Black Lightning Season 4 Review - Part 2

Part 2 of my coverage of the final season of CW/DC's Black Lightning TV show.  

Just as I mentioned in my previous CW-superhero-show-recap-reviews, this one is going to be a lot shorter and reactionary compared to my previous coverage of CW/DC shows. Again, this review was written over a rather long period of time as I go through the season slowly and write my comments and notes after watching each episode. 

S04E08: Things Fall Apart

As we go down the second half of this final season, 'The Book of Ruin' continues with a bit of an acceleration on the conflicts after the brief intermission with Painkiller. The FBI arrives on the Jefferson residence, under what is clearly a Tobias-orchestrated frame job that makes it look like Jefferson was embezzling Garfield High's money. Simultaneously, we also learn that he's going after other things that Jefferson loves -- like demolishing Jefferson's grandfather's house under the guise of creating a new hospital and giving back to the community. Tobias has been very oddly handled this season, just essentially being in the background pulling everyone's strings, and I do hope we get to see more of what his supposed master plan is. 

This ties in with Jennifer (or 'JJ') going to Garfield High to see a split among the student communities, some of whom quickly decry Jefferson for betraying them. She gets a crush on one of the other students that defends Jefferson, which leads to a bit of a conflict in the next episode. This 'new Jennifer' storyline isn't the most exciting and one that feels caused by the actress exiting, but I do have to admit that the new actress does a pretty good job at mimicking the original actress's mannerisms. 

We also learn a little bit of the superhero sci-fi stuff that seems to be relegated to the background for most of this season -- Lynn uses Gambi as the willing subject of her experiment, and we learn that Tobias's secretary Val is actually a power-cancelling metahuman. On the other hand, Jefferson and Gambi manage to also get information of Tobias's magnetic-meta hitman Red, and find out of his existence. Anissa and Grace go and get some files about Monovista International's cure project, but ends up coming into blows to Ishmael, and while the two of them retreat, the threat of Ishmael as the big scary meta-hunter causes TC to contact Khalil to bring him in for the finale. 

S04E09: Lyding

Lynn gets a fair bit of focus in this episode. The episode opens up with a (rather long) nightmare as Lynn has a nightmare of trapping her family and forcing them to take the metahuman cure. She goes to her job to find out that 26 years' worth of research was seized by the government due to Jefferson's embezzlement case; and at the end of the episode while the rest of her family is out, she gets arrested by Agent Mason, with an intentionally-protracted sequence of her being searched and processed as an inmate. 

Jen/Lightning, meanwhile, goes through a brief simple side-plot with her dad and TC about maintaining an instagram presence, particularly when she uses her influence as Lightning to help the handsome boy Uriah that she had a crush on last episode get funds for the school music program or whatever. This nice bit ends up backfiring as Chief Lopez uses Uriah's instagram profile to essentially bait Lightning to a meeting where they ambush her. Jen's impulsiveness is essentially her defining trait particularly in this season, and I wonder if this is the moment that makes her grow out of it. 

Oh, there's also a sideplot of Khalil and Painkiller arguing with each other as they go and investigate some of Tobias's operations. They do a good cop/bad cop thing, but ultimately Painkiller ends up winning this conversation and kills the criminal after getting intel out of him. 

By the end of the episode, we get a multiple-way fight. Black Lightning manages to get himself on a one-on-one fight with Ishmael after some setup. Lightning is flying away from the ambush. And Anissa finds her ally Darius dead and killed in his apartment, and about to be hit by a car... while all of this is going on, Tobias gives a whole speech about taking away everything that mattered to Black Lightning just as how he took Tori Whale away from him, and activates the ominous device we've been seeing all season. As rather obviously foreshadowed last episode, it nullifies everyone's powers... and we get to see Black Lightning, Thunder, Lightning and TC all lose their powers in a very inconvenient time. A pretty all right (if obvious) major crisis mode for a superhero TV show, although I really felt like it probably could've been built up for more than just a single episode. 

S04E10: Revelations

As we start off the final arc of 'the Book of Reunifications', we're wrapping up a bunch of the side-threads... which means certain storylines end up being quickly and abruptly finished. Which does beg the question as to why they were built up for so long. Of course, after the cliffhanger of episode 9, everyone essentially survives from their powers being removed; but the 'anti-metahuman' aura is still on the entire city of Freeland because of the plot device that Tobias Whale stole from Monovista... which leads to a confrontation between Gambi and his girlfriend Lauren... a plotline and character that really didn't amount to much and really does overstay her welcome especially in an already-packed season. 

Jeff and Officer Shakur meet up with Lynn as she's being arrested, but after the prolonged, protracted humiliation sequence last episode... it basically ends up being handwaved away when Anissa calls in Lynn's lawyer ex-boyfriend. Did he exist in previous seasons? I don't really care, and the five or so minutes of Jefferson being jealous and pouting over it felt particularly pointless. Jennifer gets panicky because of another identity crisis, and against everyone's advice, shocks herself and flies up to the ionosphere to regain her powers. Okay? The rest of the Pierces remain without their powers, which is fine but we don't really... get much out of them?  

The Kobra Kartel gets written out of the story, essentially, and Ishmael (who's really only there for the action scenes quota; he doesn't have much of a personality) gets hired by Tobias. Khalil, who is in contact with TC, goes on his own sidequest to get Tobias's ledger to solve the Pierces' legal problems... and finds out that Looker from the previous seasons is involved with Tobias's master plan. Oh, and said master plan is shown when Tobias gets into a call with a cabal of... illuminati gang leaders? It is so random, and while I'm all for Mayor Tobias taking over Freeland and having monopoly over who gets metahuman powers or not, I felt like both the ledger and the illuminati stuff could've been built up a lot earlier. 

S04E11: Trial and Errors

With most of the Pierces stuck without powers, this leaves everyone kind of floundering around. I don't really have anything to say about the Jefferson/Lynn lawyer stuff, which really just peters out on its own. Oh, Gambi also re-earns the trust of Lauren or whatever, but this sub-plot is really wearing thin and we get another 'civilian working alongside the Pierces' storyline. Speaking of civilians, Jefferson reveals his identity to Officer Shakur, and after a bit of anger on his part, the two of them conspire to drug Agent Mason... who conveniently is under Looker's mind control. This sub-plot hinges on me caring about Shakur and Mason, and... and to be honest, I really don't. It is a nice showcase of what Jefferson can do without his powers, which I appreciate. 

Lightning zips around and attacks one of Tobias's bases (which was a bit random) and steals a bunch of plot devices, but this tips Tobias into finding out Lightning is still active, and that "JJ" and Jennifer are one and the same. Tobias then decides to arm Chief Lopez with meta-booster serum and the bracelets that make Tobias's metahumans immune to the power dampener wave. 

TC, meanwhile, figures out via hacking that Jennifer's crush Uriah didn't actually sell her out, and sets up a date. Which feels like such a huge distraction in this final arc, but this is all there to build up to Tobias's minion Red showing up and murdering Uriah in cold blood when Jen's powers fail. Some stakes! It's interesting how much focus Jennifer's getting... meanwhile, poor Anissa isn't really doing anything in the past couple episodes other than argue with Grace about whether they should be happy or sad that their powers are gone. (Anissa also has some role giving exposition about the very poorly-researched 'genetics stealing' sci-fi handwave, which is terrible even by CW standards)

The big action scene in this episode comes from Khalil fighting Looker, which is a bit of a random addition although I at least remember this show's version of Looker that it feels a bit more epic than Ishmael. Looker being casually horrible in racism also gives her a bit of a nice personality -- Looker tries to take over Khalil's mind with her weird silver powers, but gets outnumbered in the theater of the mind, and beaten down by Khalil and Painkiller. It's a bit odd that Khalil's just doing sidequests while barely being in contact with the Pierces, but there you go. I also really wished that Looker was in the season more, maybe replacing the random personality-less Ishmael throughout a greater portion of this season as an antagonist. 

S04E12: Crossroads

As we go to the two-parter finale... some things are way more fitting for a finale, and some things aren't. I'm not sure how much lead-time did the showrunners have before they knew the show was going to be cancelled, but I felt like a lot of the side-characters really didn't matter all that much. Like Lauren, for example, with her will-she-find-out-or-won't-she-find-out. As a character that was entirely a satellite to Gambi, she really does feel bland. 

Jennifer is in full breakdown mode after Uriah's death, but Jefferson comes and the two get a great moment talking about the burdens of being a superhero -- with Jefferson rather cleverly remembering an aspect of his and Tobias's rivalry from season one. That Tobias killed Jeff's dad while he hid under the bed, helpless. It's, I suppose, a nice throughline as Jennifer finally matures after being a bit of an impulsive teenager throughout the first half of this final season, although it definitely is a clunky one. Jeff and Jen not really having much of a scene after the whole 'Jeff can't stand his daughter's transformation' subplot doesn't help either. 

We then wrap up some stuff on the villain end. After the strange blue-hologram illuminati were introduced all but two episodes ago, Tobias calls them again. When they try to deny him a seat, Tobias apparently has invisible assassins who are ready to kill this shadow council or whatever, and Tobias gets to be the new 'king' of this shadow council that we didn't even know exist a until two episodes ago. Tobias then monologues about his master plan, where he'll control metahumans even in all these other cities like Star City and Metropolis. Okay, sure. 

Khalil's little sidequest is now blocked by Ishmael. The two's action scene is pretty great, but it is really an odd choice to depower almost everyone in the Pierces and leave a lot of the heavy duty to Khalil... and don't even have Khalil really interact all that much with the Pierces. The fight is all right, and Painkiller kills Ishmael. Looker, who was slated to be killed by Tobias, ends up begrudgingly agreeing to testify. And... that's all these ex-villains wrapped up. Khalil/Painkiller is quite neat, but I really do feel like particularly in this final season that he should have interacted a bit more with the Pierces.  

Anissa, Lynn and Grace all kind of have this rather bland side-plot of informing the public and the victims of the 'stolen genes' or whatever, but it's quite sad that they've reduced Lynn and Anissa in particular into essentially doing nothing in the background compared to Jeff and Jen. Gambi and Lauren also find some Prometehum underneath the city and they're working on basically reversing the anti-metahuman pulse. All right. 

At least Jennifer gets her revenge on Red. With TC's help and some ionosphere power-ups, she confronts Red and beats him. She gets confronted by racist Chief Lopez. Red gets arrested, but Lopez gets livestreamed ranting about how all metahumans should be purged and in anger and desperation, she... injects herself with the meta-boosters? Okay. 

Far more interesting, of course, is the buildup of the confrontation between Jefferson and Tobias at Jeff's father's hosue. With the reminder to the audience of the genesis of their history, Jeff cooks up a plan to wipe Tobias's memory with, uh... a device. Black Lightning's zappy-amnesia powers are goofy when it showed up earlier in this season, and I am not too thrilled that it's randomly the crux of this confrontation. Thankfully, Tobias catches on to this and destroys it before it can be dignified. I do like Jefferson pretending to be utterly beaten and Tobias eating it up (I felt this could've had a lot more buildup) before engaging in a fight, and Tobias letting Jefferson 'take his best shot'. The episode ends with Jefferson apparently killed and Tobias scaring the shit out of Jennifer, which... obviously isn't the case, but it's a nice cliffhanger. 

S04E13: Closure

It's, uh... definitely a 'rocks fall, people die' final season. Comparing this to the final season of Supergirl, which had a fair amount of time within the season itself to reflect on what being Supergirl meant... the final couple of episodes of Black Lightning was really... distracted. We do check some of the boxes, and the ending is, for the most part, a good ending. But I felt like this last couple of episodes were particularly weak, and especially compared to just how strong Black Lightning started off as a show. Nothing, by the way, about Freeland or how the city is moving on was touched upon in this episode. The community of Freeland was such a strong part of the show's identity and while it was given less focus in this season, we got nearly none of it in the end. 

Let's start with my least favourite part of the finale -- the actress-swapped Jennifer we have been following for half a season was... an ionosphere energy being impostor all along? And the 'real' Jennifer came back this episode, and we get a clone fight for... for no goddamn reason at all? I felt like this was just a way to bring the original Jennifer actress back for the finale, which, fine, I get it... but it was so out of nowhere and meant that we spent so much time (particularly since 'JJ' got a fair bit of screentime) trying to develop an impostor. This was also shoved under the rug after like, a single conversation at the end, and I really felt like it was handled piss-poorly and even if they wanted the original actress back there were much more elegant ways to do it. Like, uh, just... swapping faces when 'JJ' flew back up to the ionosphere or something. The whole ionosphere thing always felt tacked-on as a vague metaphor of addiction or something, and was dropped quickly anyway. It's quite poorly done. 

The 'real' Lightning then goes and essentially one-shots Chief Lopez, who's like... given way too much screentime in the precious real estate of this final episode. This really does make the Lopez and Shakur drama amount to basically nothing as they disappear after this scene, and... again, I really wished this confrontation happened at an earlier point in the show instead of the final episode. 

Also, while all of this is going on, Gambi, Anissa and Grace have a little raid on Tobias's little military base (which we just learned about) and it's honestly quite simple even for CW standards. 

And for the most of the episode, Jefferson spends most of the episode buried in a coffin waiting for Team Anissa to turn back the power. It's... it's nowhere as dramatic as the show thinks it is, and I really don't buy that Tobias didn't actually make sure Jefferson was dead. There are some flashbacks that has Jeff swap between his adult and child self as he talks to a vision of his dead father, which I guess is good enough as a emotional hook even if it does feel rushed. Ultimately he gets his powers back, ghost-dad tells him that he is a better man than Tobias Whale, and flies to confront Tobias. Again, it is a rather typical 'superhero gets his groove back', but -- and especially for this show -- it feels like it lost a fair amount of the gravitas and thematic cohesion that Black Lightning as a show usually has. 

We get a fight; Tobias gets a couple of verbal and physical jabs in, but while I don't expect a visual spectacle in a CW superhero show, I expected an emotional one. It was nice that we get to see these two rivals fight properly, but especially compared to the previous episode's fare, I really expected more. Tobias spent so much time in this season building up this master plan to control everything, and he just... gets thrown out of the window, gets impaled, quotes Moby Dick and dies. He dies, but doesn't really get his whole political and power angle really dismantled, which I thought would at least be a lot more appropriate. Again, it could be doable if the show distributed the characters a bit differently instead of wasting time with the very shoehorned Fake Lightning bullshit, but as it is, it does cause Tobias's defeat to ring hollow. 

Speaking of side-characters... TC hacks into Khalil/Painkiller's mind and removes the 'kill order', but also wipes Painkiller's mind of the Pierce family. Um??? Again, very random to toss in here, and while I realize this was because of a spinoff being planned back in the day, I felt like Khalil's exit from the show was already done last episode. Speaking of random spinoffs, the 'stinger' of the show has La-La (I forgot he existed and got carbonite'd) get freed from his cement prison. What a waste of a character, by the way, La-La really didn't get to do anything this season and I really wished he took over the role of Ishmael or someone. 

Ultimately the final moments were with the Pierce family, with the aforementioned handwave that no one noticed that Jennifer got replaced by an energy being (surely if they wanted the energy being fight, it might be better to have Jennifer actually be Jennifer up until 12? Or something? With the vague memory-copying bullshit it could've been easily whatever the writers wanted), we wrap up some bits and bobs. Jeff and Lynn are getting remarried (which I keep forgetting hasn't already been done), and the two of them and Gambi are stepping down to let the next generation be superheroes. Again, it rings hollow because we don't really get anything in this episode that shows that Jeff is ready to move on -- if anything, wouldn't he be galvanized by the speech prior to fighting Tobias? The only real scene that we got of Jefferson being ready to pass the mantle was last episode, ironically enough, with the fake Jennifer. Which makes that plotline even worse. (By the way, it makes it even worse that Anissa and Lynn essentially got sidelined for a fake Jennifer's character development). 

Again... it really is a messy finale that misses the point about what made Black Lightning's original couple of seasons so compelling in the first place. Even the buildup of Tobias and all the hullaballoo about the more non-superhero way that Tobias is striking back at our heroes (Lynn's case in court, Jeff's dad's house, Tobias's status as a mayor) weren't even mentioned. I would've been happy with a simple, basic finale -- and while the Jefferson/Tobias fight is that, everything else around it really wasn't. Again, I get that for the most part these CW shows didn't have proper time to wrap up the way they wanted to, but this one is particularly frustrating because they theoretically have the formula even up to the penultimate episode. Definitely a shame.

Black Lightning Season 4 Review - Part 1

As I ever so slowly make my way through watching the conclusions of the CW Arrowverse shows -- many of which were produced and concluded during the years of the COVID-19, this time I cover the final season of Black Lighting. Had to take a bit to get a recap on what's been going on in this show, but happy to go through the relatively shorter season and see its conclusion. 

Just like my Supergirl final season coverage, this one is going to be a lot shorter and reactionary compared to my previous coverage of CW/DC shows. Again, this review was written over a rather long period of time as I go through the season slowly and write my comments and notes after watching each episode. 

S04E01: Collateral Damage

It is always a bit difficult to come back to a TV show you haven't watched for... god, time flies, half a decade since the last season. The recap doesn't really fill up all the gaps, but this episode is a neat one to set up the new status quo. After the Markovian invasion that happened in season 3's climax, Jefferson Pierce has hung up his mantle as Black Lightning, but has gone on a bit of a self-destructive vigilantism -- combining fights with his wife, still not getting over Chief Henderson's death, explosively attacking drug dealers and aggressive policemen. It's nice to go back to the more intimate setting of Freeland instead of the international metahuman weapons war that they did in the previous season. 

It's an interesting bit of realignment even if I'm not the most invested in the family wangst. There are also things moving along in the background. The newly-introduced police characters are suspicious of Jeff's attack on two policemen, and may be on to his secret identity. Tobias Whale has resurfaced and is now a major player as Lynn's boss -- and there's an argument that the Pierce family has about killing him preemptively. Lynn's been going around testing the metahuman serum as a vigilante. while being in denial about her addiction or something? Gambi's been going around helping clean up Jeff's mess. And lastly, Thunder and Lightning, whose confidence and wings are growing, are taking over as superheroes in the city but find themselves close to being outmaneuvered by La-La's gang. It's an all right season premiere, and hopefully the show will be able to capture some of its original magic before its end.

S04E02: Unacceptable Losses

We continue with the storylines established in the first episode, with Freeland getting caught up in all the chaos as the police are importing anti-metahuman DEG guns, the 100 and Kobra Kartel are warring in the streets, and Tobias Whale literally being untouchable as he makes it clear to Jefferson that his revenge for all of the previous seasons' conflicts are coming. All of this is going on as the Pierce family is falling apart. Jeff is split between 'I can't be Black Lightning again' while also going rogue and beating up gangsters that are evading justice; Lynn gets into a fight with her daughters when they find out that she's been recklessly following them around while shooting up with metahuman serums... and Gambi's just kind of caught between being a 'guy in a chair' and meeting up with his ex Lauren. The show does make it kind of obvious that he's never going to betray the Pierces for an ex-lover, since Lauren is working for the company producing the DEG's, but it's nice to see Gambi having a side-plot for once. 

Things are going quite slowly, although I do appreciate the death of a kid living in a car (his family was displaced by the war last season) ended up tying together the Jeffreson and Anissa plots -- Jeff ends up arguing with Gambi about his brand of vigilantism as he hunts down for the punk that shot the kid, and breaks his legs. Anissa, meanwhile, dons her Blackbird alter-ego to force Lala and Destiny to honour some neutral grounds. Meanwhile, there is a bit of a quasi-framing story of Jeff and Lynn's couples' therapy, but neither Jefferson nor Lynn are behaving particularly logically in this episode, both of them being erratic around Anissa, Jennifer and Gambi. There's also a bit of a side-plot about Anissa making a new friend while struggling with accepting Grace's condition. Seeing the Pierces fall apart as a team and family is an interesting hook to take the show, but it's not exactly the most fun to see over and over again. 

S04E03: Despite All My Rage

We're exploring more of Jefferson's... moping? Coping? He keeps insisting throughout the four-part "The Book of Reconstruction" arc that he is no longer Black Lightning, but as Gambi and other people points out, it's one thing to hang up the superhero suit. It's another to go around and beat up gangsters with his superpowers.. and in this episode, Jeff finds that Marcel -- the father of the boy killed in the previous episode -- is fighting in Lala's illegal fight club, Jeff ends up going in and fights anonymously to give Marcel the earnings. It's helping Marcel, sure, but it's also a surprising bit of brutality as Jefferson Pierce engages in something a bit darker than what a good principal is supposed to do. 

It's also a bit odd since the rest of the Pierce family is still active fighting crime... and each other. After the previous episode, Lynn confides in a therapy session that she has never felt like she belonged in her background as the only person in a military family that didn't fit in, and now as the only non-metahuman and a burden, a significant part of why she's doing so much is also a desire to fit in. The episode's cliffhanger has Tobias Whale manipulate events so that Lynn has dinner with him, ostensibly to discuss a research-funding project but with some creepy undertones as well. Not the biggest fan of the overly soap-opera-y bit of Jefferson arriving, eavesdropping and leaving without saying anything, which predictably ends up being a rather bland B-plot in the next episode. Tech-meta TC joins the supporting cast and continue to appear throughout the season, but he does really just feel like a plot device character and maybe bounces off some dialogue from Jen. 

And after two episode of Anissa's weird floundering around the comatose Grace, she's awake without much fanfare, and gets married with Anissa... also without much fanfare. It feels like this is just tying in last season's unresolved sub-plot, but ultimately isn't that interesting. Jennifer, meanwhile, ropes in T.C. to help her do a bit of a social media war against a reporter, going around to try and show the world 'the truth' about her. It's all right and something new for these characters, I suppose. Jen's bit of trying to get her own identity is understandable, at least. (All the while, there are subplots brewing about the minor gangsters, Chief Lopez and her increasingly anti-meta stance, and whatever Tobias is cooking in the background). 

S04E04: A Light in the Darkness

In the last episode of the first arc, 'The Book of Reconstruction', we get a lot of yelling and family drama about secrets. Through different ways, Jeff and Lynn end up finding out about each other's secrets and are at each other's throat about this. Jeff having going out (and enjoying way more than he should) Lala's cage matches, and Lynn's little meeting with Tobias. Having this take place four episodes in, however, and building up on Jeff and Lynn's own struggles with their respective traumas -- Jeff dealing with Henderson's death and Lynn's superhero drug addiction -- ends up with both Jeff and Lynn letting out some ugly things at each other in the confrontations. Jeff gets an actual good scene where he wanders into a bar and starts shit-talking Black Lightning, but we get other people in the bar (including detective Shakur, a minor recurring character) talking up all the good that Black Lightning's done. Lynn... doesn't really get a huge scene that changes her mind, a bit of a shame. 

Tobias continues to be fun with how much he's stringing Jeff along, setting up a meeting in a restaurant and clearly having fun trying to get a rise out of him. There's something going on with the DEG, with al parties trying to get to them. All of this culminates in Lala's gang attacking the buyback event. Lightning, Thunder and Grace intervene, but the mayor dies -- which ends up enforcing angry police Chief Lopez's hatred towards metahumans. All of this is later revealed to be part of Tobias's plan, who snuck in a metal-manipulating metahuman called 'Red' to kill the mayor in all the chaos. 

The C-plots in this episode isn't interesting. Gambi also has a rather bland continuation of the side-plot to delay the DEG production with his girlfriend... which mostly leads to Gambi discovering another sci-fi doohickey that's rather telegraphed to be commissioned by Tobias. Anissa also gets into a bit of a post-coma-recovery argument with his new wife Grace over... uh... wanting to cohabitate but not wanting Grace's stuff around because of the 'vibes' of their house? Anissa's a jerk, I'm sorry, and this C-plot was essentially handwaved very quickly.

Oh, and Jennifer has been going to the ionosphere to draw energy, but in this episode after Jeff's attempted apology, she... blows up! Whoops!

S04E05: Picking Up The Pieces

So this whole episode deals with an attempt to get the blown-up Jennifer back. Of course the show's not going to kill Jennifer, not in such an anticlimactic way. But there are some really great acting -- particularly from Cress Williams -- as the family struggles with the hectic race to gather all the ionosphere sci-fi-comic-book-y whatsits and reconstruct Jennifer Pierce. We get an oddly off-screen cameo from the Flash, who delivers the sci-fi plot device... and for most of the episode, we wait. Jeff and Lynn explode at each other again -- very understandably considering that their youngest daughter might be dead. Jefferson gets a really sad moment of confiding to Gambi how the most scared he had been in his life was when he thought he lost his daughter when she was younger. Lynn also gets a great moment when she calms down later on and bonds with Jeff over being two scared parents desperate on the hope that the sci-fi plot device works... but Lynn's brain tells her that it's impossible, and it's hurting her particularly because of that. 

Thanks to comic book magic, of course the STAR labs device works at the end of the episode, and Jennifer is back... but with a different actress! Dun dun dunn, I suppose. 

While all of this is going on, other stuff is going on. Anissa and Grace get a completely unnecessary and frankly very distracting sub-plot about boundaries (both of them come off as assholes this time) for very minimal payoff as Grace's integration to the family is essentially brushed under the rug. Jefferson suits up as Black Lightning to get Jen back, but keeps the suit and identity to confront Lala with the gangster stuff. Lala's role as the 'lesser evil' amongst all the criminals is an interesting one, for sure, especially considering what happens to him at the end of the episode. 

Oh, and Chief Lopez finally dips into the 'unreasonable police chief' role in full gusto, which isn't a surprise. She decides to pin the death of the 100 gangster that Jeff crippled (and Lala killed) on Lightning, without any real evidence and out of the vibes of the vigilantes interfering in her protecting the mayor. This makes Lightning Public Enemy #1. Sure. She also cracks down hard on the gangsters. Destiny and Lala appear to make a truce, but it ends up to be a Tobias-sponsored trap, and Lala's entire inner circle (no, Devonte!!!) gets arrested. Lala manages to escape with his Tattoo-Man powers, which continues the whole gang war storyline. 

S04E06: Theseus's Ship

So we get this whole episode devoted to the recasting of Jennifer Pierce/Lightning, as she gets magically aged up, Gotham Poison Ivy / Batwoman style, after being reconstructed through the magic electric 3D printer machine. It's an all right episode for what it is, which I felt kiiiinda tied into Jen's newfound identity-searching crisis? It does feel forced, not going to lie, although at least Jennifer (or 'JJ') being a relative unknown that gets caught in Tobias Whale and his minions' web relatively early promises to be something interesting. 

The main one who can't accept that this is Jennifer is surprisingly enough Jefferson, while Gambi, Anissa and Grace are all more quick to accept Jennifer's new form. Grace gets a nice bit of bonding by explaining her own shapeshifting powers, while Jennifer herself also goes through a whirlwind of emotions as she tries to figure her new body out. I don't necessarily feel that there's one huge big moment that shows off Jefferson and Jennifer's reconciliation, Jefferson just gets pressured (rightfully) by the rest of his family until the two of them team up and fight some dirty cops. That's all right, although I did feel like having a fake-out flash-forward to see what would happen if the civilian was caught in the crossfire was awkwardly handled. 

Oh, while all of this is going on, the C-plot of the 100 versus the Kobra Kartel kind of gets into a bit of a conclusion. With Lala's entire organization arrested by the police, he goes in and tries to kill Destiny, only for Destiny to sic an anti-metahuman assassin (from Arrow-native League of Shadows!) Ishmael who beats up Lala and then turns him into a Han Solo carbonite decoration to get past his quasi-immortality. Okay. 

S04E07: Painkiller

Right, Khalil Payne and Painkiller got split into two personalities or something in the last season. Thanks, helpful recap! 'Painkiller' is a bit of a weird episode in that it very abruptly goes off and takes a side-quest from most of the cast in Freeland, taking Grace and Anissa on a rather random honeymoon to the Akashic Valley. I must say that the Anissa/Grace 'secret marriage' thing felt very flat and unengaging, particularly since Grace is already interacting with the rest of the Pierces. But anyway, they go to a honeymoon and end up coming across a group of... they were originally presented (and mistaken by Khalil and Anissa) as human traffickers, but turns out they're a weird brain-mind cult or whatever. 

None of these is really explained as we're built to some vague villain, Maya (who turns out to be Odell's daughter -- a fact that has no bearing on the rest of the season), and most of this episode just revolves around Anissa being incapacitated while Khalil fights with his split personality Painkiller to go off and rescue Grace. There's a nice enough spotlight and conflict between the two personalities, and there's some nice discussion about the Painkiller split personality who is compulsively 'programmed' to kill the Pierces. Is it enough to carry the whole spotlight episode? Eh. We're introduced to Khalil's little support staff... who aren't colourful or memorable enough to mention. Khalil's arguments against his own dark side is a simple trope, but an effective one thanks to the backstory and to the conclusion of 'Painkiller' being able to befriend Khalil. 

and it's not until I finished and sat down that I realized (and confirmed after a quick search) that this is a random attempt at making a Painkiller spinoff. Just like the 'future Arrow babies' episode in their final season... it really didn't pan out all that well, with so many of the CW superhero shows going into a much-needed conclusion. 'Painkiller' doesn't even follow 'The Book of X' prefix that the rest of the series' episodes have, setting it apart as an episode. 

With Tobias Whale clearly being saved for the final arc, and Lala being reduced to a distraction, it is nice to focus on a former antagonist, particularly one who's actually developing as a character after all the trauma he's been through. Granted, I find it... questionable to think that Khalil somehow managed to set up a Mission Impossible team in the one year between season 3 and 4, but I suppose this is comic-book land. It is a bit of a shame that Jennifer doesn't get to participate in this episode, or even Jefferson, but it's a nice spotlight for Khalil. Other than the format, I don't have any real complaints.

Movie Review - Joker: Folie a Deux

Joker: Folie a Deux (2024)

In the midst of the change in public attitude towards superhero movies -- and the extremely valid point of a 'superhero movie fatigue', various TV shows and movies that attempt to swap the formulaic action movies of the media juggernauts that are DC and Marvel have shown up a lot. And a lot of them were received well for bending the genre in new and surprising ways. We've got actual deconstructions like Invincible or The Boys, we've got attempts at genre fiction like Werewolf By Night or Runaways... and most famously, Joker. The original Joker, while deviating significantly from its source material, was still at heart a Batman/Joker story. It was focused more on the character's transformation and the mindscape of a mentally-unwell man oppressed by the system and society around it, a character-performance-driven show that still, at its core, worked as a superhero movie. 

Joker: Folie a Deux is not. It's an insane mess of a movie, where it can't really decide what it wants to be. It's most famously derided for being a musical, yes. But as a fan of the musical genre, I'd argue that it doesn't even work as a musical, since the songs in a musical would actually progress the plot and show something. In Folie a Deux, none of the musical numbers really add much that they don't immediately repeat in spoken form, or even matter to the progression of the story. 

A good chunk of the movie is divided into Joker being stuck in Arkham Asylum in the first half, and a courtroom drama trying to string Joker up for the events of Joker, but neither of them work particularly well. The courtroom drama was overtly long and was too referential to events from the first movie that the movie makes no real effort to remind us about. While the prison part is just... depressing, and went on for too long without anything to really move any plot or characterization forwards. There is some surface-level attempt to try to follow up on the fact that the Joker is now an idea, a figurehead for a movement, but it's really not followed up particularly well and feels more like an eye-rolling 'meta-commentary' on how well-received the first movie is, and how the fans want the next Joker movie to be like this or like that... which would be fine if there was any more substance to Folie a Deux, but there isn't. Not really. 

The side-cast, by the way, is extremely bland. Joker/Arthur's lawyer Maryanne Stewart is flat and I don't really know why she's even motivated to defend the Joker other than the script demands for a character to show up. Harvey Dent (hey, Two-Face!) barely exists, and so are the rest of the cast in the courtroom. The prison guards are nasty and assholish. And the second name on the poster, Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn... is Harley Quinn in name only. And, right, because this is one of those movies, she's called "Lee" almost exclusively. She's a rich girl who buys into the 'Joker movement', and gets Arthur to fall in love with her and the idea of becoming the Joker as the public envisions it. Which as I type it out, by the way, sounds like an amazing story hook! The execution... isn't. Lee's character is flat and confusing, and literally reduced to a cipher to just kick Arthur down even more. 

With the drabness of this movie, we also get a heavily-implied prison gang-rape done on Arthur which 'broke' him so much that he essentially breaks character in the courtroom, which loses him the support of Lee and his other 'groupies'. It really is eye-rollingly shoehorned in, and there's only really the shock value of 'wow, that was the source of the big emotional change'? to carry it forwards. The movie essentially ends with a very confusing message that "being the Joker sucks", and leads to Arthur being shanked by one of his disappointed groupies in prison.

Again, there is perhaps something cool and interesting that might've been done if the movie wasn't trying too hard to be pulled in all directions and ending up with a whole load of nothing over an almost three-hour runtime. I tend to try and see some merit in even the worst superhero movies, but all this movie does is to ruin the legacy of the otherwise excellent first one. 

Movie Review: Superman (2025)

Superman (2025)

Mmm, yeah. This review was in the editing pile for forever because I just don't know how to talk about the brand-new 'DCU / DC Universe'. Not to be confused with Zack Snyder's 'DCEU / DC Extended Universe'. Even though some characters/actors and events may be ported over, it's mostly a brand-new reboot. 

It's a bit silly, honestly. I really do feel a bad taste from how poorly the DCEU has been handled in general, and while I appreciate the fresh start, I can go a bit on a rant of how reboots should be. 

And 2025's Superman is the Man of Steel's first solo movie in more than a decade after the, well, Man of Steel in 2013. And David Corenswet's Superman is... a remarkably different take from Henry Cavill's. For one, he's got the outside-underwear back! But for another... this movie isn't so much just a Superman movie, but rather a soft 'Justice League' pilot episode. 

Now, do I like this movie as a DC fan, who grew up on Silver Age and 90's comics, on the DC Animated Universe with Justice League, Justice League Unlimited and Superman The Animated Series? Absolutely. The Justice 'Gang' was great, Guy Gardner was great, Mr. Terrific was terrific, I thought that the secondary heroes didn't overstay their welcome. Krypto was fun. I laughed out loud at the Supergirl cameo at the end. 

As a reboot and reintroduction of a franchise? I felt like the movie probably should've focused really hard on Superman himself, for the simple nature that, well, it is a reboot. We are trying to get to know this version of the iconic Man of Steel. 

And the parts that are Superman-centric were great as well. Most importantly, we've got the supporting cast back! Lois is there as Clark's secret-keeper and love interest, of course, but we've got Jimmy Olsen being a dork (and getting a fun subplot with Luthor's girlfriend Eve), and Ma and Pa Kent showing up for a short but memorable scene, giving their son some very human wisdom. The Kryptonian parents also show up as traditional holograms and I'll talk about the big twist a bit later, but I've always been of the opinion that Superman is relatable always because he was raised by some farmers on Kansas, America, Earth... and never because of the manifest destiny given by the Kryptonians. So I'm happy about the focus that this movie goes to. 

Lex Luthor is also excellently portrayed as a smart, intelligent, super-insane man without resorting to being a nonsensical giggling manchild. He is suave, he is calculated, he is vindictive... but the neuroses and cruelty doesn't actually appear until he gets pushed. I feel like this is particularly well-shown when he actually threatens to kill Clark Kent in front of Superman. So hyperfocused is he in hurting Superman, his rival, that he doesn't care or is willing to entertain the idea that Superman is Clark Kent. 

Luthor's plan with his insanely powerful and useful portal device ends up being used to service him creating a private prison for all the people who did petty slights against him. He created a clone of Superman, Bizarro Ultraman, and instead of using it as his own personal showcase of a human eraching the level of a 'supposed god', Ultraman instead dresses up in Hammer of Barovia armour and beats up Superman to discredit him. Again, that massive flaw of being so utterly petty is what Luthor is all about. So smart, but so short-sighted. 

Krypto... Krypto is adorable. Krypto acts like an actual dog, but I do admit that he is in the movie for perhaps a bit too much of the screentime; again, for a reboot and reintroduction. I cannot argue with Superman finally going full rage mode when Krypto was kidnapped, though. I must say I am happy they didn't kill the dog in this movie. 

The political storylines... it's serviceable. It's hard to discuss it without bringing up actual real-life conflicts, and I'm not really in the mood to do that here, but it does feel like an old-school Superman plot. At least the evil president Ghurkos was actually involved in Luthor's plans, which I appreciate. 

The Justice Gang is there to provide some contrast as other heroes on Earth, which... again, feels a bit too crowded in the movie. Guy Gardner's Green Lantern is perfect casting, and Hawkgirl is a bit of a flat angry mace-to-the-face superhero, but I appreciate the execution. Mr. Terrific is the show-stealer, being essentially a 'good' version of Luthor  and receiving an amazing solo action scene when he goes to save Superman with Lois. 

There's also the subplot about public opinion against Superman -- a plotline that would be much more poignant without the one glaringly stupid part of the movie, the monkeys-on-typewriters. It would be much more thematic, even if it is simple, if it truly is just public opinion swaying back and forth. Luthor hacks into the Fortress of Solitude, and decrypts the Kryptonian message from Superman's parents. In a new for the character's history (Elseworlds incarnations notwithstanding), turns out that Jor-El and Lara actually sent Superman to Earth to conquer and rule, not to protect. That's a twist all right, and Superman falls into a bit of a despair after this. Throw in the dognapping incident, and Superman ends up being vulnerable and captured by Luthor. 

That is an interesting take on the character, highlighting his emotional insecurities and a nice way to get a loved one in distress without subejcting poor Lois to being kidnapped. I also like the argument that Superman has with Lois during their interview, which is an excellent distillation of Superman. He will never let his mask drop in public, not when he's inspirational. He's secure that interfering in global politics to save lives is the right thing to do, consequences be damned. But when Lois pokes holes and prods his story, he actually shows off that beneath it all is a farmboy from Kansas who really is just trying to do his best. I like that. 

I'm not really recapping the movie particularly well, but suffice to say that the movie eventually goes into a series of action scenes. Superman convinces another captive metahuman, Metamorpho (I like him! He also came out of nowhere in the movie!) and inspires him to let him escape. Lois and Mr. Terrific rescue Superman, and they rescue Metamorpho and Krypto. There's some action scenes as theey fly through some CGI environments and avoid a black hole, and return to the real world. Superman also gets back his grove from Lois and his parents. 

The Justice Gang and Metamorpho go off to deal with the Barovia/Jarhanpur crisis, with some images of kids and whatnot being inspired by Superman. Superman himself, meanwhile, deals with Luthor's portal malfunctioning and creating a rift that splits the city in half. In the middle of this huge world-ending crisis, Superman fights and defeats Luthor's two metahuman goons, the Engineer and Ultraman. It's all right. I felt like there could've been more about Superman and Ultraman, and whether this is just Ultraman being saved for a sequel where he returns mutated as Bizarro or not, I still feel like the final moments could have been a bit more drawn-out, particularly with Superman being on a full 'no-killing' rule in this incarnation and being angry when the Justice Gang killed the random kaiju in the middle of the movie. 

Luthor and Superman's confrontation is fun, even if the ending is predictable with the Daily Bugle gang exposing Luthor's schemes to the public. It's more of a clash of words and ideology anyway, with Superman, as with all of his best-written incarnations, simply refusing to play into Luthor's 'who is better, me or you' game. 

The movie handles Superman and his supporting cast well, I must say. Having grown up with TAS and a lot of the '90's-00's era comics, this is the exact take of Superman I want. And I even really like the 'wider universe' stuff introduced here, like Guy Gardner, Mr. Terrific, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho and Ultraman. It's just...  it's just a bit too much in a movie that already has to do a lot. In a vaccuum it's all right for a movie to do a lot. James Gunn made his career with movies that do too much but still manage to work regardless. But outside the vacuum, with the pedigree that Superman and a full DC universe reboot brings... it's a bit unfortunate that yes, the movie does feel a bit too overstuffed for its own good. 

DC's Creature Commandos, Season 1 Review

DC’s Creature Commandos, Season 1

So this is a bit of a weird one! With the huge news that the DCEU (or the ‘Snyderverse’) being rebooted, and the creative head of the brand-new DC Cinematic Universe (or whatever they are calling it) being James Gunn, there is a very… strange bit where they are keeping some aspects of the old continuity and junking most of it. Which leads to a bizarre sense of “oh, this is a brand-new thing, but we’re keeping some things the same”. It’s always one of the worst parts of DC comic adaptations, where there are so many independent continuities that aren’t supposed to be set in the same universe but there’s also sometimes a lot of callbacks to each other? Say what you want about the MCU, but at least they are relatively consistent in terms of not contradicting each other’s projects too much. 

So ahead of Superman, which would be released later this year, the first project in the ‘Gunnverse’ DC universe is… an R-rated animated project that runs for 7 episodes. DC’s Creature Commandos is a spiritual sequel to the 2021 Suicide Squad movie — even referencing events that happened in that movie (as well as its spinoff, the Peacemaker TV series). Some actors are reused, some characters make a reappearance, but otherwise this is allegedly the very first entry in the brand-new DC universe.

Which is weird, by the way. I’m a long-time DC fan, but I must confess that I’ve never even heard of many of the characters featured in this show. It does make it quite refreshing, in a way, even though the concept of the show is essentially a rebranded version of the 2021 Suicide Squad movie (not the 2016 one!). And if you’re going to introduce a bunch of brand-new characters to an audience, I suppose the ‘anyone can die’ format of a Suicide Squad story works relatively well. 

And… again, the concept of a black ops team comprised of shady military folk (Amanda Waller and Rick Flagg Senior make up this end) and repurposed supervillains trying to do black ops missions that technically benefit the United States of America… it’s always an interesting storyline that unfortunately was butchered by the terrible 2016 movie attempt. And given time, a Suicide Squad story would explore the humanity and the individual characterizations and backstories of each single member of the team. 

The plot is interesting enough, with our Creature Commandos initially being sent to the fictional country of Pokolistan to save Princess Ilana from a group of assassins led by the witch Circe. The first half of the mission deals with this relatively black-and-white mission, but later on the team gets fragmented over their differing loyalties to other characters when it is discovered that Princess Ilana might actually have the potential to wipe out all of civilisation in the future.

Our titular ‘Creature Commandos’ are comprised of a mixture of characters: Rick Flagg Senior takes over from Rick Flagg Junior, who died in 2021’s Suicide Squad, and as the only sane man that’s leading a bunch of lunatics, Rick is also torn between his loyalty to his country and his newfound romance with the Princess of Pokolistan. The Bride of Frankenstein is the closest thing that the show has to a main protagonist, who starts off with a devil-may-care attitude. She’s ill-mannered and keeps insisting that they are all ‘monsters’, but eventually learns to appreciate at least some of her teammates. Minor Batman antagonist Dr. Phosphorus is the team’s comedic sociopath, a radioactive skull-man who is probably the source of the show’s most brutal murders of random adversaries. G.I. Robot is a one-note robotic being who is preoccupied with one thing and one thing only, which is the killing of Nazis. “The Mermaid” Nina Mazursky is a modern-day Creature from the Black Lagoon, but is also the only one in the group that’s the most human, acting very much like a scared young woman thrust into a mission that she is clearly unprepared for. And Weasel returns from 2021’s Suicide Squad as an unintelligible beastly creature who’s there for a lot of comedic gags. 

One thing that makes this show works, however, is the fact that we have proper ‘flashback episodes’ for each and every one of these characters. With the exception of the first episode, each episode has a present-day plot and a flashback detailing the backstory of one of its characters (and secondary antagonist ‘Eric’, the Frankenstein’s Monster, gets another one) makes you really do feel about the backstories of these people… and it’s a bit of a coin toss whether someone receiving a spotlight in a flashback means that one of them is going to die or get more exploration in the story. This makes it a lot more fun to watch as we don’t have a ‘Slipknot’ problem from the 2016 movie, where it’s so obvious that the character that the movie itself doesn’t care to explore isn’t going to make it out of the first act.

Because of — and perhaps it’s precisely the function of — the obscureness of most of these characters and the utterly wanton brutality of the show, it really is hard to guess who’s going to make it out or not. Which I feel is a nice subversion to the two live-action Suicide Squad shows, where a lot of the marquee actors could be assumed to be safe. Not all the characters are created equal, but all of the flashback stories are crafted amazingly well. From the surprisingly dark and heartwrenching backstory for the mute Weasel, to the domino of effects that turned poor Dr. Sartorius into the sociopathic Dr. Phosphorus, to the sad series of circumstances that led Nina into mistakenly abandoning her family, to the exploration of the single-minded artificial intelligence that is the G.I. Robot… the flashbacks are easily the highlights of the show, really helping the idea that all of these ‘monsters’, all these creatures, are actual people with their own tragic backstories. 

I can’t decide which one I like the best, but Weasel’s surprisingly touching backstory (which even had a nice foreshadowing in the first episode and in the 2021 movie) and the brutality that broke a good man that Doctor Phosphorus once was… they’re all done very well. 

That is not to say that the present-day stories are bad, because they aren’t. The present-day material is where a majority of the tension lies, of course. But the present-day stuff do rely a lot on just a glorious amount of ridiculous animated gore that would make Invincible proud. There is a rather significant immaturity to the violence and gore that just somehow works with this brand of comedy, although I also recognise that it’s not for everyone. I did find it funny, for sure, but I am an easily entertained man. 

There are, however, a fair amount of plotlines that kind of peter out into nothing — and that’s particularly surrounding the Bride. The Bride is one of the first backstories we learn about, where we learn that in the DC universe, Victor Frankenstein existed and he did create Frankenstein’s Monster, Eric… who is best described as an entitled man-child. We get the requisite tragic backstory as the Bride is created and is immediately terrified shitless by “you are NOW MY BRIDE!” Eric. There is some questionable pseudo-parental-figure relationship as Victor Frankenstein ends up falling in love with the Bride instead, and this leads to Eric killing Victor and chasing the Bride throughout all of history. 

We actually do spend a significant amount of time following Eric Frankenstein as he gets alerted of the Bride’s appearance in society, and he begins to hunt her down. The show gets significant mileage from David Harbour’s performance as what I can only describe as an ‘entitled incel stalker’, but… but while we do get the journey throughout both the Bride and the Monster’s flashbacks, as well as the Monster’s own journey in the present day as he befriends Rick Flagg Senior… the story just abruptly and very suddenly brushed aside without much of a satisfying conclusion either way. The Monster doesn’t grow at all through his journey (which is a fair enough direction) but neither does he have a satisfying confrontation with the Bride (she just shoots him in the beginning of the final episode and leaves him for dead) and we don’t really get much in terms of him actually trying to do something good this time around. For the amount of time we spent with them, I had expected something more. And that could be content for the second season, but it also feels quite bland. 

The Bride’s focus in the present day, other than the brief reminiscing of her past, seems to be on her growing into a reluctant leadership role. Or, rather, her friendship with Nina. Both Phosphorus and Weasel are kind of tagalongs, after all. And… again, it’s pretty basic. It’s something we’ve seen many times in these kinds of superhero stories. But I also did feel like the friendship between Nina and the Bride as they bond throughout the seven episodes… and eventually, the big decision that the Bride makes at the end of the show was clearly influenced by that friendship with Nina. 

(I am being kind of coy with what happens because a good chunk of this show lives and dies depending on spoilers… and while maybe not in these next couple of weeks, I do see myself doing episodic reviews for Creature Commandos at some point down the line)

The cast is rounded up by a bunch of more familiar faces. Princess Ilana is perfectly believable as someone who could just be desperate or psychotic enough to be a threat, but can also manage to fool the audience to being sweet. Suicide Squad’s Amanda Waller and Peacemaker’s John Economos are serviceable beleaguered government agents that are trying their best to take control of the situation. Another Batman antagonist, Clayface shows up as a mostly non-speaking antagonist in an episode. Wonder Woman enemy Circe perhaps gets the biggest shaft, being reduced to essentially an act-one threat before the Creature Commandos get somewhat split down the middle… although I do find it rather funny that apparently arguments about Circe’s power levels for a brand-new continuity caused a lot of waves in the comic-book community. 

And the plot is… well, it’s simple enough to fit into seven episodes while devoting a significant amount of time to flashbacks and origin stories. It mostly relies on two or three big twists in the latter half of the show to really get going, and a good chunk of its tension relies more on which of these Z-lister characters will survive or die, and, of course, that’s right after the show makes you care for them. And in that regard, it’s rather successful. 

There is something to talk about the ‘dudebro’ comedy, whether it’s the wanton cursing or the gratuitous violence. Which, admittedly, is quite on par with some of the more violent superhero deconstruction projects like Invincible and The Boys, and even DC’s own animated Harley Quinn cartoon. I don’t find it as distracting, but part of it might simply be because these are a relatively fresh batch of characters to me and thus I don’t have a much of an attachment to specific characterizations that got ‘changed’ the way the Harley Quinn cartoon did. However, I am aware of the significant changes from the source material (particularly regarding the Frankenstein’s Monsters) and I also acknowledge that this is a sore spot for them.

But, well, at the end of the day… it’s not the best superhero comic-book adaptation. It obviously is mostly an in-name-only adaptation of the titular Creature Commandos, other than perhaps including characters from that title. But I do have to be honest that I actually found this seven-episode, devil-may-care, crass and violent adaptation to be extremely entertaining. It’s not your typical superhero fare, but the execution is flashy and catchy enough that I do have to be honest — I was very entertained by this show. 

Movie Review: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)

So this is how the DCEU ends, not with a whimper, but not quite with a bang either. I really wouldn't rate Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom as being a worse watching experience than some of the honestly rather forgotten later-released DCEU movies like the Wonder Woman and Shazam sequels, and it stands rather comfortably among the echelons of movies like Black Adam, Blue Beetle and Harley Quinn as a movie that's... okay to watch. It's dumb, loud fun like a Transformers movie that I don't think it's actually terrible...

It's just that there's so much other stuff going in real life around the production and abrupt termination of the DCEU that it really is hard for this movie to appeal to anyone that's watching superhero movies as a serialized format. Again, as a generic punch-up huge CGI special effects movie, it's an all right one. As a sequel to Aquaman? As a part of a shared universe? As what's essentially the final movie for the DCEU?

I talked about it in my review for Flash and Blue Beetle, but it really is hard to be invested in a series of movies that concludes a theoretically long-running series of movies that... isn't even meant to conclude the Aquaman stories, let alone the entire DC universe. this is a movie that was released because people did work on it and it's done, moreso than any other reason. And... throw in the fact that we've got unexplained absences (Willem Dafoe's Vulko is just randomly killed off), the whole saga with Amber Heard as an actor, a whole lot of shoved-down-your-throat 'climate change' moral stuff (I agree that climate change is bad, but the movie had less subtlety than Golden Age comics), and a generally confusing plotline that doesn't have much to do with the more epic first Aquaman movie... yeah, this isn't the most coherent movie.

I will give praise where praise is due -- some of the CGI is pretty rough, but there were moments like the many-hand-armed desert creatures, the locusts on the random island, or the monstrous squid-creatures in the Lost Kingdom, or the way Black Manta's octopus robots moved, or Topo... those were pretty great. The budget of trying to make Atlantis as colourful as possible with wacky sea animal ships and whatnot makes this feel very cartoony in a good way. But the movie doesn't have consistent CGI throughout the movie. Our main villain, King Kordax, looks like a bad World of Warcraft CGI model (that's without the obvious Lich King ripoffs) and there were many moments where there's just something off with the lighting or how light reflects off of stuff underwater. And you don't really look too hard to compare this to the first Aquaman movie. 

I would also like to praise the Aquaman/Ocean Master team-up. It's weird, I didn't expect it coming into the movie, but they put a fair amount of effort into it. Not all the dialogue and jokes land, and I honestly don't feel like the Ocean Master we saw in the first Aquaman movie would be capable of the character development here (he doesn't quite have the same excuse-plot motivations as Marvel's Loki did) but they did... okay with him. Orm essentially takes over as Aquaman's sidekick for the entirety of the movie, edging out the rest of his supporting cast, and it does admittedly feel a bit forced but they did okay with it. Awkward as it was, there at least was a character arc.

(And I realize that the real-world reason of Mera not being as involved in this movie is due to the allegations against the actress, but it is still a noticeable and jarring shift regardless)

The movie itself? The plot's rather confusing, and honestly kind of a waste. The first Aquaman movie gave us two villains that survived the movie and had sensible motivations to continue menace Arthur in the future. Ocean Master, disgraced brother who believes the kingdom is rightfully his; and Black Manta, a terrorist who blames the brutal Aquaman for his father's death. Okay, they want to make Ocean Master into an antihero. That kind of leaves Black Manta, who's pretty, fun, right? 

Except... Black Manta spends 90% of his screentime possessed by a magical trident that came out of nowhere. He just comes across it, and when the ghost of a dead Atlantean king with less personality than a cardboard cutout starts talking to Manta, he just... he just spends the whole movie as the minion of a fucking ancient fork. This is worse than Hawkeye in the first Avengers movie, because that movie at least had Loki as an interesting antagonist. But Black Manta spends the entire movie just... just doing generically evil stuff, which has very little to do with his established motivations (which the movie event takes time to recap before ignoring them entirely) making the entirety of Black Manta's screentime in this movie no more interesting or impactful other than having a cool enemy for Arthur and Orm to fight against. 

King Kordax himself? The titular Lost Kingdom of Necrus was just vaguely shown to us in flashbacks, before we get like a five-minute exposition around one hours and twenty minutes in while the movie runs around and lets Aquaman and Orm fight against random CGI monsters without any names, and... I'm just so confused and uninvested with all the talk about the 'seventh missing kingdom' and whatnot when the entire movie has been about Black Manta's something-something toxic-orichalcum secret-base climate-change plot. Kordax, when he actually gets resurrected, hilariously lasts a grand total of a whole minute before Aquaman one-shots him. 

And... yeah. I really am struggling to find much to talk about the plot. We get introduced to some stuff like Aquaman struggling to balance his kingship and wanting to introduce Atlantis to the world; some stuff about climate change; the whole talk about Black Manta's vengeance... but so little of the movie is spent on the topics they build up and instead we keep going from one wacky location to the next, from the mysterious island of giant mutated animals to the underwater Mos Eisley Cantina to the desert prison. And don't get me wrong, again, as a punch-them-up Saturday morning movie I didn't mind having it play on my television when I'm folding laundry or whatever, but the movie itself really isn't the most coherent one... which was at least something that other sub-par superhero movies like Blue Beetle, Black Adam or Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania can claim. 

Anyway, that's really all I have to say about this movie. I was entertained enough by it, but at the same time I felt like the movie is a huge pile of missed concepts that could've easily been far more well put together. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the comics, Kordax was one of Aquaman's ancestors and the originator of the "Curse of Kordax", which states that royal children born with blond hair and the ability to communicate with sea creatures would bring doom to Atlantis. Kordax himself waged war against the ancient kingdoms, and it was this curse that caused comics!Aquaman to face a fair amount of prejudice from the Atlanteans in addition to the whole half-human thing. 
• In the comics, Aquaman's baby son was infamously killed by Black Manta, who suffocated him in a bubble of air. Of course, the same thing doesn't happen to Arthur Jr in the movie but it was clearly going for it. 
• While the origin of it is completely different, the toxic oricalchum trident does originate from the comics, created by the supervillain Devil Ray to combat Atlanteans. 
• Topo is noted to be able to 'play a variety of musical instruments', and he was infamous in the Silver Age comics for being able to be a one-man band. In fact, Topo's brief cameo in the first Aquaman movie does the same. 

Movie Review: The Batman

The Batman [2022]

Did I really never review this movie? Huh. Huh! It's almost been two years! 

I didn't realize I've never reviewed this movie until I was looking through the list of superhero movies and I realized I just... somehow never talked about this one. And I really really like 2022's The Batman, not to be confused with maybe a dozen other Batman movies out there.

And... perhaps one moment of confusion is the sheer glut of alternate-universe DC comics projects running around, which didn't do The Batman (and to be honest a lot of other DC comics projects) much favours. There's Ben Affleck's Batman running around in the DCEU movie series, plus Michael Keaton playing an alternate-universe Batman in the DCEU movies (Flash was supposed to come out a bit earlier), plus there's a separate Joker movie that has its own Batman... so yeah. DC comics announcing a brand-new standalone Batman movie that is not connected to anything and is acting essentially as a soft reboot as the DC movie empire realizes that their DCEU project has kind of splintered is... an interesting decision. 

But what a movie this was. 

I really do find this as a very, very good adaptation of Batman in general, in addition to telling a pretty good story very loosely inspired by The Long Halloween. Running just shy of three hours, The Batman actually doesn't feel like it's that long and perhaps is one of the few superhero movies in late that deserves its runtime. 

In this movie, Robert Pattison (of Twilight infamy) plays the Batman, and we get introduced to the Batman's effect on crime in such a great manner in this movie as we get to see random thugs and criminals get scared of the shadows of Gotham City, when Batman realistically only shows up to stop a single mugging. It's such a great return to basics of the noir vigilante that was arguably only really properly caught by Christian Bale's Dark Knight. 

I'm not going to describe every single part of the plot, but basically a good chunk of the movie's first half takes place with Batman trying to figure out a series of murders done by the Riddler, with the movie doing a great job at making the Riddler feel gloriously unsettling without leaning too hard into grimdarkifying him. He's a lot creepier than Jim Carrey's Riddler, which isn't a hard bar to clear, but he doesn't go all the way that it loops back into being goofy again (see: DCEU's horrible gangsta' Joker). We get a nice little cat-and-mouse game as Batman and the police try and hunt down the clues and figure out who's going to be killed next.

Throughout trying to figure out the riddles, Batman also stumbles into a bunch of information being left behind about the Penguin's Iceberg Lounge. And I do really like that at one point, Batman has to resort to utilizing his Bruce Wayne persona to enter the Iceberg Lounge. It's around this point that Batman also works together with the roommate of one of her leads... who just turns out to be Selina "Catwoman" Kyle. Basically, with Selina's help, Batman manages to play detective and discover a conspiracy that all of these people being killed by the Riddler are all under the payroll of mob boss Carmine Falcone. 

What a great supporting cast, by the way. Zoe Kravitz as Selina Kyle really does sell someone who's smart but also knows enough to play the demure, confused girl next to all of these mob bosses and vigilantes. Jeffrey Wright is the right amount of tired and flustered as Gordon. Andy Serkis is the right amount of crabby as Alfred. John Turturro gloriously eats the scene as Carmine Falcone. Colin Farrell is an amazingly slimy Penguin. And while we don't get to see him much outside of his persona, Paul Dano does an amazing job balancing Riddler's nebbish civilian persona and his psychotic serial killer persona. There was some buzz about the racial-blind casting done for this movie, but while it feels forced in some projects, in this case I really did feel like the cast of The Batman was firing on all cylinders. 

Anyway, at some point we get a scene where Batman has to deal with a timed collar bomb on DA Colson that, of course, Batman has to deal with some riddles to solve, bringing a nice sense of tension into the whole procession. The riddles also double as a way to essentially force Colson to admit to his participation in this whole conspiracy -- particularly, the name of an informant that led to Don Maroni's operations being destroyed and eventually to Falcone taking over most of Gotham's turf. 

This leads to a very fun action scene as Batman figures out that Penguin is likely this mysterious informant. While all of this is going on, Selina has been going on her own little investigation -- spurred and aided by her helping Batman -- and ultimately finds her roommate Annika's corpse in one of the gangsters' cars. The crossfire causes a fight between the Penguin and the Batman with cards, leading to a very fun action sequence with the Batmobile (which is just a souped-up supercar after several movies of what are essentially Bat-Tanks) which I must confess did actually give me a fair amount of motion sickness when I watched this movie for the first time in the cinema. 

While the Penguin turns out to not be the mysterious informant, Batman and Gordon end up following the Riddler's trail, which leads them to a building that used to be an orphanage sponsored by Bruce's dead parents. Always nice to have a brief tie-in to the Wayne legacy. Turns out that what the Riddler holds a grudge towards isn't the Falcone crime operation, but rather the whole Wayne legacy. Riddler has sent a bomb addressed to Bruce Wayne, although he obviously had no idea that Bruce Wayne is the same vigilante hunting him down. Alfred almost gets killed by this bomb... which was a very nice, tense scene as Robert Pattinson manages to balance both the stoniness of Batman and the panic running through him. I actually almost wanted them to kill off Alfred since this is a one-off movie anyway, but Alfred survives, albeit hospitalized.  

The Riddler then starts sending out some character assassination videos about Thomas Wayne colluding with Carmine Falcone, where allegedly Thomas paid off Falcone to kill a journalist that was about to expose Martha Wayne's mental illness. This leads nicely to Batman's own themes of family legacy and justice. Of course, the movie doesn't go as far as to make Thomas Wayne order the death of a journalist... on purpose. Thomas asked Falcone to intimidate the journalist, but the journalist end up getting killed by the gangsters. Thomas, naïve bastion of justice that he is, planned to turn himself in, only to find himself and his wife the next targets of Falcone. A delicious string of drama that I actually like, and instead of just doing the easy way and make either Thomas obviously incorruptible and pure, or turn him fully into an evil Court of Owls villain, we get him straddling the lines of good and evil... just not as well as his son would.

Throwing things into the mess, Selina Kyle also reveals to Batman that Falcone is her father, and she's seeking revenge for her roommate Annika -- who was killed by Falcone. Selina wants to murder Falcone, but Batman manages to stop her in time. This whole sequence can get summarized pretty quickly into two sentences, but both Pattinson and Kravitz do a phenomenal job at channeling Selina's anger and frustrations and to really hammer home the 'vengeance does not mean killing'. 

Which, by the way, was always what Batman was meant to be. And as much as I loved Ben Affleck's acting, that mentality that permeates the DNA of early DCEU was why I really think that those movies thematically didn't do a good job at adapting Batman. Or Superman. 

Ahem. 

Anyway, Falcone dies anyway because of Riddler machinations, which leads to the Riddler's own capture. He gets unmasked as Edward Nashton, a forensic accountant, who turns out to be inspired by Batman himself as someone who targets the corrupt. It's a nice little Dark Knight style twist where the main villain seems to be arrested, but of course it's not quite over yet. 

As Batman, Gordon and the cops comb over the Riddler's lair, we get a fun sequence where they find that the Riddler actually has a whole other plan going on, having planted multiple car bombs around Gotham City. Riddler apparently has grown a whole dark web online cult (which seems eerily well-tuned to modern day themes), leading to a mini-adaptation of No Man's Land as the bombs destroy the bridges and cause flooding in the city. Riddler's followers end up arming themselves and are about to assassinate the current mayor Bella Real, leading to a whole final sequence of Batman and Catwoman fighting them to rescue all the people. 

It's basically a huge fight scene before we close off with a shot of an exhausted, battered and beaten-down Batman still doing his goddamn best to rescue people from the flooding building. Sure, we've got the geeky easter egg scene of the Riddler talking to the Joker in the prison... but ultimately, I think the scene that sold me on how the makers of this movie really got Batman and decided to go back to the roots was the conclusion to Catwoman and Batman's story. Selina leaves Gotham City, deeming it beyond saving and so corrupt... but Batman stays.

Batman knows it's a losing battle, but he takes what became a joke both in the movie itself and in the fandom... that Penguin keeps calling him as 'vengeance'. And taken the wrong way (and written and adapted by the wrong people), yes, Batman would become vengeance and inspire all the wrong people... all the Riddlers of the world. But that isn't what Batman was supposed to be. Batman's supposed to be, at the end of the day, a superhero. A darker one, a more pragmatic one, but one that ultimately represents hope. One that ultimately tries his best to save people, to stop Selina Kyle from murdering another criminal in cold blood.

And returning to that Batman after so many other adaptations that missed the mark? Returning to the highs of Burton and Nolan's adaptations of Batman? That's worth the price of admission, even without the stellar acting and pretty gripping plot. 

Movie Review: Blue Beetle

Blue Beetle (2023)

Poor, poor Blue Beetle. I honestly do think that it's a superhero movie that's... okay? But it's just really circumstance that led to its abysmal box office performance. There was so little marketing done for this movie, Warner Bros. and DC are in the process of closing up shop and shooting out what's left of their original 'Snyderverse' or DCEU continuity movies -- Flash, sequels to Aquaman and Flash, and Blue Beetle. And it really is a shame that this happened at the height of superhero movie fatigue because Blue Beetle is just... 'another' origin movie. 

I like Jaime Reyes and consider him one of the best 'reinvented' legacy successors, revitalizing the original Ted Kord (who I also like!) and generally just being an interesting spin on the original name without disrespecting it. The story told in the movie adapts most of Jaime's backstory in the comics, right up to the fact that he's a successor to two different Blue Beetles (Dan Garrett and Ted Kord), and we get some really good visual effects -- the horror show of the Scarab merging into Jaime's body, as well as the Kamen-Rider-on-a-movie-budget transformation sequences between the Blue Beetle and OMAC armours. The fact that most of the suits are practical effects add to the delightful action sequences of the movie. Oh, and Ted Kord's big beetle ship also shows up. That's cool!

But... that's really it, and for a movie that runs for slightly above 2 hours, there really is scant little that sets this movie apart from the others. And I get that not all movies need a 'twist' to the formula, but Blue Beetle just takes all of the cliches and plays them straight. Which would be fine if the movie is somewhere between the 45-90 minute range, but this movie feels like it's a pilot to a superhero show that is stretched out over two or three times that the runtime deserves. 

More egregiously is that as someone familiar with Jaime Reyes from the comics and from cartoons, they could've actually added something interesting -- exlpain more about Ted Kord's legacy as a superhero (or what he is as a person, instead of just someone who leaves behind giant bug-ships), or even adapt and confirm the fact that, yes, the Scarabs are actually part of an intergalactic horde of invading aliens. Even if they didn't fully adapt the Reach, some hints to the Scarab as being something malicious would've been appreciated. 

While I appreciate Jaime's family and the themes of family as a supporting cast, it really feels like this is something we've seen, and done better elsewhere, yeah? The dad is very supportive and dies; the younger sibling is smart and mouthy; there's a wacky older relative that the movie thinks is way funnier than he actually is; the grandma is secretly hiding some badass skills... none of these are bad in isolation, and I enjoyed Alberto, Rudy, Milagro and Nana Reyes in isolation, but they also bog down so much of the movie and at some point they get irritating. Particularly Rudy, who the movie basically saddles as Jaime's babysitter-turned-sidekick. This really feels like it has a bit of the problem with the Shazam movies, except that movie at least knows to keep the focus on Billy and Freddy. 

On the other side of the story are the Kords. The movie reinvents the Kord legacy and uses a gender-flipped version of Ted's evil uncle Jarvis Kord into his evil sister Victoria. Again, the plot that she's doing isn't terrible. It's pretty serviceable superhero material. But all she's doing is to try and get the super-awesome plot device, the Scarab, to make her super-awesome robot suit army, the OMACs... and she doesn't care how many people she has to trample to get to it. Again, between Aldrich Killian, Norman Osborn, Carlton Drake, Dr. Sivana and many more I'm probably not thinking of on top of my head, the 'evil CEO is evil and doesn't caer about the little people' trope is kind of an easy enemy trope to use... except that Victoria really doesn't do anything with it. Her villainy borders on one-dimensional as she cackles while she invades the Reyes household and shoots up civilians. There's some attempt to inject some complexity to her with her vague mentions of being driven by sexism/favouritism because her father picked Ted over her, but it's glossed over so quickly that it might not have even been there.

Far cooler and far more interesting is her badass minion, the 'main' OMAC who is also able to 'suit up' into a robotic suit, Ignacio Carapax. In addition to having one hell of a cool name and a very cool robot form, it turns out that Carapax is basically a child soldier abducted and groomed by Victoria and manipulated for her own needs with some clearly-bogus promises of being 'fixed' by the end of the day. Carapax is probably the more interesting villain, which is a shame because he spends most of the movie kind of in a daze.

Rounding out the cast is the main love-interest and the good Kord, Ted's daughter Jenny, who is trying to stop her lunatic aunt from doing her crazy supervillain plan. I really can't tell you much about her other than she's heroic and that she ends up getting it together with Jaime. 

Which brings to us Jaime Reyes, the Blue Beetle himself. He's very fun! Again, some of the hero motivations are cliched and kind of generic, which is no fault of the actor. Xolo Maridueña plays the character well, pulls off the charming-bumbling vibe well, and the movie sets up the 'poor Peter Parker' opening act well, with Jaime's family being at threat of losing their house thanks to redevelopments (a plot point that is interesting but ultimately kind of gets brushed aside), Jaime being a good son who's trying to do good, and eventually gets embroiled into the Kord drama when he decides to, despite common sense, try and rescue Jenny. Jaime's increasing desperation as his family gets thrown into the line of fire of people with big sci-fi guns and robot suits is palpable, and I think that's one of the better-executed parts of the movie. Perhaps not the death scene itself, which is kind of overwrought compared to some of the other 'mentor deaths' and Uncle Bens that we've seen in other DC and Marvel works, but Jaime's reaction to it and his growing horror as, at various points in the movie afterwards, his 'muggle' family members are put in danger. This leads to a very telegraphed but well-acted moment as Jaime finally manages to beat the shit out of Carapax, and unlike before, it's now Khaji-Da the alien Scarab who has to talk Jaime out from killing Carapax -- especially with the context that Carapax isn't doing everything out of shits and giggles. 

Eventually Carapax blows up Victoria in a suicide that also takes out the OMAC factory, Jaime and Jenny become a thing, and the community and Jenny's Kord Industries band together to rebuild the Reyes house. 

Again, the movie isn't bad! Other than maybe a couple of Rudy scenes, the movie itself is perfectly fun superhero fare. It's just that it's so... it's so basic, there aren't really any huge twists or revelations, and some of the scenes that they play straight -- like Papa Alberto's death, or the 'loser Jaime' establishing scenes -- are drawn out for a fair bit longer than it needs to be. Of course, that's not getting into the fact that Warner Bros is in their "let's wash our hands of this and hope for a better reboot" mode and barely cared about promoting or editing this movie. It really is kind of a shame, since they did have some pretty nice talent (particularly the visuals!) in this movie.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The opening shot of the movie shows multiple different-coloured Scarabs being shot out throughout the galaxy, foreshadowing the true nature of the Scarabs and their connection to the Reach.
  
• OMAC (One-Man Army Corps) specifically takes its portrayal in this movie from the reinvention popularized in Infinite Crisis, as an army of humans mutated by nanotechnology and controlled by the satellite Brother Eye. Anyone can be injected and transformed into an OMAC, becoming a superhuman cyborg. The original OMAC is a standalone hero that didn't really interact with the rest of the DC universe.
• The name of the OMAC bearer, Ignacio Carapax, is based on the Blue Beetle villain, Conrad Carapax, who originally fought the original Blue Beetle (Dan Garrett) and had his consciousness uploaded into a robot body. 
• Victoria Kord is a gender-flipped version of the comics' Jarvis Kord, though Jarvis was Ted's uncle instead of his sister. 
• Dan Garrett (Blue Beetle I) and Ted Kord (Blue Beetle II)'s costumes can be seen in the Beetle Cave.
• The Scarab is passed to Jaime in a Big Belly Burger box, a fictional fast food chain that's a recurring staple in the DC comics and its adaptations. 
• While Jaime no longer lives in El Paso, Texas like he did in the comics, he lives on El Paso Street instead. 
• Batman is mentioned several times by the Reyes family. Superman and Flash are also name-dropped several times. 
• A LexCorp logo could briefly be seen in the buildings next to the Kord Industries tower.