Batman: Gotham By Gaslight

In terms of style and execution, this direct-to-DVD/Blu-Ray Batman isn't really different from the other direct-to-DVD/Blu-Ray Batman movies Warner Brothers Animation has been cranking out, lately. The same murky color palette, the same pacing issues...the faux-anime look to the designs and animation. I don't think it's particularly ground-breaking, kinda slow along the middle, but I wouldn't mind re-watching it.

Why adapt Gotham By Gaslight? I remember fans would say that graphic novel is the greatest Batman story told, better than The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke and Batman: Year One! I'm not sure if there's much analysis on the internet devoted to explaining that opinion, but here's my guess: to a generation or two who read Batman comics, Batman is Sherlock Holmes. There are many Sherlock Holmes pastiches depicting his efforts to identify Jack the Ripper, so having Batman solve that mystery is a treat. Ignore the fact that Gotham By Gaslight in an alternate reality and you have an archetypal Batman story  in which he solves the biggest unsolved true crime mystery ever recorded and you could understand the magnitude of the tale. No mutants, no killer clowns, no sideshow dwarves, no gangsters. We're just following Batman/Bruce use his brain.

The team behind these movies have been getting a lot of flack over their adaptations being too faithful & leaden; conversely, when they've tried to tell an original story ( Batman and Harley Quinn, a film I liked, but try finding positive reviews ), it's declared a piece of excrement. To date, the most-popular of these films is Batman: Under The Red Hood, which explains why they brought back Bruce Greenwood to voice Batman in Gaslight, rather than, say, Jason O'Mara, who's become their go-to for voicing Batman in these movies, moreso than fan-favorite Kevin Conroy. My opinion of Greenwood's Batman is that he doesn't sound different from O'Mara, but comes off less bland; I'm surprised they don't try casting Diedrich Bader more often if they're not casting Conroy.

Another thing they did was loosen the plot and change the characters in order to include more of the Batman mythos. Selina Kyle, Hugo Strange, Harvey Dent, "Dick", "Tim" and "Jason". They incorporated elements of Master of The Future, the sequel set at The World's Fair exhibition  ( just imagine a gentrified Epcot Center if you're not familiar with that and you'll picture it better ) to include more action scenes. Plus, they clearly wanted steampunk stuff sprinkled in, so we get a bat-motorcycle and bat-grapple thrown in. Those were neat. I also liked how the fight scenes didn't use martial arts much, so that makes the fight choreography less...recycled/generic. Without listening to the commentary, I am aware of plot points recycled from past Batman films - the scene where Bruce evades the Gotham police and hitches a ride with Selina Kyle in her hansom cab is a recreation of a scene in Mask of The Phantasm..up until the part where they're pretending to be making out in the cab to hide his injuries when the cops inspect it, that is.

That's a good key to understanding what I what I'm watching..this was, essentially, an R-rated "Batman: The Animated Series" movie set in a different time period, with a final twist that I'd rather let Wikipedia reveal, but I will say was pretty cool..better than having a counterpart to the Joker show up..ironic, because there is a character in the original graphic novel set up as such, but as a red herring. I wouldn't mind a sequel..probably with a little more detective work and humor next time.

Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return

I finally got to see Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return, which I was curious about, because I remember reading the book it was based on - Dorothy of Oz, by L. Frank Baum's great-grandson, Roger S. Baum...I guess that initial confirms that he's bonafide kinfolk...

It was what you would now think of as an attempt at a soft-reboot, ignoring all the sequels written by L. Frank Baum and only continuing from where the first book left off. Maybe there was a copyright issue ( up until the books entered the public domain, the rights to adapt the sequels were often accuired by production companies; Walt Disney himself had bought the rights and held onto them for a time ), but even so, Roger's book - and his sequels - seemed to take their cues from the MGM film with Judy Garland..because that's what most people who never encountered the books remember. It's the same approach used whenever an Oz movie is made: all thinly-veiled retellings of the same plot as the first book, with new characters sprinkled in. Ironically, L. Frank Baum's initial sequel novels in the canon were similar, abeit with a naturally more-convincing texture and abundant in imagination & originality.

So with the movies, prequels & sequels, regardless of the budget, a few familiar themes remain constant which resulted in a lot of formulaic fare. First, they boost up the iconography of the Wicked Witch of The West, whose appearance in the 1st book consisted of a single chapter, but has been made to count for something much more, largely because of Margaret Hamilton's iconic performance in the MGM film. New villains are introduced in ways that are always a callback/nod to MGM's witch, but feel like also-rans and their appearances are half-baked & perfunctory. I'm thinking of all the witches in Oz, The Great and Powerful, whose rules of engagement and power plays/motivations make no sense..or when they remember the Gnome King, like the Tom and Jerry In Oz movies did, they introduce him in a similar manner as an adjunct counterpart to the witch. In Legends, we have The Jester, an associate of the witch who was actually a bit creepier in the book, but it was never clear what his motivation to gain the witch's powers derived from, aside from just being a one-dimensional megalomaniac. The film makes this more obvious by having Martin Short voice the character...and in a falling-down-drunk-in-front-of-nightclub-parking-lot moment of desperation, they make him up to look like the Joker to try and give him an edge. I tolerated him in the book, but didn't like him in the film..and I don't believe for one second that he could outwit Glinda...although she often serves as the female counterpart to a Merlin/Gandalf/mentor/advisor/trickster figure in folklore/mythology that has the power to take decisive action but stays neutral/aloof, I doubt she could've been defeated as easily as she was here, except maybe with a wink - it wasn't her, it was her avatar or someone else - but we're supposed to accept that it is. Darn.

Second, they make much ado about the Emerald City. Every new Oz adventure is now a quest to go there, but to be fair, the elder Baum's early sequels did the same, until the sixth installment, when he had Dorothy, Toto, Aunt Em & Uncle Henry move from Kanas to live in the Emerald City as permanent residents of Oz. Dorothy became a princess and ruled Oz alongside Princess Ozma ( an interesting heroine with potential who has been caat aside, unfortunately ). Aunt Em & Uncle Henry settle down on a new farm adjacent to the town. From book 7 onwards, Baum introduces new characters who have to journey to the city or have established characters begin quests that would take them out of it. In Legends, Dorothy has to get to Emerald City via the yellow-brick-road again because the rainbow teleportation bridge ( arguably the most stunning sequence, though it looks more like 'Rainbow Brite' than Oz-appropriate ) got scrambled...fortunately, she's not alone on her journey...

And that leads to the third theme of these things: new sidekicks. Regardless of the protagonist on the quest, new sidekicks in the vein of the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion are introduced. In Legends, we get The China Princess, Tugg the tree/sailboat, Wiser the owl and, arguably the best, Marshall Mallow, a man made of candy marshmallows..at least in terms of design. Neither character really adds much to generate suspense and pace that would move the story forward; each sequence featuring them is an excuse to add more songs, which is the fourth, if sometimes optional theme that's a callback to the MGM film. The characters and story aren't deep enough to require songs to explain what they're thinking or what's at stake; each sequence slows the movie down further and I'm hitting the fast-forward button. MGM had the best songwriters in the golden age of movie musicals; why are they daring comparison?

So I've hinted the Dorothy of Oz story was servicable in book form, but watered-down in the film's adaptation. I remember a magnificent sequence in the book where the Jester's magic creates a construct of the Wicked Witch of The West as a ghost to torment Dorothy during a storm in the forest..why didn't they use that? I don't know if the animation budget/technology they had available to them would've pulled that off; most of the time, Legends of Oz has a made-for-TV look, with flat landscapes, "floating puppet" CG animation and plastic humans, but I do like the designs for the new companions and the classic Oz trio of the Scarecrow, Tin-Man and Cowardly Lion. Glinda's design reminded me of Princess Peach from the Super Mario Brothers games, but she was cute. The fleeting appearance of the Wicked Witch of The West in the Jester's musical number was striking enough to feel like I was watching a different movie for a moment. It's only the character designs for the Jester, the Kansas locals and Dorothy herself that seem uninspired. For a sequel, you would assume Dorothy's appearance would've been influenced by time spent in a strange new world, though I'll admit that's my idea and most depictions of Dorothy in sequel adventures depict her in similar ways that don't break from tradition. Maybe it's too imply that her initial trip to Oz was equivalent to a child's first trip to Disney World and there's no trauma..there's not much in the way of scholarly research out there devoted to the Oz books as there is with Alice In Wonderland, so any serious deep discussions of Dorothy's adventures in the canon are likely limited to discussion groups online and venerable Oz fan clubs.

I actually thought the film was okay. It falls in with every other Oz-inspired production out there. The only one time it seemed like there was a show of real ambition to adapt a story by L. Frank Baum that didn't lean on the MGM film too much or tried too hard to stray away..was Return To Oz. Nobody likes the opening scenes of Dorothy in the children's ward of a mental hospital..and the scene with the characters trying to escape the destruction of the Gmome King's lair looks a bit dodgy, but otherwise, there's well over an hour of filmmaking perfection sandwiched in there and it's the closest any film got to bringing those old sequel novels to life.

One last bit..the "If I had the chance.." moment. I would want to adapt either The Lost Princess of Oz or The Magic of Oz as live-action films, with a mixture of CG and practical effects when needed. Obviously, I would want to adapt the stories that showed L. Frank Baum at his most creative and dispell any notion that I wanted to do an homage to the MGM film...though I'm sure there are some people who would find a way to do so anyway.

This Is Fine..

DC Comics has 3 different Scooby-Doo comic books going. There's the traditional Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, a bi-monthly Scooby-Doo Team-Up, which has the Scooby Gang members paired with DC Comics superheroes and other Hanna-Barbera/Cartoon Network cartoon stars...and Scooby-Apocalypse, which is set in an alternate reality where the gang are survivors wandering a post-apocalyptic Earth, encountering zombie mutations and sharpening their survival skills more than their sleuthing skills.

That last book is a cornerstone of Hanna-Barbera Beyond, a line of comics published by DC which showcase radical alterations of old Hanna-Barbera characters in neo-noir stories. It's been functioning more as an oddity than something solid...I'm convinced it was created to capitalize on Archie Comics' success with Afterlife With Archie, in which most of the cast either turns into flesh-eating zombies or has to fend off the flesh-eating zombies. Ironically, this paved the way toward the revamp of the whole Archie line, eschewing the house style set by the late Dan DeCarlo in favor of a more realistic, if somewhat unremarkably generic style. The old look didn't pave the way to Riverdale, but I never thought there was anything wrong/old-fashioned about it...except maybe the story style. I remember following the Jughead comic book in the late-90's and early 2000s back when Craig Boldman & Rex Lindsay were working on it..and it rivaled any humor comic out there at the time and today.

Back to Beyond...funny enough, that brand name isn't promoted well - I only know of it because it's still around on Wikipedia...are the books any good?...meh. Scooby-Apocalypse is last man standing, anchoring rotating mini-series and one-shots introducing takes on different characters. And Apocalypse of late has been sharing space with back-up stories featuring a bizzaro take on Secret Squirrel, which looks like a spoof of Alvin and The Chipmunks movies..or any "talking cgi animal" films, because Secret is depicted as a realistically-drawn "real" rodent squirrel in a trenchcoat, working as a secret agent. Last time I checked, it looked like his tail had gotten blown-off and was bandaged..at $3.99, that's a long way for a monthly 6-pages.

Here's the thing...these books are solid proof it's possible to work on a project featuring a subject that you're not a fan of and deliver what's being asked. You really don't need to be familiar with the past incarnations of these characters to understand what's happening...because it's pretty likely that none of the creators involved watched any of those cartoons...like, literally sat down in front of a television and watched. If they had, then  they could've had more fun with creating a convincing texture that doesn't just feel like an exercise in tinkering with accuired intellectual property...the Flintstones book had some interesting moments, but it seemed to ask us to take seriously what was always meant to be a gentle parody of sitcom tropes at heart, not a socio-economic, socio-political allegory. Ambitious, yes. Fun?...

...suppose I give the benefit of the doubt. Let's say Jimmy Palmiotti loves The Jetsons...but they don't live in Brooklyn. He had Harley Quinn move to Brooklyn. He had Deadpool go to Brooklyn. He had Superboy move to a Metropolis counterpart to Brooklyn. Orbit City is a series of elevated platforms on poles that are grouped into a "city"; it has no boroughs. It's suggested that the Beyond version of The Jetsons Orbit City exists hovering over a submerged New York City...so they live over Brooklyn. Try as he night, Jimmy doesn't really have his frame-of-reference accessible to him, so the only story he can tell is to have Brooklyn emerge from the depths of the ocean and threaten to destroy Orbit City...that's revenge for spoiling his muse.
The only book that felt like it appreciated what was there before..or seemed to, was Future Quest, but I thought it was just okay. It's plot felt stretched thin and it sotta lacked empathy. It wants to be Crisis On The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera using their action-adventure guys, but it needed more wrinkles in the plot, more interesting character mashups and less cliched crossover tropes.

So here's the other thing: it's possible to be a fan and not really have stories to tell within the context of premise you've been given...or you can be the experiened journeyman who creates suspense by making you wonder if he's familiar with these characters or just having a laugh. The Dastardly and Muttley comic looks like Garth Ennis couldn't be bothered to recreate theplot of the TV series and is really revisiting his Adventures of The Rifle Brigade concept that burlesqued army comedies...and hinting that he hates cartoons? I can't tell. The plot is that the Earth has become exposed to a poison gas that is radically transforming all people, places and things into people, places and things, creating multiple gory casualties as real-life physics collides with cartoon physics in transition. Any resemblance to Dick Dastardly and Muttley is coincidental. Any resemblance to the plot of Cool World is also coincidental.

At present, there's The Ruff and Reddy Show and The Snagglepuss Chronicles. Both remind me of that issue of Astro City about Loony Leo, the cartoon lion who came to life during a superhero skirmish and enjoyed the ups and downs of celebrity life. It was done in one issue and didn't wear out it's welcome. These other two series are set as six-issue mini-series. I don't think they'll accomplish the same beats as eloquently as Kurt Busiek did in that single issue, but my point is both mini-series don't have a lot to say..of course, if you imagined/fancied Huckleberry Hound and Snagglepuss as more than just thinly-veiled caricatures of the Cowardly Lion and Droopy Dog, then you get to see that...

I can't help wondering what they'll try next...how about Penelope Pitstop remodeled to look like Baby Doll from Sucker Punch? Or Inch-High Private Eye's mysteries within the context of The Incredible Shrinking Man? Or Super Snooper & Blabber Mouse fashioned after Benedict Cumberbatch & Martin Freeman in Sherlock? Peter Potamas as Doctor Who? Wally Gator as The Maze Runner?...

All of these things could happen...because it's all apocryphal..so this is fine.

About That Justice League Movie...

Justice League made it's money back, but with only a little bit of "fun money" for profit. I liked it, but I liked Wonder Woman and Batman vs. Superman, but not Man of Steel and kinda lukewarm towards Suicide Squad, so I wasn't insistent on some fidelity to every element of what came before.

Beat for beat, this Justice League movie seemed to be replicating plot points from Joss Whedon's first Avengers film, even borrowing the same auteur for reshoots/band-aids to inject doses of humor/empathy from its stars, as if to keep it from looking like a video game. I'm not a fan of the Avengers films - those two movies look like an assembly of well-paid, attractive people wearing/posing in various costumes and reciting patches of dialogue during an expensive photo shoot. The audiences collective  imagination did all the heavy lifting and applied context behind the magnitude of what we're seeing...I'm going to go on record and say the one film I truly enjoyed from Marvel Studios was Thor: Ragnarok.

It wasn't false advertising - we did get all of DC Comics best-known superheroes and Cyborg (again, lagniappe, though he's appeared a lot in cartoons, so he's not obscure), PLUS...a lot of Gal Godat, looking phenomenal and memorizing. We also get Ezra Miller as The Flash, looking like the son of Jimmy Fallon & Carrie Brownstein and unintentionally pissing off hardcore fans of Grant Gustin, the TV Flash, but I think Miller's performance does a better job at selling the character's humorous side..maybe to the point where he might've been better-cast as Plastic Man, but that character wasn't in the cards. And how is Ben as Batman? Much has been texted around the net about Affleck looking like he'd rather be elsewhere nowadays, but I think they're misreading his performance...and he's not bothering to clue anyone in. Ben's Batman seems to act more at-ease when he's wearing the batsuit and more tightly wound in civilian clothes, as if he needs to overcompensate for not wearing a batsuit in Bruce's dealings with others. It's a subtle thing that's completely ignored, but it makes his Batman/Bruce Wayne more interesting than Christian Bale or Clooney and Kilmer. Michael Keaton's Batman has an added gravitas; modern reception to Adam West's Batman has a lot of goodwill. And Kevin Conroy just has the quintessential voice you want Batman to have. Affleck's Bat seems a little closer to something iconic mired by appearing in ambivalently-received films. Pity that his next appearance might be a supporting role in Flashpoint, since it's the same rut with Mark Ruffalo not appearing in a solo Hulk film. I do wish Affleck had just gone ahead and filmed his script for The Batman as initially planned. As some consolation prize, we got a cameo by Joe Manganiello as Slade Wilson (Deathstroke), who would've been the main villain in Affleck's film.

I want to say the fault lies with the story. If you don't want to have the guys fight Darkseid just yet, then, instead of Steppenwolf (which sounded like a missed opportunity to feature music from the rock band with the similar-sounding name)  have them fight a psychotic mind-controlling starfish, instead. I'm not kidding - the first-ever Justice League of America adventure featured a battle with Starro, a massive alien starfish. The first Avengers film aped the first issue of that comic book by featuring a battle against Loki, so why didn't the Justice League fight Starro? Would it be too silly-looking? Heaven forbid. The only really interesting element of Jack Kirby's Fourth World concept to me were the Mother Boxes, because they foresaw the invention of miniature computers: pocket calculators, digital notebooks, laptops, smartphones, iPads..etc - except in this film, where they'd depicted as big, clunky cubes. I also enjoyed his parody of Stan Lee's public image with the Funky Flashman character..and about 45% of Mister Miracle, but...The King was a really clunky writer..

I had no problem with the cast, the crew or the shorter length of the film..but I do believe it suffered from the lack of a dazzling story beyond an apology for trying to make Superman a darker character over the last decade and just having the big guns...come together. I don't know if fighting a giant starfish or a gang of thugs dressed like playing cards would've been better, but it would've offered more-appealing visuals that cued audiences about what the movie was going to try to be...

Fun.

About That Blade Runner Sequel...

My blog posts wouldn't be lengthy if I could write about Blade Runner 2049 by writing, "I thought it was very good. It was better than the first one." But that's the short answer.

Publisher Random House does a clever thing with paperback editions of Philip K. Dick's Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep?: they offer an edition with the Blade Runner movie title and the true title in parentheses. For a long time, this edition's cover featured artwork patterned after the film adaptation, even a later edition with art by Star Wars poster artist Drew Stuzan, to coincide with the DVD release of the last and "official" re-release of the film. The joke here is that the book is...and I might be generous...30% of the movie. The film noir tropes and  atmosphere is nowhere to be found in the book; the Rick Deckard of the book is more like George Jetson than Philip Marlowe. And the cover has been revised to coincide with the release of the sequel...I don't like what they came up with. I would've preferred they used the movie poster, instead...or commission Struzan to whip up something. For my money, the best cover art I saw was a fanmade mockup I found online (see the second photo layout below) with Scrappy the robot owl (yes, his name is 'Scrappy' in the book) and the pyramid.

Apparently, it took a month for 2049 to break even, likely because they were so secretive about the plot that nobody could talk about it in interviews leading up to the release...that usually means it's a turkey, so that was a serious mistake. Who is Deckard's kid? That mystery could've been good-enough bait, since Ryan Gosling and Sylvia Hoeks seemed like red herrings for mostof the film. Ana de Armas' prominent presence on the movie poster seems like another red herring clue; it's only by watching the film that you learn she's not going to be Deckard's daughter...although I thought she was fantastic as Joi, Gosling's sentient hologram virtual assistant/girlfriend; Gosling and Armas have a nice chemistry that's more convincing than Harrison Ford and Sean Young in the original..there's more of a heart in this one...the fact that people debate online the nature Joi's extistince means that both actors deserve credit making believe in them as complete characters. Complete is a good word for this movie. The original always seemed improvised; this sequel has more focus on what it wants to do. Whereas it's much longer than the first, 2049 seems much simpler. I was more intrigued/interested in what was happening. I get that the original film is pretty iconic, but thestory of how it got made is more interesting than what they produced..And Rick Deckard is only interesting within that film..in my humble opinion..in that early scene where he's at the sushi bar.

The Replicants aren't robots/androids in the traditional sense; they're more like genetically modified organisms. These GMO-bots are flesh and blood, with internal organs and are man-made, yet they can be snobbish towards holograms (it's lightly hinted Joi might represent a potential evolution in a subset of artificial intelligence that hints at a class system among all forms of manufactured life...this, and a rebellion among Replicants against their manufacturer, the Wallace Corporation, seem like ideas for possible sequels).

So how was Harrison Ford in this? There's a reference to Ben Gunn from Treasure Island with 2049's take on Deckard. He's become this grumpy hermit, living in a deserted Las Vegas resort/hotel, keeping bees (perhaps a nod to Sherlock Holmes' retirement - becoming a beekeeper on a farm in English countryside). And he has a dog - possibly a replicant, since the future of Blade Runner is in a world where all animals are extinct and are either GMO replicants or nuts & bolts androids...that would include the bees. I kinda wish the Vegas had lasted longer, since there's a kind of peace to it. Does this sequel answer Blade Runner's oldest mystery? Well...this franchise isn't flexible enough to allow for the existence of cyborgs, or entertain the idea that Deckard is an older-model Replicant...one that probably has a lower threshold of endurance..he's just there, like an Easter Egg, really. An extended Easter Egg. Actually, Edward James Olmos' cameo was like a standard Easter Egg..he even does an origami sheep!

I imagine if this film had done better in the box office, we would've had another origami paper sculpture, but I'm trying to guess what it could be...a tortoise? A wolf (there's a recurring reference to 'Peter and The Wolf' whenever Joi makes her entrances and exits)? How about an owl?

About That Wonder Woman Sequel...

Wonder Woman surprised everyone by being a good movie. Especially since it's a follow-up to a very polarizing movie - Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I liked both films, but a lot of people possibly prefer WW as a standalone, an eye in a tornado that is DC Films. What do I mean by that? It's the only one everyone likes in that stable. For now. Justice League is coming out soon.

Let's stay with Wonder Woman for this post. Development on the sequel is happening. Gal Godat is coming back to star, Partty Jenkins is coming back to direct. But what will the story be?...The wartime setting had been kicked around as a backdrop for the first film for decades - as far back as the 90's, when the short list of possible candidates for the lead included Sandra Bullock, Lucy Lawless and the fan-favorite choice, Catherine Zeta Jones. Now..just because this first movie was set in WWI doesn't mean Wonder Woman 2 should be set in WW2. I liked the rumor about a 2nd and 3rd film being set in different decades leading up to the present. Or they could rip-off the approach used by Marvel Studios' Captain America films by embedding the sequels deep into a bigger storyline that connected with other sequels. One thing for certain: forget about the comics. This Wonder Woman is purely a new incarnation created for the screen; they name-dropped a number of comic book creators in the credits, but they're just being polite. There are no good/great Wonder Woman stories from the comics. Similar deal with Marvel's Thor and Captain America; you could argue that Winter Soldier and Civil War are based on storylines from the books, but only loosely; I still believe the best Thor story was the one where Loki turned him into a frog...

And it's only in Thor: Ragnarok where it looks like the studio is embracing the character's Silver Age for the first time, after the very drab-looking Thor: The Dark World and a lightweight, derivative Thor, this is the first time we get the movie Thor wearing his Helmet, albeit a stylized version of it. This film looks good enough to copy..

Here's my idea: I don't know if Greek mythology has an equivalent of the Norse Ragnarok, but I think sticking Wonder Woman in a parallel to that would be really cool. Her rogues gallery has Circe and The Cheetah - 2 villains that counter nicely with Hela and Loki. I remember John Byrne had Etrigan the Demon guest-star in some issues from his tenure on the Wonder Woman comics, so with there's a good counterpart of the Hulk who Wonder Woman could fight and later team-up with. I keep hearing about a live-action Justice League Dark film in development, so having Etrigan appear with Wonder Woman...is really good for business. Plus, whoever is cast as Etrigan's human counterpart Jason Blood will get to have dialogue with Godat, to make up for the absense of Chris Pines' Steve Trevor, so it won't just seem like special effects, special effects, special effects. The only casting choice I have is Ana de Armas as The Cheetah; I'm not sure which take on the character they'll use, but she's Wonder Woman's most-popular adversary..kinda like an MMA fighter version of Catwoman. Ana de Armas is kinda the new flavor of the month on the heels of Blade Runner: 2049, so she'd be interesting...the way it might not to interesting to see someone more familiar in the part.

What's the plot? Whatever the basic plot of Thor: Ragnarok is. The Cheetah is impersonating Hippolyta so that Circe can takeover Paradise Island/Themyscira..which kinda reminds me of the island from Shakespeare's play The Tempest..so who says Zeus/Merlin/Shazzam/Prospero didn't camp there? Did I just link Zeus thematically with Merlin and Prospero and am I the first to have suggested this? That's a fun mystery/subplot that could link these disparate characters nicely. Why the heck not? Ares was shown to be alive and well - before Diana killed him, of course - why not reveal Zeus as Merlin/Shazzam/Prospero and Circe (Miranda) as his illegitimate daughter, intending to restore her birthright by conquering the Amazons?

So after all the bread and circuses of Diana beating Etrigan in an arena battle, the Cheetah is revealed as impersonating Hippolyta, so Circe drops in, then Diana & Etrigan team-up as they're chased, i.e., hunted throughout Themyscira by mind-controlled Amazons led by Circe and Cheetah...as both parties search for some big MacGuffin...a rock shaped like a thunderbolt, the "Orb of Bachfyre" - thesolution to where Hippolyta went...and it turns out to be...a Mother Box! Hippolyta was kidnapped by Granny Goodness to train an army of female furies to conquer New Genesis! Hippolyta gets swapped with Circe and Cheetah in the Boom tube and Granny Goodness enlists them as her new furies...because who cares about Lashina, Mad Harriet and Stompa?..although I can see Aubrey Plaza as Lashina or Mad Harriet...and so the film ends as the next step in the buildup to the ultimate confrontation with Darkseid and makes Wonder Woman's corner of the DCU more central to the film universe's shenanigans.

That's my idea...now I wonder what Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League are about..

Ducktales Day!

Short answer? It was good.

Long answer?

It turned out to be an excellent idea to broadcast the 2-part, one-hour pilot episode of the new Ducktales reboot series consecutively for 24 hours through all of Saturday, August 12. I questioned the decision when I first heard of it - why not air a marathon of the original 1980s Ducktales episodes for the remaining 23 hours, instead? Or just..ape Netflix's approach and spit out all the new episodes at once..or at the very least, how about five episodes? That would just add three more half-hours of programming to satisfy a lot of build-up...

Disney used to do that...in the late-80s thru early-90s, beginning with The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh and continuing with the Disney Afternoon series, a "summer preview" of shows set to premiere in the Fall TV season on syndication would be broadcast on The Disney Channel as a privilege of sorts. And it was the first handful of episodes produced. Back in those days, that cable channel was regarded as a "premium cable channel", like HBO or Showtime, with shows and films broadcast with no commercial interruptions. I didn't get to check out The Disney Channel until it was downgraded to "family cable" bundles in the mid-90s, but the program format stayed the same...until around 1999/2000, when they began making room for commercial breaks..and that's when you realized the network wasn't going to be a good fit for programs like Avonlea. An acclaimed, period costume family drama series like that (it was the Downton Abbey of its day, in terms of popularity) airing on the Disney Channel would be unthinkable by the time you get to That's So Raven and Hannah Montana. But anyway, broadcasting this marathon turned out to be an excellent idea, for many reasons, chief among them was that you only needed to wait for the day it aired, not the time. You could watch it anytime.

I remember the original series was promoted in magazine ads and commercials, but you never saw Alan Young appear on Johnny Carson's show to talk about playing Scrooge McDuck the way David Tennant appeared on Stephen Colbert's show! The times have changed...although it's possible the ratings for the pilot on expanded cable channel DisneyXD might be similar to what the original series got in syndication, but then YouTube didn't exist in the 80s, and the grand gesture of DisneyXD offering a chance the view the pilot free and clear on their YouTube channel is a nice surprise, so if you haven't seen it, go see it. Then come back and read the rest of this post.

Aside from the new designs, the bigger distinction between old and new Ducktales is that a lot of the suspense came from the character relationships, with the big adventures being secondary. Donald and Scrooge had a falling out in the past and became estranged; it's hinted that the source of this tension is marked by the absence of Della Duck, Donald's sister and the mother of Huey, Dewey and Louie. This is a retcon, since the character was created to establish that Donald had nephews; we still don't know the name of HD&L's father; I like to joke that it's Howard from Marvel Comics' Howard The Duck, but that's kind-of nuts, even though he is an accuired Disney character, now. Besides, what was disclosed about the dad was that he was in the hospital - the victim of a cruel prank in which his sons planted a lit firecracker under his chair while he sat..presumably the kind of firecracker that sets off car alarms on July 4th..so, yeah, it makes sense to rewrite history by having the ducklings solve a mystery..of where Della went. And their dad,  _________ Duck..if they have time.

It's because Donald Duck is a main character in this new incarnation of the series  (in the original series, it was established that he joined the navy and left his nephews in Scrooge's care, though he did appear as a guest-star in occasional episodes) that the show will get to take advantage of a character dynamic that was only seen in the comic books and build off it...I never thought we'd ever get to see that play out on the TV. I'm not sure if they've reconciled the Carl Barks comic book Donald with the animated Huey, Dewey and Louie fully - there's that business with Donald slowly burning his hands to keep Dewey from getting hurt by the Atlantean death-trap, which means we might be getting a lot of scenes of Donald enduring a lot of bumps and bruises while the nephews consequently register as shallow & basic by comparison. A similar thing occurred in the series Quack Pack... We'll see.

I prefer Scrooge having a blue coat over red, but if they print a coloring book based on the new designs, you can bet I'll opt for blue crayons on that coat, so that's no big deal.

...they do look like they're ready for a team-up with Bullwinkle and Huckleberry Hound, don't they? If that gold dragon were painted green, I could've name-dropped Beany and Cecil, one of those shows that's considered a classic, but has the darndest trouble with being accessible on home video or TV reruns. I consider Ducktales a nice cartoon, a modern classic...and aside the final batch of episodes, is available to watch on home video and iTunes. And I'm going off on tangents again...well, we did get a cameo from Daisuke Jigen (albeit in canine form..I think..hard to tell) riding ontop of Lupin the 3rd's yellow Fiat automobile..have any of you seen The Castle of Cagliostro? That's an excellent anime film featuring those two characters, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, so that cartoon is not hard to find.

I enjoyed this new episode. I really did. I just wish I didn't have to wait another month to see more. If you were regarding it in terms of fidelity to the original series, I would say it really captured the ethos of the original. If it was junk, it would have been obvious, but no. When it was over, my conclusion was that this show was made with love and respect for what came before, but also marking some new territory. I believe it's something that is all the better for coming back now. The old show was good. The new show will also be good. That's Ducktales. Ducktales IS back.