always with the Dick jokes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
irrelevant) wrote2010-07-31 07:05 am
irrelevant) wrote2010-07-31 07:05 am
Entry tags:
in which I say fuck a lot.
I have an unhealthy fixation on Jason Todd. I know it, I admit it, I embrace it. Not that I think anyone is particularly interested in my fixations, but the aforementioned is relevant in that it guaranteed I would watch Under the Red Hood, which in turn led to me having a thing or ten to say about same. Hence this post.
Because I am not, as I've already stated, rational on the subject of Jay, and I also take item #3 on this icon seriously, a glowing, five star rec is the one thing you won't find here. You will find a lot of bad language interspersed with a metric ton of pissed off, which won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.
I won't say I didn't enjoy UtRH, because in a warped, masochistic way, I did. The opening scene -- the infamous crowbar/TNT special -- just about ripped my guts out. Literally: I threw up, the impact was that visceral, and that personal.
I won't say it'll be that way for you if you choose to watch UtRH; in fact, unless you read A Death in the Family when it came out, and are as fixated on Jason as I am, I doubt it will be. For me, it was like being regressed back to my almost thirteen year old self, sitting on my bed in my old room in my parents' house, watching Jason die for the first time. Which means someone did something horribly right. (Except for putting Jay in comics!Tim's old costume. Someone's getting their throat cut for that, heh.)
I say horribly right because I can't say I enjoyed watching Joker beat my Robin to death in full, animated glory, although after five viewings, I can now get through it without hitting pause so I can shake and cry. I hated it, and I hated Jim Starlin all over again, and I hated Bruce Timm for saying yes to Winick, and I really hated Winick for twisting the knife. But I acknowledge the excellence of the animation and its ability to draw the kind of reaction it did from me, even as I hate the entire experience.
Unfortunately, my reaction to the rest of the movie was just as dichotomous, and can be more easily defined by what I disliked than what I liked. When you get right down to it, the Under the Hood comic pissed me off as much as it made me purr. The movie clings tight to most of what I disliked in UtH, so it's not surprising those same things that bothered me about the comic skewed my perceptions of the movie. Different media, same fuck ups.
Well, same fuck ups minus several good points and plus a few bad points such as Jensen Ackles, who is high on my list of worst things that have happened to Jason outside the crowbar. And wow, there are so very many facets of the Ackles angle for me to dislike.
I dislike that Andrea Romano cast Ackles in the first place, which I can't help but feel was a marketing ploy. I dislike that Jason Todd is going to be linked in the public mind with Jensen Ackles' voice and the SPN character he plays until the next retcon.
I dislike that once Ackles was locked in as a voice talent, Bruce Timm catered further to a possibly interested SPN fanbase via allowing the inclusion of a) Jason's new eye color (black haired, blue eyed boys, fuck you, Timm), b) dialogue that sounds like Batman pathos at its worst, or just a typical SPN ep, and c) the motherfucking car/batwing chase, with that motherfucking muscle car adding insult to injury. The comic's first chase scene across Gotham's rooftops? Chopped up, moved around and spliced with a different scene, when they could have kept the integrity of both scenes without taking away from the show, kept the true impact of Jason shoving the reality of himself in Bruce's face, a large part of which was him taking off his gloves, cutting himself on Bruce's batarang and offering Bruce DNA and fingerprints.
But then, they excised so many parts of the original story that really worked, that distilled the essence of Jay and Bruce, who they are individually and together.
Parts like the drug warehouse, Bruce saving those dealers while Jay narrates Bruce's attempt to disarm the bomb, all of it topped perfectly off by Jay's "I just love watching you work."
Or like the fight with Hyena, Vertigo and Cpt. Nazi instead of a crew of anonymous assassins -- and for its own sake, the Deathstroke/Mask interaction ("Hyena kinda looks like a girl from the back." "I was just thinking the same thing.") The conversation after Jason kills Nazi is also important, and the movie pretty much missed all of it.
"Who's more predictable? Me or you?"
There's also Blüdhaven and Dick's possible death. Maybe it's because I know the history, all the ugly little details of post-Crisis Bruce and Dick and Jason, but Blüdhaven's destruction was one of those hard hitting canon moments.
I don't know. It felt like everything that made UtH important and unique went away -- Talia and Onyx included -- while everything that didn't was emphasized. It felt like UtRH became more about the action than the characters.
Have a quote from UtH, from Red Hood during his initial skirmish with Batman: "That's right. On the rooftop, like a proper battle."
The movie waters that aspect of the Bats down, and does away with the line. Hell, it does away with all the really great lines. I mean, I'll give Winick that for free: he gives awesome Jay snark.
"Oh god."
"No. Wanna guess again?"
Which the movie almost totally kills off, along with all the good dialogue. Remember that fantastic convo between Joker and Jay when Jay's waiting for Bruce to get over to the East End? I loved that so much, especially,
"You're not nearly as crazy as you'd like us all to believe, or even as crazy as you'd like to believe. It just makes it easier to justify every sick, monstrous thing you've ever done when you play the part of the mad clown. You're crazy, bubba, but you ain't that crazy. Well, look at that. I wiped a smile off Joker's face. Been waiting a looooong time for that."
And then they gave Jay's "Oh my goodness gracious, I've been bamboozled!" line to Joker! They just kept chipping away piece after piece of Jay until the dialogue ate him and I couldn't find him anywhere. Too much of him was, again, watered down. Too many important events were left out.
It's important that Jason beat the crap out of the Joker without explaining himself, "Because it was too much fun not to."
It's important that Jason clawed himself out of his grave, that Talia put him on the path he was on, that he spent months in the company of the al Ghuls as a patient, and many more months after the Pit with Talia's aid and monetary backing.
As for the implication that as an impoverished street kid stealing to keep himself alive Jason was some kind of horrible danger in the making that Bruce preempted by taking him under his wing? Jesus. Very little pisses me off more than the "bad seed" stereotype. Way to be a bunch of ignorant, prejudiced assholes, DC.
And still, the hits keep coming, with Dick's inclusion as the next casualty. The importance of Nightwing as Red Hood's foil is rendered incomprehensible by the modified storyline. In the movie, there's no reason for Dick's presence. He's just along for the ride.
"Nothing we haven't seen before. Or done before."
"You got that right."
The whole point of the above conversation is that Batman and Nightwing are looking at acrobatics and fighting styles they recognize because they are theirs. They're looking at someone both of them left a mark on, style-wise. But change Nightwing's line from "You got that right" to "If you say so" and you get Dick saying something out of character in addition to a subtle but important contextual shift.
Dick was flying without a net while Jason was being potty trained. In the air and acrobatics-wise in general, there is nothing Jason can do that Dick can't do better: this is a known fact in the DCU. It's freaking important to know, and the movie could have hinted at it, but the writers and editors chose not to. There are so many little moments like that, little changes that don't seem important until you pull back and look at the account balance, and then you start scratching your head and going "Waaaaaait a minute, this doesn't add up."
I spent a lot of UtRH doing that. Sometimes it was the Joker pinging my spider senses. DiMaggio's performance was all over the place. You could hear how he was trying to do Hamill and failing, which soured a lot of his scenes for me. The writers also drew from The Killing Joke for their backstory, and that sat wrong with me in a lot of ways. I've never been sure whether or not I bought into TKJ in the first place, and it didn't really work for UtRH's Joker. Then again, only someone who lives in-universe would have caught the TKJ reference, so maybe I'm just hyperanalyzing. Otoh, what is being a fan for if not hyperanalyzing.
In any case, there were other missteps as well, although as with anything, whether the notes jar you or not is subjective. As I indicated previously, one of my jarring notes was Dick, only in his case, it wasn't the voice actor I was having trouble with. Oh Dickiebird, I adore you, but there was just no point to you in this movie. All of the exchanges in the comic that gave meaning to Dick's presence were dropped for the movie, which as I said, holds true with other parts of the storyline as well.
And let's not forget those brand new, special moments of WTFery:
1) Ra's al Ghul hiring... Joker. Ra's al Guhl. Hiring. Joker. Uh... hello? Immeasurably powerful, mentally superior immortal in charge of a globally based assassins guild can't come up with a better plan than hiring an uncontrollable, unpredictable psycho? Righto.
2) Black Mask. Hiring Joker. Whoa. Suddenly, two of the Batverse's most intelligent villains just got waaaaaaay stupid.
3) After five years, a dead body is supposed to be anything other than skeletal? Really?
Wow. Just wow.
Was it truly impossible for the story to have been better handled? Like, I dunno, wild guess here -- they could've just stuck with the source material? Yes, it would have been impossible to fully recreate UtH on screen, but they could have at least cut out the ridiculous car chase scene and put the real pieces back where they were supposed to go.
They could have done better by Jason in what is sure to be the definitive work cementing who and what he is and was into the minds of the TV and movie-viewing public.
Animation and live action, sadly, have greater impact and appeal than books, manga and comics, and how many people who watch UtRH are going to be interested enough to dig around in comics canon? How many will care that there's more to Jason Todd than UtRH or UtH? It already pisses me off that so many comics readers are willing to let UtH be their defining Jay moment; how much worse is the character assassination going to get now that a version of post-Crisis Jason is readily available on screen, and with Dean fucking Winchester's voice and inflections no less.
So yeah, Ackles' voice pretty much killed my enjoyment. He sounded like he was doing Dean, period, and although I've gotten enough of a kick out of SPN to watch most of it, Dean Winchester isn't even close to what I imagined for Jay. The character I've been hearing in my head for years wasn't present for most of UtRH. There was only Ackles' overblown style, Dean Winchester's voice, and beautiful animation that could have been more than that with someone else in the driver's seat.
Only once did Ackles make me believe I was listening to Jay. The line before he fires on Black Mask's headquarters, "Wow. He can move when he really wants to" -- I heard echoes of Jay. And the kids who did Jay's younger selves were perfect enough to hurt, which made listening to Ackles all the more painful.
Because you know, UtRH really was well done for an animated feature, and far better than any live action comics-based movie could hope to be; the animation itself blew me away. The score was awesome, and enhanced the action it backdropped. Most importantly, the guy voicing Bruce did a bang-up job, and I say that as someone whose One True Batman is Kevin Conroy.
Under the Red Hood succeeded in many ways. I'm just having a hard time dealing with the fallout from those ways it didn't.
I hate that people are going to accept this version of Jason without question.
I hate that just yesterday, I saw a teaser for a fic crossing UtRH over with SPN, making Dean the Voice in Jason's Head. Fuck. Fuck. Shit like that makes me want to scream and punch things. Makes me incoherent and furious enough to put my hand through a fucking wall.
Because. Jason Todd.
Is not Dean Winchester.
Jason Todd would eat Dean Winchester for breakfast. Jason Todd would crouch ten stories up on a ledge hardly big enough to hold a pigeon, laugh his ass off at Dean Winchester running around below and then have him for breakfast.
Jason is many things. He's lived three different lives as three different people.
He's had canonically black hair as well as strawberry blond hair, and by the way, Morrison, sod off.
He's had two sets of parents die on him -- both times badly, a birth mother who gave him away then betrayed him to the Joker when he went looking for her, and a father figure who is both the best and worst thing to ever happen to him.
He has an idolized, adopted brother who in one life accepted him wholeheartedly, and in another rejected him.
He died brutally, sentenced by the jerk writing him and a bunch of fans who thought killing a fifteen year old boy by telephone vote was a cool idea, and he was brought back by a Crisis as ludicrous as the one that split his life in two.
He clawed his way out of his own coffin, was in a coma for a year, survived brain-damaged on the streets for another year, survived Ra's and Talia al Ghul, a Lazarus pit, and the League of Assassins.
He's an acrobat. A street rat. A loving, generous child. A boy filled with rage enough to match and surpass Bruce Wayne's self-righteous fury.
And no matter which incarnation you catch him in, he's always terrifyingly, beautifully fearless.
He's been mangled and mistreated by so many comics writers it's not even funny. I could go on for twenty pages on the subject of Jim Starlin's Robin Issues, A Good Soldier: The Curse of the Case by Frank Miller, Where Winick Went Wrong, and Why Jones Ought To Be Eaten By A Giant Mutated Arachnid From Outer Space, but I'm not writing a treatise on how DC comics has used and abused Jason Todd.
I'm not even condemning what various writers have done to further the insulting, obsolete "bad seed" stereotype they've so often used to explain away Jason's motivations and OOC behavior.
...Okay, yeah. I am. But I'm going to leave it there because there is nothing bad enough I can say about that stereotype and DC's use of it, and also, I'm in danger of going OT and losing my thread.
Which is... what? What am I trying to say here?
That I wish this movie had never been made?
That I wish DC had never killed Jason in the first place?
That I wish Jensen Ackles had more than one voice in his repertoire?
That I wish DC would stop kicking me in the gut every time I manage to get back up on my comics feet?
All of that and more, I suppose.
But mostly, I wish for justice. After a quarter of a century, Jason has yet to receive it.
Under the Red Hood is quite possibly the only shot Jay has at exposure to a wider-than-comics audience, and it sucks that DC apparently believes the show does him justice. It sucks that the movie reduces Red Hood to little more than the animated shade of Dean Winchester. It especially sucks that this Jason is going to be Jason to every non-comics fan who watches UtRH.
But I guess someone wouldn't really understand that unless they'd read the comics. Would they.
...
Wow, that was a lot of spleen vented. I think I actually feel better. Go me.
And since I'm feeling so much better, I might as well move on to something I've enjoyed recently. *blinkblink* Yeah, I do enjoy things once in a while when they don't, you know, involve Robins dying. And stuff.
Lucky for me, then, that there is animation involving awesome live Robins, smartass Batgirls, and a Batman who makes me want to pat him on the head instead of putting the boot in, as post-Crisis Bruce so often does.
It's called The Batman, which has to be one of the most disliked (by adult fans) animated series ever, and because I am a BTAS fan, and BTAS is about as good as Batman gets, I totally get why. To most hardcore BTAS fans (of which I am one), The Batman probably looks like sacrilege. At least, that's what it looked like to me in terms of reviews and character art, so for the longest time, I avoided it.
But eventually I started going through Bat 'toon withdrawal. I wanted some new 'toons, and I wanted some Bats, and I was thinking about rewatching Return of the Joker, and then I was like... no. I am not going to hurt my brain again that way. I will find new and interesting ways to hurt my brain. So I bought a used copy of The Batman season four.
You read that right, I started with season four, not one, and no, that wasn't an arbitrary decision. I picked season four because that's when Robin came into The Batman's picture, and frankly, it was the best decision I could have made. And now I'm in love.
I'm putting qualifiers all over this rec, if you can call it a rec. The Batman isn't ever going to be everyone's cuppa, nor will it appeal to all Batman fans, not just for what it isn't, but also for what it is.
See, The Batman is an amalgam of nearly every Batman comicverse or show that's gone before -- including the cheesy '60s TV show, the Millerverse, the Golden Age, the Nolanverse, the Burtonverse, BTAS, and so on and so forth -- and trying to pigeonhole it will just give you a headache. I'll put it this way: if crossovers aren't your thing, if you're all about the purity of continuity, The Batman probably isn't for you. Heh, DC comics probably aren't your thing either, given that comics continuity is about as straightforward as a corkscrew.
But if you're like me and 1) you appreciate if not like/love all iterations of Bats, and 2) your favorite fanworks are the ones that take bits and pieces from various canons and make something new out of them, you might want to give this show a shot. Because that's exactly what The Batman is: all Batman canons incorporated and brought up to date. And okay, that's what makes it so freaking awesome for me. I want Babs as a smirky, gymnastic, smartass as well as just plain smart Batgirl. I want Dick sitting on Wayne Manor's stairs playing handheld video games, and I want Nightwing to be his online game character, and I want him defeating nanobot Joker because games are his thing and he's good with computers. I want him and Babs with stars in their eyes because Lucius made them jetpacks equipped with rocket launchers. I want Bruce riding herd on the pair of them like a much older brother keeping an eye on his squabbling siblings, with Alfred background mothering the lot of them.
The Batman gives me what I want, what attracts me to the Batfamily -- a family of people not joined by blood, but by choice and desire and drive and need -- without drowning me in angst. Bruce, Babs, Dick and Alfred love each other and they show it in their snarky, backhanded, sarcastic way. And I love that.
I also love the lack of sexual overtones in the show. When I say the relationships between Bruce and Babs and Dick are sibling-type, I mean that, exactly. It's part of what makes the show so enjoyable for an asexual lover of gen who never really grew up; no lie, The Batman is kind of like getting a little bit of my childhood back, and sometimes? I desperately need that. I will never read anything but gen fanfic for the show -- that is if I could find any worth reading. I have yet to find any, although I admit, I haven't really been looking. I'm too enamored of the show and the fastest way I know to kill off the glow of having a new show is to go looking for a fandom.
Never fails.
Hypothetical The Batman fandom aside, though, it would take a lot to kill my love for this show. It probably won't come as any surprise to you guys that the reason for my enduring adoration is Robin.
I never have enough Robin. Not even with all five of them getting into trouble and squabbling and just being Robins together, would I have enough Robin. But I think if I had to pick one Dick!Robin to keep, one out of every iteration of Batman and of all the Dicks who've ever existed, I'd take The Batman's Dickiebird every time. I love TB's Dick Grayson with the power of a thousand burning suns. You know that feeling you get in your chest and throat when something you've read or watched or written just feels right in every way? That's how TB's Dick makes me feel.
He's perfect, as joyous and mischievous as Dick should be, but with an added layer of snark and sarcasm that's more Jason than comics!Dick. As for his Robin side, it's impossible to put into words the sheer perfection of Dick being Robin, because Dick's Robin-ness is eighty percent physical no matter which iteration of him you're watching. He's all about movement and speed; in his case, seeing really is believing.
But that's true of most good animation, isn't it? Showing is so much better than telling. But speaking of telling, I'd better get started on the villains before I forget and go off on another Robin tangent.
No Batman works without his rogues' gallery, and TB's array is pretty thorough. While the characters are different in some of their particulars -- especially origin stories -- the basic integrity, the feel of them is maintained. I adore Ivy and her new origin in particular, and I have to say, I really enjoy TB's Joker, especially in later seasons. It also tickles my funny bone that Will Friedle -- the voice of Terry McGinnis (Batman Beyond) -- does one of The Batman's villains, Gearhead (a character specific to the show). But Ragdoll may just be my favorite -- he's very well done, and I inevitably come away from the episodes he's in with a smile.
There are two notable exclusions: neither Scarecrow nor Two-Face is part of the lineup. Instead of the latter, Clayface's backstory and identity are altered; he takes on the role of Bruce's old friend whose mind and body are warped into something beyond his control. It's different, I'll grant you, but here again, the new is incorporated seamlessly with the old, and all in all, the flavor of Gotham's villains is captured, and not watered down.
As for Bruce himself, well, before you freak out and go OMG, THAT'S NOT BRUCE WAYNE, remember. Before '86, Bruce wasn't always or even often an angst-ridden, closed up, tight-lipped emotional cripple. Take The Batman's Bruce for what he (and the rest of show) is: a composite. And please, if you do decide to take a chance on The Batman, don't attempt to judge it by BTAS. It's like comparing apples and oranges.
Any interested parties, I'm going to suggest you do what I did and start with season four, episode one. If you like season four, go for season five, then three, and then if you still want more, give the first two seasons a shot. They're not as good as the other three, but if you're as addicted as I was by then, you won't care.
As a jumping off place, I'm listing a few of my favorite episodes from season four. If anyone gets beyond that and wants to pick my brain about the rest of the show, PM me.
Season 04, Episode 01, A Matter of Family: Best episode of the show, period. Of course, I would think so because I am all about Robins, and this is Dick's introductory ep. Fun fact for my fellow BTAS fans: Kevin Conroy voices John Grayson, and Mark Hamill voices Tony Zucco. Just. Aigh. So perfect. I have to say, this ep really made me *feel* John and Mary's deaths, more so than any other Dick origin story. Maybe it's because The Batman shows us who they are rather than just telling us they died, makes them feel like real people instead of shadows; a lot of that is on Kevin. Because. It's so stupid, but the first time I watched it, all I could think was Batman is Dick's dad. Eeeeeeeeee. *facepalm* But you try listening to Kevin Conroy's voice telling wee!Dick that instead of a robin, he can be a flying squirrel without shrieking with glee. It's kind of impossible.
Episode 02, Team Penguin: Batgirl meets Robin. Babs is feeling kind of betrayed that Bruce went and got himself a new partner without telling her. She says, "It's because I changed the radio presets on the Batmobile, isn't it?" *dies* Okay, this? Is the kind of relationship Babs and Dick should always have. This ep involves them learning to work together, as well as learning to take orders and not go off half-cocked. Pay attention to the Bats' expressions in this ep: they make it.
Episode 05, The Breakout: The official introduction of Black Mask into an animated continuity, and he's just as much of a son of a bitch here as he is anywhere else. More Batgirl and Robin teamwork, which is why I love this particular ep so freaking much. There are a few fun bits of Bruce scattered throughout, but this is mostly the kids kicking butt. Which is never not awesome.
Episode 07, Artifacts: This runs a close second to A Matter of Family for my favorite ep. It's a future story in two ways: it jumps back and forth between Gotham a thousand years into the future, and the closer future of The Batman's main characters. The story begins with the archaeological recovery of the cave: archaeologists and cops are looking for a solution to an emergency they think ancient Gotham's Batman may have had an answer for. And, well, he does, which is the other part of the story. Suffice to say, nowhere else in the series is the melding of separate Bat canons so obvious as it is in this episode. I'm almost willing to forgive Miller his ASBAR atrocities if only because I love seeing bits of his TDK Returns here. And the Babs and Dick snark is strong with this one, a major plus. Also, Oracle Babs and Nightwing Dick. Nngh. Just. Yes. *happy place*
Because I am not, as I've already stated, rational on the subject of Jay, and I also take item #3 on this icon seriously, a glowing, five star rec is the one thing you won't find here. You will find a lot of bad language interspersed with a metric ton of pissed off, which won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me.
I won't say I didn't enjoy UtRH, because in a warped, masochistic way, I did. The opening scene -- the infamous crowbar/TNT special -- just about ripped my guts out. Literally: I threw up, the impact was that visceral, and that personal.
I won't say it'll be that way for you if you choose to watch UtRH; in fact, unless you read A Death in the Family when it came out, and are as fixated on Jason as I am, I doubt it will be. For me, it was like being regressed back to my almost thirteen year old self, sitting on my bed in my old room in my parents' house, watching Jason die for the first time. Which means someone did something horribly right. (Except for putting Jay in comics!Tim's old costume. Someone's getting their throat cut for that, heh.)
I say horribly right because I can't say I enjoyed watching Joker beat my Robin to death in full, animated glory, although after five viewings, I can now get through it without hitting pause so I can shake and cry. I hated it, and I hated Jim Starlin all over again, and I hated Bruce Timm for saying yes to Winick, and I really hated Winick for twisting the knife. But I acknowledge the excellence of the animation and its ability to draw the kind of reaction it did from me, even as I hate the entire experience.
Unfortunately, my reaction to the rest of the movie was just as dichotomous, and can be more easily defined by what I disliked than what I liked. When you get right down to it, the Under the Hood comic pissed me off as much as it made me purr. The movie clings tight to most of what I disliked in UtH, so it's not surprising those same things that bothered me about the comic skewed my perceptions of the movie. Different media, same fuck ups.
Well, same fuck ups minus several good points and plus a few bad points such as Jensen Ackles, who is high on my list of worst things that have happened to Jason outside the crowbar. And wow, there are so very many facets of the Ackles angle for me to dislike.
I dislike that Andrea Romano cast Ackles in the first place, which I can't help but feel was a marketing ploy. I dislike that Jason Todd is going to be linked in the public mind with Jensen Ackles' voice and the SPN character he plays until the next retcon.
I dislike that once Ackles was locked in as a voice talent, Bruce Timm catered further to a possibly interested SPN fanbase via allowing the inclusion of a) Jason's new eye color (black haired, blue eyed boys, fuck you, Timm), b) dialogue that sounds like Batman pathos at its worst, or just a typical SPN ep, and c) the motherfucking car/batwing chase, with that motherfucking muscle car adding insult to injury. The comic's first chase scene across Gotham's rooftops? Chopped up, moved around and spliced with a different scene, when they could have kept the integrity of both scenes without taking away from the show, kept the true impact of Jason shoving the reality of himself in Bruce's face, a large part of which was him taking off his gloves, cutting himself on Bruce's batarang and offering Bruce DNA and fingerprints.
But then, they excised so many parts of the original story that really worked, that distilled the essence of Jay and Bruce, who they are individually and together.
Parts like the drug warehouse, Bruce saving those dealers while Jay narrates Bruce's attempt to disarm the bomb, all of it topped perfectly off by Jay's "I just love watching you work."
Or like the fight with Hyena, Vertigo and Cpt. Nazi instead of a crew of anonymous assassins -- and for its own sake, the Deathstroke/Mask interaction ("Hyena kinda looks like a girl from the back." "I was just thinking the same thing.") The conversation after Jason kills Nazi is also important, and the movie pretty much missed all of it.
"Who's more predictable? Me or you?"
There's also Blüdhaven and Dick's possible death. Maybe it's because I know the history, all the ugly little details of post-Crisis Bruce and Dick and Jason, but Blüdhaven's destruction was one of those hard hitting canon moments.
I don't know. It felt like everything that made UtH important and unique went away -- Talia and Onyx included -- while everything that didn't was emphasized. It felt like UtRH became more about the action than the characters.
Have a quote from UtH, from Red Hood during his initial skirmish with Batman: "That's right. On the rooftop, like a proper battle."
The movie waters that aspect of the Bats down, and does away with the line. Hell, it does away with all the really great lines. I mean, I'll give Winick that for free: he gives awesome Jay snark.
"Oh god."
"No. Wanna guess again?"
Which the movie almost totally kills off, along with all the good dialogue. Remember that fantastic convo between Joker and Jay when Jay's waiting for Bruce to get over to the East End? I loved that so much, especially,
"You're not nearly as crazy as you'd like us all to believe, or even as crazy as you'd like to believe. It just makes it easier to justify every sick, monstrous thing you've ever done when you play the part of the mad clown. You're crazy, bubba, but you ain't that crazy. Well, look at that. I wiped a smile off Joker's face. Been waiting a looooong time for that."
And then they gave Jay's "Oh my goodness gracious, I've been bamboozled!" line to Joker! They just kept chipping away piece after piece of Jay until the dialogue ate him and I couldn't find him anywhere. Too much of him was, again, watered down. Too many important events were left out.
It's important that Jason beat the crap out of the Joker without explaining himself, "Because it was too much fun not to."
It's important that Jason clawed himself out of his grave, that Talia put him on the path he was on, that he spent months in the company of the al Ghuls as a patient, and many more months after the Pit with Talia's aid and monetary backing.
As for the implication that as an impoverished street kid stealing to keep himself alive Jason was some kind of horrible danger in the making that Bruce preempted by taking him under his wing? Jesus. Very little pisses me off more than the "bad seed" stereotype. Way to be a bunch of ignorant, prejudiced assholes, DC.
And still, the hits keep coming, with Dick's inclusion as the next casualty. The importance of Nightwing as Red Hood's foil is rendered incomprehensible by the modified storyline. In the movie, there's no reason for Dick's presence. He's just along for the ride.
"Nothing we haven't seen before. Or done before."
"You got that right."
The whole point of the above conversation is that Batman and Nightwing are looking at acrobatics and fighting styles they recognize because they are theirs. They're looking at someone both of them left a mark on, style-wise. But change Nightwing's line from "You got that right" to "If you say so" and you get Dick saying something out of character in addition to a subtle but important contextual shift.
Dick was flying without a net while Jason was being potty trained. In the air and acrobatics-wise in general, there is nothing Jason can do that Dick can't do better: this is a known fact in the DCU. It's freaking important to know, and the movie could have hinted at it, but the writers and editors chose not to. There are so many little moments like that, little changes that don't seem important until you pull back and look at the account balance, and then you start scratching your head and going "Waaaaaait a minute, this doesn't add up."
I spent a lot of UtRH doing that. Sometimes it was the Joker pinging my spider senses. DiMaggio's performance was all over the place. You could hear how he was trying to do Hamill and failing, which soured a lot of his scenes for me. The writers also drew from The Killing Joke for their backstory, and that sat wrong with me in a lot of ways. I've never been sure whether or not I bought into TKJ in the first place, and it didn't really work for UtRH's Joker. Then again, only someone who lives in-universe would have caught the TKJ reference, so maybe I'm just hyperanalyzing. Otoh, what is being a fan for if not hyperanalyzing.
In any case, there were other missteps as well, although as with anything, whether the notes jar you or not is subjective. As I indicated previously, one of my jarring notes was Dick, only in his case, it wasn't the voice actor I was having trouble with. Oh Dickiebird, I adore you, but there was just no point to you in this movie. All of the exchanges in the comic that gave meaning to Dick's presence were dropped for the movie, which as I said, holds true with other parts of the storyline as well.
And let's not forget those brand new, special moments of WTFery:
1) Ra's al Ghul hiring... Joker. Ra's al Guhl. Hiring. Joker. Uh... hello? Immeasurably powerful, mentally superior immortal in charge of a globally based assassins guild can't come up with a better plan than hiring an uncontrollable, unpredictable psycho? Righto.
2) Black Mask. Hiring Joker. Whoa. Suddenly, two of the Batverse's most intelligent villains just got waaaaaaay stupid.
3) After five years, a dead body is supposed to be anything other than skeletal? Really?
Wow. Just wow.
Was it truly impossible for the story to have been better handled? Like, I dunno, wild guess here -- they could've just stuck with the source material? Yes, it would have been impossible to fully recreate UtH on screen, but they could have at least cut out the ridiculous car chase scene and put the real pieces back where they were supposed to go.
They could have done better by Jason in what is sure to be the definitive work cementing who and what he is and was into the minds of the TV and movie-viewing public.
Animation and live action, sadly, have greater impact and appeal than books, manga and comics, and how many people who watch UtRH are going to be interested enough to dig around in comics canon? How many will care that there's more to Jason Todd than UtRH or UtH? It already pisses me off that so many comics readers are willing to let UtH be their defining Jay moment; how much worse is the character assassination going to get now that a version of post-Crisis Jason is readily available on screen, and with Dean fucking Winchester's voice and inflections no less.
So yeah, Ackles' voice pretty much killed my enjoyment. He sounded like he was doing Dean, period, and although I've gotten enough of a kick out of SPN to watch most of it, Dean Winchester isn't even close to what I imagined for Jay. The character I've been hearing in my head for years wasn't present for most of UtRH. There was only Ackles' overblown style, Dean Winchester's voice, and beautiful animation that could have been more than that with someone else in the driver's seat.
Only once did Ackles make me believe I was listening to Jay. The line before he fires on Black Mask's headquarters, "Wow. He can move when he really wants to" -- I heard echoes of Jay. And the kids who did Jay's younger selves were perfect enough to hurt, which made listening to Ackles all the more painful.
Because you know, UtRH really was well done for an animated feature, and far better than any live action comics-based movie could hope to be; the animation itself blew me away. The score was awesome, and enhanced the action it backdropped. Most importantly, the guy voicing Bruce did a bang-up job, and I say that as someone whose One True Batman is Kevin Conroy.
Under the Red Hood succeeded in many ways. I'm just having a hard time dealing with the fallout from those ways it didn't.
I hate that people are going to accept this version of Jason without question.
I hate that just yesterday, I saw a teaser for a fic crossing UtRH over with SPN, making Dean the Voice in Jason's Head. Fuck. Fuck. Shit like that makes me want to scream and punch things. Makes me incoherent and furious enough to put my hand through a fucking wall.
Because. Jason Todd.
Is not Dean Winchester.
Jason Todd would eat Dean Winchester for breakfast. Jason Todd would crouch ten stories up on a ledge hardly big enough to hold a pigeon, laugh his ass off at Dean Winchester running around below and then have him for breakfast.
Jason is many things. He's lived three different lives as three different people.
He's had canonically black hair as well as strawberry blond hair, and by the way, Morrison, sod off.
He's had two sets of parents die on him -- both times badly, a birth mother who gave him away then betrayed him to the Joker when he went looking for her, and a father figure who is both the best and worst thing to ever happen to him.
He has an idolized, adopted brother who in one life accepted him wholeheartedly, and in another rejected him.
He died brutally, sentenced by the jerk writing him and a bunch of fans who thought killing a fifteen year old boy by telephone vote was a cool idea, and he was brought back by a Crisis as ludicrous as the one that split his life in two.
He clawed his way out of his own coffin, was in a coma for a year, survived brain-damaged on the streets for another year, survived Ra's and Talia al Ghul, a Lazarus pit, and the League of Assassins.
He's an acrobat. A street rat. A loving, generous child. A boy filled with rage enough to match and surpass Bruce Wayne's self-righteous fury.
And no matter which incarnation you catch him in, he's always terrifyingly, beautifully fearless.
He's been mangled and mistreated by so many comics writers it's not even funny. I could go on for twenty pages on the subject of Jim Starlin's Robin Issues, A Good Soldier: The Curse of the Case by Frank Miller, Where Winick Went Wrong, and Why Jones Ought To Be Eaten By A Giant Mutated Arachnid From Outer Space, but I'm not writing a treatise on how DC comics has used and abused Jason Todd.
I'm not even condemning what various writers have done to further the insulting, obsolete "bad seed" stereotype they've so often used to explain away Jason's motivations and OOC behavior.
...Okay, yeah. I am. But I'm going to leave it there because there is nothing bad enough I can say about that stereotype and DC's use of it, and also, I'm in danger of going OT and losing my thread.
Which is... what? What am I trying to say here?
That I wish this movie had never been made?
That I wish DC had never killed Jason in the first place?
That I wish Jensen Ackles had more than one voice in his repertoire?
That I wish DC would stop kicking me in the gut every time I manage to get back up on my comics feet?
All of that and more, I suppose.
But mostly, I wish for justice. After a quarter of a century, Jason has yet to receive it.
Under the Red Hood is quite possibly the only shot Jay has at exposure to a wider-than-comics audience, and it sucks that DC apparently believes the show does him justice. It sucks that the movie reduces Red Hood to little more than the animated shade of Dean Winchester. It especially sucks that this Jason is going to be Jason to every non-comics fan who watches UtRH.
But I guess someone wouldn't really understand that unless they'd read the comics. Would they.
...
Wow, that was a lot of spleen vented. I think I actually feel better. Go me.
And since I'm feeling so much better, I might as well move on to something I've enjoyed recently. *blinkblink* Yeah, I do enjoy things once in a while when they don't, you know, involve Robins dying. And stuff.
Lucky for me, then, that there is animation involving awesome live Robins, smartass Batgirls, and a Batman who makes me want to pat him on the head instead of putting the boot in, as post-Crisis Bruce so often does.
It's called The Batman, which has to be one of the most disliked (by adult fans) animated series ever, and because I am a BTAS fan, and BTAS is about as good as Batman gets, I totally get why. To most hardcore BTAS fans (of which I am one), The Batman probably looks like sacrilege. At least, that's what it looked like to me in terms of reviews and character art, so for the longest time, I avoided it.
But eventually I started going through Bat 'toon withdrawal. I wanted some new 'toons, and I wanted some Bats, and I was thinking about rewatching Return of the Joker, and then I was like... no. I am not going to hurt my brain again that way. I will find new and interesting ways to hurt my brain. So I bought a used copy of The Batman season four.
You read that right, I started with season four, not one, and no, that wasn't an arbitrary decision. I picked season four because that's when Robin came into The Batman's picture, and frankly, it was the best decision I could have made. And now I'm in love.
I'm putting qualifiers all over this rec, if you can call it a rec. The Batman isn't ever going to be everyone's cuppa, nor will it appeal to all Batman fans, not just for what it isn't, but also for what it is.
See, The Batman is an amalgam of nearly every Batman comicverse or show that's gone before -- including the cheesy '60s TV show, the Millerverse, the Golden Age, the Nolanverse, the Burtonverse, BTAS, and so on and so forth -- and trying to pigeonhole it will just give you a headache. I'll put it this way: if crossovers aren't your thing, if you're all about the purity of continuity, The Batman probably isn't for you. Heh, DC comics probably aren't your thing either, given that comics continuity is about as straightforward as a corkscrew.
But if you're like me and 1) you appreciate if not like/love all iterations of Bats, and 2) your favorite fanworks are the ones that take bits and pieces from various canons and make something new out of them, you might want to give this show a shot. Because that's exactly what The Batman is: all Batman canons incorporated and brought up to date. And okay, that's what makes it so freaking awesome for me. I want Babs as a smirky, gymnastic, smartass as well as just plain smart Batgirl. I want Dick sitting on Wayne Manor's stairs playing handheld video games, and I want Nightwing to be his online game character, and I want him defeating nanobot Joker because games are his thing and he's good with computers. I want him and Babs with stars in their eyes because Lucius made them jetpacks equipped with rocket launchers. I want Bruce riding herd on the pair of them like a much older brother keeping an eye on his squabbling siblings, with Alfred background mothering the lot of them.
The Batman gives me what I want, what attracts me to the Batfamily -- a family of people not joined by blood, but by choice and desire and drive and need -- without drowning me in angst. Bruce, Babs, Dick and Alfred love each other and they show it in their snarky, backhanded, sarcastic way. And I love that.
I also love the lack of sexual overtones in the show. When I say the relationships between Bruce and Babs and Dick are sibling-type, I mean that, exactly. It's part of what makes the show so enjoyable for an asexual lover of gen who never really grew up; no lie, The Batman is kind of like getting a little bit of my childhood back, and sometimes? I desperately need that. I will never read anything but gen fanfic for the show -- that is if I could find any worth reading. I have yet to find any, although I admit, I haven't really been looking. I'm too enamored of the show and the fastest way I know to kill off the glow of having a new show is to go looking for a fandom.
Never fails.
Hypothetical The Batman fandom aside, though, it would take a lot to kill my love for this show. It probably won't come as any surprise to you guys that the reason for my enduring adoration is Robin.
I never have enough Robin. Not even with all five of them getting into trouble and squabbling and just being Robins together, would I have enough Robin. But I think if I had to pick one Dick!Robin to keep, one out of every iteration of Batman and of all the Dicks who've ever existed, I'd take The Batman's Dickiebird every time. I love TB's Dick Grayson with the power of a thousand burning suns. You know that feeling you get in your chest and throat when something you've read or watched or written just feels right in every way? That's how TB's Dick makes me feel.
He's perfect, as joyous and mischievous as Dick should be, but with an added layer of snark and sarcasm that's more Jason than comics!Dick. As for his Robin side, it's impossible to put into words the sheer perfection of Dick being Robin, because Dick's Robin-ness is eighty percent physical no matter which iteration of him you're watching. He's all about movement and speed; in his case, seeing really is believing.
But that's true of most good animation, isn't it? Showing is so much better than telling. But speaking of telling, I'd better get started on the villains before I forget and go off on another Robin tangent.
No Batman works without his rogues' gallery, and TB's array is pretty thorough. While the characters are different in some of their particulars -- especially origin stories -- the basic integrity, the feel of them is maintained. I adore Ivy and her new origin in particular, and I have to say, I really enjoy TB's Joker, especially in later seasons. It also tickles my funny bone that Will Friedle -- the voice of Terry McGinnis (Batman Beyond) -- does one of The Batman's villains, Gearhead (a character specific to the show). But Ragdoll may just be my favorite -- he's very well done, and I inevitably come away from the episodes he's in with a smile.
There are two notable exclusions: neither Scarecrow nor Two-Face is part of the lineup. Instead of the latter, Clayface's backstory and identity are altered; he takes on the role of Bruce's old friend whose mind and body are warped into something beyond his control. It's different, I'll grant you, but here again, the new is incorporated seamlessly with the old, and all in all, the flavor of Gotham's villains is captured, and not watered down.
As for Bruce himself, well, before you freak out and go OMG, THAT'S NOT BRUCE WAYNE, remember. Before '86, Bruce wasn't always or even often an angst-ridden, closed up, tight-lipped emotional cripple. Take The Batman's Bruce for what he (and the rest of show) is: a composite. And please, if you do decide to take a chance on The Batman, don't attempt to judge it by BTAS. It's like comparing apples and oranges.
Any interested parties, I'm going to suggest you do what I did and start with season four, episode one. If you like season four, go for season five, then three, and then if you still want more, give the first two seasons a shot. They're not as good as the other three, but if you're as addicted as I was by then, you won't care.
As a jumping off place, I'm listing a few of my favorite episodes from season four. If anyone gets beyond that and wants to pick my brain about the rest of the show, PM me.
Season 04, Episode 01, A Matter of Family: Best episode of the show, period. Of course, I would think so because I am all about Robins, and this is Dick's introductory ep. Fun fact for my fellow BTAS fans: Kevin Conroy voices John Grayson, and Mark Hamill voices Tony Zucco. Just. Aigh. So perfect. I have to say, this ep really made me *feel* John and Mary's deaths, more so than any other Dick origin story. Maybe it's because The Batman shows us who they are rather than just telling us they died, makes them feel like real people instead of shadows; a lot of that is on Kevin. Because. It's so stupid, but the first time I watched it, all I could think was Batman is Dick's dad. Eeeeeeeeee. *facepalm* But you try listening to Kevin Conroy's voice telling wee!Dick that instead of a robin, he can be a flying squirrel without shrieking with glee. It's kind of impossible.
Episode 02, Team Penguin: Batgirl meets Robin. Babs is feeling kind of betrayed that Bruce went and got himself a new partner without telling her. She says, "It's because I changed the radio presets on the Batmobile, isn't it?" *dies* Okay, this? Is the kind of relationship Babs and Dick should always have. This ep involves them learning to work together, as well as learning to take orders and not go off half-cocked. Pay attention to the Bats' expressions in this ep: they make it.
Episode 05, The Breakout: The official introduction of Black Mask into an animated continuity, and he's just as much of a son of a bitch here as he is anywhere else. More Batgirl and Robin teamwork, which is why I love this particular ep so freaking much. There are a few fun bits of Bruce scattered throughout, but this is mostly the kids kicking butt. Which is never not awesome.
Episode 07, Artifacts: This runs a close second to A Matter of Family for my favorite ep. It's a future story in two ways: it jumps back and forth between Gotham a thousand years into the future, and the closer future of The Batman's main characters. The story begins with the archaeological recovery of the cave: archaeologists and cops are looking for a solution to an emergency they think ancient Gotham's Batman may have had an answer for. And, well, he does, which is the other part of the story. Suffice to say, nowhere else in the series is the melding of separate Bat canons so obvious as it is in this episode. I'm almost willing to forgive Miller his ASBAR atrocities if only because I love seeing bits of his TDK Returns here. And the Babs and Dick snark is strong with this one, a major plus. Also, Oracle Babs and Nightwing Dick. Nngh. Just. Yes. *happy place*
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For months before UtRH came out I would read these posts from DC people who are also into SPN.
I called this, especially with the resurrection thing.
...the best voice/character match ever made -- this will be just like doing Dean for Jensen...
Like watching comics!Dean! How cool is that?
The positive reviews I see now aren't much different. There's a damn good reason you're the only person I currently trust enough to read Jay fic by.
So thank you for, you know, existing. I'm really glad my minor implosion hit a chord.
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Also, I wish I could borrow some of Jay's C4 and toss it in the general direction of SPN. <3
How do I suck at returning comments on time, let me count the ways...
Maybe I'm more invested in canon than I ought to be, but the source material -- and having the source material alive inside my head, enjoying the characters I love being themselves, being happy about comics heroes going out and sarcastically kicking butt and making the universe a better, snarkier place -- is what being a fan is all about to me; it's what I'm passionate about. And I feel like fandom just... isn't about those things, really.
So when the source material itself is driving me insane, as many comics seem to do these days, I'm not really fit for fannish company. There are only a couple of people I feel comfortable interacting with, and well, you're one of them. I find myself smiling when I see a post from you, because your posts are always interesting and brain-stimulating -- and that's probably the highest compliment in my repertoire. Nothing makes me happier than something or someone who makes my brain move in new and interesting directions.
I've been told I'm a good listener. If you don't mind, I can PM you my email, and if you feel like getting your frustrations out, or just talking about anything, I'm around. One of my best friends, someone I actually met through fandom who has many of the same frustrations with it that I do, has been instrumental in keeping me from going off the fannish deep end just by being there, being sane, and letting me blow off steam. I'm sure you've got people like her already, but one more can't hurt, right?
Also, I wish I could borrow some of Jay's C4 and toss it in the general direction of SPN. <3
I'm up for it. Jay's definitely up for it. We totally need to do this thing. (How bad is it that the thought of running around blowing things up with Jason Todd gets my endorphins and adrenaline going at the same time? *facepalm*) Or maybe we just need to write more Jay fic. Which reminds me. Dick and Jay fic for you soon. No Morrison!Jay or Daniel!Jay, I promise. ♥