Recaps

Batman- Page 1

Batman... vs. the Nazis! I feel like this is a ripoff of a Captain America comic,

Establishing shot of Gotham City, at night. It looks AWESOME. Especially compared to the rather snore-fest design of Batman Begins, which lacked any character for Gotham whatsoever. A rather schmuck looking family leave the Monarch Theater, in front of which 90% of the movie takes place. The street's pretty crowded. Smiling, he strolls over to a cab and tells the driver that he'd like to go to the Adelphi Hotel. Are you sure you don't mean the Adolf Hotel? As we discover later, Gotham is all about harboring former Nazis. A couple slides in front of him, saying “excuse me” and gets in the back, while he whines that this is his cab. Not anymore! He complains that he was there first as the cab takes off. Disappointed, he tries hailing another one while his wife and kid look freaked. Seeing as how the stereotype of taxi drivers not understanding English are true, no one stops so they can make sweet, sweet cash. He finally decides to herd everyone across the street instead so they can get one down the road.

Down the street! The wife bitches, asking if for gods sake they can't just get a taxi? Lady? He's been trying. Pay attention. Now, if you push him into the street and he gets hit by a car, you can all probably bum a ride with the ambulance to the hospital. Husband says that he's trying to, and pathetically calls out to another taxi. Their kid declares that they're going the wrong way. Harold, concerned, tells “Timmy” to put the map away... they look like tourists. It's bettter to get lost, go into the bad part of down, and get mugged than look like a visitor. A sleazy prostitute walks up to tell Timmy hello, figuring hitting on pre-pubescent children is a great way to drum up repeat business, as well as encourage the spread of STDs in high school in his later years. She looks shocked as the family blows off her skankiness. Harry says that they'll never get a cab, so they'll cut over to Seventh, where they can get mugged, raped, and killed, and not necessarily in that order! Timmy, looking at the map, bellows that seventh is that way! Harry grabs him by the arm, declaring that he knows where they are, promptly leading them in the opposite direction Timmy indicated. Looks like they're not so much tourists as morons.

Alleyway of Harry's an Idiot. Walking past the city's crackhead population, they pass a skeevy looking guy sitting against a wall, asking for a dollar. Freaked, they hunch together and quickly walk off. Skeevy Guy gets up, getting hardcore about wanting a dollar. Hey, I'll do... things! Things that will make you scream “I'd buy THAT for a dollar!” My herpes isn't flared up right now! As they leave, he bitches to their back, asking if they're deaf, or if they don't speak English? He hears some guy off screen call out “come on, up here!” Hey, here's someone who'll give you money for herpes!

Even further up the Alleyway of Harry's an Idiot. As he turns a corner, Harry gets knocked out cold by a sap. The robber, in a crappy hat, pulls a gun and gets in Wife's face. He tells her to do the kid a favor and don't scream. Everything's a bit “angled Batman 1960's villain lair” here in terms of camera work. We can't really see it from the way it was shot, but Hat Guy grabs her purse and books. Skeevy Guy walks up to mug Harry's unconscious body before also booking. He's happy. Not only did he get more cash than he'd hoped, but he can hang on to his herpes and sell it to someone else! Win! Wife screams.as SG runs. She goes over to Harry's twitching corpse.

Waaaaaaaaaay up high, we get an overhead shot of some guy in a cape hearing this screaming as we get a crescendo of Danny Elfman music. Instead of bellowing at her to shut it so he can sleep, he walks in the building to call the cops. Damn tourists, don't you know if you walk down a dark alley in Gotham to get raped and killed, at the very LEAST you should be quiet about it? Show some class!

Next to some stairs, HG and SG and huddled together on the ground, going through their ill-gotten gains. Hat Guy brags as he finds an American Express Card and tries to do the announcer voice of “Don't leave home without it.” They're having voice-over try-outs downtown next week! They laugh at the idea of HG getting anything more significant than a bit part in Batman. SG reaches towards HG's hand, but HG jerks his hand back and bellows at him to get out of here. My man? You're in the friends zone. Let it go. SG looks disappointed at being rejected by the object of his affections yet again. I just wanted to hold hands! Why don't you love me? WHY?! Hearing a noise, SG looks back for a sec. He says “Let's beat it, man.” Dude? NO. He just rejected you for the handholding thing! Maybe wait until he's passed out drunk. SG says he doesn't like it up here. It's like strange people with cameras led by a bizarre goth are capturing them on film for a major franchise that will peter out until it gets rebooted a decade later. HG glances up for a sec from counting cash and sneers, asking him if he's scared of heights. Sad, SG says he doesn't know. He's never been sure if it's from being really high up, the fear of dying from oxygen starvation, or falling off and hitting the ground at terminal speed. He starts to talk about what happened to Johnny Gobs, but his (he wishes) boyfriend looks up, and casually says that he got ripped and took a walk off a roof. “No big loss.” SG gets nervous, saying no, that's not what he heard at all. Scared, he says that he heard that “The Bat” got him. Contemptuous, HG asks him to give him a break. He needs fifteen to drain the lizard and get a hoagie before they roll their next victim. We get a far off shot as SG rambles about how he fells down five stories and that there wasn't no blood in the body. I can definitely say that there's no well-honed skills in the proper use of English in YOUR body, buddy. HG starts to light one up and agrees, saying “No shit. It was all over the pavement.” No shit? Wow, I didn't know you could rupture your bowls from a five story fall! In the background, we see a guy with a cape, spread wide, and funny headgear awkwardly slide down a line while posing for the camera. As cape guy lowers his arms, SG tells HG that he's getting out of here. Annoyed, HG snaps at him to shut up and listen to him. You're... just not what I'm looking for in a life-partner. Plus there's the herpes thing. But we can still be friends and murder people in backalleys for credit cards and menthols! HG states that there ain't no Bat.

SG, nervous still, tells HG (you) shouldn't have turned the gun on that kid. Eh, he'll get over it. I mean, it's not like you killed both his parents in slo-mo in front of his eyes, then passed on killing him, allowing him to devote his life to dressing like a freak and beating up random criminals on a nightly basis. What a ridiculous concept! Again annoyed, HG bellows at him hey! “You want your cut of this money or not? Now shut up! Shut up.” SG looks down, again sad, that his friend doesn't love him like he does. Hearing something they look to the side, which is weird, as the Freaky Guy was BEHIND THEM.

Seeing nothing, they look up and see some weird guy in an all black outfit, with sculpted muscles (but thankfully, no nipples) on his armor. Oh, and he's got a yellow belt and yellow oval with a bat on it on his chest. Hardcore fanboys are FURIOUS that they dare use the yellow-oval instead of an all-black bat symbol on a gray/black shirt (seriously. They added it on during the Adam West show to brighten the character up. Personally, I like it because it makes his symbol ACTUALLY VISIBLE. Plus it's reminiscent of the batsignal). He raises his cape waaaaaaaay over his head. Scared that he's that weird hooker who's been going around passing out STDs like business cards at a car dealership, they run. He jumps down to follow. SG, realizing that this is his chance to impress his incredibly dreamy friend, turns around and shoots freak guy. He falls down after about four shots. Wow, this was one short movie!

As SG and HG start to open a door to exit the roof area, they turn back and freak as Freaky Guy stands up again with his cape raised over his head. UGH! Please! I don't care how nice your new under-arm deodorant smells, you don't make people smell it without asking first! That's just weird. Pissed, Freak Guy jerks his arms down and strolls over, giving SG the boot. He kicks him dead center in the circle on his chest saying “I (heart) Gotham City.” This is FAR less cool than the Spartan Body-Punt(tm). SG crashes through the door, breaking it. His dream guy, horrified at the idea of mixing it up with an S&M hooker, runs. Freaky Guy snaps open a little plastic bat shaped device and tosses it at a fleeing HG. A wire whips out and wraps itself around his legs, downing him. Instead of walking over to tell HG his rates (hourly and nightly), Freaky Guy pulls him over with the rope, then jerks him to his feet.

Freaky Guy pulls HG over to the edge of the roof, while HG, loosing his hat, as well as his shit, repeatedly begs him not to kill him. And, uh, anything you give me can be cleared up with some prescription medicine, right? Freaky Guy, in a low voice, says that he's not going to kill him... he wants him to do (me) a favor. Hey, you're the prostitutes, YOU'RE the one who's supposed to be handing out the favors! He tells Hat(less) Guy that he wants him to tell all of his friends about him. I have GREAT rates and can be found on the corner of Queen and Mathews between 11 and 5 at night. Parties welcome. On the verge of sobbing, HG begs, asking “What are you?” Instead of saying the expected “Your lucky night”, Freaky Guy jerks him VERY close to his face, and says “I'm Batman.” Deciding that he could use the night off, instead of kissing him and having a private party, he flings him back onto the rooftop, faces towards the edge of the roof with his now standard “Pert Plus is GREAT!” gesture, and leaps off the roof. Freaked (though grateful he doesn't have herpes from their little encounter), HG runs over to the ledge and sees a noticeable lack of shattered meat and bones on the street below.

Fancy-Schmancy business dinner. We see a bunch of people at a table with some guy blah-blahing a speech. Behind him we see a HUGE picture of Billy Dee Williams with the caption “Harvey Dent District Attorney.” A more accurate caption would have been “Forget about me, I get recast with Tommy Lee Jones in the third movie, possibly because I'm black.” Which is a pity, as I think he might have given an interesting interpretation of the Two-Face role (and no, I'm not kidding, I'd like to have seen his approach, but given what they actually DID with Two-fer in Batman Forever, he got lucky). Rather than calling him the more accurate “Not Harvey after this flick”, I'll just stick with the standard “Lando Calrissian” Star Wars ref. Speaker Guy blah blah's that across the nation, Gotham City is synonymous with crime. He continues, saying that their streets are overrun, and their public officials are helpless. He says that as mayor he promises to root out the source of this corruption, Boss Carl Grissom. Eh, just get dem Duke Boys on it, and I'm sure they'll bring Boss Grissom down eventually. He speechifies that their new District Attorney, Lando Calrissian, will carry out that promise. If anyone's going to run the city into the ground and murder innocent people, it's going to be him! After a reverse face-lift involving a bottle of acid to the face.

Lando gets up to applause and takes over the podium from the speaker, who goes back to his own chair. He thanks “Mayor Borg.”; presumably for not assimilating him into the Collective. Proving that he's not a born-public speaker, he announces that he's a man of few words instead of boring people for the next twenty minutes straight. We get “lair-angle” as we get a close-up of Lando at the podium. He says that those words will count, and so will (my actions). Well, sometimes. They MAY count. Flip of a coin, really. We get a shot of a couple of guys at the table, one in uniform, as he explains that Police Commissioner Gordon has informed (me) that he has targeted those businesses suspected of fronting for the syndicate in this city. Mostly they've targeted businesses that are fronts that haven't bribed the cops yet.

We cut to a tasteful apartment covered in paintings of some fashion model. From the pictures, we see she is literally the type that appears on the cover of Vogue that wears a towel on their head, though I've never SEEN a towel-on-your-head as an actual fashion statement. Jack Nicholson, bored, is playing with his deck, uh, deck of cards!, and watching Lando's speech on TV. Lando says that (we) are going to knock down on their doors and shed the light of the law on that nest of vipers. Or at least they're going to knock down on their doors until they give a nice, friendly “campaign contribution” that makes the city realize that they're their good buddies and fine, upstanding citizens, even if they were on trial for murder last week for the fifth time that year and are suspected ring leaders of a major drug cartel sprawling the southeast part of the country. Jack looks watchful as Lando says that together (we) can make this city safe for decent people. A pretty fashion model (seriously) sneaks in behind Jack and lifts his feet up so she can grab a magazine off the table. It's... a cover of Vogue. Featuring a model with a towel on her head! Wow! Can I call it or what?! (Seriously, I haven't seen this movie in years.) Jack laughs a bit. His feet are ticklish! He says that decent people shouldn't live here. Given how ridiculously corrupt they've made Gotham City in the comics thanks to Frank Miller's Batman writings in the 80's, I'd be amazed if hardened criminals wanted to live there, even ignoring the existence of Batman busting their asses constantly. Jack casually says that they'd be happier someplace else. Like Metropolis! Where, gasp! A hero ISN'T a psycho-path and manages to make the city livable, despite constant alien invasions!

Model Girl leans on Jack, casually saying “Pretty tough talk about Carl.” Without looking, amused, Jack tells her not to worry about it. I'M the star of this movie, baby. Didn't you see all the commercials? Getting ironic (as we'll find out later), he says that if this clown could touch Grissom, (I'd) have handed him his lungs by now. Lando's well known for being absent-minded and leaving his lungs in odd places like public restrooms and tables at Starbucks. Looking fondly at Jack, she muses that if Grissom knew about (us), he might hand him something. Presumably some of his anti-biotics, since he picked up a little something while cheating on Model in the Bahamas and hadn't asked her if she had any itching sensations yet. Jack looks up and gives her his standard Jack Nicholson Psychopathic Grin(tm), telling her “Don't flatter yourself, angel.” He brags that he's a tired old man, and that he can't run this city without (me). Well, that's why he's bankrolling the development of a cyborg enforcer. Wait. I'm getting my “cheesy 80's sci-fi movies with an old, senile man ruling the city with a limp arthritic wrist” mixed up. Jack gets out of the chair, then gets in her face, bragging, “Besides, he doesn't know.” Or... doesn't he? I mean, she's a blond model, it's not likely she's call out in the middle of sex “Yes, Jack, yes! Uh, I mean, yes, Grissom, yes! Like last night! Oh, uh, right, you were out of town last night. Well, like whenever, Jack! I mean Grissom.” Er, wait. They share a smile as he walks off. She says “You don't worry about anything, do you, Jack?” So, for the record, Jack Nicholson IS Jack Nicholson (checks imdb) I mean, Napier. Jack turns back and grins, then turns back to flirt with the person he most wants to have sex with in the room, his reflection in the mirror. So... do you... come here often? Do you? Were you a big fan of The Shining? Model strolls over and puts her hand on his shoulder, and tells him he looks fine. Mildly annoyed that she's cockblocking him from seducing the handsome man in front of him, he turns back and tells her that he didn't ask. She pulls her hand off slowly, and watches him leave, slightly thoughtful. Wow, I was surprised that they managed to fit in Jack, Model, and Jack Nicholson's Massive Ego in such a tight shot.

Street, night. Some plain clothes cop in a fedora is standing next to a cop car, telling someone on the radio (I'm) hanging on. We see a paramedic pull a bed with SG from earlier. SG's sobbing like a little girl. Sure, there's the pieces of his spine sticking out of his back, but what hurt most is when Hat Guy refused to kiss and and make it better. As they wheel him to an ambulance, we see another a fat guy with a suit, trenchcoat and fedora (basically the Flabb of the movie) talking to some other guy. Proto-Flabb, in a throaty voice, says, no, let me guess; giant, menacing, supernatural form. Kind of like a bat. Hey, you didn't use to have that big a problem with bat creatures; that's what you get for S.W.A.T. mowing down that annoying blond girl who was running around with an axe (not scythe, AXE) in her hand. The other guy (who we can now see is a paramedic) glances up, and agrees that that's it. He asks what they're seeing up there. Proto-Flabb says they're drinking Drano. They used to stick to bleach, but after they changed the formula a lot of people dropped off. Then again, a lot of people dropped off after drinking a container if they weren't very close to a hospital. The Paradmedic says that it's a little weird, then leaves. A Tim Burton movie? Only a LITTLE weird?