DC Comics Multimedia General - A crisis of infinite fuck ups

[Overly Serious]

And well, if you know how absolutely disastrous Spider-Man Turn Off The Dark was you already know what the conclusion was

I actually don't. I'm not sure I've even heard of it.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

it has to make a half billion dollars by the end of the month to not be considered a flop and its barely halfway there

It's already made more than 200 million in one week, but to say its a flop when it's not even 2 weeks old is pretty dumb.

I've never seen anyone liken Tim Burton's Batman to a horror movie killer before... but you know what? I see it. Also 99% sure that Batman killed multiple people. Of course the main villains but plenty of henchmen too. Pretty sure there's one guy he just straight blows up with some bomb?

Truth be told I kind of liked it. Probably the best depiction of a Batman that kills. I feel like nowadays the whole "Batman who kills" thing is overdone or done completely wrong when I feel the Tim Burton movies got it right before anyone else.

Yeah say what you will about Tim Burton's Batman, but him killing makes more sense than Snyder's Batman who just brands people like cattle and let them die in prison. At least Michael Keaton actually kills the main villains too.

It also doesn't linger on, he just kills with no one to really question it.

 

[Bob Barbas]

I actually don't. I'm not sure I've even heard of it.

Well, it would take too long to explain in text and wouldn't be thread relevant, but this video sums most of it up. Infact it's where I learned most about it.

But the tl;dr is that it was an absolute fucking failure and so they decided the Batman musical was not worth the trouble or so the story goes. Basically the deal was "We'll wait and see how well Marvel's musical goes and if it does well we'll consider doing our own." and then all that happened.

It also doesn't linger on, he just kills with no one to really question it.

People can't question why you're killing them if they're dead after all.

 

[TVB]

I read that in the Joker's voice!

But which voice of the Joker?

 

[Overly Serious]

But which voice of the Joker?

Mark Hamill on this occasion. Not my favourite Joker, but the most pervasive.

To stick with the sub-topic of animations, I've a soft spot for the Joker voice used in B:TBATB. There's something nasty about his delivery that sounds authentically criminal. He also belts out a musical number like nobody's business!

 

[TVB]

To stick with the sub-topic of animations, I've a soft spot for the Joker voice used in B:TBATB.

Yea, Jeff Bennett, Johnny Bravo himself, voices the Joker in The Brave and the Bold, and he was great. Even the motivation of how Joker became Red Hood was fleshed out nicely

 

[Commander X]

There was also a Superman Broadway musical, It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman that premiered in 1966, at around the same time Batman was a huge hit on TV and superheroes were enjoying a boost. The plot revolved around a genius scientist who becomes obsessed with destroying Superman as payback to the world in general for his persistent failure at winning a Nobel Prize. A smarmy Daily Planet columnist who also has a disdain for Superman, resenting Lois Lane's romantic interest in the hero, joins him and other villains in trying to undo Superman

It was written in the spirit of the superhero camp at the time, complete with colorful cardboard sets meant to invoke that 4-color comic aesthetic, and poked fun at the "square" hero. David Newman and Robert Benton who wrote it, would later go on to rewrite Mario Puzo's script for Superman: The Movie. and elements from their musical carried into that script, and featured songs written by frequent collaborators lyricist Lee Adams and composer Charles Strouse, who had written and composed the music for 1960 Broadway hit Bye Bye Birdie, among others. (They also wrote "Those Were the Days", the theme song to All In The Family.) The show's original run on Broadway lasted only a few months, and while it had a good critical reception, and the actors who played the two main villains and Lois Lane were nominated for Tonys the audiences weren't buying. It was considered a huge flop at the time since it cost $600,000, and that was a lot of money in 1966 dollars for a big-budget musical.

There was a 1975 TV special based on it, shot on video over the course of three days (and boy does that show) that aired on ABC and it was considered a flop in part because barely anyone watched at the time. Romeo Muller adapted the play: several songs were dropped and they went with a more then-contemporary disco-ish sound, the musical itself shortened, Strouse and Adams contributed a new song and one band of evildoers were changed from a troupe of villainous Chinese acrobats to generic gangster hoods like something out of the 1950s Superman TV series. Our villains, Dr Abner Sedgwick, played David Wayne and columnist Max Mencken, played by Mel Brooks regular Kenneth Mars, decide to attack Superman's morale, try to break his spirit instead of him physically and turn the people of Metropolis and the rest of the world against him.

Lesley Ann Warren played Lois Lane in this special and interestingly enough, she was one of the strong contenders for the role when Richard Donner was casting Superman: The Movie.

There's been stage revivals of the original musical over the years, including one which ran in 2010 at the Dallas Theater Center which revised and reordered some of the songs (with permission from Strouse) and set it in 1939, and focused more on the love triangle of sorts between Superman, Lane and Clark Kent.

 

[Bob Barbas]

There was also a Superman Broadway musical, It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman that premiered in 1966

Interesting.
Yeah, I wish I could say more about the Batman musical but information on it is very scarce, outside of the supposed leaked songs. All that's really known for certain is that Jim Steinman was supposed to be involved. And I believe this project was conceptualized around the early 2000s before being canned.

That's all I got. Though if the songs were as consistently good as some of the leaked ones I probably wouldn't have minded it being finished if only just to listen to the soundtrack.

 

[Get the rope Macaulay!]

which trilogy?

dark knight trilogy dumbass.

They actually planned at one point to do a Batman musical.

between the cheese of the 60s tv show and the pathos of the burton movies. batman clearly is a perfect fit as a musical. Its not like Spiderman where most of the hero's entire concept requires acrobatics and wirework.

It's already made more than 200 million in one week

the problem is almost always the opening weekend is the high point and it drops by 50% every week from then on out. outside of a sleeper hit (usually something woman coded like a musical) most films by week 4 already made 90% of their box office. and that was how it was pre-streaming. i'm sure now when its all but guaranteed for a film to be on a non-piracy streaming site in 45 days, plenty of people that missed seeing it in the first 3 weeks will just wait till it hits streaming instead of bothering to find a showtime.

It also doesn't linger on, he just kills with no one to really question it.

thats the other reason. literally all of 2000s era internet was just white dudes going "hey isn't this thing we grew up watching weird" for a reason. movies were fine just doing stuff like letting Batman murder a fuckload of people because they knew as long as they didn't linger the general audiences wouldn't either. pretty much 99% of movies in the 20th century just went "I suggest you don’t worry about this sort of thing and just enjoy yourself" and it worked out up the X generation of public school kids were forced to learn critical theory and hyper examine everything.

 

[Bob Barbas]

dark knight trilogy dumbass.

OH, now I understand what you meant. Well, I did say I'm a retard.

99% of movies in the 20th century just went "I suggest you don’t worry about this sort of thing and just enjoy yourself"

And now they spend too much time worrying about shit that doesn't really matter. Funny that. Oh yeah and we have to have ironic "Humor" every 5 seconds, that's a must. We have to make sure the audiences know that we totally know how stupid this is guys, we're just having some fun, but also please care about our overarching plotline spanning like 50 movies please.

 

[Quarterback Rex Grossman]

Burton Batman wasn't a pussy and everyone loved it. The 'no kill' rule all the adult children obsess over now is freaking gay.

 

[Bob Barbas]

Burton Batman wasn't a pussy and everyone loved it. The 'no kill' rule all the adult children obsess over now is freaking gay.

I think that's also why people like Red Hood because from where I stand his entire thing seems to boil down to "Batman is a fucking cuck! Just shoot the Jonkler bro, goddamn. Fucking cap his ass." and I mean is he wrong at all?

Burton Batman unlike Nolan Batman just let the Joker fall to his doom and honestly it was completely justified.

 

[Bob Barbas]

I know I have an unfortunate habit of double posting and I always apologize for it but fuck I always seem to think of more interesting things to say later rather than sooner.

But since we're on the subject of it. I get it. The no kill rule thing I mean. I understand why it's a thing. But at the same time it just makes Batman look like a fucking moron. Like it's one thing if he just went around killing every criminal but there's a difference between flat out killing someone and killing someone in self defense which there's almost always no distinction when it comes to Batman killing is killing. But it creates scenarios where Batman essentially allows people like the Joker to continue killing again and again and again. I get the appeal of the whole "No one is beyond saving." viewpoint but the problem is it's untrue. Some people are just totally unrepentant fuckers that need to be put down for everyone else's safety. Y'know like a certain clown?

I think that's what makes Burton Batman so appealing to faggots like me. He's still Batman but he's not an edgy nigger nor is he a grandstanding baby bitch. He doesn't explicitly go out of his way to kill people. It just sort've happens. (Well except for the guy he killed with that bomb. kek.) But he doesn't make a big bitchfit about it either. They fucked with him and paid the price.
He didn't even intentionally kill Joker, he probably could've saved himself but his insistence on attempting to escape led to him causing his own plummet to his death.
Likewise he didn't kill the Penguin directly either. He just sort've happened to tumble backwards to his doom on accident. Batman probably didn't intend for him to back into the window and fall it just sort've happened.

Not everyone deserves to be saved. And I think that's also what made Joker and Penguin's deaths so potent in those movies. Batman didn't even deal the killing blow. They did it to themselves more or less. It's almost a sort've lesson.

He's probably the most sensible version of Batman honestly. I mean would you save the Joker from falling? I feel like most normal people would say "No." because they're not retarded. Okay, well maybe that's being too generous but I would like to believe most well adjusted people would say fuck no.

 

[Basic Blond Boy]

But since we're on the subject of it. I get it. The no kill rule thing I mean. I understand why it's a thing. But at the same time it just makes Batman look like a fucking moron. Like it's one thing if he just went around killing every criminal but there's a difference between flat out killing someone and killing someone in self defense which there's almost always no distinction when it comes to Batman killing is killing. But it creates scenarios where Batman essentially allows people like the Joker to continue killing again and again and again. I get the appeal of the whole "No one is beyond saving." viewpoint but the problem is it's untrue. Some people are just totally unrepentant fuckers that need to be put down for everyone else's safety. Y'know like a certain clown?

I think the bigger problem is comics habit of upping stakes in the most superficial way possible. The Joker was redeemable back when he was just a mobster with clown makeup, who, at worst, killed other mobsters. Nowadays, the SOB skins babies and nukes cities. It has gotten extremely ridiculous on all fronts. Even adaptations I like, such as Arkham, always go way beyond reasonable to add shock value where there didn’t need to be any. Did Knight really need to have Joker kill toddlers and sow them into one piece? Was him killing Jason just not good enough to show he was evil?

This is really the biggest blunder of comics and its heroes in the modern age. They think shock value makes for good stories, but it just makes everything more juvenile. The DCAU is a great adaptation as it kept the villains pretty low profile. Plus, when they did overstep, Superman was more than willing to kill Luthor, Darkseid or Doomsday. Hell, they even killed the Joker realizing child torture was way too far.

 

[Bob Barbas]

The Joker was redeemable back when he was just a mobster with clown makeup, who, at worst, killed other mobsters. Nowadays, the SOB skins babies and nukes cities.

To be honest I'm with you on this.
But I don't entirely mind Joker being evil incarnate. The issue is the fact that the heroes don't realistically react to him. Like I feel like even cops would make some kind of exception. Actually no, you know damn well they would make an excuse to shoot him. It's more unbelievable Joker doesn't just get gunned down by cops rather than Batman beating his ass.

Again for the sake of example Batman killing every single villain or crook would be going too far. But I don't think anyone would complain except mega autist viewers if he say, let Joker plummet to his death for instance.
Maybe I'm just tired of the whole "Hurr durr Batman needs the Joker and Joker needs the Batman." schtick. Personally I always saw it as Joker needs Batman but not the other way around. Joker is just a retard who is obsessed with the guy in the bat costume. I don't really think it's deeper than that, nor should it be. Joker is just such a deranged retard that the closest thing he has to a friend is the guy who beats his ass every night when he tries to bomb an orphanage. They almost try to liken their connection to rivals of some kind when the truth is they should be bitter enemies.

Realistically, Batman shouldn't lose a wink of sleep if Joker suddenly disappeared. Infact he should sleep better at night knowing he's out of the picture. But because of this new obsession they keep insisting on peddling I don't think that's the actual case. Every death to "Modern" Bruce is a repeat of his parents death as fucking retarded as it sounds. And I highly dislike it.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

I think with the Joker it depends on how the justice system is. Since if Joker is actually locked up and doesn't consistently escape, it's one thing. But if he keeps escaping and doing horrible things, how do cops not even shoot him?!

Nolan's Joker is fine being just taken since he was merely a terrorist and he is presumably dead in the Dark Knight Rises or locked up well compared to the comics where Arkham's security is comically bad.

Though an issue with Joker is the Death penalty since he is a character that definitely deserves it. It's one thing where he's not killed in the cartoons since usually his crimes are either cartoonish or low stakes, and as @Basic Blond Boy said, even the DCAU had him die because he went too far with how he tortured Tim Drake.

But it gets ridiculous in things like the DCEU where a bloodthirsty Batman doesn't put a bullet into his head for some reason or in the comics where he keeps doing terrible things that are too far.

Maybe I'm just tired of the whole "Hurr durr Batman needs the Joker and Joker needs the Batman." schtick. Personally I always saw it as Joker needs Batman but not the other way around. Joker is just a retard who is obsessed with the guy in the bat costume. I don't really think it's deeper than that, nor should it be. Joker is just such a deranged retard that the closest thing he has to a friend is the guy who beats his ass every night when he tries to bomb an orphanage. They almost try to liken their connection to rivals of some kind when the truth is they should be bitter enemies.

It feels like a dumbass way to give Joker depth since it feels Modern Batman media seems incapable of giving any other villain the spotlight so they make Batman revolve around the Joker.

It's honestly tiring how even when they do stuff and advertise a new main villain (like Arkham Knight), they sideline them and give them no depth while trying to put the Joker in the spotlight.

It was honestly a god send when Matt Reeves made The Joker not the villain in his movie, and at best a cameo, and hopefully Joker doesn't become the main villain of the second movie (like if it's a third movie in a trilogy, that would be fine, but still).

Even fucking Spider-Man acknowledges Spider-Man has other villains and switches up his archenemies than just focus on like the Green Goblin all the time.

 

[Burt Ryan]

It is high time for a Hitman re-read. Give me another comic that features:
- Catwoman purple suit costume
- Etrigan and Jason Blood, my favourite DC characters
- Six-Pack and Bueno Excellente
- Written by Garth Ennis

 

[Bob Barbas]

It's honestly tiring how even when they do stuff and advertise a new main villain (like Arkham Knight),

Except that was a blatant lie.
And when the fans immediately called out the Knight was totally Jason Todd the devs outright lied and said "Nuh uh! It's a new villain!"
No, I will never forget because it was hilarious.

While we're on the subject as well the Joker blood thing was so fucking stupid. But at the same time the best part about the game which I think speaks to how absolutely mid the story was. The story was so shit Joker being Joker was the most entertaining part.

At least the DLCs were better. Or if nothing else I enjoyed the Mr. Freeze DLC.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

Except that was a blatant lie.
And when the fans immediately called out the Knight was totally Jason Todd the devs outright lied and said "Nuh uh! It's a new villain!"
No, I will never forget because it was hilarious.

While we're on the subject as well the Joker blood thing was so fucking stupid. But at the same time the best part about the game which I think speaks to how absolutely mid the story was. The story was so shit Joker being Joker was the most entertaining part.

At least the DLCs were better. Or if nothing else I enjoyed the Mr. Freeze DLC.

Honestly when I typed it I meant how Scarecrow was hyped up in Knight. Scarecrow was hyped as the main villain after years of build-up, but they made him a boring villain who just is on screens monologuing about fear in a way that's not interesting, with his defeat being the most unoriginal way to beat Scarecrow.

His Arkham Asylum iteration was more interesting even if he was a cackling goofy villain. He's only carried in Knight by his design and voice acting than anything else.

Though it is funny how Jason Todd is even in the game since he really makes no sense to be a villain in a world where everyone thinks Batman killed the Joker. Hell there are fan theories that had more interesting ideas for the Arkham Knight from it being Bane or Hush than Jason.

Also Joker blood is the stupidest thing since it retcons the end of City and undermines the Joker as a character if anyone can become him through a blood transfusion.

 

[Bob Barbas]

Honestly when I typed it I meant how Scarecrow was hyped up in Knight.

Yeah that was pretty fucking retarded. Like Scarecrow has a few good moments in the game but is mostly irrelevant. It's almost like the devs forget about him for most of the game and then remember "Oh right! Scarecrow is the main villain uhhh... shit!" honestly his voice and design in Knight were great so it's a shame we barely get to see them.

Though it is funny how Jason Todd is even in the game since he really makes no sense to be a villain in a world where everyone thinks Batman killed the Joker. Hell there are fan theories that had more interesting ideas for the Arkham Knight from it being Bane or Hush than Jason.

People have said it before but honestly Hush would've been a better choice than Jason because at least Hush had build up and was hinted at in previous games. Arkham City made it sound like he had something big planned only for it to amount to him simply trying to steal Bruce's money before getting slammed through a table?
I figured he would've tried to ruin Bruce's reputation. Hell that alone would've been a more interesting idea than Jason. It would've even made a better reason for Batman to reveal his identity than the stupid ass ending we got where he just kinda gives up for some reason? Maybe the only way to make everyone believe Bruce Wayne was actually the good guy is to reveal he was Batman all along? Okay, this sounds retarded on paper but I'm sure someone could've made it work.

Compare that to Jason who wasn't even mentioned beyond two lines I think one in Asylum where he mentions Batman needs a new sidekick and I think one in City where in a challenge map as Robin he'll say something like "Didn't I kill you already?" and anything beyond that is just coping from the community. It's obvious it wasn't part of Dini's original plan. Whatever the fuck he had in mind for the final game if he even had Knight in mind at all when writing the previous games which he probably didn't let's be honest.

Also Joker blood is the stupidest thing since it retcons the end of City and undermines the Joker as a character if anyone can become him through a blood transfusion.

Stealing this from someone else I heard say it but fuck it
"Isn't Joker supposed to just be a normal dude besides the green hair and white skin? So like why the fuck does his blood turn other people into him? That has to be the dumbest shit I've ever heard."