Batman, Batman -- How I do Love my Batmans

[maggie2]

Batman was my first true television love. Back when I was seven, I just loved Batman, Robin, and their battle with all those diabolical villains.  When I was older, I realized that Batman was a spoof and I still loved it.  Great that it could work for a literal-minded seven year old.  Great that it could amuse her when she got older.  Adam West and Burt Ward linger in my heart with the warmest affection.

I loved Tim Burton's Batman with Michael Keaton.  Mostly because batman was back and I am and always will be pro-batman girl.  I liked the serious tone, along with the cartoonish tone from the original show.  I'm not sure they worked together very well, though.  I loved that first Batman movie a lot, but more as a really cool failure than as a spectacular success.  The sequels just got worse from there.

I really like the new Batman with Christian Bale.  Oddly, I've only seen the first one once.   It's a bit long and takes itself too seriously.  But I like Dark Knight a lot.  It makes you think a bit.  It's definitely got some of that essential darkness that the TV show didn't have and that Burton couldn't quite blend with the cartoon sensibility..

Folks, these are three very different approaches to the source material which is batman.  If you want to take one of them and canonize it and say the other two don't measure up, that's your perogative.  But I'd like to be free to like all the batmans.  I don't want to live in a world where embracing Christian Bale means I have to renounce Adam West.  I want to live in a world that celebrates them both and which recognizes that the source material for batman is just that rich that it works well as serious brooding drama and as spoofy cheese.

Batman and Robin is a bad movie because it doesn't have the zany cheese of the series, or the weird combo that Burton tried.  It's not a fun movie, or a serious movie or any kind of good movie.  So of course, it's worse that Dark Knight.  But NOT because it fails to be properly serious.    Batman the series is NOT worse than Dark Knight.  It's just different.  Difference is good. 

To the argument in question, season 8 might well be an abject failure -- but at least let it be a failure of Joss to do justice to his own schtick, not a failure to do something he isn't even trying to do.  And please don't tell me that for any given set of ideas there is One True Way.  (Or less snarkily, any subject worth doing well is worth doing in multiple tones.  Literature is a conversation, not a dictatorship).

Comments

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Yup. And it's yet another play off Always Darkest...Buffy can't tell Spike and Angel apart because they are wearing the same outfit (a soul). (A discriminating Buffy would be able to tell the difference between a curse and a quest).

I wonder if Joss would actually go there. I wonder how on good terms he is with David Greenwalt. He seems pretty willing to trash Angel, which no the one hand I think is kind of cool (because antihero Angel is my favourite Angel) but I do wonder if having Angel not only not be Buffy's twu luv anymore, but the person she shouldn't have loved in the first place, may be too much for the character and his fans to bear.

It also would give the blurb a nice symmetry. Buffy has to go back to the place of indiscrimnate love (Angel), where the Scoobies were formed (Scoobies) and the hell mouth was closed (Spike).

When 34 came out I mentioned right away that the three vamps in the Giles-exposition flashbacks where black-hair, red-haired, and white-haired, which still seem to me to mean Angel, Willow, Spike in that order (Willow is not a vamp, but she has been coded as one in ToYL and is superpowered and possibly immortal now besides). So I am on board.

If these three are the problem, I wonder if this means that there will be a break--permanent, even?--with Angel, Spike and the Scoobies--or just Angel, Spike and WILLOW? The end of Anywhere But Here, with the two walking away in opposite directions, as well as Buffy killing Willow, may herald a rift there in particular. Buffy and Giles are already pretty rifty. Though your theory about a Dawn-related rift with Xander is tempting....

Dawn: Dawn is complicated though, isn't she? Because in one set of memories, she came in years after Spike did--and wasn't "real" so was never in Sunnydale; but in the other she first appeared in Buffy's life as a baby in L.A., long before Sunnydale.

If Dawn is left out, that could mean that she's toast. It could mean that she's really Buffy's problem, and not the rest of them. This would tie into fandom as well (LOVE the fandom-ripped-apart insight)--the general idea that Dawn was the jump-the-shark moment, that Buffy shouldn't have jumped to save her sister, must have trickled through to Joss. You mention the rifts in fandom; well, there are very few Summers Sisters Power! fans (in comparison to the Spuffies, Bangels, Banders/Billows/Scooby-friendshippers), and fans used to shout "Shut up Dawn!" at OMWF screenings. Buffy's been ignoring Dawn all this time because (?) fandom ignores her too. All Buffy's late-series emotional problems happened after Dawn's entrance in the narrative forced her to become an adult. And if she's not real, then.... But that's kind of too horrible. Could Joss actually do that? Throw away Dawn and the last seasons of the show? Or maybe have Buffy make that choice, and regret it?

OR: maybe it really is Angel, the Scoobies, and Spike who are the problems--and the season ends with Dawn's keyness actually destroyed and Dawn, conversely, a real girl again. You talk about Living Doll's foreshadowing, but Dawn does turn into a real girl again at the end--the killing her thing is tempting but it really could be a mislead, and maybe it's the key part of her that gets killed off so that Buffy gets a real life with her sister.

I'm not sure who I'm more personally uncomfortable with as the source of Buffy's problems--Spike, Dawn, or the Scoobies. (I'm surprisingly okay with Angel being the source of her problems, but we know that's not it.) Since I'm very fond of Spike, Dawn and the Scoobies all, it's kind of tough.

I could probably live with a permanent Buffy/Giles separation if Giles gets to do "Ripper" finally, hopefully live action with AT LEAST a Dushku cameo and maybe Hannigan as well and ghosts of Jenny and Ethan and, sure, let's throw Quentin and Welsey in there too.... (If Ethan is dead.)

So many possibilities. It could turn out very bad for a Spike fan, but I'm still excited.

It could turn out bad for everyone! It's kind of an all-bets-are-off thing. So: yes, exciting.

I heart Joss's commentary! song in a big way.

Yes yes yes. "I said some things I didn't mean/Okay let's talk about this scene...."

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

... but I do wonder if having Angel not only not be Buffy's twu luv anymore, but the person she shouldn't have loved in the first place, may be too much for the character and his fans to bear.

You are right. And I freely confess that I'm sure I have a major bias distortion thing going on with this subject. I mean, I really do see things this way. But it's so obviously Spike-centric I figure it's not 'true'. Still... would Joss go there? Nah -- it'd literally rip the fandom apart. Destroy the world, demons might come pouring in. Very bad stuff.

When 34 came out I mentioned right away that the three vamps in the Giles-exposition flashbacks where black-hair, red-haired, and white-haired, which still seem to me to mean Angel, Willow, Spike in that order (Willow is not a vamp, but she has been coded as one in ToYL and is superpowered and possibly immortal now besides). So I am on board.

Ooh, cool -- I had forgotten that observation. Willow keeps floating out of my head -- but you are totally right that we're set up for Buffy/Willow rift stuff in a big way. Another trio I keep thinking about is Buffy-Willow-Spike, the three central players in the closing of the hellmouth/slayer spell deal.

I forgot about the Giles-Buffy bond. It's not alluded to, unless he counts as a Scooby.

It could mean that she's [Dawn] really Buffy's problem, and not the rest of them. This would tie into fandom as well (LOVE the fandom-ripped-apart insight)--

I think the problem of Dawn has always been a chip to be played. There's such a huge nexus of issues there, along with lots of space to put in an in-story issue (Buffy dying for Dawn causing some instability; Dawn made out of Buffy causing some instability; the time-line split problem etc. etc.) The issues: Dawn represents Buffy's attachment to humanity. Buffy died rather than give it up, even though Dawn wasn't real. But it didn't quite work because when she came back Buffy was even less attached to humanity (Dawn-neglect). Dawn now as a rival for the ordinary life Buffy doesn't get; and Dawn's own reference to the slayers' need to choose between demon or humanity... I don't know how it adds up, or if anything will happen. But this is the stew that makes me think that a lot can be done to make Dawn play a 'gigantic' role in the conclusion to the story.

I don't know if that specifically means erasing all memory of her -- though one way to read the Twilight symbol is as time lines. We have the Dawnless timeline on the bottom. The the Dawn insert jumps the timeline up only to have it collapse back down and disappear again, with the original time line left to run its course. That would explain why the apparently undisturbed Fray future does not have any memory of a slayer army -- which has always been the main reason I think something about juggling time lines has to be in play this season. To make that work, Willow would have to have kept the memory of the lost time line (since she knows how to link to it), but she's got dimension crossing ability, so why not.

See? Very excited about this final arc. Thanks for letting me blather about it!

"Charybdis tested well with teens" I love every line of that song.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

You are right. And I freely confess that I'm sure I have a major bias distortion thing going on with this subject. I mean, I really do see things this way. But it's so obviously Spike-centric I figure it's not 'true'. Still... would Joss go there? Nah -- it'd literally rip the fandom apart. Destroy the world, demons might come pouring in. Very bad stuff.


Hee! I saw your comments on the Jeanty-interview thread and like what you have to say there. The comments there also show what Joss is up against if he is going to trash B/A. If he does, will he be able to get his issue drawn? Bring Karl Moline in to finish it up?

I was going to say that Joss needs his fans, but I guess in a sense he doesn't; fan loyalty means a lot but his devoted Buffy fans didn't save Firefly and they didn't save Dollhouse. It's possible that he's really willing to cut the apron strings here.

I also don't think the attitude is Spike-centric; you just have to not buy destiny. And there *are* Spuffies who see Buffy & Spike as destined, but I think they're missing much of the fun.

Ooh, cool -- I had forgotten that observation. Willow keeps floating out of my head

Oddly, I seldom have that problem for more than a day or two at a time. It's tough.

I forgot about the Giles-Buffy bond. It's not alluded to, unless he counts as a Scooby.

I was wondering if he'd count as a Scooby. (And if he doesn't--does Andrew? Nah.) There's also Faith--whom Buffy was drawn to over the Scoobies as well. It's possible that Giles and Faith come in as a connection to the overall watcher/slayer line, which also predates Sunnydale even though she met both in Sunny D.

Dawn: as well as hints about Dawn's death, Living Doll does have her go through the trajectory doll ==> real girl. So I do wonder if maybe all her keyness will be deployed and she'll survive, pure human. But since she's mostly been portrayed as pure human, that would be a bit pat. I guess I'm just hoping she makes it through this okay.

Sunnydale: I forgot to mention last time, but the season is interestingly structured around a return to Sunnydale, with returns in the first arc ("Well, I wanted to go home"), at the midpoint as an intermission (After These Messages) and then a third time in the finale. Amy and Warren were presumably introduced as villains because they were Sunnydale denizens, and not just because they were villains from the show. Since they were in Twilight I figure they're along for the ride as well, so I have a feeling that one or both of them will do something significant in the final arc, though I have no idea what.

A key line to think about as we go into the arc: in ToYL, Willow says, "When you've lived as long as I have, you learn that it's not who dies, it's who kills them." Possibly Last Gleaming is where she learns that lesson.

I'm pretty excited too! And I don't mind listening to the ranting at all. Hopefully you don't let the Jeanty interview get you down. (And I'm serious about wondering whether Joss will have to quash a rebellion from Jeanty when the last few scripts come in. How do these things go?)