The Batman: Is It Any Good?

I remember when news came out of yet another Batman reboot. (Or perhaps it's supposed to be part of the latest universe, but with a different actor for Batman? Can't tell.) And when I heard it was going to be Robert Pattison, my first reaction was -- ugh. Like many other fans, I asked, "Is Batman going to sparkle?"

But then when I heard it was actually good, I decided to give it a try. So, it was another trip to the local IMAX.

And yes -- it was on the most part good. It was like they took all the weaknesses of Pattison and turned them into strengths, and it actually worked. Instead of the playboy Bruce Wayne who's happy-go-lucky Bruce in the day and brooding Batman at night, we get the brooding Bruce and brooding Batman, which makes for a darker movie.

The main villain -- very scary in a different way, because it feels -- real. In the opening scene, he is looking through binoculars at a family getting ready for Halloween. And he's breathing hard. Cut to perhaps an hour later, the dad is alone in his study walking around and we see someone in the shadows all in black. At first I thought it might be Batman, but it's clearly an ad-hoc costume, and we see someone's eyes looking around creepily. And then he attacks -- so nope, not Batman.

Another development involves a very scary concept that has happened before and is likely to happen again in real life to some degree. Some good chills at that moment.

As the show continues, Batman encounters the Penguin, the Riddler, and other villains. And what is totally awesome -- they are not shown as campy caricatures, but rather as real down-to-earth gangsters. Even Batman is shown not to be invincible -- well, kinda.

I think there may be more violence in this movie compared to other incarnations. I hear that they started with a Rated R movie and took out scenes until it got down to PG-13. The one "PG-13" F-bomb was believable and somewhat organic. What remains seems to make for a fun action-filled movie.

Though, there are a couple of scenes that are slow and could have easily been edited for time.

My main complaint is -- well -- the music. It starts out pretty fun. There's an "Ave Maria" unaltered at the beginning -- a nice choice for the scene. And then throughout the movie there were a couple of variations -- sometimes major, and sometimes minor. And then -- it kept coming -- and again -- and again. It started becoming, "Okay, we get the idea."

The main Batman theme is cool at first, but then becomes very repetitive. We can do thirds in the bass! Yay! And then I started to notice that most of the chords were root-position chords and so many parallel fifths. I was disappointed to learn it was the work of Michael Giacchino, one of my faves.

In short, the music is probably perfect for the desired mood, but whatever you do -- don't analyze the music.

Danny Elfman's music remains my favorite Batman soundtrack.

But yeah -- I know most of you aren't going to analyze the music (though I do have a lot of musical friends). Go catch The Batman. Have fun. Enjoy a "realistic" Batman movie.

Double Feature: Free Guy and The Eternals

Today, I thought I'd do a double-feature: two small reviews. Often I'll watch a movie without reporting in, but I wanted to say a few things about these movies.

Man in the High Castle: TV

I can't figure out if I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick stories or whether I'm fan of movies based on his stories. I've only read a couple of his books, but seen several related movies and TV shows.

So, Man in the High Castle was required watching for me.

In Juliana Crain's world, the Nazis and the Japs win World War II. It's now in the early 1960s, and Juliana comes across mysterious silent films depicting the US winning the war. Viewers will recognize that it's actual footage from "our" universe. These films are collected by the Man in the High Castle -- whoever that is.

In this alternative war, the Nazis control everything to the east of the Rockies, and the Japs have everything to the west. The narrow band of land surrounding the Rockies is the Neutral Zone, which by treaty is not governed by Nazis nor Japs.

Hitler, himself, is still in charge in Berlin, but rumors are that he's nearing the end of his life, and most uprising contenders seem to desire war with Japan and its states. So, the upper leadership in Berlin is jockeying for position, the Nazi leadership in the Nazi States are also trying to stab each other in the back, and the Japanese leadership is trying to find a way to avoid war with the Nazis.

And whatever happens, the conquered Americans lose.

Well -- except for the resistance, who Juliana meets along the way.

Plus -- how are these videos appearing from some other universe?

Overall I thought it was executed rather well. The first two seasons were crazy good. The last two seasons were decent, still with good scenes, but less direction, and the season finale episode was terrible -- though everything mostly seems to come to a satisfactory end.

I always love the rebellions-rising-under-authoritarian-societies stories. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever have to live out these scenarios (and sometimes it seems we get very close). So, this series really caught my attention.

It all seems to lead to a wonderful Season 2 finale, which feels like the end of a book.

And then Season 3 adds in some features that don't quite make sense -- trying to explore more of the sci-fi aspect. However, most of the original direction seemed to remain intact. 

Season 4 introduces an entirely new rebel group that we never saw in the first 3 seasons (kind of like what executives did to LOST in season 3). It was fun, but a jolt -- I wish these people had been with us the whole time, and not added as an after-thought.

The penultimate episode was excellent -- and I could almost suggest stopping there. Because the season finale doesn't seem to follow the direction of the rest of the show. It's like someone decided they wanted a specific ending so they could set up a certain person's last words -- which can certainly make one think -- but it wasn't actions I would have expected coming from the characters based on what had been established previously.

And the very last five minutes make no sense at all. Ugh. But it's easy to pretend it didn't happen. It didn't happen -- right? I still enjoyed the series as a whole. Many of the character arcs are wonderful (especially if you ignore the last episode).

One last complaint -- the writers definitely went out of their way to get the Nazi-killing-America shock value thing going. If you watch the trailer above, you can get a sense of it. Of course the Nazis wouldn't have everyone repeat a pledge saying "... and liberty for none." That's only intended to upset the watchers -- kind of clever, but not really.

Another example -- somewhere in there, a prominent Nazi watches a video of the Liberty Bell being melted down and changed into a large metal swastika. He says, "Excellent, excellent" with a big smile. And I'm thinking -- really? Getting excited over yet another swastika?

And yes -- there are swastikas everywhere. Having a party? Better have an ice sculpture of a swastika. And the only music you can play is German. A girl makes a cupcake? It's going to have swastika icing on top. I don't think in real life they would be quite so obsessed with the symbol. It was reminiscent of how the newer Doctor Who episodes like to depict Americans as people who always carry guns. Pew pew!

I also think it unfortunate to further ruin a religious symbol you can see on top of Buddhist temples. (It was interesting to see those symbols in South Korea knowing it wasn't Nazism, but I digress.)

As for accuracy in following the book -- I've only just now started reading the book -- of which I'll report in another month or so. But I can already see some differences. In the book, the Man in the High Castle produces books, not film (at least so far). There also seem to be plenty of characters added in the TV show, and a lot more added detail.

Either way -- I highly recommend this series. It does have a lot of unnecessary cussing (not in the book), but VidAngel can come to the rescue in that regard. It's only 40 episodes -- 10 in each season. Check it out!

The Expanse -- TV Review

Today I introduce to you one of the best TV series I've caught over the past decade -- a sci-fi epic that takes on the universe.

The Expanse is the TV series version of the popular book series (which is up to nine books -- and perhaps finished now?). The TV show spans the first six books in six seasons.

It begins with the stories of James Holden and Detective Miller. 

James is just your everyday XO on the Canterbury. His job is to extract ice from Saturn in order to deliver water to the colony in Ceres (yeah -- it's inside of the asteroid). But everything goes south when a group of fast and mysterious ships attack.

Meanwhile, in Ceres, Detective Miller picks up a job -- find a missing girl -- a seemingly easy task, but he runs into surprising amount of friction.

On top of this, we have a colony on Mars that wants to be independent. We have overpopulation on Earth where only the wealthy can live comfortably. The "Belters" are tired of being pushed around by "Inners" and so they have their own terrorist groups.

And yes -- it's all connected.

And the science is as real as I've seen in any shows. Just in the first episode, the producers go to great lengths to show a Coriolis effect on coffee as it's poured inside the spinning Ceres.

The original trailers attracted me to the show back in 2015. It looked a lot like the newer rendition of Battlestar Galactica, so I had to give it a try.

The first episode was very confusing, as I complained back then. This is because they introduce all of the main places across the solar system, so it's easy to get lost. Just remember: Earth, Mars, Ceres, Saturn, and a few places in between.

I was also disappointed because the trailer (above) led me to believe that Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) was going to be a regular character, but after the first episode it was clear that it was all a big lie -- kind of like Emilio Estevez in Mission: Impossible.

The first few episodes also felt like a space noir flick, like Outlander, but it was starting to get on the slow side for me and I was about to give up. It's definitely on the gritty side -- people living terrible lives, swearing, and so on. But it has Mormons -- so I stayed an extra episode or two just to see how they treated our peeps (kind-of okay, but still got some things wrong). And just as I was to quit, something big happened, introducing a cool horror element. It hooked me in for the rest of the six seasons.

You may have caught my review of the first book, and so far, I'm liking the TV version more than the book. Maybe because it feels more like a script than a literary novel. I'll continue reading through the series and see if the writing gets better. On the most part, the TV version kept most of its energy going to the end, though it seemed to decline slightly.

The first three seasons were released on SyFy and the last episode of the third season was by far my favorite of the whole bunch. I was disappointed when SyFy announced the cancellation -- especially when it had gotten to its strongest point. To make matters worse, SyFy did not have any new shows coming to replace it to catch my attention. (Should I mention that right now there isn't a single show that I'm watching on SyFy? They've certainly allowed themselves to go downhill.)

Jeff Bezos, himself, worked to obtain The Expanse for Amazon Prime. But I have to admit that the later episodes, while good, weren't as strong as during the SyFy era. There was a gigantic increase in F bombs, perhaps slightly more grit, slightly less consistent pacing, and a little more overacting by some of the characters. Yet, it was still the best show on TV.

BTW, for those concerned about the language, this show is available on VidAngel. I used it myself, as these characters aren't really the most organic cussers.

The show comes to a mostly satisfying conclusion at the end of Season 6, but I'll be honest -- I didn't know it was the series closer while I was watching it, and when it was over, I was still wanting more. I mean -- all these threads were being tied off, but many were left open, and yet the good guys were flying off into the sunset ... and I was like -- really? There were only 6 episodes in that last season and the last one felt rushed. I think it could have been stretched out effectively.

Some complain that the show was "cancelled" again, but this time it was planned, as Book 7 starts a couple of decades later with different people. There are rumblings of another series in the future to finish off the last three books, but evidently that story is very far reaching -- sounds expensive to produce. I hope someone can pull it off -- I'd watch it. Who knows? I may finish reading the whole series by then, though.

Anyway, overall it was a good experience. Good plot. Good characters. Believable special effects. Good music. Good science -- real science. A possible future, and none of that Star Trek, Star Wars made-up stuff. And lots of action.

I highly recommend it. All 6 seasons are on Amazon Prime -- give it a try.