#and on a shallower(?) level they’re incredibly fun-interesting-kind-intelligent-caring people and i adore them so much!!

[robinsteve]

i love my brother so much i love my sister in law so much i have so much love in my heart right now!! god.

[cookinguptales]

So I ended up being so bummed out about the shorts that I neglected to do a write-up for The Lego Batman Movie, which I saw the same day. But TLBM came up like 5 times on my dash today bc bigoted critics are lambasting it for being “pro-gay” so I thought it’d be a good time to talk about how much I enjoyed it! I don’t think I liked it quite as much as the original Lego Movie, but it wasn’t really trying to be the same kind of movie as TLM. It wasn’t quite aiming for that meta angle, and I don’t think it necessarily needed to. It was just a super fun movie -- and one that was really gratifying in some ways to someone who got really burned out on the comics.

Full review and slight spoilers below the cut.

So the basic plot of the movie is what you’d gather from the trailers: Batman (aka Bruce Wayne) is a weird reclusive loner who lives in his giant mansion/bat cave with no one but the butler who raised him, and he has to learn to stop doing shit himself and being such a goddamn asshole. It was kind of nice because he was constantly called out on the stuff that he’s gotten away with doing in a lot of Bat media. Barbara Gordon talking about how he never created lasting institutional/structural solutions to problems, but instead fed his ego by punching poor people felt really good haha. (More on Babs later.) It’s your basic “dickhead has to learn how to use social skills” film, but with a lot of humor and heart that prevents it from getting sappy. And Batman seriously never gets away with his bullshit. He is constantly called on the way he hurts people, and instead of the somewhat shallow lip service that has always been paid to his antihero status, I felt like this film really interacted with those ideas on a hopeful and emotional level. He wasn’t treated like a villain because he was ~dark and brooding~. He was treated like a villain because he went off half-cocked because of his own issues, and because he didn’t care who he hurt in the process. It wasn’t just a story about Batman learning to make friends -- it’s a story about Batman learning to set aside his own ego so he can work together with public officials to create long-term stability and safety for the town he purports to care about. It’s a movie that calls for kindness, compassion, and accountability in crime-fighting -- and in a world torn with debates about increased militarization and police brutality, that’s a conversation that’s pretty damn important.

The audience is there for a comedy, though, and the movie is hilarious. I was cracking up before the movie even technically started, because Batman’s narration and criticism of all the production logos was great. And I basically kept laughing the entire time. The movie pokes loving fun at pretty much every kind of Batman media that exists, from the biggest blockbuster movie to the smallest limited run mini, and there are tons of sly little jokes that will make a comics fan laugh. (No spoilers, but one of the more overt and more hilarious comics jokes was basically the entire Nightwing segment. It is not to be missed.) The characters are all incredibly endearing, especially a shockingly adorable Robin, and I genuinely enjoyed watching them go on their batshit adventures. I won’t give away where the plot goes, but I will say that things just kept escalating until I was impressed (and cracking up) at how bizarre things got. Just really, thoroughly enjoyable. The slapstick humor and mile-a-minute jokes could have gotten old very quickly, but the warmth and heart really helped pull things together.

The interpretations of the characters were all pretty interesting. Robin’s childlike wonder and naivete was really emphasized, whereas Alfred’s RAF background came quickly to the fore. Barbara Gordon was perhaps the most interesting interpretation of them all. As a disabled ex-comics fan, I’ve always had pretty complicated feelings about Barbara and I was nervous going into this. I will say right now that as far as I could tell, there were no real allusions made to Oracle in this film. I am bummed about that. Babs made the transition to Oracle before I was even born, and her journey has been important to me. (But I guess that’s a rant for another day.) But the Barbara that was introduced in TLBM wasn’t really Batgirl, either, despite allusions being made to the moniker. She’s the new commissioner of Gotham City, and she’s strong, fierce, intelligent, and committed to making structural changes to Gotham’s criminal justice system in order to create a safer environment for both Gotham’s innocent citizens and its seedier ones. She refuses to just delegate her duties to Batman, and she believes that things can be so much better than they have been -- and she’ll work hard to accomplish that. Perhaps most striking of all, despite Batman’s obvious infatuation with her, she does not reciprocate his advances. She wants to be his ally and his friend, but she is her own woman. (”If you call me Batgirl, does that mean I can call you Batboy?”) She’s not the protagonist of this film (and after three lego franchise films, they really are due for a female protagonist) but she’s also no sidekick. She advocates for responsibility, but she’s not the ~boring nag~ that female characters are often reduced to. She’s the voice of hope and reason in a culture of toxic masculinity, and Batman has to realize that her ideas are just as important, if not more, than his. She wasn’t Oracle, but I found that I still ended up really loving this version of Barbara.

Finally, all that gay shit! As I said, Batman has an obvious crush on Barbara. But he definitely has an overtly homoerotic relationship with the Joker, too. Their foemance is constantly put in terms of a relationship, with the main thrust of the plot being inspired by the Joker wanting Batman to pay more attention to him and treasure him as his most important adversary -- frankly, the Joker wants to be Batman’s most important person. I was tickled to find after I got home that I was not the only person that half-expected a kiss in one of their final tension-laden scenes. If Batman had to grow to appreciate his family (re: Robin and Alfred) and his political allies (re: Barbara), he also had to grow to appreciate the Joker, and perhaps in a more heated and intimate way than any of the others. It really is a story about their relationship, strange as that sounds. It’s not a canon gay pairing. Batman has a thing for Barbara, and the Joker and Harley are a (remarkably healthy and cute) item. But damn if it’s not basically rolling around in all that subtext. It’s the kind of film a fanficcer would have a field day with, frankly. There’s a lot of room for exploration. (Basically, if you like Kate Beaton’s Nemesis comics, you’ll like the Batman/Joker relationship in this film.)

Hilariously, the other potential pairing in this film is Bruce Wayne/Batman. It’s never directly stated, but I’m pretty sure Robin thought they were a thing for much of the movie. He definitely thought he was being co-parented by the two of them. And he was psyched! Robin loved having two dads! He went from having no dads to two dads! (“It’s raining dads!”) Like there is zero judgment from anyone about the concept of Robin having two adoptive fathers, even though it was never explicitly stated that people thought his two fathers were dating. (Related -- I kind of want to write fic about the Bruce/Batman that people lowkey thought was going on.) Like both of his dads were shitty, but that was clearly portrayed as a Batman thing, not a gay parenting thing. The film actually had strong messages about the importance of adoption, both by exploring Batman’s relationship with his new son and by exploring Alfred’s relationship with Batman.

tl;dr, the fundies aren’t crazy. The movie is definitely homoerotic and pro-gay parenting. AND I LOVED THAT.

Anyway, overall I really enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t the deepest film in the world, but it was really, really fun. I liked the plot and the characters and the jokes were great. There’s a lot there for both the passing fan of Batman and the superfans who’ve read comics for years. And frankly, it’s the kind of modern film that the franchise has needed for a while. It dissects some of the messages that have been put forth in many of the movies and comics that have starred Batman (and that have made him popular amongst angry wannabe grimdark vigilante dudes for decades) and shows why they’re actually quite dangerous on both a personal and societal level. Really good film.