The Batman (June 25, 2021)

[batfan08]

Yes, the exo-terrorist has been pitched a million times. But its just not that interesting, it's just not Poison Ivy. She's no different than Dr. Poison in Wonder Woman. You really can't separate the "wild plants" from Poison Ivy. Having them as a base for poisons... well, fine that's her thing anyway so it adds nothing.

I can't believe so many of you are hung up on Poison Ivy. Ah, adolescence. You guys know its because she's sexy that she had such an impact on you, right? Not her "character".

Ironically enough, I think the most ridiculous thing that would require the greatest amount of suspension of disbelief with her character would be that outfit, to counter your point about it being all about sex appeal.

 

[Wor-Gar]

I guess for me it becomes less a matter of “making them fit into the real world” and more a matter of “making the real world fit them.” The Long Halloween is quintessential Batman. It’s a murder mystery, a Godfather pastiche, and a Batman story all rolled into one…and it’s got Scarecrow and Mad Hatter riding a horse drawn carriage and wreaking havoc on Halloween, Joker flying away from the Holiday from Hell he created on Christmas in a Biplane, and Solomon Grundy lurking in the sewers beneath Gotham.

We have the technology now that you can make all that **** a reality and, with the right perspective, make it horrifying. That’s what Gotham Central did so wonderfully. It didn’t ask you “why is there a Clay man who can absorb me until I suffocate inside him in front of me?” It threw you into that situation and said “okay. I’m a regular beat Cop. How the **** am I going to deal with having a Clay man who can absorb me until I suffocate inside him in front of me?”

I think that’s where suspension of disbelief has almost become a hindrance. Because I don’t think you need Zack Snyder to do some edge lord deconstruction in order to make these characters work, nor do I think you have to “ground” everything fantastical about them. I just think you need to have the tenacity to commit to all of it as sort of a thought experiment and say “it doesn’t matter how we got here. It doesn’t matter why this thing exists; what matters is that it does…and that its existence will horrify you.”

All of your examples of "it" working are coming from comics and cartoons.

 

[batfan08]

All of your examples of "it" working are coming from comics and cartoons.

And that’s my point. How would we know it doesn’t work if no one’s ever had the balls to try it? You look at something like that legendary piece of animation that is Clayface’s identity crisis at the end of Feat of Clay Part 2 and you tell me that you couldn’t take that core idea and turn it into an absolutely nightmarish piece of psychological and body horror that would make people’s stomachs churn. Batman, face to face with the person who’s eluded him all this time, only to find that, not only is it not a person at all, but it’s Bruce Wayne. He’s shocked and confused and he doesn’t understand and it just becomes further compounded when his face starts literally melting and stuttering into other people. One of the moments I most remember from The Dark Knight Trilogy is the nightmare scene where Batman sprayed Crane with his own fear toxin. It was beautiful and gothic and creepy as hell and it ******* worked.

 

[Wor-Gar]

It's not to say it is impossible... but what you think might "work" onscreen, may not work for many others.

For me, I wasn't moved like you about "legendary piece of animation that is Clayface’s identity crisis at the end of Feat of Clay Part 2".

I find Sandman in SpiderMan ridiculous.

There's a reason certain characters continue to be used over and over in live-action Batman movies: suspension of disbelief. It is a much different thing in animation or comic books.

 

[batfan08]

It's not to say it is impossible... but what you think might "work" onscreen, may not work for many others.

For me, I wasn't moved like you about "legendary piece of animation that is Clayface’s identity crisis at the end of Feat of Clay Part 2".

I find Sandman in SpiderMan ridiculous.

There's a reason certain characters continue to be used over and over in live-action Batman movies: suspension of disbelief. It is a much different thing in animation or comic books.

I wasn’t so much referring to the Pathos in the scene, affecting as it may have been, so much as the technical achievement in animation, but I feel the point stands. Lest we forget Reeves was able to make a tribe of sentient, talking apes believable. If anything, I count the fact that they’ve rehashed the same rogues over and over again as testament to the lack of originality in Hollywood and executive meddling over anything else. Just like Venom in Spider-Man 3.

“Hey, Matt. Look, we really loved your Freeze pitch, man. Yeah, I mean, well…I loved it, but I spoke to Gary and, yeah, I know. You know how Gary is. He’s just…not 100% sold. I don’t know. I mean, we’re sort of the guardians of this IP, you know? And it’s our job to make sure we’re doing the absolute best thing for it and we just feel like the audiences might connect with someone more familiar, you know? Somebody like, oh, I don’t know…The Joker? You haven’t done anything with him, yet, right? And you know, you did set him up in your last movie, so, the ground work’s already there!

Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna be honest: Freeze is cool. Ha. You know what I mean, but if we’re gonna do a character like that, I mean, you need a name, you need VFX to do it right, and that’s…that’s a money character. Plus, with Joker? I mean, if we play up that killer clown angle. You know we have that Gacy project going at New Line? And the It Prequel for HBO? I just feel like marketing could have a field day with that. Especially if you’re still angling for an October release window. With Halloween, you know, man, it’s just like…all the stars are aligning for us.

Anyway, great talk, Matt. We love you. We’re here if you need anything, but right now? I need the Shiatsu Becky scheduled for me at 2:30. The guy’s supposed to be really good. I guess he picked up some techniques from the Dalai Lama and I don’t know. I’ve just been carrying a lot of tension lately. So, just, uh, call Becky and maybe we could set up a call for next week? Gary should be back from Venice by then.”

 

[lordnastrond]

I never really got the impression that Reeves was emphasizing what was "realistic" in these films - but emphasizing a dark gothic tone seemed to be the priority to me.... thats just my impression.
In contrast, I feel that the Nolan films really emphasised the realistic - Ra's isn't immortal just his legacy is. Scarecrow's fear toxin worked in a very grounded way rather than the mind bending imagery of say the Arkham Games, Joker with the Chelsea smile rather than the acid-bath, the setting of Gotham itself felt like a real city (mostly Chicago-esque) rather than the nightmare-scape of Reeves world.
Yes the Riddler was done somewhat-realistically, but I'm not sure if the realism was what we were meant to focus on over the darkness and gothic nature of the presentation.
Just my two cents.

So - for me - I see no issue doing a character like Freeze, Ivy, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter or the like so long as the Gothic-Horror aspects are emphasized and the result doesn't feel like "magic". People generally have a pretty large suspension of disbelief so long as it fits the tone of the story and is used to enhance the narrative - so long as the nature of the unnatural events going on play on the trope of the unknown/preternatural more than the supernatural/magical.
An example I would give is GET OUT - which uses tropes like hypnotism, mind control and impossible science in a way that never takes you out of the horror element of the setting by treating the tropes seriously and maintaining the tone while using these more unrealistic tools to both utilize gripping imagery and explore realistic anxieties (indeed a lot of the horror of the movie is realism induced horror - isolated with no contact, racist fueled violence, online predatory behavior, rape, slavery, loss of identity etc).

This is a long way of me saying I'd be perfectly happy to see Reeves and Pattinson doing these movies for years to come, not limit themselves to a mere trilogy and feel free to explore some of the more uncanny figures of Batman's rogues gallery.

 

[Wor-Gar]

An example I would give is GET OUT - which uses tropes like hypnotism, mind control and impossible science in a way that never takes you out of the horror element of the setting by treating the tropes seriously and maintaining the tone while using these more unrealistic tools to both utilize gripping imagery and explore realistic anxieties (indeed a lot of the horror of the movie is realism induced horror - isolated with no contact, racist fueled violence, online predatory behavior, rape, slavery, loss of identity etc).

This is a good example, except that hypnotism, mind control and impossible science are all very overused horror tropes -- so it is in keeping within the genre.

And as you point out, "magic" is where the Gothic aspects of Batman begin to bend under the weight of suspension of disbelief. Magical characters that can bring plants to life or have a biology similar to the blob just won't work on-screen (again, what I say won't work is subjective -- others may be perfectly happy with something like Uma's Poison Ivy). And when I say "won't work" it means exclusively to a real-world Batman like Reeves or Nolan. It works fine in Schumacher, likely Burton, and certainly West.

 

[jye4ever]

I reas that as “won’t woke” or “woke work” or “woke woke” lol

 

[Wor-Gar]

Woke...

 

[lordnastrond]

This is a good example, except that hypnotism, mind control and impossible science are all very overused horror tropes -- so it is in keeping within the genre.

And as you point out, "magic" is where the Gothic aspects of Batman begin to bend under the weight of suspension of disbelief. Magical characters that can bring plants to life or have a biology similar to the blob just won't work on-screen (again, what I say won't work is subjective -- others may be perfectly happy with something like Uma's Poison Ivy). And when I say "won't work" it means exclusively to a real-world Batman like Reeves or Nolan. It works fine in Schumacher, likely Burton, and certainly West.

Well you say that - but it depends on the approach and how its executed - so I agree that a green lady telepathically controlling vines like Venom-esque tentacles/extensions of herself I don't think would work.

But what about a Poison Ivy who develops a strain of cordyceps fungi that works on humans?



As the video states some of these fungi flood the brain with powerful hallucinogens and aphrodisiacs to force them to mate with others in order to infect them with the deadly fungus - an even more sinister form of STI caught from what is effectively either a raving dying lunatic who is rotting before their eyes or from an empty eyed zombie whose body is being animated by this sinister fungus....
Some of these fungi infects insects and hijacks their brain and motor functions by first eating through the insects' outer shell and then physically growing through the body of the ant until it enters the brain and takes control - the ant, which at this point is functionally dead, is puppetered by the fungus to find a spot with the right humidity and height in and then forcibly grow through the head and body of its host - permanently killing them and releasing their spores from the highest point to infect as many others as possible.......in fact it will force its unwilling vessel to do this even when the fungus has caused the body to recieve enormous damage, its not uncommon to see ants, cicadas or other insects infected by these type of fungi missing limbs, having gaping holes in their abdominal cavities of even missing entire halves of their body still being forced to move by the fungi controlling their corpse.

Now - this is something that exists in real life and yet is so horrifying that it borders on the uncanny - it also deals with a lot of Ivy's tropes, killer plants, mind control, hallucinations, aphrodisiacs, body horror (SO MUCH BODY HORROR), the triumph of the plant-life over animal life etc.

So if the science of it is grounded - though terrifying and uncanny to the point of feeling preternatural....
all that is needed then is to set the tone and emphasise the horror....

So imagine - the movie opens with a date - at the table is a stunning woman, hair red like fire, a dark stunning green silk dress on, a red smile that doesn't touch cold assessing eyes... we never see her face in full, only these snapshots of a person... across from her is a man of wealth who doesn't particularly care what measures are abandoned so long as it suits the bottom line... despite himself he is nervous for this date... something about this woman was captivating from the start... not like anyone else he has ever met... she wasn't impressed by his wealth or power, she spoke with such passion and steel... he was surprised but delighted when she asked him out to a nice new vegetarian restaurant he thinks it goes well enough, but she leaves before dessert and never even bothers to come up with an excuse, the man leaves dejected but otherwise fine - several days pass and the man isn't well at all, he has been sweating, sick, shaking and now he is hallucinating, horrifying visions that melt the world before his eyes, unanchor his sense of times as seconds stretch into eternity and days wheel by between the torturous effort to force one thought to follow another... more days pass he becomes irrational and... to his confused horror... unbearably aroused - he tries to suppress it... he leaves his expensive apartment building.... he feels suffocated in their and needs to restock on new medical supplies, there are now strange rashes on his torso and he feels like there is something wrong..... he walks past several women on the street, he avoids looking at them as now the sight hurts, his body rattling with need.... he leaves himself and when he returns to consciousness he realises he is in the middle of trying to force himself on a woman, they are pleading and screaming at him - in horror at what he almost did and terrified of whats happened to him he flees and locks himself in his home - he is too afraid to go to the doctor or to work or to leave at all in case the person he assaulted has filed a report with the police - as the days pass and the phone rings with people wondering where he is, why he hasn't been to work in over a week, he becomes more and more paranoid, sees ever more horrifying visions, he tears the phone from the wall as the noise of it screams as it, he closes all curtains and blinds as the daylight burns his red and weeping eyes.... but in time he begins to forget everything else as his body begins rotting before his eyes, parts of his hands, feet and even skin begin to drop off, liquify and slide from the meat of him as these strange things begin to grow through him, the pain and the drugs in his system make him animalistic, driving him insane he claws at his own flesh with the hope of getting it out - reaching blood or even bone - but beneath his skin is more of the thing growing inside him, forming mushrooms, blooming in strange colours and shapes, alien to the body of any animal... eventually his body stops hurting... but he also stops thinking... he just knows he needs to get high, as high up as he can get... he runs... people stop or scream as he runs past them on the streets, others vomit at the sight of him or stare in shock, some even look about expecting film crews as though they have wandered onto a movie set.... he sees none of this, he sees nothing at all and all he does is feel the need to get to the top of the place resonating in his brain... the image of a place once familiar in his mind that now is all thats left of the man whose twisted broken body is being forced to run past the horrified faces of people he once knew but no longer recognized, past the doors of collegues who are now part of a dream he no longer remembers... he climbs and climbs until at last he opens a door and sees nothing but blue sky and feels relief... his shambling body forces him to the ledge and below him looking far, far above to the pinnacle of this tower that once was this man's empire, his life's work are the terror-struck faces of the crowd below arriving in time to start the work day only to face an image that will be part of their waking nightmares to the day they die......
But the man doesn't seen this - or anything anymore - as the long tendrils of the fungus have at last grown through the soft flesh of his weeping eyes crawling upwards and joined by their brothers that even now force themselves through the rotting matter of what was once the dead man's brain, skull, flesh and hair to reach upwards towards the rising sun........
Later on, its dark, the police have been there all day the scene is surrounded by tape and lights, the officers at the scene as far from the.... body... as they can get away with, they avert their gaze as Gordon looks over them, ashamed to be so afraid to do their own jobs, to be judged by Gordon's stare... but far more afraid to go near the thing near the ledge, some glance upwards to a light in the dark clouds above showing a symbol..... out of the shadows steps a dark figure, made darker for the contrast of the harsh lights illuminating the scene - Batman steps past the threshold of terrified detectives across the unseen barrier they hope to protect them from the sight before him now, some visibly relax as they see the Dark Knight venture forth where they would otherwise tread. Batman steps forward and gazes on what may have once been, and by eye-witness accounts apparently once was, a man - now only recognizable by the vague suggestion of limbs, maybe a mandible bone and few other spilled viscera.... now dominated by the tall and proud mushrooms growing from the decaying soup below it some almost glowingly pale and others of posionous colour.....
The shot focuses on Batman's face, its stoic but there is the suggestion of horror, bewilderment, disgust, anger....
We hear Gordon's voice off screen "....what... what is this... what could have done this."
"I don't know...yet".


Something like this, to me, is horrifying and fantastic, yet does so while still anchoring itself in the Gothic and the possible (no matter how improbable), it plays on the unknown rather than the blatantly magical - there is no way to have ivy as a green woman who magically can control plants telepathically in a way that would gel with the tone of the Reeves universe.... but something like this? I can see it.

 

[Wor-Gar]

The Last of... Gotham

I do love cordyceps. And that is a smart tie-in for Ivy. But again, she either becomes a serial killer of sorts (which is too grounded)... or she creates a zombie-like army of fungus men to do her bidding (which goes the other way).

 

[lordnastrond]

I've actually never played that game - do they use that fungus?

 

[Wor-Gar]

I've actually never played that game - do they use that fungus?

Yes, its the entire gag.

I saw a show on cordyceps many, many years ago and thought it was a great thing for a movie. I think the Last of Us creators saw the same show because a few years later the game came out and they said they saw a docu on it.

Anyway, sadly, cordyceps has been played out.

Still, good call. Great idea as an example of "upgrading" Poison Ivy.

 

[lordnastrond]

I was thinking thematically more body horror - the Fly or a American Werewolf In London rather than zombie apocalypse.
Individuals become infected with degenerative condition that is twisting their body and mind and will eventually steal from them their sapience and life while making them a danger to others.
Ivy would target prominent individuals whose cases would develop significantly quicker and would die much faster than the hundreds who would catch the secondary spores, and Batman is not only trying to stop her but cure the innocents who would die as thoughtless collateral of her plot.

 

[Wor-Gar]

As a prequel to The Last of Us...

Maybe there's a tie-in to plants and spores allegorical to our Covid lock-down situation -- something (vine, spores) that spreads so quickly and is toxic.

Again though, it has to be something the story can work with and not just be a wave of disaster that we watch kill people while Batman tries to find a cure.

 

[lordnastrond]

Well - it doesn't have to be the only thing - maybe just something gory and eye catching for the opening and a few grisly deaths.
There are plenty of strange plants and fungi with unusual effects.

As a prequel to The Last of Us...

Maybe! Haha - sadly I don't know enough about the plot to know - all I know is a lot of people relate it to Logan and its supposedly good and has something to do with zombies.
Oh and it has giraffes in it - though my friend may have been having fun at my expense.

 

[batfan08]

I was thinking thematically more body horror - the Fly or a American Werewolf In London rather than zombie apocalypse.
Individuals become infected with degenerative condition that is twisting their body and mind and will eventually steal from them their sapience and life while making them a danger to others.
Ivy would target prominent individuals whose cases would develop significantly quicker and would die much faster than the hundreds who would catch the secondary spores, and Batman is not only trying to stop her but cure the innocents who would die as thoughtless collateral of her plot.

That’s how I feel about Clayface. You can have subtle hints of the hulking, dripping monster, but use Greg Frasier’s cinematography and lighting to its full effect to realize it and focus far more on the body horror/shape shifting element. No giant CGI battles, just atmosphere. Also? I ******* love your take on Ivy.

 

[batfan08]

Well - it doesn't have to be the only thing - maybe just something gory and eye catching for the opening and a few grisly deaths.
There are plenty of strange plants and fungi with unusual effects.


Maybe! Haha - sadly I don't know enough about the plot to know - all I know is a lot of people relate it to Logan and its supposedly good and has something to do with zombies.
Oh and it has giraffes in it - though my friend may have been having fun at my expense.

The Giraffe’s one of the best parts (that’s not a lie, by the way).

 

[lordnastrond]

The Last of... Gotham

I do love cordyceps. And that is a smart tie-in for Ivy. But again, she either becomes a serial killer of sorts (which is too grounded)... or she creates a zombie-like army of fungus men to do her bidding (which goes the other way).

The (not so sad) thing is that in real life there are only so many realistic "types" of villains that we can heighten, exoticize and otherwise render in the uncanny valley without straying into the "too far" lane of comic-book supervillainry.
Serial killers and terrorists are probably two of the worst, if not the very worst, crimes that can be committed... if these are too grounded/limited and beyond them is too fantastic... then there is no scope left to tell a decent story.
Thats why I think we shouldn't make "grounding" the universe such a priority and instead focus on good story telling.

Now with Ivy you absolutely can do her as a combination of terrorist and serial killer using heightened versions of several naturally occuring flowers and plants effects, or you can play on her chemical seduction element from the comics and use it to play up the suggestion of lack of consent, rape, mind control etc. and by mixing these qualities you will have a somewhat realistic villain who is nonetheless heightened beyond the mundane.

Look at Riddler, in real life he would be one of the worst and one of the most unique criminal minds who ever lived, terrorists and serial killers stick to a regime, a formula, a certain ritual - there is little to no cross-over between them with the possible exception of those that blur the lines a little like the unabomber. And even so no singular criminal has ever done something like the wholesale flood/devastation of Gotham like Riddler did in real life.

So the trick I think is not to look for some other category between supervillainry and real-life criminality that somehow is distinct from both - it doesn't exist - but instead to use tropes and tools from both to make the basis of a solid, challenging character and story.

Just my thoughts.

 

[Wor-Gar]

Good thoughts. But I still feel like the "serial killer" aspect was just done with Riddler, so it would be ideal to find another type of criminal for Batman to hunt, at least right now.

Thief, smuggler, terrorist, anarchist, criminal kingpin... lots of room.