Imperial Privilege

I've been on another DC Comics kick lately.

I have Earth One: Teen Titans and some issues of Earth 2 on the way from Amazon, and I caught up on most of the DC animated movies. The Crisis on Two Earths, Under the Red Hood, Justice League: Doom, Superman vs. The Elite and Batman/Superman: Public Enemies were at least entertaining even when they're not "good."

Under the Red Hood is far and away DC's best animated movie, owing to a great mix of action, intrigue and emotional weight. It did pretty much everything right, even if it had to condense everything due to the running time, which is a perennial problem for DC's movies.

Crisis was the second best of the bunch, being a good mix of action and character beats, though mostly on the Syndicate's side. Owlman and Superwoman were wonderfully insane. A+ job on their voice actors. A pity they wasted so much time on the Martian Manhunter's pointless, dumb, doomed romance. It added literally nothing.

Son of Batman and Justice League: War were awful. The biggest problem that both had were a lack of running time.

I do like Damian Wayne, but a lot of that comes from his character development as he learns to give a crap about other people and build genuine relationships with those around him. At just barely feature length, SoB (hue hue) doesn't give the writers enough time to paint Damian as anything more than an arrogant, disobedient brat. Dick rising to his barbs makes him look just as childish, Batman comes off as kind of dumb for what is allegedly the world's greatest detective and Deathstroke looks like a giant pussy. He's DC's unofficial poster boy with how often he has been showing up in every possible video game, movie and TV show spin off, owing largely to his fearsome reputation as one of the few guys who can get away with fighting almost everyone and not getting immediately punched out. So imagine my surprise when he can't hold his own against a kid and has to defeat a weak old man with help from his goons and an attack helicopter.

JLW was even worse. Lack of time struck again, boiling almost everyone down to one or two pieces of characterization. The second and greater problem is that those pieces of characterization make almost everyone out to be an arrogant jerk. Really, only the Flash and Cyborg come out looking like something other than power-mad narcissists. The scene of protestors crying out against the supers is clearly framed in such a way as to make them look foolish and ungrateful, but the message goes sideways once we see what a pack of destructive, selfish asshats most of them are. I get that it's the first time most of them have needed help, and it's kind of Green Lantern's schtick. He's riding high on his own hype and is getting shown up for the first time. Even Superman's smug streak is justified -- he's freaking Superman. But it also clashes pretty badly with the fact that he's Superman. Big, Blue Boy Scout and all. Shazam/Cap Marvel is in the same boat. Sure, superpowered teenager. Makes sense he would have an obnoxious ego. But Marvel's power has always been tempered by Billy Batson's humility and heart. This would have worked better as a pilot to a brand new super team instead of making a bunch of fan favorites into jerks.

What's sad is that it could have been an interesting concept to tackle. We've seen power-mad supers in Crisis on Two Earths, the Injustice video game the Justice Lords arc of the DCAU. Watching the rise of such a regime or, better yet, the dawning horror as the heroes realize what they're becoming would have been a fascinating story. But, nope, it turns into a generic alien invasion story with no real effort to tell us who these people are beyond their self-righteous showboating. Which is the point, I suppose. The animation is beautiful, and there are a few good character moments, most of which stem from GL and Batman.

A pity that it's these two stories that DC seems to be pushing. I haven't seen Throne of Atlantis, and I'm not jazzed for Batman vs Robin either. If you're going to ride the wave on something, why not give us more good Batman stuff with a Knightfall adaptation or revive the Judas Contract Teen Titans movie that was canned a while back? I would watch those in a heartbeat.

At least they'll be pretty.

I also started watching Arrow recently. You know -- the show allegedly about Green Arrow/Oliver Queen getting his start even though it's pretty clear everyone on the creative staff wishes they were on a Batman show instead? There's always been a lot of similarity between the two, but I was hoping to see more of what made Green Arrow the Green Arrow. I don't necessarily mind because these are usually interesting characters, but it seems like Green Arrow has been the poor man's Batman ever since Smallville.

On a characterization front, Oliver and Dig have been fantastic. Laurel is the worst. Thea is second worst.

Superhero stories have always been big on melodrama and the double life paradigm, but Laurel and Thea are riding the drama llama right into high school level bullshit. It's too bad, really. Thea, at least, has some good moments playing off of Oliver when she's being his goofy kid sister, and the actress can pull off the heavier moments. The problem is that she's written as such a shrill harpy half the time. "OH MY GOD, I'M AN ADULT! STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO!" and then "I'M A TEENAGER! I NEED GUIDANCE AND CLARITY! TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" Realistic to see a hormonal teenager being horrible with mood swings, I suppose, but she wears thin.

Laurel is bad as an actress, a love interest and a character. She bitches at everyone as if she's the ultimate, moral authority in the universe in spite of her blatant hypocrisy and going back and forth on whether Oliver is good or bad, and she has zero chemistry with the supposed love of her life. She's supposed to be the Black Canary one day? Please, make it stop.

I do like the way the writers are handling the super villains in a scaled down context. The Royal Flush Gang as common bank robbers with card motifs on their masks, Firefly as a vengeful burn victim instead of some dude in a fancy jetpack suit, etc. They're recognizable without being too terribly sci fi -- which has the side effect of making it feel even more like Batman Begins.

Really, though, I'm just trying to fill the void left by Young Justice. I know I pissed and moaned about its bloated cast and over reliance on romantic sub-plots, but it really was a pretty nice production overall. I would have loved to see the story wrap up with just one more season. The blue balling was painful. I suppose I'll have to soothe myself with Arrow and Flash once I start that one up.