be the first director to have ever made a good superhero / comic book threequel. Spiderman; Superman; er, Batman: all have stumbled at the third block, despite their strong first and second outings. Sure, Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class means that we now have three good X-Men films, and despite a mixed reception I've always liked Bryan Singer's problematic but interesting Superman Returns which acts as a sort of alternative Superman III but with less Richard Pryor. But no one has yet managed to make three consecutive, quality superhero films based on the same character and the same universe. There are multiple reasons for this, but the major one is the studios changing a good director for a shit one in the third instalment. This happened with Superman III (Richard Donner to Richard Lester), the 90s Batman Forever (Tim Burton to Joel Schumacher), and X-Men: The Last Stand (Bryan Singer to Brett Fucking Ratner). I call this phenomenon the Third Movie Dick Move, or TMDM for short. Interestingly, Warner Bros. seems to have pre-empted the TMDM by giving the director's chair in their new Superman: Man of Steel franchise to the Boy Who Never Grew Up, Zack Snyder, whilst relegating old man Chris Nolan to Producer.

My emo sense is tingling: A silly fringe doth not a conflicted hero make

Spiderman 3, although retaining Sam Raimi as director, repeated the other faux pas of the comic book prequel: cramming. What is especially frustrating about Spiderman 3 is that there is a good movie in there somewhere, but it is clogged up with unfunny humour, adolescent whining (admittedly a hallmark of the franchise as a whole), pointless romantic sub-plots, wasted villains and a baffling soap-opera amnesia gimmick that disable the most interesting and well-developed character in the whole fucking franchise for almost the entire running time. And it's these sorts of problems that I worry about for next month's release, The Dark Knight Rises, particularly with regard to the glut of characters. Not only do we have the returning players of Bruce Wayne, Alfred, Lucius Fox, Commissioner Gordon and new villain Bane, but also rookie cop John Blake, Catwoman and Marion Cotillard. Cotillard is listed as playing a character named Miranda Tate, but is widely rumoured to have really been cast as Batman's long-time love interest / antagonist Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Batman Begins' R'as, who was played by Liam Neeson in that film, and who, by the way, is also rumoured to return in TDKR. Phew. So that's a roster of nine, if not ten, major characters, on top of an extensive supporting cast. Admittedly, Nolan is very good with ensemble pieces; his last effort Inception, did a superb job of juggling a large central cast, and his ability to cast actors for the right roles is one his major strengths. Still, those niggling fears of an overstuffed script linger at the back of my mind, and I worry that Cotillard's (not to mention Neeson's) presence in particular may just tip the scales a little too much.

It's unrealistic to expect TDKR to repeat the magic of 2008's The Dark Knight. That film was one of the best action films since Raiders of the Last Ark, one of the best crime films since Heat, and without question the best comic book film ever made. The problem is escalation: Batman Begins gave us a great origin tale; The Dark Knight came back with a great villain in Heath Ledger's monumental Joker. The one mistake that the third film must avoid is to attempt that escalation. Rather, while keeping up the excitement, it absolutely needs to retain the examinations character that underpin, and beautifully conclude, both BB and TDK. The Dark Knight Rises can't possibly hope to replicate the exhilarating success of its predecessor, but if we're lucky it might, just might, be able to follow it with a full and satisfying conclusion. Here's hoping.

"Along come these left-wing militants who blast everything within a three-mile radius with their lasers": Why the concept of over-analysis is a stupid myth and doesn't exist.

This fortnight's / month's post is on a subject dear to my heart, and one which surrounds a popular myth that has bugged me for years: the position that certain films, books, music and popular entertainment weren't meant to an analysed in any serious way, and any attempt to do so is a futile and pretentious enterprise, practised by only the most self-indulgent of navel-gazers. I put to you that this viewpoint is not merely misguided and narrow-minded, but that it is self-contradictory and demonstrably false. Yes, dear readers, tonight I defend that most unpopular and derided of creatures: the film critic. Incidentally, this one is a bit of a rant.

Spongebob Squarepants: Disproving the myth of stuffy academics

Firstly, let me begin my blasting the popular conception of art criticism. Since this is a blog about films I'll limit myself to that medium. The image of the critic distanced from both popular opinion and reality, jollying himself to the meta-academic pleasures of Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, sat in his ivory tower while he misses the more earthy, blue-collar pleasures of Joe Dante's Gremlins, looking down his nose at anything that resembles a blockbuster, is as old as the hills and is still extremely pervasive. Whilst I'd agree there is an element of snobbery amongst some schools of criticism (Halliwell's Film Guide, I'm looking at you), the vast majority of popular critics that I read are as open to American blockbusters as they are to Scandinavian social realism and Italian arthouse cinema. Even amongst so-called bonafide academics, there is an extraordinary rejection of snobbery: one of my university supervisors, who has got a PhD and academic publications and everything loves Spongebob Squarepants and Batman: The Animated Series. The notion that 'high' critics don't engage with 'low' art in any positive way is nonsense and needs to stop.

This leads me on to my main target - the (frankly, idiotic) mantra that some films were never meant to be 'over-analysed'. This is something that I have heard repeated over and again from intelligent, normally open-minded individuals, and it has to stop. Firstly, let me start with the word 'meant'. This is misleading because is presupposes that the mantra-chanter somehow had access to the inner-motivations of the film-makers when they wrote, directed, filmed and edited their work. You might well think that Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was never meant to be watched as anything other than entertainment, but, how exactly do you know this? Did Bay consult with you beforehand, wringing his hands over whether he is an artist, or entertainer (as if those things are mutually fucking exclusive to begin with)? No? Well then sit the fuck down. More to the point, the intent of the artist doesn't bloody matter. In scholarship / criticism / whatever, there's a rule called the Intentional Fallacy, which, in short, states that 1) We can't ever really know the intentions of an artist so there's little point in trying to decipher them, and 2) there will inevitably be meanings and subtexts in any piece of art not necessarily consciously inserted by the artist. Did Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster consciously invoke Christian iconography when they created Superman? Maybe, maybe not, but it's damn well there and you'd be a fool to deny it on the basis that the creators didn't intend it to be there.

Gremlins is only fit for entertainment, you say?
Fuck you.

So that's one word polished off. Let's move on to the next one, and the real meat of my argument: 'over-analysed'. Like it or not, we analyse things everyday. If you're not particularly bothered about the cultural significance of Roy William Neill's Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, or how Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo is really about the voyeuristic nature of cinema and the objectification of women, that's fine with me (though I really do think you're missing out if you don't care just a little bit), but don't call the discussion of these things something they're not. What, I think, people usually mean by 'over-analyse' is that whatever film review / article / opinion they're griping about, a review of the aforementioned Gremlins, for example, has exceeded the analytical limitations they would like to see set for that particular film. Let's say you disagree with my opinion that what makes Gremlins interesting is the way it constantly breaks the fourth wall in a way that reflects the delightful, dangerous and hilarious anarchy that the eponymous Gremlins embody. Perhaps you don't like my writing style, or you favour the opinion that the Gremlins represent something other than anarchy, which is all fine and dandy. But, and excuse me while my prose briefly devolves into splenetic fury, exactly who the fuck put you in charge of how far I'm allowed to analyse a film, or whether that's how I should derive pleasure from it? Do you like Gremlins? Well, bad luck chump-change, because you've just analysed a film. Yep, that's right, even deciding whether or not you like something constitutes analysis, since presumably you've come to your decision based on, you know, the component parts of the film and whether they add up to something that pleases your pink little brain. To return to my carefully considered question, who (the fuck) put you in charge of deciding when I should stop analysing Gremlins, or Superman, or my fucking Campbell's Tomato Soup if the mood should strike me?

There is no such thing as over-analysis. You can analyse something well, and you can analyse something badly. You can make your points in a measured articulate way, or you can ramble incoherently. You can make complex ideas clear and accessible, or you can obscure simple ideas with impenetrable prose and a contempt for your reader. You can look at every facet of one frame of a film, or you can discuss the movie's big themes. You can make a value judgement based on a historical or purely aesthetic basis. You can hate a film because it's pretentious and self-indulgent, or because it's violent and over-crammed with unnecessary CGI. You can take whatever opinion of a film that you like, but you can't accuse critics of over-analysis because it's nonsensical, and this silly, embarrassing fallacy of taking criticism 'too far', whether it's for The Three Colours Trilogy or Uncle Buck, has got to stop. It's just bloody stupid.