Wednesday 16 January 2013

The Second Return of the Dark Knight

Since I talked about Part One... Part Two was inevitable!

This time we have Batman versus the Joker... was Frank Miller the first to actually kill the Joker? (Which, spoilers, I think ends up not happening in the second Dark Knight Returns - which was bollocks all round - or it was his son or some stupid thing.) Joker is pretty fun here, voiced by Michael Emerson who knows a thing or two about playing the dubious bad guy (no, I haven't seen the Batman Animated series, so I have zero to less loyalty towards Mark Hamill playing that role, and so I also fail to care that Peter Weller is voicing Batman over Kevin or whoever that other chap is. Peter has a nice hard edge to his voice, so works well for elderly Bruce/Bats). (Gee, that was a large parenthetical.)

And, also, Batman versus... Him. I can't recall if in the comic they ever actually say His name, but definitely doesn't get said here. The moment with the sunflowers... kinda falls flat here. In the comic, it's either Clark taking the energy from the planet or the planet giving it up to him (can't recall, but it's definitely something surreal), here it is just a flat moment that really seems out of place and only works because I know the moment from the comics. There's no... tension here, just 'hit by nuke, touch ground, touch flower, get power back, get on with it'. Meh).

Again we have a lot of images that are basically the comic panel on screen (in the style of the artists of this movie). It relates the comics, so works as that. Not sure it would work without knowing the comic, but I can't comment on that. Here's hoping they don't do the sequel.

[END]

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