Lead Capes - A Superhero Wargames Blog: January 2018

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Superhero Media: The Lego Batman Movie

Best Batman film since The Dark Knight. Possibly one of the best Batman films ever; no, really. As I've ranted about more than once on this blog, since the advent of Batman Begins and Arkham Asylum, Batman has had his skills, abilities, wealth and competency built up to mythic levels, to the point where there is essentially nothing he cannot accomplish. It is this version of Batman which is presented in The Lego Batman Movie, having probably the most awesome life ever, beating up dozens of bad guys whilst singing and being thoroughly beloved by all of Gotham. Batman lacks the emotional maturity to admit that he's lonely and overcompensating as a crime-fighter to hide his internalised grief. Holy hell, that's some heavy material for a "Family" film. Into Batman's life come two vitally important people, Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. Due to a misunderstanding, Bruce Wayne adopts Dick and Babs is the new police commissioner, recruited from Bludhaven, where she cleaned up the mean streets using compassion and statistics.

What follows is some of the most sharply written pastiche I've seen in years, not only because it tackles a subject dear to my heart, but because it manages to be incredibly funny the entire time. The film The Lego Batman Movie reminds me the most of is Mel Brooks' High Anxiety, in that it readily pokes fun at the weak corners of the Batman mythos like the lack of character growth in 70-odd years and villains like Crazy Quilt and Egghead, yet truly loves and admires the source material. The "I've seen this before" segment alone, which briefly (in Lego form) flashes back through every live-action version of Batman right back to Adam West, is a love letter to all of the mad fun that we've had with the Caped Crusader over the years. The overall "message" of the film, insofar as it has one beyond "we love Batman", is that the character of Batman, and thereby the audience, needs to grow up a little and accept that the "unstoppable badarse" version of the character is not merely only one version of the Masked Manhunter, but may not even be the best version.

The Lego Batman Movie is, at some level, a passionate argument for a more "fun" version of Batman to come back to cinema; not something so divisive as the Joel Schumacher films, but at least let's get Robin back, ok? Robin first appeared all of eleven issues of Detective Comics after Batman, but he's only been in two of the eight Batman-titled films since 1989, what the fuck? No, I'm not counting The Dark Knight Rises, and neither should you. What about Batgirl, Nightwing, Batwing or Batwoman? There is so much damn potential in Batwoman alone as a film franchise that I can't believe WB and DC aren't looking at it. I think many forget, or willfully ignore, that Batman is a franchise, not just a single hero, and that the other characters help tell the stories. Batman is the inciting tragedy and ethical centre of the team, Robin and Batgirl are the surrogate children, Nightwing the child who left the nest, Alfred the father-figure, Batwoman the tangential "other" everyone is learning to accept and Azreal is the mentally ill cousin who's really good at that one thing you need done on occasion. This film is great, go buy it so that they make more.

Monday, January 22, 2018

The Pitch: Batman - Battle for the Cowl

Ever since Warner Bros announced radical changes to their plans for the DCU film franchise[s], it seems like every nerd with an internet connection has taken a swing at "pitching" their version of a Batman film. Whilst many of these I've seen come under the banner of "fan-fiction", there have been quite a few good ones as well, so I decided why not me as well? Not to toot my own horn, but I'm probably a little more "qualified" than most, with my background in Film and Television and being, perhaps, one of the more prolific, non-academic, writers on the subject of superheroes. As the man said, "Here... we... go!"

Batman - Battle for the Cowl
Batman has been protecting Gotham city for a long, long, long, long time and for almost all of that time, he's been Bruce Wayne. However, even a living legend can't keep it up forever and time is taking a toll on the Dark Knight. Increasingly reckless, violent and unreliable, Batman's friends and family come together to try and turn things around and protect the legacy of the Caped Crusader. Meanwhile, a rash of arson attacks are stretching the emergency services of Gotham to the limit.

Plot
This one's pretty basic and divides nicely into a three-act structure. Act one, arson attacks across Gotham push an ageing Batman to his limits, and forcing the Dark Knight to compromise his values, even hospitalising looters because he physically cannot keep up the pace he used to. Bad goes to worse when the situation gets so dire, Batman is forced to use a gun to stop a criminal getting away. He only wounds the guy and the gun comes from another thug, but the impact is still there.
Act two, Alfred, Oracle and Robin (Tim Drake), unable to talk sense into Batman, make the difficult decision to call in Nightwing (Dick Grayson), from Bludhaven, to confront his erstwhile mentor. As has happened in the past, Bruce and Dick come to loggerheads, the argument spiraling to the point where the pair come to blows, Nightwing coming off worse because he holds back. Enraged at the perceived betrayal, Bruce throws all of his friends and family out of the cave to focus on the arson investigation.
Act three, Bruce figures out that the fires are being set by Garfield Lynns, aka, Firefly and prepares to confront him. An extended battle across Gotham via jetpack and Batwing leaves a trail of destruction, forcing Dick to suit up and try and bring down both Batman and Firefly. During the confrontation, Bruce and Dick have to work together to defeat Firefly, their years of teamwork coming to the fore as they save the city as "Batman and Robin" one last time.
Epilogue; in the Batcave, Bruce sits at a console alongside Oracle, tracking a major criminal operation in the city. The instant the Batsignal goes up, Bruce calls up the Batmobile where we see Dick Grayson, in the Batman cowl. The torch has been passed.

Tone
Darker than Batman (1989), but not as dark as The Dark Knight; think Civil War, things are serious, but we can still have fun. The entire narrative drive of the film is the old giving way to the new, so the "grimdark" Nolan and Snyder styles can be dropped in favour of something new. Personally I'd like to see something more along the lines of Justice League Unlimited, where things are serious, but characters can crack jokes and make references. Nightwing is a major character in this narrative, do we really want him grim and dour all the time? I don't.

Cast

Batman/Bruce Wayne: Now, I'm going to be accused of being a fanboy here, but I'm saying Michael Keaton for this one.

But stick with me on this, ok? This isn't an attempt to, somehow, keep Batman (1989) "in continuity" with current DC films or to give fans my age a thrill to see Keaton in the suit again. I would cast Keaton in this role because he would be the best actor for the part. At 66, Keaton is old enough to have the maturity needed for the part, but is still amazingly fit and has only become a better actor in the time since strapping on the cape. His recent acting efforts have clearly displayed that he can carry the emotional intensity needed for an ageing Caped Crusader close to the edge of snapping.

Nightwing/Dick Grayson: Again, I'm sure the assumption here will be me pushing some personal agenda, by there really is more to it. I'd cast Michael B Jordan.

I swear this isn't a social justice thing, Jordan is just a fucking good actor. Hell, if I were heading up the film, I would literally not even mention his race; he's Dick Grayson, we can throw in death of his parents if we feel like it. However, this isn't a Nightwing origin story, so the main idea is for everyone to just assume that this is business as usual and why would we point out the Dick is black when he's always been? Jordan has shown that he has the chops to work with far more experienced actors, so he would be perfect in the scenes where Bruce and Dick have to argue ideology before/whilst throwing punches.

Honestly, the rest of the cast is far less vital to the construction of the narrative, roles like Tim Drake and Oracle would be good for young and hungry actors looking for a decent break. Alfred and Jim Gordon would, once again, be already-successful character actors and Firefly would have to be the big "flavour of the month" action actor in order to sell the film to the studio.

Crew
This film is really more about the relationship between Bruce and Dick than fighting Firefly, so the Director should really be someone who has experience filming those scenarios interestingly. Ideally, I'd like someone along the lines of Kathryn Bigelow, but George Miller has a good track record with personality-driven, visually interesting action. Hell, with a tighter reign than he usually gets, even Neill Blomkamp would work fine.

Pretty basic one this time, folks. I just had this rattling around my head and felt like I needed to get it out there. Something more unique next time, I promise.

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Superhero Media: The Lone Ranger (2013)

Oh, so Disney has the rights to The Lone Ranger, no wonder The Green Hornet didn't reference it, they would have had the pants sued off them. Actually, this film reminds me a lot of The Green Hornet in more ways than the obvious narrative connection; both have an acting choice that severely hurts the overall production, both show glimpses of the, far better, films they could be and both give a contemporary reworking (of a kind) that seems utterly unnecessary. Let's get it out of the way first, Johnny Depp was a terrible choice for Tonto, on many levels. Having a white actor play a Native American in a film where American colonialism is destroying the last of the Native Nations just seems like a phenomenally idiotic choice that someone should have caught before any filming started. I certainly get why Depp got the role, Disney were hoping to have another Pirates of the Caribbean level success with Depp as the draw-card, it just smacks of poor decision making and insular Hollywood ignorance of broader cultural issues.

What really grates is that every other Native American in the film (even young Tonto) is played by a Native American actor and they are all killed off at the end of the second act. There's also a sub-plot with Tonto hunting a Wendigo that turns out to be his imagination, except that the guy may have eaten a woman's leg? That never gets resolved, by the way. All this is really a shame, because with a decent Tonto, or at least less of a focus on him, The Lone Ranger could have been a much better film. John Reid is a District Attorney chasing criminal Butch Cavendish into "Indian Territory", joining his brother Dan's Ranger posse to hunt Cavendish down. The posse is ambushed and everyone is killed, only for John to be resurrected by a spirit horse to become the "Spirit Walker", champion of justice. The film follows the protagonists as they hunt down Cavendish and his men, there's some kind of plot developments with a silver mine and an evil railway tycoon, but they fail to excite once you get there.

The one element that almost saves the film comes in the finale, in which The Lone Ranger finally emerges, prancing horse, silver bullets, William Tell Overture all combined with a dramatic chase across two runaway trains. It's pretty damn awesome. In fact, it's probably worth sticking out the entire film for; no really. Someone came in as I was watching the finale and commented that the film looked really good, sat down and watched the remainder. I'm somewhat reminded of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, as both that and The Lone Ranger are pretty dull, focus too much on a tired Johnny Depp caricature and one hell of an epic battle that I loved (the big ship battle in Pirates). Look, this is on Netflix, you can gain access to liquor, give it a go, even just to see the finale. As disappointing as it was, The Lone Ranger did bring to mind the many great costumed heroes of the Old West that I can get to work on down the track. Jonah Hexx, Two-Gun Kid, Lone Ranger team-up here we come!

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

See Wakanda and Die!

The NWA "Pirates in September" mega-game this year was "Plunder the Spanish Main" and, once again, I ran the native island adventure, which I typically turn into Wakanda. As one may expect, life became pretty deadly for any pirates brave enough to try and steal some of the treasures that could be found on the shoreline. Aside from some miscommunication with other organisers that led to a couple of disappointed players earlier in the day, everyone seemed to have fun and I had barely any downtime throughout. Enjoy the pictures and hope to see you in September 2018!