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Batman: The Brave and the Bold: The Top 15 Episodes (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Batman: The Brave and the Bold caused slight askance glances among comics and animation nerds when its initial bright-as-shit promo art was released. "Really?" seemed to be the prevailing reaction even though the series was being headed up by James Tucker, a proven DCAU veteran of shows like Justice League. Especially considering that the promised Silver Age (or "that 50s-60s period where shit got REALLY weird") tone and aesthetic was so out of step with anything produced in the superhero animation landscape since Batman: The Animated Series had reshaped it. I was cautiously optimistic, especially when trailers and previews started coming out, and when Diedrich Bader was cast as Batman given he was by then a more-than-proven vocal talent on shows like Disney's Hercules and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy. All fears were allayed with the series premiere on November 13, 2008, "Rise of the Blue Beetle!", which paired Batman with Jaime Reyes (Will Friedle), the recently introduced successor to the Blue Beetle legacy in the comics. The show was bright, colorful, and campy, yes, but there was a genuine wit and heart to the series, and the action scenes were first-rate, as if Superfriends had finally gained a budget and fight choreography that amounted to more than "the heroes stiffly restrain the villains".

The show continued for 65 episodes across three seasons, ending in November 2011, and I recently revisited them all. To my pleasant surprise, it holds up rather marvelously, barring some inevitable questionable bits of humor (I doubt it was ill-intentioned, but the thankfully-briefly-appearing Mrs. Manface is wincingly transphobic in retrospect) and a certain old-fashioned genteel "men are like This, women are like That" writing style. Nevertheless, I was inspired to rank and review what I feel are my top 15 episodes of the series, which I hope you will enjoy below:

Honorable Mentions:

Scooby-Doo & Batman: The Brave and the Bold: A DTV movie released in 2018, seven years after the series' end, this expands on a crossover briefly seen in the series (which we'll cover on the list proper) into a full-blown feature. As a reunion piece that recollects much of the cast and crew, one could be tempted to dismiss it as pure fanservice, and I suppose it is to a degree. But these two franchises have always fit well together thanks to Batman's penchant for detective work, and the mystery here, while easy to follow, has some pleasant twists and turns indeed. And even beyond that, the pleasures are myriad: Velma geeking out over being in the Batcave; Fred digging himself deeper in trying to explain that they're a "gang" but not THAT kind of gang; Martian Manhunter's cookie addiction rearing its ugly head against Shaggy; Scooby being able to drive the Mystery Machine but being bad at directions; and so on. The visuals are as bright and bouncy as ever, the voice performances are all on target, and while I don't think it's the best Scooby OR Batman DTV, it's a delight from start to finish.

The Space Ghost cold open to Bold Beginnings!: The episode itself is fairly average if entertaining, telling us how Green Arrow, Plastic Man, and Aquaman handled their first team-ups with Batman. But the cold open, possibly the longest in the entire series, is basically a lost episode of Space Ghost co-starring Batman. As a kid who grew up on both the janky Hanna-Barbera action series of the 60s and 70s, and subsequently a teenager and college student who grew up on their smart-assed parodies via Adult Swim, this is basically tailor made for me. The Alex Toth character designs and spacefaring backgrounds are recreated to an absurdly faithful degree, the HB library sound effects are on full display, and we even get the late, great Gary Owens reprising Space Ghost one last time.

THE TOP 15

15. The Golden Age of Justice!

This is admittedly a soft "personal" favorite. There are probably better episodes and, gun to my head, you could convince me to put something else in this spot. (The Super-Batman of Planet X! is a good candidate). But there's so much here that appeals to me as a DC comics and TV nerd: the sense of history with the appearance of the Justice Society tying back to WWII heroics; guest voices like R. Lee Ermey and William Katt, the Greatest American Hero himself; Clancy Brown adopting a more Germanic tone than his usual Luthor as Per Degaton; and it's a personal story for Black Canary, frustrated by what she sees as babying old guard sexism. And while it's revealed there's a deeper reason that Wildcat in particular tries to protect her from danger, I like that she's allowed to still be frustrated even with understanding that and gets to save the day. (Also there's some good humor shown in that Batman, the supposed golden boy, gets nitpicked as much as she does by the old-timers that takes the edge off).

14. Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!

This is more a collection of shorts than a full episode, but they are certainly marvelously entertaining ones. Any time Bat-Mite shows up is guaranteed to be great, and the dearly missed Paul Reubens is pitch-perfect as a master of ceremonies into the deeply weird turbonerd areas of Batman's history. The first short is Bat-Boy and Rubin, a near-exact adaptation of a famous 50s MAD Magazine parody. It replicates Wally Wood's art style to a fanatical degree in bouncy animation, while Frank Welker and Jeff Bennett (sounding more than a little like Jerry Lewis) hit exactly the right goofball notes as the title characters. Next up is Bat-Manga, which was a real thing that came out during the 60s as Batman hit a pop culture craze in Japan thanks to the Adam West series. The art style is honestly quite distinct and wonderfully 60s, but the real treat here is the purposefully crappy, breathless Speed Racer-style dubbing, complete with a lampshaded avoidance of saying that Lord Death Man is, well, dead when it's quite obvious his demise happened onscreen. And last but not least is the aforementioned Scooby-Doo teamup in homage to their first team-up on the 70s cartoon The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Unlike the DTV, done in the main BATB style, this is produced and animated as if it actually did happen in the 70s, with faded colors and a few animation errors (my favorite detail is Bat-Mite snarking on Batman's neck color getting messed up, but failing to notice the inverted chest logo). It's a real treat, and we get a moment of awesome as Bat-Mite overrides the 70s censorship standards to let Batman and Robin have a real fight scene with Joker and Penguin, with even Scooby and Shaggy joining in on the fun. Plus Weird Al makes an appearance in all his polka-loving glory, what's not to love?

13. The Siege of Starro! Parts One and Two

This is probably the closest the series ever gets to the tone of something like Justice League Unlimited: apocalyptic stakes, C-list heroes having to be the ones to save the day, and a genuine sense of sacrifice. Who knew they could get audiences to tear up over friggin' B'wana Beast, of all characters? Starro's always a great choice for stories like this given his zombie inclinations (any time they start in on the STARRO LIVES chant is appropriately creepy as hell), I like the twist they add to a Galactus-and-Silver-Surfer-esque relationship with his minion the Faceless Hunter, and the stakes build up over the two-parter to make things feel truly darkest before the dawn as all the heroes' options dwindle. And yes, B'wana Beast laying it all on the line has real weight, especially aided by Kevin Michael Richardson's lovable, working-class performance.

12. The Knights of Tomorrow!

Feeling something like a lost Batman Beyond episode, this takes us into a possible future where Bruce marries Selina Kyle and they both retire from costumed heroics, raising a son in Damian as Dick Grayson takes up the Bat-mantle. This is just a good, meaty character-and-action episode, with the grinding wheel of fate and tragedy affecting all here. Patrick Cavanaugh gives an excellent performance as a callow, uncertain Damian who nevertheless rises to the occasion when it's called for, and the final twist of just who's been telling this story called Alan Moore's epigraph in his great Superman story Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow: "This is an imaginary story. Aren't they all?"

(Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Marc Worden as "Joker Jr." in terms of performances. Worden has done good voicework before, but he so thoroughly changes his usual gruff tones to imitate Jeff Bennett's Joker performance that I genuinely thought it was Jeff on a first viewing. Major props.)

11. Deep Cover for Batman!/Game Over For Owlman!: Our first foray into the DC multiverse, this two-parter deals with Batman matching wits and fists with Owlman, his Crime Syndicate counterpart. Usually I find these kinds of stories more interesting when there's more moral grayness in the less-than-heroic counterparts, but the Crime Syndicate being unapologetic bastard-coated bastards absolutely works for this show tonally. The first part involves Batman going undercover as Owlman to infilitrate the Syndicate, which has fun in the usual sense of "aw shit Han and Luke are disguised as Stormtroopers, will they get found out?" And part 2 with Batman on the run, forced to team up with Joker of all people, is fun in the opposite direction, with both episodes climaxing in big blow-out splash panel fight sequences. A pure expression of bashing action figures against each other.

It's also the first big showcase for Jeff Bennett as the Joker in this series, both as the heroic alt-Red Hood who rejected madness and chose to rise above it, and Prime!Joker as the goofiest, most gimmicky 50s Joker of them all. I confess to being rather tired of edgelord serial killer Joker (you're never going to be better than Heath Ledger, for one), so having him be a full-on clown is retro-refreshing. And Bennett, one of the great VAs of his generation, more than rises to the occasion with his sing-songy tone and hyena cackle. His Red Hood is quite an intriguing performance in and of itself, not completely abandoning the base Joker voice, but playing around with what it might sound like as a hero.

10. Fall of the Blue Beetle!

As noted in the Starro rundown, BATB is primarily a bright, colorful show, but it is hardly free from pathos or drama. This was the first big indicator of such, that characters could or would die, with the death of the previous Blue Beetle Ted Kord looming large over the proceedings. Jaime's insecurity over living up to the legend and wondering if it was pure random chance that led the scarab to him is expertly portrayed, with Friedle in top form on the acting front (I like a moment where he throws a bit of Batman's previous coldness back at him in particular). Even our villain, Ted's uncle Jarvis Kord, plays well into the themes, with Tim Matheson making us believe the sincerity of his goals (world peace) and the extreme methods he'd take to achieve them. (He also gets one really funny moment with "No missiles in the lab, please!") And while it reaches the conclusions we expect (Jaime is a true hero doing Ted's legacy proud), it does so sweetly and with no small charm.

(Sidenote: Season 2's The Menace of Madniks! is an excellent follow-up to this episode, with Wil Wheaton getting more to do as Ted between himself, Booster Gold, and Batman as a trio, and giving the latter two some good emotional closure over their friend's death).

9. Requiem For A Scarlet Speedster

The Flash is just awesome. He's perhaps only next to Spider-Man in terms of the pure cool factor of his powers and how versatile can be. This episode, penned by Gargoyles/Spectacular Spider-Man/Young Justice veteran Greg Weisman, completely understands that. Even with the initial heavy subject matter of Barry Allen's presumed death, it's pure FUN first and foremost. The drama is dealt with well but unobtrusively (it takes one Batman pep talk to prod Wally to stop being a horse's ass to Jay over the whole affair), and there's humor in how even the Rogues of Central City are in mourning for Barry but refuse to admit it. And we have proper Flash-ian shenanigans with going so fast you can travel through time, with Professor Zoom a more than capable smugly punchable villain for the proceedings, especially in a bitchin' action climactic race-fight with him and Barry. (It's also the first time John Wesley Shipp, who played Barry in the cheesily enjoyable 1990 live action series, dips his toes back into the Flash-verse, albeit in quite a different form than what he'd do on the second live action show a couple years after this. His great work here makes me wish he'd done a little more villainy on that tbh). Manages to be a better Flash story in 20 minutes than 2 hours of Ezra Miller Ezra Miller-ing it up amongst horrible deepfakes and wasting Michael Keaton AND Michael Shannon's valuable time.

8. Legends of the Dark Mite!

As noted, all of Bat-Mite's appearances are great, and his debut is no exception. Paul Reubens manages to ride the line between being an annoying fanboy and a lovable one, especially in the all-timer Comic-Con scene where he defends the series' tone and aesthetic on behalf of the creative team, and a climax that pays explicit homage to the classic Daffy Duck short The Great Piggy Bank Robbery. It's a fun episode for Batman himself, much in the same way Mxyzpltk episodes tend to be for Superman, as he finds himself beset by strangeness but also more than canny enough to manipulate the little troll. Add in bouncy, creative visuals like biker Santas and rabid Easter bunnies, and you've got a winner.

7. Journey to the Center of the Bat!

Aquaman quickly became the breakout character the series through a multitude of factors like John DiMaggio's OUTRAGEOUS performance and writing him as a comedically awesome blowhard who does stuff like write memoirs about every single adventure he has. That makes him ideal for episodes like this, a buddy comedy with Ryan Choi's Atom as they go inside Batman's bloodstream Honey I Shrunk The Kids/Fantastic Voyage-style to save him from dying via Chemo getting him in the face with nasty radioactive shit. James Sie makes for an excellent buttoned-up straight man as Choi, bouncing off DiMaggio's hammery with aplomb (my favorite bit is him translating science talk into a deeply frustrated "This doohickey beeps when the cooties are near"). And while the story arc leans where you'd expect in terms of them learning from each other, the tension mounts nicely as Batman continues to try to fight Chemo and his master the Brain (Dee Bradley Baker with a hilariously goofball Monty Python-level French accent) against doctor's orders.

6. Battle of the Superheroes!

The use of certain characters in superhero media can often be weird and tied up in legal red tape, so it wasn't necessarily surprising that the show couldn't use big deal characters like Superman and Wonder Woman until its third and final season. This was arguably to its benefit, as we got to build out the obscure or B-and-C-list heroes core to the cast. And it means that when we DO finally introduce Superman, we can do a full-blown Superdickery episode. Every joke you can think of from those old misleading covers is here: Lois's marriage schemes to get Superman to reveal his true identity, Jimmy Olsen as a magnet for misfortune, and Superman just being hilariously, childishly petty under the influence of Red Kryptonite. Veteran voice actor Roger Rose gives the man of steel a perfect old-school radio announcer tone that suits both genuine heroics and the comedic douchebaggery (how he chastises Lois for the marriage schemes has me on the floor every time). And on top of that, we get a genuinely exciting throwdown between him and Batman that homages their famous brawl in The Dark Knight Returns, even offering a poignant moment when Batman asks him what Ma Kent would think of this behavior and it breaks through for just a moment.

5. Mitefall!

I wouldn't call the final season of BATB bad by any stretch, but certain habits were starting to creep in that nearly any long-running show takes on if it goes on long enough. Characters get flanderized (Aquaman is a little dumber and goofier than before), the plots get wilder, and some of the emotional core falls by the wayside. So perhaps it's appropriate that the series finale metatextually takes stock of things. Bat-Mite, our erstwhile fanboy, has grown bored of the show, wanting a return to a darker, grittier Batman. So he takes it upon himself to get the show cancelled by making it jump the shark: gleefully adding characters like a love interest or a cute kid (as well as a Bat-ified Scrappy Doo, everyone's favorite punching bag); ridiculous toy tie-ins (the way Diedrich Bader repeatedly says "Neon Talking Super Street Batluge!" kills me); and, most egregious of all, replacing Aquaman's voice with Ted McGinley (who gets one of the funniest moments in the episode as a result of this). But Ambush Bug, essentially DC's Deadpool in terms of being aware of the fourth wall, feels he must work to stop this hackery and seeks out Batman to make him aware of his status as a fictional character to save the show. (In another wonderful bit of meta-casting, Ambush Bug is voiced by Henry Winkler, the original shark-jumper himself.)

And yet, despite all this inside baseball humor and vintage TV references, things reach a real poignancy by the end. Ambush Bug impresses on Batman that, fictional or not, what he does matters to people, as well as a brilliant moment where he points out how wrong things have gotten for Batman to use guns. Despite their best efforts, the show is cancelled, with even Bat-Mite being erased from existence because he certainly couldn't fit into a darker-toned Batman series. And the final scene has all the heroes reunite at a wrap party as the "set" gets torn down, with Bug and Batman reflecting that at least he had a great run. Batman turns to us, promising that until the next time we meet, he'll still be out there, fighting injustice and protecting the innocent.

"Goodnight."

4. The Last Patrol!

Ah, the Doom Patrol, or "the team where everyone is kind of a dick and weird shit happens to them constantly, including dying a lot." This episode reflects that basically dead-on, with our titular Patrol members being prickly dickheads, foes like Animal Vegetable Mineral Man, and a climactic death. Yet despite the surface level surrealism, this ends up as pretty emotionally affecting because of the questions it asks about heroism, the stakes and the costs. The ending is especially a knock-out as our resident assholes, when the chips are down, choose to do the right thing to save fourteen "pathetically ordinary" people in the face of termination, and the world responds in solidarity. It's a good show for Batman too, as he picks at the team's insecurities and brings them back together for their final stand.

3. Chill of the Night!

One of the most acclaimed episodes of the show, and rightly so. It plays out like a lost Batman: The Animated Series episode between the moody lighting, dark subject matter, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill's presences as the Phantom Stranger and Spectre respectively, and Paul Dini on writing duties. But because this is Brave and the Bold, we also get Adam West and Julie Newmar voicing Thomas and Martha Wayne, and Bruce and Thomas get to beat up some gangsters together complete with an "old chum". There's some great tension here as Batman flirts with a darker path, Bader doing some his best work of the series as he furiously confronts his parents' killer and we see Bruce Wayne unmasked for the first time. And the final notes are grimly ironic as justice is served...or perhaps vengeance, who can say.

I also want to give a shout-out to Peter Onorati's work as Joe Chill. Onorati is a great long-time "tough guy" actor on any number of cop shows and more recently on projects like This Is Us as Jack's abusive father. He uses that skillset wonderfully here as the hardened, aging criminal, but also gets to mine other depths like his bewildered realization of just who Batman is and what he means, panic as he tries to solicit the other villains for help, and weary acceptance as he dies.

2. Aquaman's Outrageous Adventure!

This, by contrast, is perhaps the most purely hilarious episode of the show. Superheroes having to do mundane everyday things is a rich vein of humor, and forcing the boisterous man of action that is Aquaman to go on a family road trip vacation is a killer premise just by itself. It's funny when he tries to sneak off to do hero work like he needs a fix (I love that Jaime doesn't question it in their encounter and is just thrilled for the team-up opportunity, as usual), and perhaps funnier still when he resolves to actually try to enjoy his family vacation. (A moment of silent commiseration between a fellow dad-on-the-road is a highlight.) Despite all this, Arthur is still a genuinely loving husband and father, and the script takes pains to not make his wife Mera an obnoxious harridan, and Arthur Jr. is merely a disaffected sullen teenager who perks right up when he gets to join in on a supervillain fight.

Also they use the Superfriends transition noise, which is awesome.

Mayhem of the Music Meister!

I mean, could it be anything else? The best direction and animation of the series. Neil Patrick Harris deepening and expanding on his Dr. Horrible work to be a one-shot musically inclined supervillain for the ages. Superheroes and supervillains in a kick-line. An industrial metal number about death traps. Batman saves the day through autotune. Villains and heroes alike complaining in song how Batman drives them bats. And a genuinely sweet love song that gets a reprise to close us out. Pure, perfect Brave and the Bold.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

"I post the receipts from every shitty c3 fan I can think of tomorrow night" Please do this anyway, I am ready for VIOLENCE

I feel similarly about Laudna. Maybe because I know people like that IRL. Where a relationship is all they boil down to and it is as if they no longer have internal drive and personal goals. Might also just be a post college thing.

Yeah I've also seen people like this, and the thing is, firstly, if that had been explored - if there had been an intent to explore a character who ultimately only wanted to become half of a relationship and sink into a partner's identity and be nothing more what might lead them to that, that could be interesting too! We've seen fantastic characters from Critical Role who ultimately didn't change much on purpose (notably, Caduceus) and that's totally fine! But Laudna feels a bit like a microcosm of many of my issues of the campaign, namely, she feels like a drifting path of least resistance to some bland endpoint that alleges to be happy while feeling utterly empty. She never really explored anything. She was just physically present while events occurred.

The second point though is that there's people straight up in their 30s like THIS CHARACTER IS GREAT, like I'd go much easier if Laudna were exclusively loved by 19 year olds because you know what it do be like that sometimes. but she seems to be very popular with 25+ year olds who write the way I did in middle school except somehow even more melodramatic.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)

Environmentalism in kids' entertainment in the early 90s is kind of a funny thing. Earth Day was a big focus, as was animal conservation and "doing your part" in terms of individual activism about picking up trash or planting trees. Captain Planet ruled the roost, with a multi-national team fighting grotesque stereotypes who bragged stupidly about how pollution was just so much fun even beyond the monetary value it might bring them. (looks at our current class of failson tech bro billionaries Actually that last part might not be so inaccurate...)

Looking back and with the looming specter of climate change reshaping our world, it seems almost quaint. Yet I wouldn't say all of that was wasted effort, nor were these unworthy causes. And a movie like FernGully: The Last Rainforest, corny as it might seem in places now, is both a reflection of that strange time and an interesting effort all its own. How does it hold up? Let's take a look.

Set in the titular, fictional Australian rainforest, FernGully tells the story of Crysta (Samantha Mathis), a fairy being tutored by Magi Luna (Grace Zabriskie, a good ways away from her work in David Lynch's repertory company). Magi informs her (and us) of the history of Ferngully and the evil spirit Hexxus (Tim Curry), who nearly wrought its destruction before Magi sealed him in a magic tree. Crysta, being a 90s teenager, is impatient and flies off to hang out with friends like Pips (Christian Slater, reuniting with Mathis from Pump Up The Volume and before their third collab in 1996's Broken Arrow) or Batty Koda (Robin Williams). But she soon discovers strange creatures encroaching on the forest: humans, who've long passed into legend after leaving Ferngully. More specifically, she meets Zack (Jonathan Ward), a young man working with a logging company. (Interesting/amusing observation: while we see Zack has an Australian driver's license, he has a very thoroughly Southern California accent. Possibly an expat?) After a mishap where Crysta accidentally shrinks him, Zack begins to learn more about the world of Ferngully and becomes increasingly enchanted with the place (though having a very cute girl express quite a bit of interest in you doesn't hurt, I imagine). Good timing, too, since Zack's co-workers have inadvertently released Hexxus from his prison and he's down for some payback...

The most striking thing about the movie remains its look. Director Bill Kroyer and his team, including his wife Susan Kroyer on art director duties, give the Australian landscapes true beauty in the use of bright, vivid colors and exceptional lighting. Ferngully truly does seem like a magical place even before you add the fairies, and Kroyer smartly makes use of blended CGI with the 2D animation that holds up remarkably well in expanding the landscapes or depicting machines like the ominous Leveler. (It helps, of course, that he was already a CGI veteran at this point, having been one of the pioneering animators on films like TRON). Outside of the lovely Aboriginal-art-inspired prologue that puts one in mind of Watership Down's famous dream sequences, the character animation itself is much in the Disney or Don Bluth models of the time, and not quite as detailed, but there's a lot of good character touches. In particular, Kathy Zielinski (who'd animated characters like Ursula or the snake form of Jafar in Aladdin, and would later supervise Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame) gives Hexxus a gleeful, vibrant quality that's almost seductive. You know that had to be difficult to figure out given he's alternatively made of oil, smoke, and a bitchin' Chernabog-esque skeleton form at the climax.

The film is also deftly written and acted, which helps it stand out from the crowd that included either the hilarious melodrama of Captain Planet or the cute-but-boring Once Upon A Forest. In particular, I like how naturally Ward and the script makes Zack's journey; in addition to some great incredulous deliveries (like my favorite line in the film, "Great, I've been shrunk by an AMATEUR!"), Zack opening up his perspective to truly see the world around him is handled with a light touch because he's ultimately not that bad a guy. I appreciate too that the reveal of his initial lie that he wasn't helping cut down trees is played with genuine remorse and owning up to it, as well as an immediate desire to set things right. Mathis matches him well, making a character concept that could've easily been insufferable (she might as well have "90s Tinker Bell" written on her model sheet) into genuinely winning and heartfelt. She even manages to sell a line like "Can't you feel its pain?" about a tree, which easily could've gotten a bad laugh. The ending is nicely bittersweet, with Zack and Crysta parting ways because they know how important it is that they do the work to build a better future on each side. (It's kind of the same ending as Princess Mononoke, when you think about it).

On the supporting end of things, Williams is actually a lot less of a scene-stealer than you'd think. Oh, he gets a few comedy impressions in, notably in a rap number (we'll get to that) and the climax, but otherwise he mostly dials into Batty's nervous-wreck dealing with trauma from being a lab animal characterization to great effect. (This is not to knock his work in something like Aladdin, where he gives arguably one of the best voice performances of all time as the Genie, but there is a notable difference). Curry, too, is less prominent than you'd think, only getting a few big scenes to sell his villainy. But his musical number "Toxic Love" is unsurprisingly a highlight, and he gets a lot of his patented "best evil laugh ever" in the screentime he DOES have. Everyone else is on point: Slater gets some nice sardonic jabs in, Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong have a couple funny bits as some biker gang-esque goons who ride beetles, and Zabriskie navigates the cliches of Ye Olde Doomed Mentor with aplomb.

Musically, the film has an...interesting pedigree. In addition to a lovely, understated score by Alan Silvestri of Back to the Future fame, there are eight songs throughout, three by Thomas "She Blinded Me With Science" Dolby and the remaining five all by other artists/songwriters. This is not inherently a bad thing; while most musicals benefit from a standardized production team, having a number of different voices who can work in different genres can be novel. And I wouldn't say any of these are outright bad, but it does lead to some "the hell?" moments.

Dolby's songs are the opening "Life Is A Magic Thing", which takes us below the canopy into Ferngully, and it's a pleasantly bouncy number easing us into things courtesy of Jimmy Clegg's vocals; the aforementioned "Batty Rap", which is very white-guy-rap, if buoyed by Williams' enthusiasm and the horrific implications of the backstory (which are further expounded on in the twice-as-long soundtrack version); and "Toxic Love", a properly bluesy, boozy villain song that Curry throws himself into with abandon. (That one too is expanded on the soundtrack, which removes any doubt about the sexual connotations of the character and his motivations). We also have the inexplicable "If I'm Gonna Eat Somebody (It Might As Well Be You)", where a goanna voiced by gravel-pit-toned rapper Tone Loc serenades Zack as he's about to devour him (that was co-written by...Jimmy Buffet??? Would've loved to see that conversation); "Raining Like Magic", a brief quiet interlude by children's singer Raffi; our big awards bait song "A Dream Worth Keeping", co-written by The Last Unicorn's Jimmy Webb and belted out with gusto by Sheena Easton like she's looking over her shoulder at Celine Dion; and "Some Other World", the first animated movie song by Elton John that plays over the credits and is fine if a bit generic. (There's also a diegetic cover of "Land of a Thousand Dances" that issues forth from Zack's stereo as he leads the fairies in a dance party because some cliches aren't just old, they're prehistoric)

I goof on FernGully sometimes because it really is so painfully earnest that you can't help but roll your eyes on occasion. But that's hardly the greatest sin a children's film can commit, and I appreciate that it's, essentially, a better Lorax movie than the actual Lorax movie in its messaging (sincerely, forever and always, fuck that movie). The film ends with an epigraph of "For our children, and our children's children", and I can't knock that sincerity. Maybe it's important to remember.

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2023 at the Movies: A Year in Review

2023 has been an odd year for American cinema in particular, between overall tepid box office outside of a few big hits and the combination of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes affecting release dates as well as promotional tactics. (Just so we're clear, this is a Union Solidarity Blog) But it was a fascinating year artistically nonetheless, especially on the blockbuster end. What this list aims to achieve is sort of a capsule review of the theatrical releases I saw (not counting streaming-only films even if I ended up seeing theatrical releases ON streaming) and how I felt about them in capsule review form. And even then, there's still stuff I need to catch up on like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Oppenheimer, Elemental, or Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Anyhoo, on with my list, in chronological release order:

John Wick: Chapter 4: Much like its titular hero, there are perhaps some signs that this franchise could benefit from taking a bit of a rest. Some of the worldbuilding is going from knowingly absurd to just plain absurd, and a couple early action beats, while fun (NUNCHUCKS), are a little familiar in terms of director Chad Stahelski's neon-as-fuck aesthetics. Ultimately, it's not too much to derail things, as Keanu Reeves proves a capable grounding lead like always, and the Parisian third act is giddy, comically overblown violence in the grand John Wick tradition that reaches an unexpected poignancy. The supporting cast might also be one of the best in the series; while Asia Kate Dillion's unflappable Adjudicator is missed from the last installment, we do receive Bill Skarsgard doing an OUTRAAGEOUS French accent as a smarmy villain you really want to see dead by the end of this, Donnie Yen as a clever, funny spin on the blind swordsman trope, Rina Sawayama is both badass and touching, Shamier Anderson stands out by dialing down, and my beloved Clancy Brown has some of the best implicit "are you fucking kidding me" reactions I've seen in a while.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie: I was honestly dreading this for a while. Illumination Entertainment is a perfectly cromulent animation studio who makes films that, with a couple exceptions, represent pretty much everything I dislike about American family filmmaking: loud, hyperactive, deficient of nutritional value, and did I mention loud? But the trailers started impressing me in terms of how well they adapted the candy-colored toybox Nintendo aesthetic to a wider theatrical scope. And if nothing else, casting Jack Black as Bowser would probably be pretty awesome (spoiler alert: he was). Thankfully, it manages to be an immensely entertaining, zippy adventure film that minimizes potential annoyances at nearly every turn. This is primarily thanks to a ready-to-play, enthusiastic voice cast (outside of Black, I particularly like Pratt and Day's brotherly dynamic and Anya Taylor-Joy doing a Disney Princess-esque comedy action spin on Peach), a smartly simple story structure, and leaving a lot of potential open for the future like Seth Rogen's lovable ready-for-spinoff-movies Donkey Kong. It may not rock the boat, but it was better than it had any business being, and that counts for a lot in my book.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The Marvel Cinematic Universe and I are admittedly on a bit of a break. Not because they're doing anything WRONG per se, just that a lot of their shows and movies haven't enticed me as much in the past year. I did get out to see this, though, which is both the best all around MCU film since Endgame and very possibly the best film of its own trilogy. James Gunn pulls out all the stops emotionally for his Marvel swan song (godspeed to you over at the still-in-progress trashfire that is Warner Bros. Discovery, good sir), crafting a beautiful, resonant journey for all the characters. The ensemble cast fires on all cylinders, for one. While Bradley Cooper is the obvious vocal standout as Rocket takes center stage, it's assuredly the role of Chris Pratt's career (other non-Mario/Marvel directors, take note! You can in fact have this guy be funny, credibly tough, AND sympathetic instead of missing out on the other two), Zoe Saldana navigates a difficult emotional dance, Pom Klementieff finds real heart in Mantis, Dave Bautista is still one of our most interesting wrestlers-turned-actors in the choices he makes, Karen Gillan has slowly become of the MCU's MVPs as Nebula, Will Poulter is endearingly dunderheaded as a comedic take on Adam Warlock, and Chukwudi Iwuji proves a truly vile villain who exemplifies the maxim of "if you really want an audience to just HATE a motherfucker, have him torture cute animals". And of course Gunn's musical tastes remain impeccable, such as a Beastie Boys needle drop that prompts a truly bitchin' fight scene (oddly the second time this specific song happened this year in a Pratt-led vehicle). It's funny, it made me ugly cry at SEVERAL points, and I got to see a psychic cosmonaut dog beat people's asses with her mind. What more could I want?

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse: Into the Spider-Verse was a revolution and a revelation for what the American animated film industry could accomplish artistically and technically. How could a sequel possibly live up to it? Across does, against all odds, proving to be the Empire Strikes Back to the original's Star Wars in terms of going darker/more complex on the emotions and to greater visual heights (albeit with the caveat that maybe next time, we can manage the production better and not crunch people so much). Co-directors Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers, and Joaquim Dos Santos (who I've stanned as one of our best animation action directors from Justice League Unlimited through Voltron Legendary Defender) craft a propulsive narrative that asks big questions about who and what Spider-Man is. And while those will have to wait to be fully answered in the third installment, what it sets up is no less compelling or thrilling. Shout-outs in particular go to Hailee Steinfeld, who has to anchor this film with Gwen as much as Shameik Moore's still-iconic Miles; Daniel Pemberton for an outstanding score; Oscar Isaac for giving rich complexity to Miguel O'Hara, who could have felt like a boorish bully in lesser hands; and Jason Schwartzman for not just proving he transitions REALLY well into voicework between this and projects like Klaus, but being by turns pathetically funny and terrifying in ways I've never heard him be as the Spot. Can't wait to see where that goes next time in particular.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: "Pleasant surprise" comes to mind. While I never hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as much as most, it was definitely a little underwhelming as a possibly final Indy adventure. (Not helping is that Steven Spielberg immediately turned around and made an infinitely better indy movie in the form of The Adventures of Tintin) So I was curious to see how going to the well for seemingly the real final adventure would work this time around. Thankfully, director James Mangold proves he has a good eye for creative action, even if nothing here quite reaches the heights of the original trilogy, and Harrison Ford does some of his best acting in ages as a weary, burnt-out Indy; one always got the sense that THIS was much closer to his heart than Han Solo. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a terrific foil to him, joyously amoral (or so she says), while Mads Mikkelsen finds a new spin on coldly cruel cinematic Nazis; he has a tense reintroduction scene that had me squirming in my seat. Add in a slam-bang ending and a touching epilogue, and I'm pretty happy with where things end up for our favorite archaeologist. A solid B+, which we could use more of nowadays.

Also they Poochie-d Shia LaBeouf, which is hilarious to me on several levels.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One: The Mission: Impossible franchise has undergone a curious metamorphosis from where it started as one of many oldies TV adaptations in 1996 to a purposefully old-school action franchise. Director Christopher McQuarrie has become a pro at these over the last three installments, and Dead Reckoning (now no longer a part one, as the back-in-production followup will be retitled) has lots to offer both large and small for action fans even outside of the continued spectacle of Tom Cruise Possibly Wants To Die On Camera. Obviously the big stunt sequences remain a draw, like a terrific car chase through Rome or the climactic journey onboard the Orient Express because trains are ALWAYS bitchin' locations in movies. But just as good are pleasures like a tense cat-and-mouse game in an airport where nobody's quite sure whose side Hayley Atwell's thief Grace is on, Henry Czerny coming back to the franchise after 27 years and looking as shiftily patriotic as ever, Pom Klementieff on this list for the second time looking really hot as she whoops ass, and Cary Elwes getting an unexpectedly choice exposition monologue. Plus the whole deal with the A.I. villain ended up being, uh, fairly relevant.

Barbie: A brilliant human comedy from an unexpected source. This could have gone wrong in so many different ways, I can easily imagine a version that's WAY more lugubrious and, crucially, much less funny. But director/co-writer Greta Gerwig has quickly become one of our best talents between this and the wildly-different-but-has-more-in-common-than-you'd-think Little Women (I also still need to see to heard-it's-excellent Lady Bird). With an infinitely clever script (I love in particular that the "real world" is just as ridiculous in its own way as Barbieland) and Sarah Greenwood's impeccable production design, Gerwig and her cast craft a feminist fable that remains light and funny even at its most strident and angry. Margot Robbie has never been better, hilarious and gut-punching by equal measure, America Ferrera ends up as the unexpected heart of the piece, and Ryan Gosling is absolutely hysterical as Ken while still making him intensely sympathetic. He and Robbie deserve Oscar noms in particular. No, I'm not kidding. Might expand this one to a full review at some point tbh.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: I missed this in theaters and regret it immensely, given that this is a hilarious, cheerfully irreverent take on characters who've really managed a surprising amount of relevance in the modern age. Actually having teen actors voice the Turtles makes them feel so authentic, and they're matched well by an equally game cast like Ayo Edebiri's thoroughly modern April O'Neill, Jackie Chan as a more bumbling-but-heartfelt version of Splinter than usual, and Paul Rudd going full surfer bro as Mondo Gecko. And of course the scribbled-notebook underground comics vibe of the animation is a neat bit of full circle aesthetics if you know these guys' origins.

Wish: All of you are wrong and being dumb about this movie. It's not that I can't grok some of the criticisms as being legitimate, to be fair; for example, the songs, while very good on their own IMO, don't always hit the iconic level of a Frozen or Encanto. But the vitriol with which they've been expressed, and this odd narrative that Disney is in the toilet artistically and needs to nebulously "fix" things, is something I can't at all agree with. It's gorgeously rendered, for one; yes, I would potentially like to see a return to full 2D animated films for the studio at some point too. But if they're gonna experiment even marginally with CGI, I applaud co-directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn making it look this painterly as a starting point. And as with a lot of modern Disney, there's real richness and inner life to these characters. Ariana DeBose is a winning heroine as Asha, who feels distinct from other "princesses" by essentially being working class and unionizing the kingdom. And Chris Pine as Magnifico is a Disney Villain for the ages, blending real complexity in his relationships with scenery-chewing madness. (Also am I the only one who got major "studio executive/CEO" vibes off him?) If this is "mid" or "bland" Disney, I really question what some of y'all are seeing that I seemingly can't.

Also I liked the 100th anniversary references, sue me. The last one in particular gets points for quiet charm rather than grandstanding.

The Boy and the Heron: Hayao Miyazaki, anime's favorite grumpy old man, comes back out of retirement for like the fifth time. Seriously, remember when Princess Mononoke was supposed to be his last film 25+ years ago? I'll believe his "last film" is truly his last when he's in the cold, cold ground. Regardless of the continuing saga of Old Man Won't Retire Because He Seemingly Can't Be Alone With His Own Thoughts, this is a brilliant, haunting spectacle of animation that might be a new favorite for me. Some have called it confusing, whereas I go for "dreamlike", possibly his most to date. Nearly every frame is suffused with longing and melancholy (though this also has some of Miyazaki's best comedy in a while), and, oddly like Wish, this feels like a true career reflection, if a bit more fraught and questioning what legacy truly means. Joe Hisaishi contributes possibly his moodiest, most dissonant score, with little of the bombast or whimsical charm that typifies his music, but it works unfathomably well. Credit also to the dub, with Robert Pattinson as funny and menacing as you've heard, but Luca Pandoval is also excellent as our stoic lead Mahito, Florence Pugh manages to be both a total badass and a funny old woman (it makes sense in context, I promise), Christian Bale puts forth a fascinating two-step with his boisterous father, Gemma Chan and Karen Fukuhara nail some complex emotional turns, Willem Dafoe nearly steals the whole thing in under two minutes, Dave Bautista makes a real meal out of a part not much bigger than that, and Mark Hamill finds resonance as a tired old man.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

The Rescuers Down Under (1990)

Movie sequels are a funny thing. Done well, they can be clever, meaningful expansions of the original film or give artists chances to take the creative impulse in a different direction; compare Ridley Scott's Alien to James Cameron's Aliens. Done poorly, they seem like cheap cash-ins with lazy writing and not an ounce of true artistic passion. Nowhere can this divide be more apparent than in the decade-plus of direct-to-video Disney sequels that kicked off with 1994's Aladdin follow-up The Retun of Jafar. As I've said in other posts, it's not ALWAYS true that these or the TV spinoffs were bad. In addition to my previously published review of 101 Dalmatians II and Atlantis: Milo's Return, I swear by Aladdin and the King of Thieves for being a solid adventure film. And Cinderella III: A Twist in Time fills in characterizations for characters that often came off as ciphers in the original, as well as being a clever story in its own right. Some could even be downright inspired, like how The Lion King 1 1/2 takes a page from both MST3K and Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead compared to the original's Hamlet influences. But many fumbled in trying to justify further stories for characters that weren't necessarily built for them or did lazy reversal rehashes. Curiously, though, a built-for-the-theaters sequel beat this crowd to it, in the form of 1990's The Rescuers Down Under, coming to us in the midst of the Disney Renaissance. How does that one stack up?

A sequel to the 1977 film The Rescuers, Down Under reunites us with Miss Bianca and Bernard (Eva Gabor and Bob Newhart, reprising their roles), two mice who are agents of the Rescue Aid Society, which dedicates itself to helping lost or kidnapped children. Their case this time is Cody (Adam Ryen, who, in a fun fact, dubbed his own part in the Norwegian dub), an Australian boy captured by the evil poacher McLeach (George C. Scott) and his sidekick goanna Joanna (Frank Welker) in pursuit of the great golden eagle Marahute. Bianca and Bernard catch a flight with Wilbur the albatross (John Candy), taking over from his brother Orville from the original, and catch up with local hero Jake (Tristan Rogers, the only natively Australian actor in the film) to track down McLeach.

The most immediately striking thing about the film compared to its predecessor is its look. The original Rescuers was made in the heyday of Xerography, the process wherein Xerox machines could print animators' drawings directly onto cels and save a shitload of money/time in terms of hand-inking and painting. Starting with 101 Dalmatians (which necessitated the process both for the logistics of all those puppies and because the gorgeously rendered, lovingly hand-painted over years of production Sleeping Beauty had been a financial failure), this gave Disney's films a scratchier, more graphic look through the next couple decades. It's not a BAD way to make a film, and I would say the results often looked quite good, especially for moody, atmospheric scenes such as the swamplands in the original film.

Down Under, however, took a different approach, being the first Disney animated film to be fully inked-and-painted digitally in Disney's CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) pipeline. This has a number of advantages, such as better integration of the CGI elements like McLeach's Truck Of Doom, but not the least of which is the bright, vibrant colors. The Outback truly feels like an epic stage for the adventures, with the justly famous Marahute flight showing off its grand scope and beauty. Even the urban night-time New York scenes feel freshened up compared to the muddier vision of before. Even beyond that, the filmmaking has evolved. The original's director, Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman, was a fine talent (I'm especially partial to his Robin Hood), but the 1977 film feels awfully slow-paced for what's supposed to be exciting and propulsive. Down Under's directors Hendel Butoy and Mike Gabriel use tighter angles and much brisker editing to lend a real sense of Spielbergian action mechanics, such as in a scene where the mice try and board the Truck Of Doom or the nervy climax.

The character animation is excellent as usual, with the obvious standout being Glen Keane's Marahute. Bird anatomy is perhaps the hardest to do in animation outside of horses, and Keane gives the eagle both a sense of realism and character without anthropomorphizing her to the same degree as the rest of the cast. Mark Henn, meanwhile, does a solid job of grounding Bianca and Bernard as a duo and separately; they never reach too far for effect and seem more or less like normal people doing their best. The great Ruben Aquino, whose resume is more diverse than he gets credit for (Ursula, Adult Simba, and Pleakley are among his characters), gives Jake a full dashing-rogue bearing. Nik Ranieri does honestly some underrated work with Wilbur on the anatomy front, and Duncan Marjoribanks and David Cutler attack the duo of McLeach and Joanna with gusto. The way the latter moves in particular is hilarious, such as in a scene where she tries to steal eggs from a pondering McLeach.

Story-wise are where things get interesting. In addition to the original being well-suited to a sequel (literally having the "you've got another case!" ending), we smartly get things rolling fast. The first film is about the same runtime length-wise, but it spends a long-ass time getting anywhere, or at least feels that way. Whereas this is like "yup, we're off to the races, kids, iconic eagle flight in the first 10 dang minutes". Thus, while Bianca and Bernard don't enter the film for a hot minute, we don't feel like our time's being wasted in the first act as we set up the situation. I like also how the potential triangle between Bernard, Bianca, and Jake is handled with remarkable subtlety. Bianca barely seems to notice, while Jake is certainly puffed-up but never outright cruel to Bernard, and the latter gets a great chance to step up to prove himself when the time comes. The only possible negative effect is that the film is ultimately on the short end, and the plot is fairly simple as a result. Thus we get some goofy comedy padding with Wilbur being subjected to unhelpful medical practices to straighten out his back, as well as a pair of scenes with Cody and some Marketable Animal Friends as they try to escape McLeach. Hardly bad, but a little perfunctory.

I also like Cody a little better as a kid protagonist, tbh. The original film tries to get a lot of pathos out of the plight of Penny, who's not just an orphan, but a KIDNAPPED orphan. It's not bad in and of itself, with an effective scene where the villainous Madame Medusa insults her passive-aggressively to try and get her under her thumb. And it anticipates where Don Bluth, who worked on the film as a directing animator, would go in terms of his own child protagonists like Fievel or Littlefoot. But a little of it goes a long way, even if my heart's not fully made of stone. Down Under trades things up for Cody in terms of being well-adjusted with a single mother and tenacious enough both to save Marahute upfront, as well as seeing right through McLeach's transparent attempt at bullshitting him (though a later manipulation DOES succeed).

The audio end is a good marriage here too, starting with Bruce Broughton giving us an absolutely iconic adventure score. There's lots of distinct themes here that all weave together fantastically, never feeling overly like a "cartoon" score. In terms of the voice cast, Ryen gives a nicely natural performance, kid-like without ever being too cutesy, and brave, but not SO brave that it feels out of place. Gabor and Newhart, the highlight of the earlier film, reach a nice equilibrium between "society lady who takes nobody's shit" and "nice normal guy who can nonetheless keep up with her". Rogers is one of my favorites here, his Aussie twang lending some authenticity to the proceedings, and his soap opera experience (he's a longtime fixture on General Hospital) lets him access the slightly broader cartoon acting necessary. Candy, of course, was a comedy legend, and he adjusts well here in terms of making Wilbur a distinct chatterbug with a noble streak rather than simply recycling his genteel screen presence. My favorite performance, though, is undoubtedly George C. Scott as McLeach. Always an intense, thoughtful actor (he's my favorite Ebenezer Scrooge on film), he makes what could've been a generic "evil hunter" type into something really memorable by snacking on the scenery and giving him a real cruel streak. And I'd be remiss without mentioning Welker's Joanna, who nearly sounds like an anticipation of Andy Serkis' Gollum in her slobbery growls and chuckles.

I'll be honest, I can't be TOTALLY objective about this movie. It was one of the first Disney films I owned on VHS, and many a rewind was had because I couldn't get enough. It's a little rougher around the edges now that I'm an adult, true, but when Marahute starts to fly as the music swells? Every time, I get transported back to a living room in Peachtree City, Georgia, inches away from the TV. That still means something, and thankfully, most of the movie still backs that kid up.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

The Prince of Egypt (1998)

When Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney in 1994 to form DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, it was essentially seen as a declaration of war against his former compatriots in the company. The first volleys in that war, however, would not come until 4 years later in 1998 with Antz and The Prince of Egypt. Both were bold statements, the former a CGI comedy directly designed to compete with Disney's new comrades at Pixar, the latter a big-budget traditionally animated musical taking aim at the prestige and box office returns of the Disney Renaissance that Katzenberg had helped shepherd at Feature Animation. Both made a strong impression at the time, and while Antz is somewhat forgotten today (especially thanks to the increasing controversy of Woody Allen as a filmmaker/performer and public figure), The Prince of Egypt has held on as a genuine classic. Does it deserve to be? Absolutely.

The plot is certainly familiar in its outlines to anyone who ever attended Sunday school. Hebrew slave Yocheved (the late singer Ofra Haza, absolutely haunting in only a few sung lines) places her baby Moses (Val Kilmer) in a basket and sets him down the River Nile in Egypt to rescue him from a purge commanded by Pharaoh Seti (Patrick Stewart). Moses eventually drifts towards the palace and is adopted by the Queen (Helen Mirren) and raised in the palace alongside his brother Ramses (Ralph Fiennes). They grow up as troublemakers, much to the consternation of Seti and the high priests Hotep and Huy (Steve Martin and Martin Short). When Moses helps free a captured Midian woman, Tzipporah (Michelle Pfeiffer), he learns a shocking revelation from the slaves Miriam and Aaron (Sandra Bullock and Jeff Goldblum): he is their brother. Disturbed by this and the full reality of the purge, he accidentally kills a slave-driver in a struggle, then leaves Egypt. After reuniting with Tzipporah in Midian, he begins to make a new life for himself. One day, when trying to retrieve a sheep, he comes across the fabled burning bush and speaks to God, learning that his task is to free His people from the Egyptians. But it will not be easy, God warns, and you DEFINITELY know the holy ass-kicking coming up next if you've read your Scripture.

First things first: this is in the top 5 of the most beautiful animated features ever made, regardless of country or studio. This is as grand, no, grander than many live-action films in the scope of its vast settings-deserts, palaces, chariot races, plagues of frogs and fire, the Red Sea-yet the tiniest gesture from its characters can have just as much impact. Spielberg brought much of the staff and talent from his short-lived Amblimation studio in London to work on this, and the talent is well in evidence. Animators like Rodolphe Guenoden, William Salazar, and Kristof Serrand give stellar, realistic renderings that avoid much of the scenery-chewing instincts of Western animation. (Katzenberg did some poaching of his own, bringing in James Baxter to do some truly stellar scenes of Moses' acting that anticipate his great realism on films like Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmaron) The CGI is used brilliantly too, even if, like Hunchback, the crowds look a little obvious nowadays if you look too closely. I also want to shout out the direction by Brenda Chapman (another Disney vet), Simon Wells, and Steve Hickner. They guide the story brilliantly in terms of shot choices, such as in a famous scene where Moses goes on his journey across the desert and becomes smaller and smaller in the frame.

Like Hunchback, this is a story that demands a certain seriousness, and it avoids the pitfalls of that film by eschewing goofy sidekicks for more natural character-based comedy amidst all the sturm and drang. Even Hotep and Huy, while they get some funny moments, undergo a darker, hypocritical turn when their power is threatened. While there are changes made to the Biblical story (addressed upfront in my favorite "please don't kill us" disclaimer of all time), they all pretty much work for the story this tries to tell. Moses is reframed as a man desperately in need of a purpose, and God certainly gives him one, but also someone who truly loves his adopted brother and wishes things didn't have to be this way. Ramses, too, is seen with remarkable complexity as a figure who adores Moses, but is simultaneously all too aware of and completely blind to the privileges he holds, which costs him everything. The supporting cast gets some nice moments too; I especially like Tzipporah's subtle shift as she grows to love Moses, even if she never loses her spirit.

(A quick word on the voice cast before we get into the aural end. You would probably not cast the film the way they did today, with predominantly white or non-Jewish actors as Hebrews and Egyptians, and I think that's certainly worth considering even if visually, the characters obviously look much closer than previous Biblical films using very white casts. The main observation I will put forth is that the film WAS shepherded by two of the most powerful Jewish men in Hollywood, Spielberg and Katzenberg. And given that the story was important enough for them to consult an army of religious experts from various cultures to get things like clothing and traditions correct, they presumably could have gotten any cast they wanted. They ultimately landed on this one, and I think that was their right. I do not object to anyone who feels differently, especially as a non-Jewish white guy myself.)

In terms of the soundtrack, Stephen Schwartz possibly outdoes his collaborations on Hunchback with the songs here, aided by an equally great score and arrangements by Hans Zimmer. "Deliver Us" is a powerful opening number that visualizes the plight of the slaves with heartbreaking cruelty. And as said, Haza's vocals cast a spell that will hang over the entire film. "All I Ever Wanted" is the shortest, probably weakest song in the film, but I like how it plays almost as an inversion of the typical "I Want" song in terms of Moses trying to convince himself that this is what he actually wants. "Through Heaven's Eyes" boasts a robust performance from Broadway vet Brian Stokes Mitchell as Tzipporah's father Jethro that is genuinely uplifting in the new spirituality offered to Moses. (Mitchell is so good, in fact, that I wondered why they even brought in Danny Glover for the character's few spoken lines, even if those are well-delivered). "Playing With The Big Boys" is easily the most sinister I've ever heard Steve Martin and MARTIN SHORT, of all people, sound, though I suppose it helps when you back them up with badass chanting. "The Plagues" too is ominous and rumbling, with a heartbreaking counterpoint duet between Moses and Ramses right in the middle. And "When You Believe" genuinely soars as the newly freed slaves embrace life.

The voice cast is star-heavy, as mentioned, but all are well-chosen rather than distracting, and it certainly doesn't sound like anyone's phoning it in to my ears. In particular, I think this is one of the best performances of Val Kilmer's career, equal to his Doc Holliday in Tombstone, as he goes to the mat emotionally in scene after scene. (He also plays God, doing a wonderful job of making him seem mysterious, unknowable, and sympathetic all at once). Fiennes is his match, tragic and vile in equal measure, though perhaps his cruelest delivery is his most offhanded, a casual "Slaves" when Moses observes their father murdered children. (This echoes Stewart, who goes from sternly warm patriarchy to a truly chilling moment where he tries to comfort Moses by saying "They were only slaves", much to his adopted son's horror). Bullock doesn't get a ton of screentime, but she paints an effective portrait of a woman trying to hold onto hope and faith because that's all she has left. Goldblum gets some proper Goldblum-y comic relief moments as Aaron, but also a crucial cynical beat where he questions why Moses cares so much about them now. And as said, I really like how Pfeiffer gives Tzipporah a lived-in toughness rather than seeming fake (she also gets a priceless reaction when she helps save Moses from a well).

I come to this film from a number of different angles: as an animation fan first, and as someone for whom it was a fixture in a mixed secular-Christian household growing up. I grew away from God as time went on, but stories like this can still take hold in my imagination because of the pictures they paint. There is a genuine sense of wonder here, beautiful and terrible by turns, and I feel it every time I watch. The faith that a true miracle is occurring.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

As observed in the last post, when the Disney Renaissance period "ends" isn't always entirely clear. Even after the high water mark of The Lion King, the animated films were still making money (esp. on the merchandising end) and getting good reviews, just somewhat less effusive ones depending on the film. Perhaps no film during this period was regarded with more curiosity and suspicion than their attempt at adapting Victor Hugo's classic French novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame (though if you want to get technical, that's the title of most adaptations, whereas the original French title is Notre Dame de Paris). The story of Quasimodo is often a dark one, after all, full of themes like religious hypocrisy and discrimination against minorities. Could Disney handle that, critics seemed to ask, or should they even TRY? Well, they ultimately did, and we have the film in front of us to judge. Let's dig in.

(Quick note: the film uses the outdated g-slur to refer to Roma characters throughout. I will not be doing so for sensitivity purposes.)

We open in 15th century Paris, as Clopin (Paul Kandel), leader of the city's Roma begins to narrate a story, "a tale of a man...and a monster." Twenty years ago, Judge Claude Frollo (Tony Jay) murdered a Roma woman when pursuing her for a presumed theft. The cargo turns out to be her son, who Frollo classifies as a monster for his hunchbacked deformities, and he nearly murders him to boot. But the Archdeacon of Notre Dame (David Ogden Stiers) stops him, warning that the "eyes" of Notre Dame, and possibly God Himself, will witness this crime. A shaken Frollo agrees to raise Quasimodo (Tom Hulce), but shuts him away in the bell tower. As the present day opens, Quasimodo yearns to join the outside world, with his gargoyle friends Hugo (Jason Alexander), Victor (Charles Kimbrough), and Laverne (Mary Wickes, in her final film role) as his only companions. But Frollo insists they would never accept him, and Quasimodo nearly seems ready to accept that lonely lot in life, so much has he internalized this abuse. His friends, however, encourage him to sneak out to the yearly Feast of Fools, just for one day. He works up the courage to do so, only to encounter the beautiful Roma Esmeralda (Demi Moore) and be crowned the King of Fools. After the crowd turns on him, Esmeralda comes to his rescue, only to be pursued by Frollo and the goodhearted captain Phoebus (Kevin Kline), who convinces her to take sanctuary in the church. Things quickly become a waiting game as Quasimodo and Esmeralda begin to bond over sharing an outsider status, and he begins to consider a potential life "out there", as Frollo's anger begins to twist into hatred...and lust.

The first thing that has to be said about Hunchback is that it's one of the best-looking films the studio ever made. Like Tarzan after it, CGI techniques were heavily used to give Notre Dame a real sense of place and atmosphere previously though unachievable. You truly FEEL the vastness of the cathedral and Paris, occasionally feeling just a bit of awe in the process, but thankfully directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (Beauty and the Beast, Atlantis: The Lost Empire) never let them overwhelm the characters and their emotions. Some of this hasn't aged gracefully (the CGI crowds are definitely a little ropey when you look close), but the overall effect remains outstanding.

So too does the character animation, which is remarkable in its complexity. Quasimodo alone would be a challenge for most animators, but James Baxter is not most animators, and he gives the hunchback a genuine soulfulness in addition to making that seemingly impossible body move with pencils. Kathy Zielinski, meanwhile, takes what could have felt like a caricature in Frollo and makes him into a real, terrifying person. You feel his pain...and gape in horror at his cruelty. Tony Fucile's Esmeralda is vivacious and vibrant, Russ Edmonds makes Phoebus a little rougher than most handsome Disney leading men even with his good heart, and Mike Surrey grants Clopin an intriguing ambiguity; right up until the end, you're never totally sure what he's after.

The story is just as good as the visuals. I will admit upfront that it probably bites off more than it can chew. There is a LOT to cover here in terms of the intersections of racism, religious hypocrisy, and othering of people deemed "monsters" because of their disabilities. Especially since smarter people than me have pointed out this was NOT wholly Victor Hugo's original intent, but that the story transformed into a parable about discrimination thanks to Hollywood and other adaptations. It's possible that anyone could balk at it, much less the largely-compositionally-white Disney animation studio of the 1990s. Yet it has to be said that a genuine, earnest effort is made here even with some fumbles (which we'll get to later).

A useful comparison point is the previous year's Pocahontas. I can genuinely say I kind of hate that film outside of a few caveats, and one big reason why is that the characters feel so flat in their assigned roles. Nobody surprises or does anything unexpected, there's no nuance in the colors of the wind there, and even the characters you think could have affecting arcs are unbearably stiff. Not so here. Quasimodo is an excellent lead, for starters; even if he's gentler and less outright antisocial than other adaptations or the source material, he's allowed to be flawed in terms of parroting assumptions about Roma planted in him by Frollo and initially feeling entitled to Esmeralda's love because she was kind to him. He rises to heroism instead of having it be assumed. Frollo, too, is more complex than most Disney villains. Not sympathetic, precisely, but you get the sense that he really is just a miserable person at the end of the day, directing that misery outward as the contradictions between his religious piety, his racism, and his lust tear him up inside. Esmeralda is a little sexualized, it's true, and perhaps a little more noble than she might truly be in the situation, but she's a passionate, driven adult with a sense of humor. Which feels rare even now in animated kid's movies. The triangle that develops between her, Quasimodo, and Phoebus is intriguing because we can see it going either way, rather than having Phoebus be an obvious bad egg. I like his arc, too, as the Roma gain a human face and he grows increasingly uncomfortable with his complicity.

The voice cast helps with this considerably, giving stellar performances across the board. Helping is that they have one of the best soundtracks in the Disney canon backing them up, with Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz giving us banger after banger. "The Bells of Notre Dame" stands out especially for getting across a ton of story and character notes as elegantly as the likes of "Belle", "Circle of Life", and "The Family Madrigal." (Credit to Kandel, too, for hitting that insane high D note at the end of both it and the final reprise) Plus, I'm always a sucker for Badass Ominous Latin Chanting, and that's all over this score. We also get TWO "I Want" songs for the price of one, with "Out There" and "God Help The Outcasts" being excellent mission statements for Quasimodo and Esmeralda. "Hellfire" is the most chilling Villain Song in the entire canon, taking us down a road of darkness and flame. And "Topsy Turvy" feels underrated as a comedy song, feeling almost like something you could hear in another Hugo-derived musical, Les Miserables, in the clever rhyming and archaic word usage. (I'm also partial to "The Court of Miracles", which is short, but has a nicely sinister bounce)

In terms OF the actors, Tom Hulce is honestly an interesting choice for Quasimodo given that his best-known performance otherwise is as Mozart in Amadeus. A great film, and great acting, but Mozart is a markedly different character in that he is cheerfully obnoxious even whilst remaining in our sympathies. Here, Hulce finds a wistful quality in his tones, childlike without ever being childish, which is a hard balance to strike. And he knocks "Out There" out of the park, as it were. Tony Jay, meanwhile, gives the performance of his lifetime as Frollo, mining every scrap of loathsome humanity he can without ever losing the reality of the man. His rendition of "Hellfire" always leaves me awestruck. Moore has a distinct, smoky tone that aids Esmeralda spectacularly even if we can question the ethics of casting a white woman as a dark-skinned Roma in retrospect, and Kline matches her well in terms of being funny and down-to-Earth, making us believe in Phoebus' turn.

(Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Stiers' cameo at least a little bit. He was a good luck charm for Disney in this period, and he gives the Archdeacon genuine warmth to contrast Frollo's bigotry, a necessary one given how brutal that becomes)

Now there are some fumbles, even if they don't blemish the film overmuch for me. The first is the depiction of the Roma, which can run a little inconsistently. It's laudable that the movie is sympathetic to their plight and doesn't make any mealy-mouthed both-sides statements about it the way Pocahontas tries to run with an ill-defined "hatred" as the Aesop. Frollo is just straight-up racist and that's how we're doing this. But they also get played as comic relief and we don't get much internal dialogue on them outside of Esmeralda and Clopin (though as said, I appreciate that he has purposeful ambiguity in seeming like a gleeful jester one moment, then a tough street boss the next).

The second is the gargoyles, who you may have noticed haven't been mentioned much up to now. That's because I'm of two minds about them. On the one hand, I don't think they're bad characters. The animation on them is as good as the rest of the film, and you could tell the animators had fun figuring out how to move stone figures around. Alexander, Kimbrough, and Wickes all give excellent comedic performances, and especially in the early part of the film, they serve a useful function as keeping the mood light and confidants for Quasimodo. There are much worse Disney sidekicks purely on the merits (fuck you, Gurgi, go to hell). Nor do I object to comic relief on its face. I adore comedy-as-characterization, and Disney sidekicks can often be a useful counterbalance.

What I dispute is the usage here. To me, there's an obvious arc of Quasimodo shedding his comfort levels as he grows up and decides to engage in the outside world. But the gargoyles...keep showing up past a point where it feels necessary. You get the sense the filmmakers were nervous about just HOW dark and adult the rest of the film was, and were hedging their bets. This is best exemplified in their song "A Guy Like You." On its face, it's a funny, catchy number that the actors sing the hell out of. And the dramatic purpose (building Quasimodo's confidence about his romance before learning that Esmeralda has fallen for Phoebus) is solid. But it's just...too much. These guys aren't the Genie or Timon and Pumbaa, and they shouldn't be. Also between them and Esmeralda's pet goat Dhjali, who's also Fine mechanically, and Clopin already being funny in cleverer ways, it begins to feel a smidge crowded.

One quibble I DON'T have is with the ending. This remains the most criticized part of the film, given that the book ends tragically with Frollo, Quasimodo, and Esmeralda all dead, and some variation on this tends to stick for a lot of adaptations (in fact, both Disney's later German and English-language stage adaptations hewed closer to the novel, if not exactly in terms of circumstances). By contrast, here we get an uplifting ending where not only is Frollo the only casualty (and with a bitchin' variation on the Disney Villain Death to boot), Quasimodo is accepted by the citizens of Paris. Unrealistic? Maybe. Does my heart melt every time that little girl comes up to feel Quasimodo's face? Absolutely. Look, I'm not someone who thinks we need to treat minorities/disadvantaged people like glass dolls in narratives. We can have bad things happen to them without it being Le Problematique. But given the history, is it really so terrible to give a hunchback a happy ending on occasion? I think not, and for this version of the story, they absolutely arrive at the correct decision.

The mood around the film was slightly more muted upon its release. It made money, the critical reception was generally positive-even in France!-and some critics like Roger Ebert gave it effusive reviews. But it was usually agreed that Disney had done its usual thing of simplifying a popular narrative for mass consumption the way they did for fairy tales and such. Hard to totally argue against that point, but I would posit that, as said, the story had already mutated into a very different form thanks to various other adaptations. You'd hardly think Les Miserables would be a good crowd-pleasing musical either at first glance. Even if it totally doesn't stick the landing, this remains one of my favorite Disney films because it TRIED, damn it. It's imperfect, but beautiful.

Could say that about our hunchback, couldn't we?

[spiderdreamer-blog]

Tarzan (1999)

It's hard to define sometimes where the end of the Disney Renaissance period from the late 80s through the 90s is. After the release of The Lion King, the 2D animated features steadily made less money and critical acclaim became more mixed. There was a sea change occurring thanks to more competition from companies like DreamWorks and Warner Bros., as well as the advent of the computer. For me, the dividing line is 1999's Tarzan, mostly because it's after this point that we get to what I and others call the 2000-2004 "experimental" age with films like The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Lilo & Stitch, and Treasure Planet. But Tarzan has much in common with those films, representing a step away from the Broadway musical traditions and into a new, intriguing arena of animation storytelling. It's genuinely one of my favorite Disney films to revisit, and I hope this review helps explain why.

The story takes Edgar Rice Burroughs' initial novel Tarzan of the Apes as a guideline more than an actual adaptation, namely ditching concerns about nobility wealth inheritance and unflattering black African caricatures (the spinoff TV series would deal with the latter in trying to be, uh, less problematic about such). We pick up with Ye Olde Dramatically Convenient Boat Wreckage in a truly commanding opening sequence set to Phil Collins' anthemic Two Worlds. Tarzan's unnamed parents land in Africa and are put in parallel to gorillas Kala (Glenn Close, at the time coming off a very different performance for Disney as live action Cruella De Vil) and Kerchak (Lance Henriksen). Tragedy strikes for both families, and where one loses his parents, another gains a son. But Tarzan (Alex D. Linz as a child, Tony Goldwyn as an adult) grows up knowing he is "different", desperate to prove himself as an ape and belong. He seems to find an equilibrium, becoming best friends with Terk (Rosie O'Donnell) and Tantor (Wayne Knight at his most nebbishy), and even managing to vanquish Sabor, but then strangers arrive. Strangers who look like him, in the form of British scientist Archimedes Porter (Nigel Hawthorne), his daughter Jane (Minnie Driver), and their guide Clayton (BRIAN BLESSED). Now things steadily grow more complicated as Tarzan wishes to learn all he can about these outsiders and himself, but what might it cost?

One of the first, most notable things about the film to me is its complexity in the writing and characterization. Looking back, the Renaissance can have a problem in terms of male leads being love interests who don't get as much focus or slightly bland focus-tested "likable". This isn't true for ALL of them; the Beast has many layers to his personality, while Simba and Quasimodo are great, imo, because they have more baggage tying them down and thus more to rise above for true heroism. Nor does it make most of them bad characters. But it was notable enough, as was the tendency for them to be overshadowed by the villains or sidekicks, for co-directors Kevin Lima/Chris Buck and writers Tab Murphy/Bob Tzudiker/Noni White to slightly...course-correct.

Ergo, Tarzan himself is very much the main focus here. There's only one major sequence that he's not really involved with, and even when he's not onscreen, the other characters are as intrigued by his contradictions as the audience. (Insert your own Poochie jokes here, though obviously it doesn't come CLOSE to that) We truly feel his anxiety about fitting in, and the lengths he goes to are intensely relatable even at their most self-damning.

The other characters, too, feel richer and more lived-in than many of the standard types. Kala is a mother figure, one who tries to make Tarzan feel like he belongs, but is deeply scared of losing him. Kerchak is possibly my favorite character in the film because of how much you have to read into his actions because he holds so much back emotionally until the very end. Even then, he comes off as a more realistic harsh father figure than a caricature, and we can always understand where he's coming from. Jane is one of the best Disney love interests, meanwhile, feeling like a modern romantic comedy heroine with a lot of drive and initiative, as well as being just genuinely nerdy, which you don't often see even today. Clayton manages a nice two-step of seeming like an obvious bad guy but playing things down the middle until he gets what he wants. Even the comic relief gets good moments, such as Professor Porter gently supporting the romance or Tantor standing up for himself at a critical juncture.

Of course, what helps here is that said characters have some of the most beautiful environments and animation backing them up in Disney history. The African jungle is depicting as a kind of painterly, hyper-real fantasy, with impossible tree shapes and vines that bloom in the sunlight. And the then-revolutionary Deep Canvas CGI process allows Tarzan to soar through them, the camera spinning and rotating with each movement. The design sensibility is "classical" Disney to a large degree, but with slightly longer faces or larger eyes to add expressiveness. The California, Parisian, and Florida animation teams all clearly busted their asses to make this come to life. And Glen Keane's work with the Paris studio on Tarzan might be the best of his legendary career in terms of the variety of movements and subtleties in expressions. So too goes the rest of the supervising animators: Ken Duncan makes Jane truly lovable and wholly distinct from the likes of his Meg or Amelia; Randy Haycock gives Clayton a macho swagger that feels entirely his own rather than feeling like a Gaston ripoff; Bruce Smith combines remarkable anatomy work and microexpressions with Kerchak; Russ Edmonds' Kala is warm and motherly while never letting you entirely forget she's a gorilla; Dave Burgess makes Porter funny with his slightly squat, short shapes; and Mike Surrey and Sergio Pablos make for an excellent duo on Terk and Tantor in terms of contrasting their size, as well as the latter giving nervous-nelly body language to such a huge character. That's harder than it looks.

The aural end is just as good. Much hay and memery has been made of Phil Collins going ridiculously hard on the storytelling songs, which I fully support. But it really is true that they add so much here and take the burden off the characters in terms of singing save for the improvisational scat number "Trashin' The Camp". I'm partial to "Strangers Like Me" in terms of the earnest yearning and connections that Tarzan makes over the course of it. And of course the various versions of "Two Worlds" are essentially the mission statement of the film, complete with absolutely bitchin' percussion. Mark Mancina's accompanying score is also excellent, sounding like a fusion between The Lion King (which he produced/arranged for both the film and Broadway show) and his action movie work on projects like Speed or Bad Boys. Particularly great is the cue that plays when Tarzan defeats Sabor and builds up to his classic yell, which milks the heroic triumph for all its worth.

The voice cast is also excellent top to bottom. Goldwyn has a deeper timbre than many Disney male leads, less of an ingenue, and this adds to the stormier emotions; we truly feel his pain on lines like "Why didn't you tell me there were creatures that look like me?" But he's not TOO grim, thankfully, and gets some good subtly funny moments such as sounding out monkey noises in a conversation that Jane only hears one half of. Close is properly maternal, of course, getting her best showings in emotional one-on-ones with both Linz and Goldwyn as they hash out their relationship. Henriksen, like the animation, wisely underplays Kerchak and lets the emotion come out through his gruff, gravel-pit voice rather than obviously signaling things. Driver is hilarious and winning as Jane, getting some of the best laughs and most sweetly tender bits of the proceedings. It's all the more impressive when you consider she played Lady Eboshi in the Princess Mononoke dub the same year, which is the utter opposite of this performance. BRIAN BLESSED doesn't do a lot of his patented BRIAN BLESSED yelling outside of some choice bits at the end, but he makes a meal of Clayton regardless as a charismatic asshole, and I like how he plays a climactic bit of manipulation in particular. Hawthorne gets a much better showing here than his previous Disney voice role as Fflewddur Flam in The Black Cauldron, daffily sweet and humorous in equal measure, while O'Donnell and Knight are familiar vocally but use that to inform their characterizations rather than distract.

I think what I like most about this movie is that it feels incredibly well-rounded. Some Disney movies from this period might have a great villain or sidekicks but a weaker protagonist in Hercules or strong protagonists/villains but a weaker supporting cast as in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (Then you have Pocahontas, which sucks on ALL ends!) In Tarzan, everything feels of a piece, and nobody jars against the tone or mood. Combine that with the dizzying highs of the animation and truly excellent emotional beats, and you've got a real winner that stands the test of time in my eyes.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

My Adventures With Superman: “Adventures of a Normal Man, Pts. 1 and 2″ Review

Since the end of Superman: The Animated Series, Superman has not had an animated series solely dedicated to himself as an adult in the intervening 23 years. He’s certainly been part of team shows like Justice League/Unlimited or Legion of Superheroes (albeit as a teenaged Superboy) that had his character as a key component. And there have been no shortage of movies, live action or animated, that starred him either. But it feels like something’s been lost, especially on the live action end, where interesting ideas by Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill largely failed to coalesce into a compelling character (and also were a major contributing factor in the current disaster zone that is Warner Bros. Discovery, so, that doesn’t help). But we finally have a new series starring him in My Adventures With Superman, and its two-part premiere has finally surfaced. How do things shake out for the Man of Steel?

Rather than start with the standard origin, the series picks up with Clark Kent (Jack Quaid, The Boys, Star Trek: Lower Decks) arriving in Metropolis to start work at the Daily Planet as an intern alongside his roommate Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid, Cousins for Life). They quickly meet Lois Lane (Alice Lee, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist), a fellow intern who dreams of bigger things, but is currently stymied by the Planet’s gruff editor-in-chief Perry White (Darrell Brown, Gabby’s Dollhouse). Lois drags Jimmy and Clark along on a story about military tech stolen by mercenary Leslie “Livewire” Willis (Zehra Fazal, Voltron Legendary Defender, Amphibia, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power), which pretty quickly spirals out of control. Clark quickly leaps in to save the day, and now the question of who or what this “Superman” is becomes THE question.

The first, most striking thing about My Adventures With Superman is its look and tone. Aided by the ever-capable Studio Mir, the character designs are bright, expressive, and far more rounded than the stripped-down, angular DCAU look of old. Clark in particular has an appealing sweet softness to his farmboy frame, Jimmy being black has been done before but never quite this excitable, and Lois is now a full-on tomboy with short hair and dark skin, much to the consternation of idiot YouTube grifter screamy men everywhere. This spreads downward to the tone, where producers Jake Wyatt (DuckTales), Brendan Clogher (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and Josie Campbell (She-Ra) basically position the proceedings as a shoujo/josei romantic comedy that happens to have superhero action scenes.

Nothing against them, of course, they’re very well done (and fix a core problem I had with She-Ra in that the action scenes were, number one with a bullet, the weakest part due to jank). But just as much attention is paid to loving close-ups of Lois and Clark blushing as they realize they might LIKE like each other. Needless to say, I find it incredibly charming, especially after years of SnyderBros breathlessly insisting that Cavill’s dour, contemplative lonely god Superman who SNAPS PEOPLE’S NECKS is the best version of the character instead of some pussy who, I don’t know, saves kittens from trees.

(Full disclosure: Cavill is a fine actor in other projects and I have a great deal of admiration for Zack Snyder as a filmmaker, just...not them together for the most part)

In particular, a Clark who’s unsure of himself gives things a bit more of a mysterious tone than usual, particularly in the most intriguing plot hook so far: the Kryptonian ship that he came in contains the usual hologram of Jor-El, but he speaks in garbled Kryptonian that Clark can’t understand and is frightened by as a child. This, the ship creating The Costume (though Martha adds a humanizing touch with a belt and shorts), and a flash of a space battle when he unhooks a piece of damaged tech from Livewire’s back hint that it may be harder than usual to reconcile his Kryptonian and Earth selves. Which I’m not opposed to. While, as said in my STAS review, I don’t generally like the idea that Krypton was some cold unfeeling society with no value to Clark, this could be going a different, more interesting direction.

The awkwardness also adds great dividends to his interplay with Lois, who he generally has to keep up with anyway. Jimmy is also boosted in terms of already having an interest in extraterrestrial stuff, and he feels like a genuine part of the ensemble instead of a third wheel. The supporting cast is also going in some interesting directions, with a wearier Perry White than usual as a solid semi-antagonistic force, Livewire standing out as a smart, canny villain even before she busts out the Electro powers, and an excellent read on the Kents, with Jonathan and Martha warm and supportive, but fretting about losing Clark to this new persona. (Hey, Snyder? That’s how you make the Kents conflicted about Clark being Superman, not “idk, maybe you should let kids die rather than reveal your secret”)

All of this is aided by an incredibly strong voice cast. Quaid is my favorite Clark voice in a long time, affecting a soft dorkiness rather than going for a slightly formal patrician vibe. His comic timing is also great, such as in an early scene where he first meets Lois and is quickly embarrassed. Lee matches him well by switching out Lois’ usual businesswoman vibes for “overcaffeinated”, as well as self-aware enough to admit her mistakes, though not enough to cop to her immediately becoming smitten with Clark. Sahid is a funny, excitable Jimmy, taking the edge off what could have been an eye-rolling “CONSPIRACY THEORIST” gag, and his interplay with Quaid and Lee is often a highlight of the show. On the supporting end, Brown wisely dials down to be a straight man, Fazal is credibly tough and intelligent as usual, Kari Wahlgren gets those aforementioned great beats as Martha, and Azuri Hardy-Jones is immediately endearing as Flip Johnson, a gender-flipped version of the leader of Jack Kirby’s Newsboy Legion (now the NewsKIDS Legion, given some other gender-swaps in the group); she’s very much a believable scrappy kid, worrying at one point if they should call the President or “my mom”.

(Sidebar: the funniest, most unusual casting here is Chris Parnell as an anime twunk-ified Slade Wilson/Deathstroke, who appears as an ominous figure that tries to get intel out of Livewire, fights her, then captures and interrogates her with Amanda Waller and seemingly Sam Lane in attendance after Superman de-escalates the situation. Now, Parnell is an excellent voice actor with a long resume at this point, but his stock in trade is usually characters like Cyril Figgis on Archer or Jerry on Rick & Morty, who are most charitably described as weak-willed sexual obsessives. It’s a head-trip to hear him take on a role previously essayed by deep-voiced gravel pit legends like Ron Perlman, Will Arnett, Mark Rolston, and the late Miguel Ferrer. Though perhaps wisely, he doesn’t try to imitate those guys and leans into his own tones, just more of a smarmy asshole variant. His delivery of “We’re the good guys” at the end of the premiere is wonderfully insincere.)

Overall, My Adventures With Superman is immensely promising and I hope it has a decently long, unimpeded-by-Discovery-fuckery run. By going off-book but also appealing to the fundamentals of the character, it’s a fresh take that I am keenly interested in seeing develop and grow. Also, it’s just really dang cute, sue me.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

My Adventures With Superman PSA

The comparisons with Luz Noceda are starting to become actively aggravating. Luz is Afro-Latina. Lois is voiced by a Korean actress, Alice Lee, and is probably some variety of East Asian due to such. We don’t in fact have to flatten everything in a fandom monoculture.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqvGZLpoOGA

reblog to bonk the person you reblogged it from with a hollow cardboard tube

[spiderdreamer-blog]

Superman: The Animated Series: The Top 10 Episodes

P. self-explanatory, I’d imagine. Multi-parters will count as one episode Let’s get rolling!

FIVE HONORABLE MENTIONS

“In Brightest Day”: This one’s admittedly here more for the historical importance. It’s a solid episode on its own, with a much-abbreviated mashup of Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner’s origins serving as the main thrust, and Kyle is a very likable protagonist in his first day on the job, especially against a formidable threat in Ted Levine’s arrogant, well-essayed Sinestro. But what this represented to the larger DCAU is hard to understate, with the Green Lanterns and Guardians of Oa introduced, as well as the soaring musical leitmotif that will also go on to represent John Stewart in Justice League. Of the hero team-up episodes, this is definitely on the higher end.

“Speed Demons”: Speaking of which, this also has a great deal of importance in introducing Wally West as the Flash to the DCAU. And the episode is a ton of fun, especially with the mix of personalities and TMS’ animation bolstering the speedy movements of our heroes and environmental effects. The main reason it’s here and not on the list proper is that it’s fairly light and fluffy as these go. Weather Wizard gets a lot of mileage out of Miguel Ferrer’s confident sneering villainy and going as far to attempt to murder his nebbish brother, but he’s ultimately just kind of A Guy here, and the frivolity is indicated all too well by the ending tag as Superman and Flash cheerfully resume their race. It came close, but it can’t quite go the distance.

“Little Girl Lost”: Another important episode, this introduces Supergirl as well as Granny Goodness and her Female Furies on Apokolips. Nicholle Tom of The Nanny fame makes for an immediately winning Kara, sympathetic in her desire to roam free and tough enough to make her a credible heroine. As said in the main post, the legendary Ed Asner is hilarious and menacing in equal measure as Granny, just the right edge of camp, which Apokolips should always have to one degree or another. It doesn’t make the main list because I think it is a LOT of material to cover even in a two-parter, and I wonder if having Supergirl start in a more mundane adventure could’ve been beneficial. Still, what’s here is fun, and we get enough of Ironside’s Darkseid to tease us further, especially his darkly funny exit: “Teach Granny the price of failure.”

“Monkey Fun”: This is pure Silver Age ridiculousness, and I mean that as the highest compliment possible. Titano the giant space-irradiated monkey is one of Supes’ goofiest threats, and to see him get battered around like a children’s toy is remarkably funny. It’s also a good episode for Lois, as we learn about her military father Sam and childhood with Titano (few things can tug on the heartstrings like a little girl being devastated at a pet being taken away). She even gets to save the day in her own fashion.

“Legacy”: Yes, this is another series where the finale doesn’t end up on the top 10. No, I don’t know how this keeps happening. Mainly I quibbled with putting it there because while they’re excellent episodes, there is a clear sense of unfinished business. We wouldn’t fully answer the questions raised by the story until Justice League Unlimited, especially in regards to characters like Hamilton. And the final note is bittersweet, but hardly definitive. Still, this is some of the best action and drama in the series, especially the iconic Timm-boarded throwdown between Superman and Darkseid, which features just as many great lines as punches.

Other Miscellaneous Favorites: “My Girl”, “Fun and Games”, “Brave New Metropolis”, “The Hand of Fate”, “Knight Time”.

THE TOP 10

10. “Two’s A Crowd”: This feels underrated by a lot of fans tbh. Stan Berkowitz gives us a clever premise in Supes having to rely on Parasite’s absorbing abilities to tap into the mind of Dr. Earl Garver, who’s holding the city ransom via a bomb that he’s hidden. But it’s not quite that simple, and the twists it takes with Garver and Rudy Jones interacting are very well done. Garver benefits hugely from the vocal presence of the legendary Brian Cox, who brings his typical brand of egotistical intellect and confidence to what could have been a generic madman, relishing Berkowitz’s hammy dialogue with gusto. It’s a good showing for Brion James as Jones too, who has his own opinions about getting crowded out of his body, and expressive TMS animation is the cherry on top; while they were always great with action scenes, their character acting is a great boon to this episode in particular.

9. “The Main Man”: Sometimes two-parters in this series feel like butter scraped over too much bread in terms of thin plots getting padded out by action scenes (this would also be an issue at times in the first two seasons of Justice League before the Unlimited rebrand). Thankfully, that’s not the case here, primarily because we have such a surplus of character work. As noted in the main post, Brad Garrett is terrific as Lobo, a character who should never be taken completely seriously, and his comedic crassness matches well with Tim Daly’s increasingly impatient straight man. (Credit also to Harvey R. Cohen for giving Lobo a distinct musical identity with bitchin’ electric guitars) It also does have a genuinely intriguing plot, with the creepy Preserver as a formidable foe and Superman having to use his wits to get out of the situation; my particular favorite moment is him briar patching a group of thugs. Also features the iconic scene where Clark sarcastically confesses to being Superman to annoy Lois.

8. “The Way of All Flesh”: This is a fascinating episode because it takes a premise that would have been an outright tragedy in Batman: The Animated Series and tweaks it to fit this series’ tone. Corben is never anything less than a brutal asshole intent on killing Superman and clearly has no regrets on that score. But the struggle with his dwindling senses is nevertheless compelling, and Malcolm McDowell gives a stellar performance as Corben rages against his loss of humanity. Add in some great TMS-aided fight scenes and one of my favorite cold-blooded Luthor moments (”And just what makes you think there’s anything of him left to find?”), and you’ve got a classic.

7. “Solar Power”: There’s a bit of a pattern with my favorite episodes in terms of Superman having to rely on more than just his powers to solve the problem, and this fits in well here. Edward Lytener, who first debuted in the episode “Target” as a stalker/burned source of Lois, returns to take vengeance on Superman by becoming Doctor Light Luminus and creating a device that turns the Earth’s yellow sun rays into red ones to put Superman on a normal human level. It’s clever plotting, and Robert Hays gives a fantastically smug performance as Lytener, relishing his attacks and holographic tricks (it resembles the kind of stuff Mysterio puts Spider-Man through on the regular at points); he also has one of my favorite big “NO!” deliveries ever.

6. “Mxyzpixilated”: This has a great Looney Tunes vibe, with Superman baffled and confused by Mxyzpltk’s braying jackass routine, but ultimately turning the tables and becoming more of a Bugs Bunny type trickster than I’ve ever seen him as before. It’s another one where Tim Daly gets to shine with deadpan deliveries, such as a moment where a stunned Mxyzpltk blusters that his friends will remain animals if he doesn’t play along: “They don’t seem to mind.” Very funny stuff, with an immensely satisfying ending.

5. “Ghost in the Machine”: Much like Harley Quinn’s introduction in Batman, Luthor’s bodyguard Mercy Graves proved compelling enough in her creation here that she crossed over into the main DCU comics. And it’s easy to see why, with Lisa Edelstein giving her a fantastic don’t-fuck-with-me vocal edge and proving to be incredibly competent. This is a rare showcase for her and Luthor’s relationship, with us learning that she believes that Luthor taking her off the streets made her what she is. It’s more than a little sad, especially with the final moments playing out as Superman looks on. We also get Brainiac and Luthor interacting, which has fantastic dividends here with the tycoon oddly vulnerable and his protestations having little effect on the brutally efficient A.I. (plus it pays off down the line in a very unexpected way in Unlimited).

4. “The Last Son of Krypton”: As said in the main post, this is a top-tier pilot movie, especially part 1 with my favorite depiction of Krypton’s destruction ever. But the other two parts are equally good, with Jason Marsden giving teenage Clark genuine teenage angst without going over the top in part 2, and some truly kickass TMS action in part 3, plus a final scene that says everything it needs to about Superman and Luthor’s relationship.

3. “Apokolips...Now!”: The first part of this is quite good, bringing in Jack Kirby’s New Gods elegantly and giving us the backstory on them and Darkseid. But it’s part two that everyone remembers and gets it on the list, with Darkseid’s invasion of Earth offering dark action scenes with a genuinely operatic atmosphere. The stakes have never been higher, illustrated all too well by the death of Dan Turpin, which still shocks me to this day in its swift brutality. It becomes a loving tribute to Kirby and his work, and this would carry forward in the DCAU to even greater ends.

2. “The Late Mr. Kent”: I’ve never been fond of the idea with either Batman or Superman that one persona is fake and the other is “real”. To me, both should be true to some extent even if they ‘mask’ plenty. And this great episode illustrates why Clark Kent is necessary to him; he belongs in this world, not separate from humanity. The plotting is ingenious, making us wonder how Superman can get an innocent man off death row while appearing to die himself as Clark, and it’s a terrific showing for Lois as she takes up Clark’s quest as a way of honoring him, as best shown in a wonderfully played moment where she admits that she respected and liked him even amidst all the teasing. It features possibly the most chilling ending I’ve ever seen in a Western kid’s cartoon that still gives me goosebumps.

1. “World’s Finest”: Let’s see. Beautiful TMS animation? Check. Thrilling action scenes? Check. Snappy dialogue and outstanding character interactions? Check, double check, triple check. This isn’t just one of the most important episode of the DCAU historically, it’s one of the most purely FUN, barely seeming like it’s straining for effort in bringing all these characters together. Batman and Superman’s initial wary partnership is played just right, with hostility giving way to camaraderie as they save each other by turn and give the promise of more in the future. Even better might be Bruce Wayne and Lois Lane having a genuinely spicy romance, something that feels so obvious but is so rarely played out, and Conroy and Delany feel like an old-school movie star couple in their vocal stylings. And of course there’s the villains, as Luthor and Joker’s deal is inevitably, hilariously doomed to fail, and we get to watch two masters of the craft in Clancy Brown and Mark Hamill go at it like prizefighters. (Also hey, remember when the Joker was threatening AND funny instead of validating every weirdo edgelord on the Internet?) I never get tired of watching this one.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

Superman: The Animated Series (1996)

It’s not always easy to appreciate how groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series was. Much in the same way that The Simpsons revolutionized adult animated sitcoms, Batman completely changed the game for action cartoons in America. And as it wrapped up its initial run, the obvious question arose of what to do next. While creator/producer Bruce Timm wasn’t initially eager to do a Superman series, believing it would be much more difficult even with Batman under his team’s belt, he warmed to the idea and set forth on a series that would follow in those footsteps, but create its own identity. Gone were the gothic shadows of Gotham City, replaced by sunny Epcot-esque futurism. The heavy Max Fleischer influence on the character design would give way to a sleeker, streamlined look more reminiscent of Jack Kirby and Japanese anime (designer and art director Glen Murakami would take the latter influences even further on series like Batman Beyond and Teen Titans). And Superman himself would be a vastly different lead character, which trickled downwards. So how do things hold up?

As usual, we start off with a bang in my favorite rendering of the origin in the three-part pilot movie, “The Last Son of Krypton”. Jor-El desperately tries to warn the planet Krypton of its impending destruction, but they are unmoved, especially with Brainiac manipulating matters to the A.I.’s favor. Right out of the gate, we have smart decisions. I greatly dislike the depiction of Krypton as a cold, ultra-conformist state, and while it certainly has problems from what we see, there’s less of an implicit suggestion that they had this coming. Jor-El is portrayed as a nuanced figure, correct in his warnings and ultimately heroic in his dogged pursuit, but it doesn’t ring false when Lara and others chastise him for being so caught up in being right that it’s become obsessive. And tying Brainiac into Krypton’s origins immediately gives him character through his twisted logic and ego rather than “he’s a bottle city collector because wacky Silver Age” (and don’t get me wrong, I love me some Silver Age).

The tragedy comes as it must, and moving into Earth gives us more smart decisions with Jonathan and Martha Kent coming off as regular people rather than saintly. Then we segue into Metropolis with my favorite depictions of Lois Lane and Lex Luthor ever, as well as Superman’s first public showing and fight against John Corben. All wonderfully efficient and full of great character beats. I particularly enjoy Luthor’s smugness that turns to anger as he tries to talk a stonewalling Superman into working for him, or Martha observing that Superman could use good PR because she doesn’t want people to think he’s “like that NUT in Gotham City”.

We then move into the main body of the series, which is episodic but far more connected than what could be amorphous continuity in Batman. A lot happens step-by-step, such as the discovery of Kryptonite in “A Little Piece of Home” or Parasite’s energy-sucking powers in “Feeding Time” prompting Superman to create protections. Or how “Tools of the Trade” has a story that appears to be about crime boss Bruno Mannheim, then reveals itself at the end to have set a far grander stage with the introduction of Apokolips...and Darkseid. It’s certainly not as heavily serialized as series we have now or even some at the time like Gargoyles, but it’s an important step regardless. And we get the first inklings of a wider DCAU, with appearances by the Flash, Dr. Fate, Aquaman (albeit with his classic design rather than the Peter David mullet-and-hook-hand 90s look that would take hold later in Justice League), Kyle Rayner becoming Earth’s first Green Lantern, and of course, Batman fully folding in with “World’s Finest”, a 3-parter still so awesome I’m mad more adaptations haven’t taken inspiration from it. This is a smart approach creatively because it allows Timm and company to expand the scale and tone of stories that can be told with these characters, esp. because it can be so matter of fact in terms of Superman going “well I know this magic dude, he might be able to help”. Superman himself gets to be far more present in the narrative than Batman could be at times, which so often ceded the viewpoint to its villains. And we even explore his psychology in episodes like “The Late Mr. Kent”, where he has to consider both the effect he’s had and what might be lost if he has to give up his human identity.

Character, of course, is what these shows live or die on, as well as casting, and voice director Andrea Romano assembles another incredible team of actors to give life to these icons. In terms of our heroes, Tim Daly is an excellent Superman, bringing his sitcom bonafides from Wings to create a man of steel who’s very grounded rather than an unapproachable god, and without coming off as phony or bland. If I had one criticism, it’s that I think he’s not always up to the task of Superman’s righteous fury, occasionally coming off as flat in trying to work himself up; George Newbern is more natural and intimidating with these beats later on in Justice League/Unlimited. (I will say he’s an excellent Bizarro, mining a lot of comedy and tragedy out of the character in ways I rarely see) Dana Delany is an outstanding match for him as Lois Lane, a modern career woman who’s genuinely sexy and romantic to boot; she often gets the funniest lines in any given episode like a fast-talking sum-up that ends in aggravation towards an elevator. While George Dzundza and David Kaufman don’t get AS much to do as Perry White or Jimmy Olsen, they’re excellent archetypal depictions nonetheless, and Kaufman gets to show off the likability that would serve him well later on as Danny Phantom. I also like Mike Farrell and Shelley Fabares as the Kents; not only does their real-life marriage add a certain flavor, they come off as warm and down to earth. Joseph Bologna and Joanna Cassidy provide able support as SCU cops Dan Turpin and Maggie Sawyer, tough and credible at every step. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Christopher McDonald as Jor-El; it’s a performance a million miles away from the likes of Kent Mansley or Shooter McGavin in its genuine heroism, and he gives real poignancy to Krypton’s final moments.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a superhero show without great villains, and Romano does this equally as well. The approach TO the villains is interesting in and of itself; even when there are hints of tragedy or sympathy, they’re far more straightforward in their villainy and motivations rather than the psychological Russian nesting dolls we could get on Batman. Lex Luthor is of course the pinnacle of all Superman’s foes, and Clancy Brown simply IS the man to me. There have been other good depictions of course, but none are so immediately arresting and iconic than his deep, overpoweringly egotistical tones. Though my favorite era of his performance might be Justice League/Unlimited, which sends him and us on an emotional rollercoaster compared to the relatively untouchable industry captain here. Just behind him is Corey Burton as Brainiac, who gives the A.I. a chilling intellectual tone that bolsters his logical-only-to-himself mindset, and Michael Ironside as Darkseid, who has never been matched in terms of seeming like a genuine personification of evil. Plus we get solid recurring threats like John Corben, who becomes Metallo, and even in lesser episodes, Malcolm McDowell’s sneering aristocratic villainy is always welcome; the late Brion James gives Parasite a working-class brutality; Brad Garrett is hysterically funny as Lobo, who I can never, ever take seriously and barely want to try; Gilbert Gottfried is just as comedically on point as the obnoxious Mr. Mxyzptlk; Bud Cort gives Toyman an arrested-development creepiness; and Ed Asner, he of the iconic grouchy grandpa voice, goes astonishingly against type as screaming queen Granny Goodness. If you ever wanted to hear Lou Grant himself try out an Ursula vibe, this is the show for you.

Animation-wise, one reason for the streamlining of both this and the accompanying New Batman Adventures episodes was to make things look more consistent rather than the peaks and valleys of how the original Batman run could look if you got a crappy studio that week. This is mostly successful. While Tokyo Movie Shinsha’s episodes still look the best in their fluidity and shading, only a few episodes at the tail end of the series look outright wonky, and both the character acting and action scenes evolve a lot. Musically, Shirley Walker is back to oversee things with a full studio orchestra and composers like Kristopher Carter, Lolita Ritmanis, and Michael McCuistion. They give things an upbeat, heroic sound and start mixing in flavors like electric guitar depending on the episode. I particularly like Darkseid’s doomy, foreboding theme that signals You Are Fucked in the most direct way possible.

The series isn’t without its flaws, of course. The upfront consistency is certainly appreciated compared to the early LOW lows of Batman. Even this series’ worst episodes, with the possible exception of the truly dreadful “Superman’s Pal”, feel better executed than the likes of “I’ve Got Batman In My Basement” or “Cat Scratch Fever”. But this can mean that there will be strings of episodes that are good but not necessarily exceptional, and many can become slugfests thanks to the nature of Superman’s powers; “Father’s Day” is a particularly apt example of this in starting at an interesting point, but devolving into a surprisingly dull, long fight between Superman and Kalibak. He gets to be clever, certainly, but there’s less chances for him to outright outwit an opponent in the ways Batman could. And while the female characters are still very well-portrayed, especially for the time, the unrelenting horniness of some of the designs is a little “oh wow, how did I not notice THAT back then”.

All in all, though, Superman is, on some days, my favorite DCAU series because of how rock solid the fundamentals are and how enjoyable it can be to really get in a groove. It was an important series for laying the tracks that would become Justice League, and compared to some of our more modern depictions of the big blue boy scout, it’s a breath of fresh air. Despite ending on a somewhat downer note with “Legacy”, the show kept hope alive. And that’s a nice sentiment to return to now and again.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (1993)

Thirty years ago, the American TV landscape was a world apart from the one we know today. Broadcast networks and syndicated local markets still ruled the roost, the Internet was just starting to have an influence, and cable had a few powerhouses but was still fairly expensive. Perhaps most importantly, while serialized storytelling wasn’t nonexistent-soap operas were popular in daytime, and network dramas and sitcoms like Hill Street Blues and Cheers had made inroads in terms of story arcs and long-term character development even within episodic structures-it was still a relatively fresh concept. In terms of sci-fi genre fare, largely episodic TV was still the order of the day with series like the various Star Trek entries or Quantum Leap. And the televised Western was relatively dead by comparison. Thus we come to The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., a one-season hybrid mash-up on FOX that is practically tailor-made for the designation of “cult classic”. How does it hold up in our streaming age?

Developed by screenwriters Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) and Jeffrey Boam (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2 and 3), and inspired by Western serials of old, Brisco’s pilot episode picks up in 1893. The eponymous bounty hunter’s lawman father (R. Lee Ermey) is shot dead by infamous outlaw John Bly (Billy Drago) and his gang during a train escape, with Jr. (Bruce Campbell, he of the legendary chin) left to pick up the pieces. A group of robber barons hires Brisco to track down Bly and his gang, with nebbish lawyer Socrates Poole (Christian Clemenson, not a million miles away from David Hyde Pierce as Niles Crane) as their liaison. Also on Bly’s trail is rival bounty hunter Lord Bowler (Julius Carry), and along the way are colorful characters like Dixie Cousins (Kelly Rutherford), saloon singer and girlfriend of Bly’s second in command Big Smith (M.C. Gainey), and Professor Warwick (John Astin), a Doc Brown type who shares Brisco’s enthusiasm for “the coming thing”/promise of the future. But things quickly become complicated: Bly is interested in a strange artifact known only as the Orb that grants people inexplicable strength and psychic powers, among other niceties. Is THIS the ‘coming thing’? Perhaps, but Brisco will have to find out for himself. And there are plenty of other adventures in store along the way.

I feel like the above description does not quite do the series justice in getting across what it’s about or, more crucially, its tone. Like the other shows of the time that I mentioned, the adventures are primarily episodic; outside of the pilot, there are only five pure “plot” episodes about the Orb and Bly himself, even if many of the episodes deal with other members of his gang. That overarching plot is even resolved several episodes before the end of the season, the rest of which are more standalone plots. And those plots can vary wildly in terms of genre and incident: one story has Brisco acting as a lawyer for an old friend, another features a sheriff who acts like Elvis with no explanation whatsoever in the middle of a reasonably serious story about the cycle of revenge, and yet another has pirates. Yes, that kind. No, they’re not on the water. The only limits here are the writers’ imaginations (and of course the almighty budget), which are quite fertile indeed even if there are occasional dud episodes.

One might be tempted to assume via Campbell’s presence that the series is a parody of square-jawed adventurers in impossibly ridiculous situations. After all, he had just come off Army of Darkness, which rotated his Evil Dead protagonist Ash Williams into an outsized macho caricature whose skill in dispatching Deadites is matched only by his lack of foresight in, uh, everything else. It’s genuinely not. For one, Brisco is a far more traditional lead in terms of his competence. For two, the characters are comedic and eccentric, certainly, but their problems and emotions are taken seriously.  A good early touch is that while Brisco initially seems cold about his father’s death (reasoning that he had a long time to prepare for it given the man’s career), we see at the end of the pilot that he’s genuinely shaken and it still weighs on him for some time. And while he is a bit of a womanizing Indy/James Bond type, he’s not a bro-y horndog.

The others get nice shadings of depth at times as well. Bowler could have very easily come off as an Angry Black Man caricature and a lackey to Brisco once their rivalry turns into genuine partnership. And yet we get real insight to some crucial differences between them, like a terrific beat where Bowler proves to have invested his bounties wisely in terms of his beautiful mansion home, complete with an on-call butler. And their friendship always feels like one of equals, with a back-and-forth and mutual, eventually less grudging respect; there’s some very touching moments later on when we see how things have changed between them. While Socrates doesn’t get AS much development, he does prove to have more backbone than initially anticipated, as well as a moral fiber that serves him well. Dixie too has some nice beats of seeming less like a femme fatale and more like someone who’s very comfortable in her own skin, but also weary of Brisco’s inability to potentially settle down if she ever wanted that.

A lot of this is down to the cast, who is top to bottom terrific, with nary a bad performance in the regular, recurring, or various guest casts. Campbell often self-deprecates about his acting ability compared to some of his contemporaries, but I would say that his very blue-collar, get-the-job-done mentality is an unimaginable boon to his screen presence. There are many actors who could have played Brisco and well, but there’s a potential danger of either too much machismo overpowering the charm of the character or that aforementioned self-parody aspect being too much of a “ain’t this ridiculous, folks” twinkle in the eye. That does work for a character like Ash, who is sympathetic but ultimately a buffoon with one particular skillset, but Campbell wisely modulates and plays more of a straight man here. His comic timing never reaches too far for a laugh, letting them come out naturally rather than mugging for attention (good example is when he throws Dixie over his shoulder at one point and she demands to be put down: “Alright, you look bad in a wig and you were too easy to find!”) This lets him be a good balance to Carry in particular, who’s wonderfully exuberant and over-the-top by comparison, though he too modulates as necessary. Clemenson is the perfect likable nerd, not too action-hero but not too pathetic either, and Rutherford finds the right balance of Dixie being a canny career woman who nonetheless has the soul of a romantic at times. Warwick is also a lot of fun when he shows up, with Astin’s grandfatherly likability that can make even the groaniest of groaner dad jokes land on full display. The various guest villains make good impressions too, with Drago as a particular standout in terms of being genuinely scary for such an ultimately lighthearted show, and John Pyper-Ferguson manages to make a hell of an impression as Pete Hutter, a gunman with delusions of intellectual grandeur and an unhealthy fixation on his prized “piece” revolver. Think cowboy Team Rocket and you’re halfway there.

In terms of the actual production, it’s a handsome one even if the DVDs are showing their age (prayer circle for an eventual HD remaster). The physical effects are all great, and even the primitive CGI has a weird appeal, especially because it gets used for a couple of REALLY horrifying death scenes. It also hugely benefits from being shot on location in terms of the Wide Western Vistas and loving recreations of old-timey towns. The actual direction is very early 90s TV in terms of “get it in the can” professionalism most of the time, but it fits well with the breezy nature of things. Musically it’s fairly standard too outside of Randy Edelman’s excellent Copland-esque theme music (that later got reused for NBC’s Olympics coverage, which definitely fits).

I suppose in terms of actual FLAWS one can discuss, the main one that the racial dynamics are occasionally problematic. In terms of positives, we get a few black characters with Bowler as our main one, and they’re all fairly well portrayed, with nary a hint of racism beyond one “half-breed” comment implying that Bowler has Native American heritage (which is reflected in some of his dress and that Carry apparently had in real life). And while some of the Chinese characters have stereotypical mysticism attached, we are at least spared any broken English, and James Hong being the main recurring one means that the power of James Hong Being Awesome overpowers most of the negatives (he gets a good line about a Wise Saying where Brisco asks if it’s an ancient proverb: “No, I just made it up”). More glaring is zero Native American presence outside of that Bowler mention, and the Mexican characters are divided into groups of Bandits, Corrupt Military Assholes, and Heroic Revolutionaries. Not the most nuanced portrayal, is what I’m saying, even if you can make the argument of “well, EVERYONE is kind of silly, so that doesn’t stand out AS much as it would in a more ‘serious’ show.”

So why did Brisco ultimately fail with audiences? It’s hard to say. By all accounts, Fox was very supportive of the series and promoted the hell out of it. They aired every single episode too, unlike other, later shows that they cancelled early or mid-run (gestures at that one Family Guy joke). The time it was on could have played a role; 8 p.m. on Friday night is generally seen as the Death Slot. But then again, The X-Files, the show it was paired with during THEIR first season, found great success there before moving to primetime Sunday nights mid-run. And the audience Brisco DID obtain loved the hell out of it, especially when TNT later re-ran the series on Saturday mornings. Shit’s just hard to predict sometimes. But I do think it’s a shame. It’s a series that’s fun above all else, with good spirits and plenty of sensible-chuckle humor if rarely outright laugh-out-loud funny.

Maybe someday Brisco County, Jr. will ride again. Until then, we have this. And sometimes, that’s enough.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

Disney DTV Sequel Capsule Reviews: Atlantis: Milo’s Return (2003) and 101 Dalmatians: Patch’s London Adventure (2003)

The legacy of the DTV sequel/TV spinoff era for Disney’s animated films is a fascinating question. In terms of the naysayers, it was seen as diluting the brand with cheap recycling of the characters and plots of the classic movies (this is also the current argument aimed at the live action remakes). On the positive end, fans who grew up with them cite expanded worldbuilding and stories with new, compelling characters as points in their favor. I’m somewhere in the middle: I think at their worst with films like The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, The Jungle Book 2, or The Fox and the Hound 2, the stories are lazy and inspired with dull characters that don’t further the narratives. (FATH2 also lands in the strange “midquel” territory, which tends to present structural and dramatic issues) But at their best, those positive elements do stand out: even with some janky animation here and there, the Aladdin sequels and series created a robust action-adventure universe, The Lion King 1 1/2 is a genuinely clever spin (I also have a fondness for the Timon and Pumbaa TV show in terms of unabashed cartoon shenanigans, and Simba’s Pride has some strong drama to it), An Extremely Goofy Movie is a very solid follow-up to its predecessor, while Cinderella III: A Twist in Time arguably improves on the original in terms of the character writing. So I find myself here today having watched a couple of them I hadn’t seen before and found them interesting enough to write about. Let’s dig in, shall we?

Atlantis: Milo’s Return

So the first interesting note here is that this technically isn’t actually a sequel film. Prior to the summer 2001 release of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a follow-up TV series called Team Atlantis was developed by Disney TV animation stalwarts like Tad Stones, Victor Cook, and Greg Weisman. It got far enough into production that three episodes were fully completed. Then the bad news came from on high: Atlantis had underperformed at the box office (though not outright bombing in the way, say, Treasure Planet did) thanks to a certain green ogre dominating all he surveyed, so the series was cancelled. This is quite a shame, in my opinion. Atlantis is one of my favorite Disney films, especially from that weird experimental era where they were attempting to experiment and get away from the strict Broadway musical formula that had dominated the Disney Renaissance of the late 80s through the 90s. We had this, Treasure Planet, Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove, and Lilo & Stitch in a five year span (we also had Dinosaur, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range, so not all of them were GOOD experiments, though I like Range more than most). It has great characters, some of my favorite character animation in the canon, and is gorgeously realized in terms of the various blended aesthetics and filmmaking. But someone got the bright idea in their head to compile the completed episodes and add some bridging animation to see if they could make some money off it. Incidentally, this is not the first time this has happened: Belle’s Magical World is made up of three episodes of an abandoned Beauty and the Beast spinoff series, and the first of these, The Return of Jafar, was initially created as the pilot movie for the Aladdin TV series before Michael Eisner suggested the video release.

We pick up sometime after the events of the film. Kida (Cree Summer), now Queen of Atlantis, is pondering if she should end her late father’s isolationism and return the city to the surface. Before she and Milo (James Arnold Taylor picking up for Michael J. Fox, the only original cast member not to return since he was presumably too expensive for a series budget) can make that decision, friends like Whitmore (John Mahoney, though a few lines sound like Corey Burton ADR pick-ups), Mole (Burton), Vinnie (Don Novello), Sweet (Phil Morris), and Audrey (Jacqueline Obradors) drop in for a visit. It turns out weird shit is happening on the surface that may be related to lost Atlantean artifacts, so the group goes to investigate. This gets us into our three recycled episodes: the first involves a trip to a village near Trondheim, Norway that is besieged by a Kraken and the mysterious Volgud (Clancy Brown); the next takes them to Arizona and an encounter with dust coyotes; and the third involves a former competitor of Whitmore’s, Erik Hellstrom (W. Morgan Sheppard), who had a mental breakdown and now believes himself to be Odin, wishing to bring down Ragnarok on the world.

I admit to grading on some fairly generous curves here. The animation is a notable downgrade from the film in the level of detail and fluidity, though it’s better looking than other spinoff series like The Legend of Tarzan, which cannot remotely replicate the intricate designs of that source film on a TV budget. And while Taylor is a fine actor that replicates Fox’s nerdy exuberance well, it’s distracting that he sounds “off” when every other major character outside of Cookie (Steven Barr taking over for the late Jim Varney, who died prior to the film’s release) steps right into place like they never left. But in terms of an old-fashioned episodic adventure series, it’s actually pretty entertaining once we get underway. 

One major point in its favor are that the characters are all on point writing wise (Sweet is forever my favorite thanks to Morris’ cheerful motor-mouth contrasting so well with his massive size), and it’s nice to see progression on things like Milo and Kida’s romantic relationship being low-key sweet or the obvious question she would have to answer in terms of Atlantis’ status. It’s also interesting to watch the stories progressively get better. The first one has some decent action and Lovecraftian atmosphere, but Volgud is a mostly periphery threat who could’ve been emphasized more; it feels like a waste of the always great Brown, who adds a Nordic chill to his bass tones. The second has more of a fun Western vibe, with a good sneering villain in the form of Thomas F. Wilson as Ashton Carnaby, shifting his Biff vibes into sleazy con man mode, and he gets a grimly karmic fate for his transgressions. A Native American spirit named Chakashi also has some interesting beats as a character, not revealing whether he’s friend or foe until the end, and I like Floyd Red Crow Westerman’s dry, foreboding performance. The third story is unquestionably the best. Sheppard (in an ironic bit of casting since he played the genuine article Odin in an episode of Weisman’s Gargoyles) is a commanding and charismatic presence as Hellstrom, who carries the action formidably. His recasting of Milo as the trickster god Loki and Kida as his daughter Brunhilde reminded me of how Batman: The Animated Series handled the character of Maxie Zeus: his delusions are so overpowering that they barely seem to inconvenience him. You even feel a slight touch of pity as he cries out for his Asgard at the end. It also has some fun lifts from Jack Kirby in how a frost giant and presumably Surtur are visualized.

All told, I think I had this quite a bit of potential as a series even with the noted flaws. Among the planned episodes were a crossover with Gargoyles called “The Last” that would’ve featured an unnamed Demona and one of the Canmore family’s Hunters, which got as far as recording and model sheets before the plug got pulled. I don’t know that it would’ve been groundbreaking, but we still could have had plenty of adventures with this crew, and maybe more continuations like a theatrical sequel. Hell, I’d be down for a revival Disney Plus series at this point. But this is all that remains of a curious, half-formed dream.

101 Dalmatians: Patch’s London Adventure

The original 101 Dalmatians is not what I’d call a four-star classic of the Disney canon, but it’s a solid B+ with a great 60s London vibe and one of the all-time classic villains in Cruella De Vil. She’s so iconic and funny that they half considered using her in The Rescuers (which IMO would’ve been a considerable improvement) and they had to get no less then the great Glenn Close to play her in the 90s live action remake. The massive success of said remake reignited interest in the property, with a spinoff TV series that melded elements of the original film and the remake, as well as a sequel to the live action film, 102 Dalmatians (the height of creativity, as you can see), and this sequel. I’d never seen it before, but found a good recommendation for it in a YouTube ranking of all the sequels, so I decided to check it out.

We pick up after the film as Roger and Anita Darling (Tim Bentnick and Jodi Benson, the latter managing a pretty good British accent to these Yankee ears) prepare to move their pound of puppies, as well as Pongo (Samuel West) and Perdita (Kath Soucie), to a farm in the country, their “dalmatian plantation”. One pup, the titular Patch (Bobby Lockwood), increasingly feels left out and not recognized for his own qualities. Naturally, he fawns over TV hero Thunderbolt (Barry Bostwick), who’ll be in town for a get-on-the-show-as-a-guest-star contest, and Patch seizes the opportunity when he’s accidentally left behind in the move. After Patch embarrasses himself at the contest, Thunderbolt’s sidekick, Lightning (Jason Alexander), informs the star that the producers are planning to kill him off and replace him with a younger dog, in a bid to make himself the star after stewing in his shadow. Thunderbolt then determines he should commit real acts of heroism to raise his profile and recruits Patch to help him when he realizes the fan remembers more about his own show than he does. Meanwhile, a disgraced Cruella (Susanne Blakeslee) meets strange artist Lars (Martin Short, going full-bore on the pretentious French artiste cliche) and is inspired by his spot-centric art, eventually getting a wonderful, awful idea to inspire him in turn...

The first, most obvious thing about this movie is that it looks great. Disney’s then-still-in-action Japanese unit replicates the Xerography look of the original quite well, giving it a fresh digital crispness in the process. Especially good are the backgrounds, which are a lovely callback to the modern, abstract cityscapes of London. They accompany this with their typical brand of fluid, snappy character animation that suits figures like the larger-than-life Thunderbolt and the extravagant Cruella. It feels like a channeling rather than a stale imitation, which is key to these projects. The acting is also very much on point, particular highlights including Lockwood being chirpy and likeable without becoming grating, Bostwick riding a good line of an egotistical jerk that you nonetheless care about, Alexander using his smarmy asshole routine to great effect, Blakeslee adding to her repertoire of recreating old-timey villains (she’s also a great Maleficent) by chewing every last scrap of scenery available, and Short managing a good two-step with a character who is at first deliberately annoying but undergoes a pleasantly surprising change.

“Pleasantly surprising” is a good way to put it overall. Like the original, it’s not groundbreaking, but it finds purchase in pursuing solid character dynamics. A dilemma like Patch’s is quite a fertile one, and they mine it well without going too far into bathos territory; notably, once it’s discovered that he’s missing, his family IMMEDIATELY leaps into action. The bond between him and Thunderbolt is nicely organic, with the star learning that his actions do have a positive impact even if they’re just “acting” in his mind. And while they have a slightly rote “liar revealed” moment when Lightning gleefully rubs it in that Thunderbolt was using Patch for his own benefit, the pup’s hurt is well-handled, and Thunderbolt actually owns up to it rather than make excuses, which assists his ultimate redemptive moments (he’d also already been feeling guilty and tried to admit it beforehand). Cruella is used in interesting ways too; even if she reverts to her old self to a degree, it’s fascinating to see her kind of broken down and in a real relationship. There’s also a few good chuckles out of the culture clash between the thoroughly American Thunderbolt and his British surrounding, such as a gag where he chastises drivers for being on the “wrong” side of the road. The only really tired/eye-rolling moment is a drag-disguise scene with henchmen Horace and Jasper that doesn’t really add anything a less elaborate, gendered disguise couldn’t have accomplished. I get that a lot of these old-school drag bits weren’t inherently malicious, but it’s always a bit jarring to go back (compare to, say, Bugs Bunny, who gives remarkably zero fucks in ways that are more palatable to modern lenses).

My ultimate conclusion here, I suppose, is that while hard work and talent do not always make up for weak premises and starting points, as many of these sequels evidenced, the fact remains that a lot of hardworking, talented people who cared about the craft did work on these. The law of averages demands that can come through even under mercenary circumstances and with less resources. I find myself glad I dipped into these waters again, thinking more fondly of the whole enterprise.

Except you, Little Mermaid II. You still suck.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

Treasure Planet (2002)

The year 2002 was a weird time for the Disney animation studios, to put it mildly. After the legendary stretch of films that constituted the Disney Renaissance-The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King-the yearly animated offerings were still making money, but they largely weren’t outright phenomenons anymore. Worse, competition had arisen both within and without: Pixar had totally changed the game with 1995′s revolutionary Toy Story, but the fancy new CGI bells and whistles were making more money than the studio’s traditional 2D animation and seemingly had more staying power to boot. Former studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg had left to form DreamWorks with legends Steven Spielberg and David Geffen thanks to a highly publicized power struggle with CEO Michael Eisner after the 1994 death of company president Frank Wells. They were succeeding too, with 2001′s Shrek being a (ahem) monster hit in particular. Eisner’s grip on the Magic Kingdom was slipping after this and other costly blunders like the creation of Euro Disney/Disneyland Paris, and he knew it. In the middle of all this, one of the most expensive films in the company’s history, a passion project for directors Ron Clements and John Musker, was nearing the end of production: a sci-fi adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure novel Treasure Island. How does it hold up? Well, if you’re like me and grew up with this, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and The Road to El Dorado on loop, the answer is “I cannot be remotely objective about that”, but let’s get down into the nitty gritty on why this movie rules.

I suppose in one sense, I don’t necessarily have to offer a plot summary. If you’ve somehow gone your entire life without knowing the basics of Treasure Island and its myriad adaptations, I’d love to see the realtor quote on the rock you’re staying under. Disney itself is no stranger to the property as a studio. The book served as the basis for Walt’s first big swing into live action territory in 1950, and quite a good one at that in its surprisingly faithful rendering of Stevenson’s red-blooded adventure. Not the least of which was Robert Newton’s immediately iconic, gloriously hammy West Country accent-fied portrayal of Long John Silver; if you’ve ever wondered why movie pirates sound the way they do, he’s patient zero. And of course there’s Muppet Treasure Island, a childhood favorite that has a surprising amount in common with Planet in terms of some of its adaptation choices (namely, making Mr. Arrow a stern, professional sailor rather than the drunken layabout of the novel).

Where Planet benefits the most is the meta-knowledge one is bringing to the story and updating it to fit within the lines of a modern feature film. Structurally, it’s fairly faithful as we meet Jim Hawkins (Joseph Gordon Levitt, still most famous for 3rd Rock from the Sun at the time) at the Benbow Inn and he obtains the fabled treasure map from Billy Bones (Patrick McGoohan, giving us a great death rattle in about 2 minutes of screentime), thus prompting a treasure voyage. But even in this early stage, there are smart changes: Dr. Doppler (David Hyde Pierce) is a combination of Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelawney so we can cut down on characters, for instance.

And most crucially, rather than a pre-teen, Jim is now a teenaged delinquent whose father abandoned him and his mother Sarah (Laurie Metcalf); the thirst for adventure and Treasure Planet itself is established in a tooth-rottingly sweet prologue, but now we have extra context and motivation in addition to the destruction of the inn. Jim wants to make his mother proud and feel like he’s worth something. Then, when we get to the ship, not only do we get the great reinvention of Captain Smollet in Amelia (Emma Thompson at her Emma Thompson-iest), Silver (Brian Murray) too is enriched by foreknowledge. Silver’s treacherous intentions are laid bare within minutes of meeting him rather than saving that turn for Stevenson’s famous apple barrel scene. But this adds tension rather than subtract. Now we wonder less that Silver WILL turn mutinous and more what it means for his and Jim’s relationship; the apple barrel becomes a lightning rod. He becomes an even more intriguing character as a result, one of the few genuinely morally ambiguous villains in Disney’s history that makes some surprising choices by the end.

If there’s one arguable flaw in the adaptation, it’s the depiction of B.E.N. (Martin Short), a robotic take on Flint’s old crewmate Ben Gunn. He’s a clever idea conceptually, especially with the angle of his missing memory circuit that hides a deadly reveal, and I like his gangly CGI animation. But he fits into a trend Disney was leaning into in terms of trying to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was Robin Williams’ Genie in Aladdin where they hired big comedy actors to come in and riff as the sidekicks so that they could boost the trailers with funny bits and ensure the parents their kids wouldn’t be bored. Sometimes this worked out splendidly (Eddie Murphy’s Mushu in Mulan is as iconic as his Axel Foley or Donkey in Shrek, Rosie O’Donnell and Wayne Knight fit in shockingly well in Tarzan), other times...less so (hi gargoyles in Hunchback and Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis just doing Bob and Dave McKenzie again as the moose in Brother Bear). To be clear, there’s nothing outright wrong with the character as presented. I think Short is a deserved comedy legend who also really needs clear direction so he doesn’t get lost in a sea of hamminess, but this is certainly a better showing of his eager-to-please neuroses than the likes of The Pebble and the Penguin. And he only comes in at the third act point, so there’s less time for him to feel jarring. But he doesn’t feel strictly necessary in retrospect, especially when the movie is already funny in cleverer ways (”Well, uh... thank you. Thank you very much! Well, I have a lot of help to offer anatomically— amanamonically— as-astronomically face smack“), and we have a Designated Kid Appeal Merch Sidekick in the form of Morph. Two feels like pushing it.

Of course, even if the story had been merely okay instead of better than average, this would still be one of the most visually striking films the studio’s ever released. Taking cues from the Brandywine school of illustration, the colors are lush and rich, and the alien character designs are appropriately outsized on such a grand stage. The action scenes are clever and creative throughout, especially the escape from the inevitable mutiny and a nail-biting outrun-the-clock climax.  The CGI integration is a little easier to spot 20 years on, but the Deep Canvas process allows for all manner of imaginative spacefaring visuals, the Victorian-by-way-of-Star-Trek aesthetic (sailing ships in outer space is exactly the level of FUCKING AWESOME it needs to be), and especially Silver’s cyborg limbs married to his broad 2D frame.

Though it certainly helps when you have master animator Glen Keane supervising one of his best performances, marrying the subtlety and grace he’d achieved with characters like Aladdin and Tarzan with the bravado of his earlier villains like Ratigan or Sykes in Oliver & Company. Under his hands, Silver can go from garrulous and brash to quiet menace or reflection in the blink of an eye. John Ripa (recently co-director on Raya and the Last Dragon) has a tougher assignment with Jim considering he’s something of a straight man, but he rises to the occasion with touches like a ‘face mask’ adding to Jim’s brooding nature that gradually fades as he opens up emotionally. Ken Duncan adds another great heroine to his quiver after Megara and Jane in Amelia, especially with the cat-like features, and Sergio Pablos’ Doppler is frequently a comic highlight with his wild gestures and facial grimaces that anticipates the animator’s work on Klaus.

Things are equally great on the aural end. A year after his iconic work on Atlantis, James Newton Howard gives us another great old-school adventure score with Celtic/Gaelic influences that also gets rockin’ at points with electric guitars punctuating Jim’s most awesome moments. Yes, it’s very XTREEEME and 2002, no, I do not care. (YMMV more on John Rzeznik’s “I’m Still Here” musical montage, but I think it’s awesome) The voice cast is also well chosen in its mix of then-current-stars and more unusual talent. Levitt, as with Ripa’s animation, opts to underplay, but he’s far from flat and manages some moving moments of tenderness and anger. Murray, primarily a theater actor in life, goes for the opposite approach, marrying big theatrical emotions with Silver’s larger-than-life personality, but never loses sight of the character and is quite affecting in the film’s denoument. Pierce inevitably brings a bit of his Niles Crane to Doppler, but since that’s one of the best sitcom characters in history, I can hardly complain, and he gets the lion’s share of the film’s most memorable lines, including a priceless Star Trek shoutout. Thompson is stiff-upper-lip dry wit personified, and she gives an interesting tinge to a budding romance in the latter portions of the film. Metcalf only has a few key scenes, but builds an effective portrait of a struggling single mother within them; thanks to her, you really end up rooting for Jim and Sarah to make amends. Rounding out the numbers are Michael Wincott giving a scary-ass pirate filter to his iconic gravel-pit voice as the villainous Scroop (who gets a memorable spin on the typical Disney villain death-by-falling trope), Roscoe Lee Browne’s stentorian bass giving Arrow a do-not-fuck-with-this-guy dignity, and ringers like Corey Burton and Rodger Bumpass as a pair of robo-cops.

Treasure Planet’s story had a bit of a sad ending at first. Unlike the same year’s immediate hit Lilo & Stitch, it was a notorious flop financially, especially given how expensive it was to produce, and hastened the death of big 2D theatrical films at the studio who pioneered them. But it’s lived on admirably, and even with its flaws (I think we also could have done without the fart noises alien), I count it among my favorites. I miss this period of Disney theatrical animation, where strict formula gave way to experimentation and weirdness. We should do that again every so often.

[spiderdreamer-blog]

The Legend of Vox Machina: The Nature of Change

The Legend of Vox Machina is two-thirds of the way into its second season, with three episodes left in terms of the adaptation of this portion of the campaign’s Chroma Conclave arc. I think on balance, it’s been pretty great! The first season tackling the Briarwoods arc was excellent, but as with most first seasons, it took a bit to find its creative identity and how to approach the material. The Conclave arc is bigger, bolder, and wider in scope, and they’ve done a hell of a job upping the stakes as well as their production values, already very good to start with. Additionally, there have been even more changes made to the story and character choices than there were in the first season. This has caused a lot of debate, inevitably, and I don’t begrudge people for DISLIKING some or even most of them; for my part, I think they took a bit to figure out how to translate Scanlan’s crass humor when at the table, much of the edge is taken off by his cast members’ genuine laughter and assurance that it’s all in good fun. And I think there have been some odd friendships seemingly lost in translation like Vax and Grog’s prank war, or Percy bonding with Keyleth initially because he thinks she’s the only other adult in the group. But outside of my own minor personal gripes, I think there has been a broad failure here of a proper analytical framework for an animated series as opposed to a tabletop campaign, and I wanted to dig into that in my own long-winded way. Strap in.

FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Where does one start a story? Good question. There are as many ways to begin weaving your tale as there are to end them. Once upon a time, long ago in a galaxy far far away, it was a dark and stormy night, and so on. The beginning is in many ways the most important part of your story because it’s setting the tone, the place, the time, and your characters. And much is dependent on genre too: if you’re, say, a romantic comedy, you might choose to begin with your protagonist at a low point in their personal relationships so that the conflict is immediately established.

Critical Role’s first campaign began in medias res, two years into the players and characters already knowing each other as respected adventurers and heroes of the realm. Thus, the audience was left at an initial disadvantage, and the cast created backstory videos to explain what the plot had been up to this point as well as the journeys of the characters. Thankfully, Matthew Mercer’s world of Exandria was fairly simple and standard in terms of its high fantasy leanings at first, and the initial streamed arc was a basic dungeon crawl as a quest given to them by NPC Allura Vysoren. By the time the adventures through the Underdark and Vasselheim were over, the story was ready to move into the far more personal and harrowing Briarwoods arc because we as an audience were now attached to those characters. Even so, much of this was dependent on the cast playing out those relationships in the theater of the mind, especially since Mercer’s minis and battle maps were far less elaborate at this point. We learned information as we went, and Mercer built the world to be far more robust as time went on, narrating descriptions of towns and cities to bolster that picture.

By contrast, animated series, like any other kind of film or TV, have many more tools at their disposal in order to help with these tasks even if there is a far shorter amount of time available because of how much time production takes and how expensive it is. Think about how Avatar: The Last Airbender begins with the refrain of “Water...earth...fire...air“. It then segues into Katara, one of our main and most important characters, explaining how those elements correspond to the four nations of her world, how “everything changed” when the Fire Nation decided to make war upon the others, the function and disappearance of the Avatar, and her belief that he will return some day. This is a lot of information and could have easily been dry exposition, but it gains our interest through the visuals of moving through the world map, the excellent music by Jeremy Zuckerman, and striking still images like the fearful closeup of Katara and Sokka in their village, as well as Mae Whitman’s heartfelt vocal performance. The effect is far more immediate. We know the danger of the current situation, we gain insight into Katara as a character (she has grown up in a terrible situation but not yet lost hope), and where our journey will go (the Avatar’s almost certainly going to show up again soon).

Thus, The Legend of Vox Machina opts for a different approach compared to the campaign or even other adaptations of pre-stream material like the Vox Machina Origins comics or novels like Kith & Kin: we’re still in medias res, but Vox Machina are not yet a cohesive unit of heroes that kings and arcanists call upon in their time of need, and they’ve been traveling together for a much shorter amount of time outside of pre-existing relationships like the twins or Pike and Grog. This is the largest and crucial change made in the adaptation, and key to understanding every other choice that comes out of it. Starting them off in a far more difficult position makes us more likely to root for them as the underdogs, such as when they’re laughed at in their introductory bar fight scene and then lick their wounds afterwards, wondering if they can change their luck. We see how their failure to save a village and children within it galvanizes them into vengeance and heroism in the Brimscythe encounter. This provides explicit proof that they can kick ass through the power of friendship and teamwork. Basic, but it gives everyone somewhere to grow from.

MECHANICS AND MEDIUM

Now, it is true that the Briarwoods arc did not have as many changes on a basic plot level. We still go from A to B to C in much the same manner; it helps a great deal that the Briarwoods arc itself was on the shorter side, and there was less to outright cut. But even here, there are myriad changes large and small, and much of them have to do with the filmmaking end of things. As an example: because the script cuts down much of the timescale, things happen more quickly and with juicier character interactions: Percy no longer has time to prepare for dinner with the Briarwoods to calmly disguise himself as Vax and avoid recognition, but instead has to sit and listen to them lie with his own face, finally able to stand it no longer. We are also able to gain more insight into the Briarwoods and some of their associates because we are no longer restricted to the party’s POV in all scenes. Delilah’s flashback to the deal she made with The Whispered One to save her beloved Sylas illuminates what was only hinted at in the campaign. Or take how Professor Anders, a fairly forgettable boss fight, becomes a genuine highlight through Stephen Root’s demented, sneering intellectual tones and showing us that he felt underappreciated by the De Rolos because they held his research back. Ripley too is boosted by actually helping the party with the acid trap, even if it’s only for her own survival, and escaping at a moment where it’s far more inconvenient for her to do so.

Yet despite these and other changes (I like in particular how Percy is in far more denial about Orthax’s hold over him and this adds considerably higher stakes to the fight with the demon), it’s still fairly compact as a story. The Conclave arc, meanwhile, has had far more drastic additions and subtractions to the plot. Because the original is so sprawling and epic, the party could afford to take their time and do the usual goofing off shenanigans in between fights. Not so here; time is of the essence, time the party increasingly seems to be running out of. And that seems to be the chief complaint rising up, that we’re rushing through things and not slowing down enough.

I do find a couple things funny with this statement. It’s always been a complaint of both fans and haters that the cast goofs off even when things are serious and does side trips. And of course there’s the infamous planning sessions where they can often argue in circles before finally deciding on a course of action. But this is a function of the tabletop stream medium; unless Matt decides to literally drop a dragon on them, he can let them take as much time as he wants.

The series, however, gains as much as it loses by cutting most of this down and switching things around. For one, the danger IS more immediate; losing allies like Kamaljiori as soon as they gain him ups the tension dramatically and keeps the threat ever-present, which is useful if you don’t want people to get bored in an action-adventure series. Or Grog, Pike, and Scanlan getting sent to Westruun in a botched plane shift spell adds intrigue to that; can Grog get his strength back in time? Additionally, the visuals, music, and performances can substitute for everyone narrating out every action. Sam Riegel dials down considerably as Scanlan and offers more sincerity to where we know his arc is headed. Vax’s connection with the Raven Queen is an outright horror movie at the moment with his flashes of images he doesn’t wholly understand, as well as hinting at his eventual fate. Or we can now truly see the guilt and shame on a young Grog’s face as he regards Wilhand, begging for life in Henry Winkler’s quavering, sympathetic voice. Parts that could feel a little weaker dramatically because Matt is not ultimately out to “win” the game and most heroic-aligned NPCs need to be at least a little accommodating no longer have that restriction; Troy Baker can bring the full force of Syldor’s personality to bear and make him a tougher challenge, such as dismissing Percy’s attempt to bolster Vex with his title and fueling her defense of herself and her friends.

(Sidenote: I’m very curious to see how the Mighty Nein series translates Yeza, who I felt and still feel is Matt’s most jarring example of this tendency)

Hell, what about the Conclave themselves? Even outside the casting of heavyweights like Lance Reddick and Cree Summer as Thordak and Raishan, we can now gain more insight into their motives and just how scary they are. An exchange between Umbrasyl and Kevdak has the danger of two politicians jockeying for position, and almost makes us feel sympathetic for the latter...almost. Ripley teaming up with Umbrasyl is another boost for a character who was great but appeared infrequently; by keeping her and Kelly Hu’s hot-but-evil purr around, we’re keeping her fresh and active.

THE FEMALE CHARACTER PROBLEM

This is where things get a little bit...trickier. Both Dungeons and Dragons and tabletop gaming at large have long-time problems of sexism, homophobia, racism, you name it; many a horror story has been told of gatekeeping assholes. And the reception to Critical Role was sadly no exception despite their evolving efforts to be an inclusive company and brand. Marisha Ray got the worst of it for sure in terms of her portrayal of Keyleth, being both a novice to D&D and streaming as well as Matt’s girlfriend, later fiancee and wife. But Laura Bailey and Ashley Johnson have had their fair share of mistreatment too: Vex was called a greedy bitch on the regular, Jester confounded everyone by rarely suffering serious consequences for her prankish actions (whatever the hell that means), and to this day Johnson is seen as the worst player at the table mechanically by rules lawyers because she commits cardinal sins like not remembering all her class abilities (in case you can’t tell, add a heavy sarcasm font to that). In response to this harassment, both Critical Role and the community made it increasingly clear these assholes weren’t welcome and they thankfully, slowly bled out of influence.

However, I must confess that it feels like we haven’t really left that sort of...defensive paternalism, for lack of a better phrase. Instead of treating the female cast members like adults, which they are, and fellow participants in the company and story, there is this odd parasocial insistence that anything they do that the audience doesn’t like is somehow forced upon them by the male cast members. To be blunt: we don’t have evidence this is the case. And while it would be folly to say that the CR team can do no wrong or have no biases because they are a majority cishet white group, their apparent sincere commitment to inclusive practices leaves me doubting that anything especially pernicious is going on.

What’s basically come to a head recently with The Legend of Vox Machina are complaints that they’ve either made the women characters too mean OR too nice. This hasn’t really come up with Pike (who I think is a much stronger character because Ashley has a much clearer thesis upfront and isn’t absent for huge chunks of the narrative), but I’ve seen both applied to Keyleth and Vex. Keyleth, I think, is a case of Marisha wanting to not exactly sand off her edges, but correcting what she saw as missteps because she the player didn’t know what she was doing. She’s less self-righteous about things like religion or that they shouldn’t make deals with groups like the Clasp because those conflicts have been substituted for putting more emphasis on her reckoning with the “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” principle. I do miss that a little, but also, I think people are often reading more into those instances than what was actually there in terms of substance.

Vex is admittedly a difficult character to translate because in the campaign, so much of her arc is internal and subtle; she changes very slowly compared to Keyleth going from “nervous wreck” to “confident leader”. You can’t really do this in an animated series. Long-term character arcs are certainly POSSIBLE, but they genuinely require being communicated through clear shifts in visuals, writing, and performance. Thus Vex’s problems in particular have to be more blatantly shown: her stinginess causes problems with Zahra before they reconcile, she connects with Percy quicker because of shared experience, and she folds in on herself far more when talking with Syldor compared to Vax because she still wants a relationship and her brother has long given up on this.

And here’s where we get to the complaint I still find the most inexplicable because it seems to describe a totally different character than the one that exists onscreen: that making changes like this or Vax being present for Vex’s rescue of Trinket when he originally had no idea how she found him somehow makes her arc “all about men” and “not about herself”. I feel like this is an overcorrection from earlier feminist schools of criticism that women characters are all too often accessories to men and not their own full characters. Which I do still agree is v. bad, but also, saying that women can or should never have meaningful relationships with men because of our patriarchal systems of society...well, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. More to the point, it ignores that Laura had and has meaningful input into these relationships in the game as well as other campaigns: in addition to focusing much of her C1 roleplay on Percy, Syldor, Vax, and even Scanlan, Jester directly pursued Fjord because Laura wanted to try and romance her husband Travis Willingham in game and blatantly said this was her intent. It feels like people aren’t giving themselves permission to just...not like her choices because they don’t want to be lumped in with Those Assholes. And that’s a terrible way to treat yourself as a fan.

CONCLUSION

To sum it up: feel free to be a hater! You don’t have to suddenly like the show and the changes it makes because some random rambling asshole like me says so. But I think it is far more useful to look at what actually exists on the screen than making up an idealized version in your head of “this is how it’s supposed to go!” You’ll be happier, I’ll be happier, and we can enjoy things. Or don’t. It’s your choice.