Star Trek: Voyager, Season 7 Reviews

Reviews originally posted on the Star Trek thread at http://bondandbeyond.forumotion.com/

"Unimatrix Zero, Part Two"
So basically everything happens the way you'd think it would. Janeway, Tuvok and Torres are successful (and easily de-assimilated at the end of the episode, no biggie), the Unimatrix Zero revolution becomes a full scale uprising, but the virtual world itself is destroyed so that it doesn't actually become a recurring thing. A predictable end filled with good production values and "excitement" but nothing really great. The Borg are totally domesticated as villains, perhaps the only glimmer left of proper Borg writing is when the Queen just starts blowing up entire cubes that have as little as 1 mutated drone on them to quell the insurrection. Like Part 1, there are a lot of retarded plot holes. For example, Axom's plan is to destroy the Queen and somehow this is victory for the rebellion. Huh? We've seen the Queen killed and come back plenty of times, making it clear she's just a kind of Borg unit, that can be reproduced, not some actual centralized authority. Granted, both this and Part 1 write the Queen like she's Emperor Palpatine, like she's just Janeway's arch enemy in a comic book. Then there's the fact that it's made clear that Unimatrix Zero is a virtual environment like the Matrix -- the drones can appear in any appearnace they wish, and the Klingon one even conjures a bat'leth for himself, yet when it comes time to fight the Borg in that environment they make crude traps out of sharpened sticks and vines like fucking Ewoks. Why not imagine yourself a phaser cannon? Also, you're telling me that super mentally disciplined Vulcan Tuvok is the one who succumbs to the Borg mind control, not the halfbreed or the psycho? Finally, it's super easy for Janeway and Seven to destroy the virtual enviroment when it suits them at the end, that it seems unbelievable that the Queen aka the resources of the whole Collective where unable to figure it out at the start of Part 1. Also we take a massive hit from the Cube that makes a big hole in the ship through three decks and NO ONE DIES. Also, it's magically repaired by next week, but that goes without saying.
# of Crew: 138 Total -- 118 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 7 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -41
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 25,292.8 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

"Drive"
This is actually a nice fun episode and a great little Paris/Torres relationship even if it is just basically all stuff we've seen before, it's also the culmination of it all. The only super unsatisfying thing (other than the Delta Flyer being magically rebuilt, better than ever, between episodes like it ain't no than) is that Torres and Paris suddenly get engaged at the end of the story, then get married between commercial breaks. On DS9 Worf and Dax were engaged for a good set of episodes before getting married, and we got like a whole ceremony and everything. I understand not wanting to repeat that, but it feels like a total cheap way out of this whole three year courtship to have them finally get married ENTIRELY OFF CAMERA.
# of Crew: 138 Total -- 118 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 7 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -42
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 25,247.9 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

"Repression"
OMG, someone remembered the Maquis existed! What a weird episode to do in season seven. To basically comeplete forget the Maquis for like three seasons and then to bring it all back just for the sake of a "murder" mystery. Overall it's a decent episode, being Tim Russ' contractually obligated once-per-year "Tuvok goes crazy" episode. But the weirdest thing is that according to this episode there are 30 Maquis onboard (there should be 13), which suggests that the Val Jean's original complement was 35 (when it was 18). Also, based on some dialogue here, the crew complement is made up of 1/4 Maquis (for 120 total), when in fact it should be 9% Maquis for 138 total. Also, this episode claims a distance from Earth of 35,000ly, which is like 5,000 more than they were saying in season 6, and hasn't actually been true since like mid-season 5 or something crazy like that. Also, in addition to there suddenly being way more Maquis, there's also a Vulcan Maquis, when it's been previously established that Vorik is the only other Vulcan on the ship.
But aside from the nitpicks, the biggest problem with this episode is that it's a murder mystery for two acts, then a mind control Maquis rebellion in act three, and then it ends. Tuvok suddenly turns good, so does Chakotay, for no real reason other than the hour is up, and then off camera between a cut all the other mind controlled people are stopped and everything's back to normal and the crew joking around again. Seriously, we go from terrorists controlling the bridge to the crew watching 1950s 3-D movies on the holodeck between cuts. It's fucked.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 7 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -42
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 25,219.9 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

"Imperfection"
At times this is a pretty good episode about dealing with a potential terminal illness in a friend or family member, but at other times its an utterly predictable medical procedural played with all the excitement of a completely uninspired and cliché hospital drama. We at least get rid of all the non-Icheb Borg kids in the teaser.
# of Crew: 134 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -46
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 25,180.7 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

"Critical Care"
So VOY finally got around to doing a good episode of Star Trek. I mean, this is classic TOS, from the social allegory of a modern day problem in a sci-fi setting, to the emotionless computer controlling it all. The only thing missing was that no one convinced the computer to blow itself up in the end. It's also a great Doc episode, as he learns to play hardball and make some tough choices. The only thing that's a little fucked up is the moral. Doc saves the day because he's willing to sacrifice an individual to save a greater whole, but thats also the rationale that the villains use, who are willing to let lesser patients die to save the greater society. So at what point does "needs of the many" stop being a great logical truth and start becoming the Borg? That's a question the episode never really addresses because then the whole Federation philosophy starts becoming unraveled.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -46
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 25,138.6 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

"Inside Man"
A fun episode with Barclay, holograms and Ferengi. I've seen this episode get criticism for its use of the Ferengi as the villains instead of a more heavy hitting AQ villain, but the choice of Ferengi makes sense because it means the villainy is lightweight enough to be dealt with in one episode and without having to deal with explaining the political fall-out of the Dominion War (like with the Romulans or something). I love the "cool, confident" hologram version of Barclay. I also really like the Barclay/Troi scenes, which actually, after years of doing scenes like this, finally feel like real counselling scenes. All in all, despite being a "Voyager could, but doesn't get home" episode, I liked this one.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -46
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,925.8 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

I liked two episodes in a row. Something must be wrong with me.

"Body and Soul"
An episode where we visit a society in the grips of an insurgency of "photonics" -- the highly advanced holographic beings who feel subjugated as a servant class and who have risen up against their oppressors. To avoid detection, the Doc hides in Seven's body. Any interesting notions this episode might contain are thrown out (we never even meet the holo-insurgents) in favour of tired, old "body switch" cliché jokes with Doc Seven, including numerous awkward sexual moments. Also, Tuvok solves Pon Farr by boning a hologram of his wife in a simulation of Vulcan. Yawn.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -46
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,758.6 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

Fuck, I am so sick of this show.

"Nightingale"
So it's Harry Kim's first command, which I think we've seen before on this show. The B-plot is basically the same "character who doesn't understand humanity F***S up their first attempts at love" episode that we've seen on this show already with Seven and the Doc, and also on DS9 with Odo, and on TNG with Data -- this time with Icheb going after B'Elanna based on weak premises for the pure result of weak "hilarious" misunderstandings. The entire thing feels thrown together and thrown in to fill time. The A-plot itself is super predictable (the helpless aliens we're assisting aren't what they appear to be) and the ending is nonsensical (the whole point is that it's super hard to get passed the blockade, but once Harry accomplishes the goal of getting in, he's able to get back out lickety-split in the commercial break no problem).
So what's worthwhile in this episode? Actually, quite a lot. It's the first, I think, really GOOD Harry Kim episode, because it acknowledges the truth of the character. It acknowledges that the dude is way too old and inexperienced to still be an ensign. He actually, in dialogue, confronts the captain about it. It would've been nice if he'd gotten promoted at the end of the episode, but at least the episode comes out and says it. And his whole arc of always being Tom's sidekick is examined, as well as the fact that all previous Kim episodes were usually based around him falling in love with the wrong girl. It looks at all that Kim has been so far and says "Fuck, even Harry Kim hates being Harry Kim," and gives him the chance to be something more. It's smart in the way it handles his character and his attitude and Garrett Wang does a helluva job with the script.
Sucks that I know everything will be back to normal next episode. This fucking show.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -46
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,722.16 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11


"Flesh and Blood"
So, of all the 2-hour Voyager telefilms, this is I think the best so far. I mean, it's just as dumb and over-the-top as the others, and I feel like I'm gonna have to sit through at least four or five bottle shows to make up for all the money they spent on this one. The premise -- that the holograms we gave the Hirogen have risen up in revolt -- is at times asinine and the amount of hoops we need to jump through to get the story where it needs to go is insane, but once we get where we need to be, things do work. I appreciated that the leader of the hologram revolt is a crazy Bajoran terrorist who wants to set himself up as hologram Jesus and that the episode actually acknowledges that not all holograms are ultra-advanced potentially sentient beings -- I love when he "liberates" some mining holograms and they are just simple programs. And then the episode manages to end in a big action climax complete with one liners and it doesn't feel totally forced.
But the first half is just freaking awful. Janeway has an argument with Chakotay where she argues that they have a responsibility to help the Hirogen because it was a huge mistake to give them holodeck technology -- and acts like she wasn't the one who made that decision. There is actual dialogue where she says that giving replicators to feed and clothe people is different and something they've had to do, when the first two seasons were all about her steadfast refusal NOT TO DO THAT. Janeway is just batshit crazy in this episode.
Why do the holograms need a home planet? Being in a simulation is indistinguishable from reality for them -- why not Moriarty them all and give them some planet within a computer chip?
Where did the massive medical staff Doc has in this episode come from? What the fuck?
In short -- the first half is a nonsenscial mess but once we ease into the second half and don't have to worry about setting up the premise, things are much better.
Also -- while using Alpha Quadrant computer based holograms was a nice way to utilize the DS9 alien costumes, what the fuck is a Jem'Hadar doing here? There's no way at all that they would be in the database VOY gave the Hirogen.
This is an episode that ocassionally used great continuity (holy shit, referencing the holo-uprising based episode from a few weeks back that sucked and using it to make this one better? Remembering the Maquis??) and then ocassionally shat all over it. Also, once again, the only way Janeway makes sense is if you fanon that she is crazy.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,657.6 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
How did NO ONE die in that episode?

"Shattered"
This is kinda like a clip show where the reshot all the scenes. Voyager gets split into mulitple timeframes from across the series seven year run and only Chakotay can travel between them. We run into a bunch of characters and situations from a few different episodes, and I bet the writers thought this was a good tribute to the show's history but it's all really pointless and procedural and has no fun and at the end everyone's memory is wiped so for all intents and purposes it never happened anyway.
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians <--- --="" 141.="" 153="" actually="" and="" br="" but="" claims="" combined="" crew="" dudes="" her="" maquis="" of="" past-janeway="" s="" she="" started="" that="" the="" total="" with=""># of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,593.2 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11

"Lineage"
A superbly realized, dramatically effective, and well acted piece about B'Elanna and Tom's troubles once they learn B'Elanna is pregnant, and she wants the Doc to genetically modify the fetus to weed out its Klingon traits. It's a good exploration of a plausible sci-fi ethical issues -- except -- wait -- isn't genetic engineering of any kind except in cases of life-threatening conditions ILLEGAL in the Federation? What is everyone doing standing around having moral arguments over whether this is right or wrong? It's not only wrong, there's already a law against it for just this kind of scenario. The whole episode is totally invalid and complete joke because it never even slightly brings this fact up. That's like a Trek episode being about how hard interstellar travel is since faster-than-light travel is impossible. What?
# of Crew: 137 Total -- 117 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,539.9 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 49 days

"Repentance"
A death penalty allegory episode that strikes one as the VOY writers trying really hard to do a classic Trek "moral choice" episode. Some of the metaphor works, some of it doesn't, some of it comes across as hopelessly naive. I did admire, however, that Janeway respected the spirit of the Prime Directive throughout and remained level-headed, rather than unfairly judging another culture and cowboying their way to moral victory like they usually do. Also I liked the twist that the crazy psycho killer was mentally unbalanced and actually not a bad guy, while the "they only looked me up cuz the system is racist!" guy turned out to be a scheming asshole. This episode is all right, but flawed.
# of Crew: 135 Total -- 115 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,517.5 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 57 days

"Prophecy"
Honestly not as bad as I had expected it to be. Not really good, either. Kinda pointless and cliché and predictable, but not outright bad. I can't even fault them for doing "Klingons on Voyager" because heck, it's Season 7, why not at this point? This show abandoned really treating it's premise seriously ages ago. And it sorta shows we're getting closer to home, I guess. I dunno. Whatever.
# of Crew: 134 Total -- 114 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians,
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -50
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,411.8 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 77 days

"The Void"
I liked this better when it was half as long and starrred James T. Kirk. Seriously, this episode is essentially word-for-word "Time Trap" just extended for an hour.
# of Crew: 134 Total -- 114 Starfleet, 13 Maquis, 4 Civilians,
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -52
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,386.6 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 86 days

"Workforce" Parts I & II
Actually not bad. A decent plot with decent character moments that really only falters in the poor justification for why Janeway's love interest from the planet can't just join the Voyager crew. I mean, yeah the Captain can't fraternize with her crew but there's no regulation against having a boyfriend. He could just be a civillian. It's not like you don't have a habit of picking up hitchhikers.
One thing I liked about this one was that the evil aliens aren't the whole race, and it isn't the concept of working in a power plant that's evil either. It's just a few elite members of the society driven to extremes who are working in secret, and in fact other members of their species help our people take them out. That's cool and refreshing for Trek at this point.
# of Crew: 126 Total -- 107 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -56
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,324.4 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 111 days

"Human Error"
It's like a perfect summation of all this series' flaws that a quarter of a season away from the final episode, the only way a major character can experience any kind of significant development is in a holographic fantasy. As well written as this episode sometimes is, in a modern day television show it's closest equivalent would be an episode about a woman writing erotic fiction about her co-workers and masturbating to it. And what an awful reset button ending. If she ever experiences significant emotion her Borg implants will disable her? And she chooses not to get a procedure to remove them, despite that being clearly what she wants. What's the point when you're so close to the end? Oh, right, so you can strip it in syndication reruns such that there's no discernible difference between season 4 and season 7.
And Chakotay is a vegetarian, Seven. If you're gonna fantasize about him, at least get your facts straight.
# of Crew: 126 Total -- 107 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -59
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,279.3 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 11
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 125 days

"Q2"
Taken by itself, this episode isn't actually as bad as I remember. Q's son is funny, the actor (de Lancie's actual son) is pretty good, and I enjoyed the show poking fun at itself for a while. It amused me that the central theme is of Q Jr. learning responsibility when the way he acts at the start is the way our "hero" KINO acts in STINO (to use Tux's terminologies).
But the main problem with this episode is that it's the apex (or nadir) of the retrograde development of the Q by VOY, similar to VOY's ruining of TNG's other great concept, the Borg. Once, both were all powerful and awe inspiring. Now, both are flippant jokes used for ratings grabs and reduced to one-note, and largely brought down to human levels. No coincedence it seems that the Borg pop up in this episode too -- as a gag.
Also -- Q Jr is about to make a space-time gate to ANYWHERE using JUST a standard deflector dish and the controls in the Delta Flyer? Fuck Q's "tips", ask him how to do THAT! Hell, you don't even NEED to ask -- keylogs in the Flyer should tell you EXACTLY what Q Jr did! F***IN' Voyager crew man. Dumber than a box of rocks.
# of Crew: 126 Total -- 107 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -59
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,234.4 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 141 days

"Author, Author"
While this episode is in many ways a retread of "Measure of a Man", it's still one of my favourite Voyager outings. It's certainly the best episode all season, maybe the best since "Blink of an Eye" in season 6. It manages to be just different enough from "Measure" to be worthwhile, and the holodeck stuff is well done as well. It's an episode that makes good use of series continuity as well, even drawing on earlier hologram related episodes this season -- it almost feels like "holographic rights" is the theme of season 7, if you wanted to give the writing staff that much credit. The characters are well drawn this hour, and somehow we manage to fit in the Doc's Holo-Novel, Tom's parody, the courtroom drama, and the subplot of Voyager crewmembers reconnecting with their families all into one hour without any of it feeling rushed. It's a well-written episode, and no matter how derivative, this is a rare enough quality in Voyager to make it a worthwhile hour.
I also like how the idea of being able to achieve 11 minutes of reeltime contact with home really establishes how close we're getting to the goal. It's like this episode was written by someone realizing that the series was wrapping up!
# of Crew: 126 Total -- 107 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 4 Civilians (Neelix claims there are 146!)
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -59
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,167.2 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 160 days
The final scene with the EMH-Mark 1s actually takes place a month or so after the crew returns home.

"Friendship One"
This episode is intellectually retarded, on several levels. First up, the Friendship 1 probe traveled at Warp 1 (or near that) for 180 years before Starfleet lost contact. Because they tracked it to Voyager's vicinity, that means that the loss of contact was probably due to the crash, not, say, it falling into a wormhole or something. So how come it's 24,000ly from Earth and not, say, 180? Which would place it closer than Rigel, Antares, Vega, Betelgeuse, etc, etc.
They could have said the probe was from Kirk's time, or even Archer's, and it could have then gone 24,000ly in a reasonable time for Voyager to find it (and for the radiation sufferers to only be like 1st or 2nd generation instead of the unlikely idea that they'd survived on a dead world for 200 years), and it would not have changed anything
Then we have poor Joe Carey, a major S1 recurring character who we haven't seen except in flashbacks and time travel since "State of Flux", and is summarily killed off here for some cheap pathos, despite the fact that hardly anyone in the "regular Voyager audience" would remember him.
Then there's the idea that travelling to a planet 136ly away would take a month at max warp according to Torres, and 17 round trips would take 3 years, which is the BS reason they can't help the people dying of horrific radiation, when in fact this would only take Voyager about 20 weeks at max warp.
Then there's "action Doc", who shoots 3 dudes when the Hippocratic Oath is hardwired into him.
Janeway doesn't want to help the entire planet of dying radioactive people because it's "not their problem", when helping the Ocampa is what landed them in the DQ in the first place, and I don't even remember why destroying the Array helped them anyway.
And then finally, Janeway is so morose after the death of the character we haven't seen in six seasons that she declares that exploration isn't worth the risk if it means even the death of one man. WHAT THE FUCK? You're the Captain of a vessel in a quasi-military whose main mission is exploration and whose quasi-military nature means that everyone is prepared to give their lives in the line of duty! RISK IS YOUR BUSINESS, JANEWAY! That's like the mission statement of STAR TREK!!! Worst. Captain. Ever. Just based on that one statement alone, regardless of all her other, major, failings.
# of Crew: 125 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -4
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -65
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,188.8 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 167 days

"Natural Law"
Another terrible episode where Seven learns primitive aboriginals are just as good, if not better, than her, while Paris goes through driver's ed. Augh. If I caught this in reruns and you told me it was the fourth last episode of the show I would not believe you. Also, Seven, who has a crush on Chakotay, is stranded on a planet with him, and their "romance" is a major plot point of the finale less than a month away, and yet there's no evidence of such a subplot here at all. Also, Janeway is terrible and I have no idea what moral this episode is getting at, except I'm pretty sure it's misguided as fuck.
This show, man.
# of Crew: 125 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 4 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -5
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -65
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,135.5 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 186 days

"Homestead"
This episode has a lot of stupid things in it. The Talaxian colony 50,911.5ly from home. That they got there within 22 years (Warp 9.89 without stopping). The fact that they've settled on an asteroid owned by someone else after settling on other planets owned by someone else as if there were no uninhabited planets within all that space. The fact that everyone overlooks the simplest solution: The miners wanna mine, the Talaxians already have an intricate tunnel complex throughout -- rather than blowing them up, pay them to mine for you. Then everyone keeps acting like this is a Prime Directive issue, when it's really clearly not. Then there's the chronological snafu of making it April 5, 2378 suddenly when it should be Nov 14, 2377 according to the stardate system.
But, y'know what? Whatever. Neelix gets a good episode to go out on, an end to his character arc, and some closure and a nice goodbye. That's better than anyone else on this show gets, and it means we get a couple of hours without Neelix, too. That might make it the best episode of VOY by default.
# of Crew: 124 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -5
# of Warp Cores: 2
# of Photon Torpedoes: -65
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,088.5 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 201 days

"Renaissance Man"
This episode was actually really good. It's clever, the characters are super-competent, Tuvok is awesome, the Doc gets to do a bunch of awesome stuff that he should always have been able to do but never did, and at the end of the day it's not ridiculously stupid (although the initial con ruse seems that way when the episode is pretending the con is real). I really liked this episode. But THIS is the second-to-last show? Really? At least the Doc's fake death scene gives him a chance to say a bunch of stuff to the crew that gives a feeling of mini closure. But of course he's fine. VOY reset. But oh well, a good episode is a good episode (and one last holo-episode for a season full of 'em!)
# of Crew: 124 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -5
# of Warp Cores: 1
# of Photon Torpedoes: -65
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 24,059.4 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 209 days

"Endgame"
Okay, we all know why this episode is super stupid. The time travel makes no sense, there's no closure for anybody at the end, the tech upgrades make Voyager super OP, why does Admiral Janeway choose this lost opportunity to get home and not any others (especially the Ferengi wormhole incident)? Why is Tuvok's illness, Chakotay's death, Seven's death, etc. the motivation to ruin an entire timeline and everyone else's lives all of a sudden? How did Seven not recognize that it was a transwarp hub? Why doesn't the Borg Queen just assimilate everybody the first sign of trouble (she doesn't need to interrogate people if she just assimilates them!) Remember when the Borg were undefeatable and un-negotiable? Not to mention the shitty storytelling and filmmaking decision to cut back and forth between the future and the present continuously until Janeway arrives in our timeline. Sloppy. Etc. Etc. Etc.
But what's especially aggravating is how easily all the problems could be solved. I can even buy why it's THIS moment she goes back to and none of the others -- a friend pointed out that it's a point when the crew is at their most happy -- Neelix has his happy ending, Kes is a hyperevolved life-form, Seven and Chakotay are beginnng their romance, Tom and B'Elanna are about to have their baby -- ultimately you don't wanna wipe out too much of the journey because if they went back, say, with the Caretaker Array at the start, then Neelix would still be trading garbage, Kes would be getting raped by the Kazon, Chakotay and B'Elanna would be in Federation prison along with Tom, etc. etc. So I get it. And she can't wait too long after this point or Tuvok's condition (which also comes out of nowhere and should've been alluded to in earlier episodes) would be untreatable already. So, imagine this:
We start in the future, same shit, same dumb story (I'm fixing the episode, I can't make it high art). But Janeway gets the device without a hitch -- no Doc seeing Tuvok, seeing Reg, warning Kim, fight with Klingons, convincing Kim because at the end of the day NONE OF THAT MATTERS because she succeeds! There's no real tension for it. It doesn't matter because all of these characters are gonna be wiped from the timeline. We just need to see that Voyager got back, get a hint of their lives since, and most importantly, see how things are bad (Tuvok's first illness scene does that fine, as does Chakotay grave scene). So bam, the future scenes are much shorter. Admiral Janeway travels back in time. THEN! We're in the present, everything's the same (including the damn Chakotay/Seven romance because ultimately my only problem with that is that they should've fucking built up to it -- it comes out of so much nowhere). Admiral Janeway shows up.
But the transwarp hub ISN'T the Borg's. Because when you think about it, it breaks the Borg. We see that the hub network can take them ANYWHERE nearly INSTANTLY, including the Dominion AND 1ly away from Earth! It's not consistent with ANYTHING we've seen of how the Borg travel up to this point. Yeah, their ships are fast, but why haven't they used this thing to conquer EVERYTHING so far? Why weren't the Borg fucking up the Jem'Hadar? Why aren't they constantly launching Cubes at Earth?
So, instead, the hub is run by some group of friendly aliens that we befriend, and Admiral Janeway didn't know about when she was Captain Janeway (Voyager scanned the nebula, didn't detect the hub, kept going, but Future Janeway knows because these aliens will have made contact with the Feds in the years since Voyager's return). But! The Borg have discovered the hub! And the crew then decide to fuck about risking Voyager to help the aliens DEFEND the hub from the Borg because otherwise if the Borg get access it risks all the above shit I just said the Borg could do with the hub the episode already gives them. This is then Admiral Janeway's conflict with Captain Janeway about selfishness vs. heroism, because in the episode as it stands it's clear the Hub isn't a big deal (since the Borg haven't used it to fuck everybody) and so Captain Janeway comes off as stupidly reckless (again). Also, in this new scenario, our villains are trying to do something villainous, and we're risking our way home to stop them! As opposed to risking our way home to shit on some people who aren't actually doing anything in the story -- yeah, those people are the Borg, but as it stands the Queen's villainous scheme is "don't get blown up by these guys."
So the moral quandary is that Janeway realizes the hub is too powerful to let stand -- even if we defeat THESE Borg, they will keep coming as long as the hub exists. So we convince the aliens to destroy it to save themselves and the galaxy, and the jeopardy is can we destroy the hub, defeat the Borg, and get through in time to get home?
I think Admiral Janeway can still use the pathogen to kill the Borg by sacrificing herself. I like that bit, because we've been talking about killing the Borg that way since "I, Borg" and it's good to finally do it -- and I like that it straight up takes the Borg out of the equation -- you can argue that after "Endgame" they are dead, which is good because they've been beaten into the ground and no longer useful as villains.
Then we make it home, and because we cut all that faffing about in the future, we can have SOME FUCKING CLOSURE.
And it doesn't have to be a big never-ending Return of the King thing. It can be like a "Wire" style montage of short, simple scenes:
The Doc and Reg hug, see Zimmerman again, who's just fine, thank you.
Kim shows up at his parents' doorstep, wearing LIEUTENANT's pips, hug.
Chakotay and B'Elanna at an official hearing are cleared of all charges, as are all the other Maquis, in light of their service to Voyager.
At another official hearing Janeway is cleared, promoted and given medals.
Seven introduces Chakotay to that aunt, she calls her "Annika" and so does Chakotay.
Tom meets his father. They look at one another. Then, B'Elanna and the newborn emerge from behind Tom, Admiral Paris is overwhelmed with joy. Admiral Paris: "I'm proud of you."
The crew and other Starfleet officials, all in dress uniform, standing in front of the Voyager, landed at the Presidio. They toast the ship and her crew. Then, old Admiral Janeway, same time period we started, looking at a holo-image of that day, happy. The End.
It would take like ten minutes if that, which you would easily get by eliminating the dumb Doc/Tuvok, Doc/Reg, Janeway/Klingons, Janeway/Kim, Kim/Klingons shit in the future period.
***FINAL STATS***
# of Crew: 124 Total -- 106 Starfleet, 12 Maquis, 3 Civilians
# of Shuttles: -5
# of Warp Cores: 1
# of Photon Torpedoes: -71
# of Gel Packs: 30
Distance to Alpha Quadrant: 0 lightyears
Opportunities to Get Home Missed: 12
B'Elanna has been pregnant: 239 days

I'm so fucking glad to be done that. Disapointed we didn't lose more crew, but -71 torpedoes is pretty F***IN funny.

Now on to NEMESHIT. Zod, why couldn't there be something GOOD to look forward to at the end of my chronological Trek? Even if I follow Ambassador Spock back in time, I just end up at STINO. Trek is a Hollow Franchise -- ends with a whimper.

Fuck you, Rick Berman. Fuck you.

 

The Glory of Godzilla

Nihon no daikaiju eiga. The Japanese giant monster movie. A genre that has spawned hundreds of films over a period of almost sixty years, thanks in part to great success found in the West. In the next two years, Hollywood will be trying to replicate the appeal of these movies with two big budget releases. Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim is first, a movie of epic giant robot on giant monster combat powered by imagination and adrenaline. Also on the table is a remake of Godzilla, the premiere giant movie monster, from Monsters director Gareth Edwards, promising to be a serious and sober take on the behemoth nuclear therapod, in line with the dark and gritty sensibilities of today's audiences. But movie critics have questioned this approach – Godzilla, serious? Impossible!

In the West, the fun we get from these movies is laughing at them. We laugh at the hokey special effects, the ludicrous plots, and most of all, that awful dubbing! But of course, that is merely a reality of adaptation for the West, a process that has often involved some degree of revision from the Japanese originals. As kids, we grew up with a Japanese television series originally called Dinosaur Squadron Beast-Rangers, the American release of which reshot everything but the action and special effects series, transforming it into Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. When this genre is altered and adapted for their release here, often with not much respect, the result can be laughable. Mystery Science Theater 3000 spent years mocking the Gamera series, about a giant city-stomping flying turtle, a low-budget competitor to the King of the Monsters, Godzilla.

Godzilla, of course, is where it all started. With 28 instalments over fifty years, the monster is as much as symbol of Japan in the West as the Rising Sun. And while he's often a source of camp and amusement to us, it can be quite an eye-opening experience to actually go back and watch the films, especially in their original Japanese forms. The best of them, like Mothra vs Godzilla or Invasion of Astro-Monster, exude a sense of imagination, of fun and spectacle that is truly unique and very entertaining on its own. The creativity is unbridled and exciting, like a Jack Kirby comic. And the effects work, while outdated, is clearly executed with much attention to detail and craftsmanship, to create sequences that are totally convincing in their own way. There is great, liberating fun to be had enjoying these movies on their own terms, rather than just as subjects of mockery.
Thematic depth is also often overlooked in Western appraisals of these movies. Depth? What depth? Yet Gareth Edwards' conception of a “serious, sober” Godzilla film is in fact less of a reinvention than it is a return to form. The original 1954 Godzilla by director Ishiro Honda is a dark and brooding meditation on the dangers of nuclear power, and while a modern audience could try to mock it, by the time you reach the scene of schoolgirls singing a prayer for the dead as ambulances transport radiation burn victims in the wake of the monster's devastating assault, no one is laughing.

Japan knew full well the horrors of atomic assault, being the only nation to ever be so attacked. Godzilla was the first Japanese film to reference the attacks, even obliquely, as the subject matter was verboten during the American Occupation, which had only just ended. The direct inspiration for the film was the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident of 1 March, 1954. The small Japanese fishing boat was hit with fallout from the United States hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll, the crew struck with fatal levels of radiation sickness. Godzilla opens with images that would've been familiar to the public: a small fishing boat at sea, a flash of bright light, nuclear fire, and the wreck drifting ashore, the survivors soon dying from radiation. The film's finale chillingly evokes the wrath and the fury that was producer Tomoyuki Tanaka's primary intent. “The theme of the film from the beginning,” Tanaka said, “was the terror of the bomb. Mankind had created the bomb, and now Nature was going to take revenge on mankind.”

As the series became more popular the tone lightened and gradually Godzilla, implacable destroyer of civilization, became a heroic defender of the Earth and mankind. And even this seemingly inexplicable transformation speaks volumes of subtext. The monster changed as Japan's view of itself changed, as the nation overcame the guilt over its wartime actions and ascended into a great positive economic power, so too did the monster ascend to heroics, and campy silliness it must be said. As more and more monsters and imitators arose to destroy Tokyo, so too arose manmade giant robots to combat them, creating an entire subgenre that led to Gundam, Evangelion, and now Pacific Rim. 

And while Edwards' new Godzilla film may be heralded as a return to form, Hollywood is not the first to reboot Godzilla into a dark and monstrous character again – the original Japanese series rebooted in 1984 with The Return of Godzilla, which restored the series to its former grandeur and whose success led to some of its greatest entries, such as 1989's del Toro-esque Godzilla vs. Biollante, a personal favourite. This creative renewal, accompanied by improved and sometimes even awesome special effects, led to a renaissance for the whole genre. Even Gamera returned bigger and better than ever in 1995's Gamera: Guardian of the Universe.

Over time the genre has evolved from serious allegory to escapist entertainment and back again, growing in popularity and influence. So before indulging in Pacific Rim or Edwards' Godzilla, take some time out to discover or rediscover the joys and the glory of the Japanese originals that started it all, and perhaps you will find a deeper and purer entertainment, the kind of childlike awe that can perhaps only come from seeing a giant dinosaur engulf an urban centre in nuclear flame.

Man of Steel Follow-Up

I still have major concerns with the tone. And I don't like Pa Kent saying that "maybe" Clark should have let the kid die, and Pa Kent being the one saying Clark should hide himself. Pa Kent is supposed to be where Clark's morality comes from (not Jor-El), and frankly every version since (especially SMALLVILLE's) has come up really short next to Glenn Ford's brief perfect scene.

But! I must admit this trailer (like the Jor-El V/O teaser) stirred something in me.

I love the line where young Clark says "What was I supposed to do? Just let him die?" not in a "Am I doing the right thing?" way, but rather in the sense of a rhetorical question, as if saving the kid was something he didn't, and would never question, because it was the right thing to do.

That's the kind of ingrained morality and heroism Superman needs to have, and I hope has through the whole film.

If there needs to be the theme of "what is heroism?" etc. addressed, then the way I would hope it is approached is to have Superman be the sole voice for morality and heroism in a world that has lost faith in that kind of behaviour. To have everyone doubting Superman, rather than Superman doubting himself. Y'know, the Army being convinced he must be a scout for an Invasion (which, with Zod's arrival, would be a likely conclusion to jump to), and the reporters asking themselves "what's in it for him?" and everyone being stupified by the idea of someone doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do. But Superman himself should never waver in his goodness. He should be the lone voice in the woods, calling for people to take a stand. And thereby become an inspiration to others. I can see the potential for that, and I hope it's what we get. Whereas RETURNS tried hamfistedly to address similar issues but failed to make it's hero a paragon of virtue and failed to demonstrate that the world did, in fact, need him. Supes in that film actually causes more harm than good by returning.

Since it's all shot digitally, I kinda wanna see a version where the colour saturation has been bumped in the other direction, just to see if I like that better. I feel like the dour visual styling is half my problem at this point.

My Man of Steel

Here's a teaser poster for Zach Snyder's upcoming Superman reboot feature:

Now what's wrong with this picture? Well, for one -- why the hell is the U.S. army arresting Superman? And two -- why is everything so bleak? I mean the colour scheme. Look, fellas, I get that THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY was successful, but "grim n' gritty" is NOT Superman.

This is Superman, for me:

Superman is big. Superman is bright. He's primary colours, he's outrageous situations, he's heroism in the face of unyielding danger. He stands for hope and he stands for good, and his adventures are larger than life. And he can do all of these things and still be a badass. Because my Man of Steel is nothing if not a badass. If you want examples, you don't have to go any further than the original Siegel & Schuster Superman comics, where the Man of Tomorrow dispensed social justice with righteous fury:

Here's a quote from Snyder that I find telling:"We have great respect for the canon. I would say it is a clashing of stories and ideas. Superman is the king-daddy of all superheroes - to make him work is a big deal. The big challenge is if you can make people feel 'What would you do if you were Superman?' That's what we went out to do as far as we could. Superman's always been this kind of big blue boy-scout up on a throne that nobody can really touch, so we tried to make him relatable."

Superman CAN be relatable. But it's not in making him darker, or grittier, or angrier, or making him conflicted about who he is or why he does what he does. Clark knows that doing the right thing is the right thing to do. Simple as that. He knows that the best use for his powers is helping people. In the original comics from the 30s/40s, he knew that without even knowing he was from Krypton. He didn't discover his heritage until he'd been Superman for a while already.

Clark may be from Krypton, but he was raised on a farm in Kansas and that's how you make him relatable. He's a good person. Pure and simple. He's not a god, he's not a judge, he's an ideal. He leads by example. He's there to inspire us to believe that we can be better than we are. He's a champion of the oppressed, fighting a battle for truth, justice and the American Way and what's more American than the ideal of self-improvement? He fights that battle in and out of costume -- after all, freedom of the press is the 1st Amendment, and a reporter should stand for truth and justice.

Superman shouldn't be some all-powerful stone-faced god, but that doesn't mean you turn him into flawed, feeble, Peter Parker, either. All that navel gazing about "what makes a hero?" and "am I doing the right thing?" is for Marvel heroes. Superman knows what the right thing to do is. So does Batman -- even if his interpretation of "the right thing" is different from Clark's. That was one thing that bugged me about Nolan's Batman -- where was the grim determination? Where was the vow to war on crime? Nolan's Batman became a big sobby mess who wanted to give up once his childhood crush was killed.

I think the issue may be that the creative forces behind MAN OF STEEL have had their greatest success adapting the works of Alan Moore, Frank Miller, etc. Batman, Blade, Watchmen, 300, and so on. Those aren't exactly properties that speak to a great view of Superman. Granted, Bruce Timm was able to go from doing a great BATMAN to a great SUPERMAN, but generally speaking the techniques that work with one do not work with the other, unless that technique is "be true to who this character is".

And who is this character? From Superman #1, 1939:

He is the Champion of the Oppressed. He is a hero.

Granted, Bryan Singer claimed to be a huge Superman fan too, and also fucked up royally. But then, his Superman was just Donner's Superman with more CGI. 60% of the dialogue was just unironically cribbed from Mankiewicz. RETURNS was a nostalgia trip and what new elements it did bring to the table were questionable at best. But it sounds like Snyder & Co. are falling into the same trap: probably an hour and a half into the movie before we actually get some Superman I'm betting, with the first two acts just being Clark biding time having innner conflict while the audience grows restless, and then he'll fight a villain we've already seen before because heaven forbid a Superman movie use a villain from his comics rogues gallery that wasn't in one of the two Donner movies.

There is an animated Superman feature called SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE, which is I think a great response to the whole foolhardy notion that Superman needs to be darker and more extreme to fit in with the 21st century. Here's a page from the original comic the feature was based on:

Snyder and co could do better than looking to Mark Waid's SUPERMAN: BIRTHRIGHT for inspiration. That flawed origin/reboot doesn't hold a candle to what is the undisputed masterpiece of Superman comics. To me, someone looking for who Superman is should look no further than ALL-STAR SUPERMAN by Morrison and Quitely.

This is Superman, for me:

He's a hero.

And he's hope.

The Annotated Cinematic Batman: BATMAN & ROBIN (1997, Joel Schumacher)

Writer: Akiva Goldsman
Producer: Peter MacGregor-Scott
Director: Joel Schumacher
Batman: George Clooney

Time indexes refer to the 2005 Special Edition NTSC Region 1 DVD of the film.

00:00:13 -- Once again, the WB logo morphs into the Bat-symbol, only this time frozen inside it's oval. On the one hand, this tells us of Mr. Freeze's involvement in the plot, on the other hand, it looks an awful lot like the teaser poster for BATMAN RETURNS.

00:01:02 -- Once again, we get CGI credits that end in the Bat-logo, accompanied by almost the same music. BATMAN & ROBIN had twenty-four months from conception to release, and so there was a lot of corner cutting and most of that means that the movie repeats a lot of the exact same beats as BATMAN FOREVER, and features a score that is almost note-for-note that of the previous movie. The Bat-logo here is joined by the "Robin symbol" created for the film. Loosely based on the costume/symbol of the comic book hero Nightwing, this symbol was designed to create a visual identity for Robin more closely linked to Batman for... reasons? The double logo was on a hell of a lot of marketing, I'll tell you that. I mean, it looks stupid, but so did a lot of things in 1997.

00:01:14 -- Once again, we start with a close-up montage of the heroes suiting up, introducing us to the new costumes. The new Batman costume is much like Val Kilmer's but with one crucial difference: It's all dark blue, top to bottom. Now, in the comics, Batman's cape and cowl (and boots and gloves and trunks) are dark blue, but in the movies it's been all black since 1989 thanks to Burton. This film restores the blue, but uses it all over, including the Bat-logo on the chestpiece. It's still the version with the oval, but all of it is blue. On the one hand, it suggest the lighter, campier tone of this movie, on the other hand it looks really weird. Also, still got dem nipples.

00:01:15 -- Robin's new costume, as noted above, is sort've patterned after Nightwing's. Nightwing is the hero identity Dick Grayson adopted after he felt he had grown out of the role of Robin and wanted to become his own man (Tales of the Teen Titans #44, July 1984). Nightwing's costume as of 1997 was an all black bodysuit with a stylized blue bird on the chest, along with the old domino mask. This movie Robin costume uses a red bird (cuz he's still Robin, duh) and keeps the cape. This look was choosen to symbolize Robin's attitude in the story wherein he increasingly wants to step out of Batman's shadow (despite having only been in it for the last twenty minutes of the previous movie), and apparently was intended to set up a transition to the Nightwing character in a fifth movie. Also, dem nipples.

00:01:16 -- In case anyone's wondering why George Clooney is now Batman, Schumacher gives a close-up of rubber Bat-ass.

00:01:19 -- Rubber Robin ass too, because this film might as well be the feature film adaptation of the Ambigiously Gay Duo. I feel slightly dirty in noting that these rubber asses lack the zipper up the crack of Kilmer's rubber Bat-Ass, so access from behind is presumably more difficult.

00:01:34 -- The Batcave is lit like it's by water because it's been rebuilt in the sub-Batcave that was shown at the end of BATMAN FOREVER, which was by an underground lake, because the Batcave was blown up by the Riddler in the last movie. Which is actually impressive inter-movie continuity for this series.

00:01:44 -- The new Batmobile (cuz, again, the last one exploded) is sort've like Schumacher's take on the design from the Burton movies -- two fins at the back, big phallic front, but now it's covered in bright blue and red neon lights!

00:01:50 -- And Batman is now played by George Clooney. BATMAN & ROBIN was only Clooney's fourth major feature film performance, but he was already a huge star as the lead of the hit television medical drama ER. Clooney was cast after Val Kilmer dropped out of the role. Kilmer had committed to a big screen adaptation of THE SAINT, and BATMAN & ROBIN's insanely fast production schedule didn't allow him to do both roles. Kilmer had disliked working with Schumacher on FOREVER, and as the feeling was mutual, neither one made much effort to avoid recasting. As I noted in my FOREVER annotations, Schumacher believes in casting good-looking actors in all roles whenever possible. Hence, Clooney. In interviews, Clooney jokingly said he played Batman as homosexual because he saw no other way of playing him.

00:02:22 -- Joking reference to Superman implies an onscreen DC Universe. Around the same time that BATMAN & ROBIN was being developed, Kevin Smith was writing the script for SUPERMAN LIVES for director Tim Burton, a big budget Man of Steel vehicle that was to star Nicholas Cage and loosely adapt the popular DEATH OF SUPERMAN storyline. Smith had written an appearance for Batman at Superman's funeral, but both Burton and Smith intended for Michael Keaton to reprise the role, being the preferred Batman of both. The film was scheduled for a Christmas 1998 release, but never happened for many reasons.

00:02:34 -- Michael Gough is still Alfred, engaged in a kind've last man standing casting battle with Pat Hingle at this point.

00:02:38 -- The Batmobile doesn't need a windshield despite traveling at speeds of 350mph, because FUCK ANYTHING MAKING SENSE EVER.

00:03:00 -- Continuing Dick's motorcycle infatuation from the last movie, we have the "Redbird", his custom bike. As previously noted, the idea of Dick preferring motorcycles comes from the 1992 animated BATMAN series and its spin-offs, and was adopted into both the movies and the comics afterward. One thing that might be good to note here is that following FOREVER's big box office and subsequent merchandising success, the one marching order Schumacher and his team got from Warners was to make BATMAN & ROBIN more "toyetic", meaning to intentionally include elements that would be easily translated into toys and other merchandise. This led to a noticeable change even to the on-set atmosphere. Chris O'Donnell was on record as noting that shooting FOREVER felt like making a movie, shooting B&R felt like making a toy commercial. The new Batmobile and the Redbird are, of course, very toyetic.

00:03:17 -- And here's our first hint at the "Alfred is dying" subplot, a well written and well acted element that many cite is the saving grace of this movie. In many ways it is like the "Red Book" subplot of the last film, except they didn't cut it out this time.

00:03:34 -- And now Commissioner Gordon just shows up on a TV-Batphone saying things like "there's a new villain", because BATMAN & ROBIN is very much intentionally a big screen modernized version of the 1966 BATMAN tv show on basically all levels. The irony is that the BATMAN movie series had originated in an attempt to move public perception of the character away from the popular, but campy, series, and here it is, homaging the series wholeheartedly.

00:03:37 -- Mr. Freeze first appeared in Batman #121 (February, 1959) created by Dave Wood and Sheldon Moldoff and was originally called Mr. Zero. He made no further appearances until he was adapted to the live-action television series, where his freeze gun, ice gimmicks, and cold puns fit perfectly. The TV show renamed him Mr. Freeze, and he was popular enough to reappear in the comics under that name in Detective Comics #373 (March, 1968). The name change was even remarked on within the comic by Robin as "like something you'd find in a campy television show!" Since then Mr. Freeze has been a staple member of Batman's Rogues Gallery, and it is worth noting he is essentially the only character who debuted in Batman's reviled "Sci-Fi Era" (roughly 1958-1963) to survive to the present day relatively intact. He was chosen as a villain for BATMAN & ROBIN partly for his popularity from the television series and partly due to an upswing in popularity that the character had received from the animated series, which I'll address in due time.

00:04:01 -- Why is there a statue of a dinosaur in the Museum of Art?

00:04:07 -- The design of Mr. Freeze's costume in the comics really had no consistency until the mid-1990s, but even so this movie costume doesn't resemble any of them. The one consistent element to all of Freeze's costume is that he is sealed inside, with his head inside a transparent helmet -- and that's not here at all. The first choice to play Mr. Freeze was Patrick Stewart, because the mad scientist's other consistent visual attribute is his lack of hair, but Captain Picard turned the role down after reading the script. Schumacher cast Arnold Schwarzenegger because he felt Mr. Freeze should be "big and strong like he was chiseled out of a glacier" and also because of Schwarzenegger's Olympian body which he felt perfectly suited a comic book character. Schwarzenegger is the second Batman villain to get top billing over the title character, after Jack Nicholson in the first movie.

00:04:43 --  Why are there diamonds in a Museum of Art??

00:05:32 -- When the Redbird crashes through the wall, it makes a perfect Robin symbol shaped hole. Which makes no sense, but did I mention this movie was a toy commercial?

00:06:57 -- I would mock Batman & Robin fighting a bunch of hockey goons on the frozen floor of the Art Museum with actual built-in (physically impossible) ice skates in their Bat-boots, but I won't because a) victory is in the preparation and b) this shit happened in Silver Age comics all the goddamn time. If you're going to praise a movie for being "true to the souce material" it can't just be in the cases where you like the source material.

00:07:59 -- "*snort* Well, ACTUALLY, most scientists believe the dinosaurs were killed by the fall-out from a large meteor collision in... oh, oh, you were making a bad joke. I see."

00:08:34 -- Freeze standing up in his Freezemobile? Not worth Ah-nuld's time. Get the stunt man to do it. Also, why does Mr. Freeze have a Freezemobile? "More toyetic." Certainly never had anything like it in any other media.

00:09:35 -- And then Freeze turns his Freezemobile (already a vehicle) into a rocketship to get away, because... ? Like, where is Freeze going that he needs a rocketship?

00:09:55 -- I love that the Freeze-rocketship looks exactly like some crappy 1950s sci-fi rocket-ship, complete with oddly phallic appearance and the exhaust trail that's just a harmless shower of sparks. It makes no sense at all, but it is very much in keeping with this movie's "influences".

00:10:40 -- That's right, Mr. Freeze had a working space rocket-ship built into his already existing tank in a physically impossible manner, just to place Batman in an elaborate deathtrap in case he showed up. It's stupid, it makes no sense, but it's classic, classic Silver Age comics. I mean, this would be kinda awesome if it wasn't so retarded.

00:10:51 -- Here Freeze wears goggles that resemble his animated series appearance. He only wears them in this one scene for some reason, but all the Mr. Freeze action figures were made to look like this, so it must've been what the costume looked like in the concept art.

00:11:08 -- And then, just in case he needed to quickly escape from his space rocket-ship deathtrap, Freeze has impractical, physically impossible, metal wings built into his suit that would in no way help him fly or glide and just make him heavier but somehow totally do. Again, stupid as hell, but spot on Silver Age style. Those comics just cold did not make sense if they could be cool instead. (Two "cold" puns in one sentence! This movie is rubbing off on me!)

00:11:52 -- Okay, now what Batman's doing here makes no sense at all. He told Freeze that if the capsule exploded it would slaugther thousands. His plan to prevent this? Blowing up the capsule. That's not Silver Age logic, that's dumb 90s Action Movie logic.

00:12:06 -- So, to recap, the first twelve minutes of this movie include Batman surfing down a dinosaur, Mr. Freeze's tank turning into a rocketship, and Batman and Robin airsurfing away from the explosion of said rocketship. Did Akiva Goldsman write this movie, or did Akiva Goldsman's eight-year-old nephew write this movie?

00:13:59 -- How the hell did Freeze's goons (presumably who is driving the tank) know where to pick him up? And how did they get there so fast?

00:14:14 -- Eleven minutes to thaw Robin? Batman can't defeat and capture Freeze within eleven minutes? Because you know he hasn't even tried hitting him yet.

00:14:22 -- Like seriously, in all the time Freeze is talking, or slowly blocking his escape with ice, you don't think to throw a Batarang at him or something? A grappling line? You just stand there and gawk like an idiot? What kind of Batman are you?

00:15:00 -- Look at that. It took you 13 seconds to thaw out Robin. You could've easily captured Freeze and then gone back and done that. Or better, yet, now that both of you are up and running again, why not go AFTER FREEZE WHILE THE TRAIL IS STILL HOT?

00:15:28 -- And here's Dr. Pamela Isley, played by Uma Thurman. Isley is the civillian identity of Poison Ivy, whom I'll talk more about when we get there. Thurman took the role because she wanted to play a classic femme fatale, which is indeed Ivy's typical role in the comics and her role in the movie as well. Ivy's origins and motivations have changed and evolved considerably since her first appearance in Batman #181 (June, 1966) and this movie mixes and matches from many sources, as well as connecting her to the villain Bane through the character of Dr. Jason Woodrue, also know as the Floronic Man. (I'll try to sort through this quagmire as we go). Ivy was chosen as a villain for the movie because Schumacher wanted a sexy femme fatale, and the first three movies had already used up all the classic Golden Age Batman villains, leading to Schumacher seeking inspiration in the Silver Age stories that inspired the campy television show.

00:16:06 -- Project Gilgamesh, after the demigod of myth, is the name given in this movie to the project to create Bane (again, more on this later). The comics never named the quasi-military experiments that created Bane, and the term "Project Gilgamesh" in fact comes from the animated series "Bane" episode. This is one of many examples in both this film and FOREVER of the filmmakers sourcing the animated series rather than the comics.

00:16:31 -- John Glover plays Dr. Jason Woodrue. Woodrue first appeared in The Atom #1 (June 1962)  by Gardner Fox and Gil Kane and is the civillian identity of the Floronic Man, a mad scientist obsessed with plantlife who transforms himself into a man/plant hybrid. The movie version here emphasizes the mad scientist aspect in order to make him responsible for the origin of Bane and Poison Ivy at the same time, while the comic book version is only involved with Poison Ivy. Glover was the voice of The Riddler on the Batman animated series, and would go on to play Lex Luthor's father on the SMALLVILLE television series. Glover was critical of Schumacher's direction style, reporting that he would shout "Remember everybody! This is a cartoon!" before every take, which perhaps explains Glover's way, way over-the-top performance.

00:16:41 -- In this movie, Bane's original identity is "Antonio Diego, serial murderer serving life in prison". While that means they got the Latin American and the prison aspect of the character right, everything else about that statement is made up for this movie, and the name invented here has never been repeated in the comics, where Bane is known only as Bane.

00:17:07 -- Why does his mask look like a luchador's? It makes sense in the comic, here it does not.

00:17:12 -- Super Soldier Serum? I think Marvel has a trademark on that. You should try a different name.

00:17:15 -- Venom, yeah, because that'll sell well. The supersoldier drug Venom first appeared in Legends of the Dark Knight #16 (March, 1991), created by writer Dennis O'Neil as an addictive chemical that enhances the user's strength and stamina to superhuman levels but also erodes the rational mind and increases aggressive emotions. Batman became addicted to using it after falling into a depression when he wasn't strong enough to save a drowning girl, but overcame the addiction. Venom became the drug powering the villain Bane when he was created for the KNIGHTFALL event storyline in 1993. I still have never understood why it's called Venom.

00:17:21 -- Why, if you're making a supersolider, would you add toxins to the supersoldier serum/steroids mix? And why would you announce that you added toxins to your bidders?

00:18:09 -- Okay, so Bane. Bane first appeared in Vengeance of Bane #1 (January 1993) and was created by Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan. Bane was the orphaned child of a political criminal in the Latin American drug state of Santa Prisca. In that wartorn nation, if a man does not live to finish his prison sentence it must be finished by his eldest child, and so Bane was born and raised in the hellish Pena Dura prison. He trained himself in body and mind to the ideal of human perfection in order that he might rule the prison and beyond. He volunteered for the military experiments using the venom drug in order to make himself even more powerful, despite the addiction he developed. After escaping Santa Prisca, he set his sights on Gotham, the greatest city in the world, and decided that to rule it he must break the Batman. He did so, in the classic KNIGHTFALL storyline, through a combination of brute force, but also an exceptionally cunning plan. In many ways, Bane was designed as dark mirror to Batman, and specifically created to be a villain capable of defeating him. He became immensely popular, and his character and the KNIGHTFALL storyline featuring him were highly promoted by DC Comics. Bruce Timm and his team at the animated series were reluctant to use him because he was considered a "gimmick character" but adapted his story into the "Bane" episode. Schumacher added him at the last minute to the movie due to pressure from DC to promote the new, cool, character, and knew nothing about him other than the bare bones basics, which explains why his depiction in this movie is so far off. Bane is played by wrestler Jeep Swenson, in what is essentially a nonverbal, grunting role. Unfortunately his extremely poor portrayal here, an idiotic muscular brute who grunts and is essentially nothing without his Venom, leaked back to the comics and also informed popular conception of the character for some time, before Christopher Nolan and Tom Hardy would restore the original mastermind personality in 2012's THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

00:18:25 -- And for some reason he has a "Turbo" mode activated by a big skull button because, well, it's "toyetic".

00:21:08 -- Two-time Olympic decathelete and Nobel Prize Winner for Molecular Biology, Dr. Victor Fries. Because they felt they needed to awkwardly justify casting Ah-nuld as a brilliant scientist by suggesting the most unbelievable resume ever. Also, there is no Nobel Prize for Molecular Biology, and that's not even what Victor Fries is supposed to be a scientist of.

00:21:16 -- MacGregor's Syndrome may as well be called MacGuffin Syndrome, but is in fact named for producer Peter MacGregor-Scott. What is the writer saying when he names an incurable disease after the producer? In the comics, Nora Fries suffered from cancer, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

00:21:23 -- For some reason Clooney says "here's where everything goes north," instead of "goes south", which at first seems like he's altering the common phrase to make a cold joke, but y'know, it's cold down south too.

00:21:52 -- Okay, so let's talk Mr. Freeze's origin. Back in Batman #121 (February, 1959) when he was Mr. Zero, he was a mad scientist developing a freeze-ray gun whose experiment backfired on him. The explosion altered his body chemistry and he must stay in sub-zero temperatures to survive (presumably on the Fahrenheit scale, so that's like -18 to the rest of the world). Outside of temperature regulated environments he wears the suit. The 1966 TV series added the element that Batman's interference caused the explosion, leading Freeze to hate and desire revenge on the caped crusader. The tv show gave him the real name "Dr. Schivell", which never carried over to the comics. Freeze had become a joke of a villain by the modern age of comics, remembered and mocked for his gimmicks and bad puns. But all that changed in 1992 with the airing of "Heart of Ice", an episode of the Batman animated series written by Paul Dini that won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program and catapulted the series to critical success. In this version, Victor Fries was a scientist in the field of cryonics. After his beautiful wife Nora is stricken with a terminal illness, he attempts to cryogenically freeze her using equipment from his research. However his employers didn't take too kindly to Fries appropriating their equipment and interrupted the experiment, killing Nora and causing the explosion that transformed Fries into Freeze. Mr. Freeze was now an emotionally complex villain fueled by revenge against those who tormented him. This winning reinterpretation of an old villain was applied almost formulaically to other Batman villains on the show, such as The Riddler and The Mad Hatter. DC Comics knew a good story when they saw one, and imported this origin and its version of Freeze into the mainstream comics series in an issue written by Paul Dini. So it is mainly the animated series' origin being used in the movie, although here the explosion is random and thus removes Mr. Freeze's revenge motive. So why is he a criminal? Well because his suit is suddenly powered by diamonds (primarily for the "ice" pun) so he needs to steal them! Why diamonds? Because he's kept cold by super lasers! Which... makes... no... sense at all...

00:24:03 -- When I was a little kid it always bugged the hell out of me that we never found out who the mysterious bidder who won the auction for Bane was. Lex Luthor?

00:26:30 -- Okay, let's talk Poison Ivy. Created by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff in Batman #181 (June, 1966), Ivy was originally just another femme fatale criminal, a Catwoman rip-off with a plant motif whose appearance was a redhead Bettie Page in a leafy outfit. She had no special powers or agenda, she merely committed crimes with a plant theme. Her lipstick, however, was often drugged to various effects including poison, mind control, and pheromones to make men fall in love with her. She found Batman to be a perfect male specimen and her plans often involved trying to make him fall for her and become her partner in crime. Unlike his interactions with Catwoman, Batman's attractions to Poison Ivy were always written as purely physical and blamed on her pheromone drugs and mind control. She didn't have an origin until the 1988 Black Orchid mini-series by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, which linked together many of DC's plant based characters. In this version, Pamela Isley studied botany in Seattle under Professor Jason Woodrue (along with several other characters) and fell in love her with professor, who seduced her and used her for his human/plant hybrid experiments. The result was her biology was merged with a plant's, giving her chlorophyll blood, poison lips, an immunity to toxins, and a natural control of her pheromones. In essence, her previously technological powers became biological after this revision. She grew hateful of men and became the villain Poison Ivy in order to steal enough money to get away and be alone with her plants, away from humanity. The 1992 animated series introduced her in the episode "Pretty Poison" by Paul Dini and Michael Reeves, at first using the non-powered version but later switching to the plant-hybrid version without comment. The major addition made there was Ivy's motivation as an eco-terrorist, a fanatical environmentalist seeking to strike back at the world of men for its destruction of Mother Nature. All of these various revisions have become integrated in the current comics version, and all are present in the movie version to some degree or another, although it takes a good writer to reconcile Ivy the Man-Hater, Ivy the Eco-Terrorist and Ivy the Femme Fatale to any degree that makes sense. The movie version also adopts an on/off Mae West accent when in costume because... ? She also sports the same "obviously fake" shade of red hair that Riddler did in the last movie. Does Joel Schumacher just not know what real red hair looks like?

00:26:37 -- This is the Snow Miser's Song from "The Year Without A Santa Claus", a Rankin-Bass stop motion holiday special from 1974.

00:26:50 -- Akiva Goldsman may have taken Freeze's origin from the tragic, emotionally cold, vengeful animated version, but Schumacher and Swarzenegger are clearly giving us ridiculous campy pun Freeze.

00:27:27 -- If your "passion thaws" for your "bride alone", why the hell do you even have a sexy gun moll played by the future Copperhead from KILL BILL?

00:27:45 -- And now, according to this, the diamonds aren't just focusing the "cold" lasers, but actually POWERING them! Holy shit, we can get energy from diamonds? Tear down the nearest DeBeers store, our fossil fuel problem is solved!

00:27:52 -- For the sake of demonstration to the audience, Freeze puts some diamonds to turn on and power his suit, even though he isn't using it. Also, it's implied that somehow the energy from the diamonds gets "drained", which is why he needs to keep stealing to replenish them. Which, again, what? What power are you getting from diamonds that can be drained? And if it drains so easily, why are your leaving the suit running while you're not in it? When did diamonds become batteries?

00:28:10 -- Freeze's plan is to freeze the City, THEN hold it ransom. Hey, I'm sorry to question a two-time Olympian and Nobel Prize winner, but I'm pretty sure that are a little mixed up on how ransoming works.

00:28:31 -- Freeze needs billions to fund his research to cure his wife, and that's why he's holding the city ransom. So, who or what was funding his research before? Y'know, before the accident? And why can't they still fund it? I mean, Nora's not the only one suffering from MacGuffin Syndrome (as we'll see), so why did the funding stop? Can't Freeze just hold a bunch of sappy fundraisers? Run for a Cure? I mean, c'mon, his wife is a dying Swedish supermodel! Who wouldn't wanna save that? Keeping his wife alive and removing the revenge angle means that Freeze's motivations as a villain sorta break down under close examination.

00:28:39 -- Oh yeah, spoilers, his wife's still alive! Nora was revealed to be alive in the animated episode "Deep Freeze" by Paul Dini from 1994, which established the classic image of Nora floating suspended in a cryogenic freezing tube, exactly like she is here in the movie. This was done in order to give Freeze a continuing motivation and sympathy beyond his initial revenge story, as he now must work to cure his wife, but cannot go through proper channels as a notorious murdering psycho and so on. While the animated series and this movie made the image of sleeping Nora classic, the comics chose to kill Nora off in an accident caused by Batman, which solved the problem of how to keep Freeze a recurring villain who hates Batman given his new backstory and motivations.

00:29:08 -- For the first tme in this series, Wayne Manor is plated by the same building twice: the Webb Institute in Glen Cove, New York.

00:29:56 -- Okay, so I suppose now's as good a time as any to address Batgirl. The original Bat-Girl was Betty Kane, created by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff for Batman #139 (April. 1961). Betty Kane was the niece of Kathy Kane, better known as the Batwoman. Both characters were created as female versions of Batman and Robin and were introduced into the comics under the aegis of editor Jack Schiff, as a direct response to the 1954 accusations of Dr. Frederick Wertham that Batman and Robin were homosexual characters and promoted homosexuality in children. Both Batwoman and Bat-Girl were designed to be romantic interests, and were very stereotypical female characters who were more concerned with getting the Dynamic Duo to fall in love with them than fighting crime. Both characters were eliminated from the comics in 1964 when Schiff was replaced as editor with Julius Schwartz, who began a new era in quality for Batman comics that directly inspired the 1966 television series. After two seasons of dominance on the air, the Batman TV series was slipping in the ratings. Producer William Dozier believed that introducing some sex appeal in the form of a strong, independant female hero would help, and asked DC to create a new Batgirl character who could appear in the comics first and then be introduced for the third season of the show. Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino created the new character in Detective Comics #359 (January, 1967). The new Batgirl was Barbara Gordon, librarian redhead daughter of Commissioner Gordon, and unlike Batman and Robin she was not motivated by tragic backstory but simply by her intelligence and need to do the right thing, and became a costumed hero because she could not join the GCPD. The character was an immediate hit, both in the comics and on TV as played by Yvonne Craig. Her introduction was not enough to save the show, but she was memorable and well liked and completely overshadowed the first Bat-Girl, becoming the definitive version of the character. She was old enough to have some romantic tension with Batman and young enough to have sparks fly between her and Robin, but Batgirl was in many ways her own character, just as smart and resourceful as the other two heroes. In 1988, DC made the controversial decision to retire Barbara from crimefighting in Batgirl Special by Barbara Randall and Barry Kitson, and then Alan Moore had the Joker shoot her in the spine and paralyse her in THE KILLING JOKE later that year. Fans of the character were outraged, but Barbara eventually emerged as Oracle in Suicide Squad #23 (January 1989 by John Ostrander and Luke McDonnell), and became a rare positive portrayal of the handicapped in comics, commanding the all-female Birds of Prey team from her wheelchair and laptop and becoming a powerful information broker. The inclusion of the character in this movie follows the general pattern of focusing on popular Silver Age Batman characters, but as we will see the version used here is very much altered from her comic book character. The character is played by Alicia Silverstone, who was redhot in 1997 after a string of high profile successes starting with 1995's CLUELESS. However, the poor critical response to this film and her performance in it essentially led to the end of her A-List career.

00:30:10 -- First major change, Barbara Gordon is now Barbara Wilson, and is the niece of Alfred Pennyworth. (Also she's blonde instead of a redhead). This changed really confused the hell out of me when I was a kid, since I thought it meant Alfred and Gordon were brothers, but no this movie Barbara has no relation to Gordon (while comics Barbara has no relation to Alfred). This change was primarily made to bring Batgirl closer into the fold of the main characters and their story in a quick and expedient manner, as Commissioner Gordon has been shortchanged into "minor supporting character" as this series has continued.

00:30:30 -- This Barbara's parents were killed in a car accident, thus placing her in the "angsty orphan" category along with Bruce and Dick, unlike her comic book counterpart who was free of such baggage.

00:30:43 -- So Barbara is the niece of oh-so-British Alfred, and is on break from "Oxbridge Academy" (are the royalties to either Cambridge or Oxford expensive?) and yet talks like the California girl that Alicia Silverstone is.

00:31:18 --  Batgirl's preference for motorcycles predates Robin's, as she drove a motorcycle on the 1966 TV series.

00:32:02 -- Now, while Alfred's sister Margaret and her husband (Barbara's parents), are plucked out of thin air for this movie, Alfred's brother Wilfred is indeed a comics character. Here he is portrayed as another butler, but in the comics he was the owner of a company of Shakespearean actors, whose star performer was his daugther (and comic Alfred's only niece) Daphne Pennyworth, who both first appeared in Batman #216 (November, 1969).

00:34:28 -- I'd comment on the ridiculousness of Bane's "fedora and trenchcoat over luchador mask" outfit, but it's totally a gag the animated series pulled and that's probably where they got it from.

00:35:01 -- Gossip Gertie returns, again played by Elizabeth "Betty" Kane. Bob Kane was too ill to participate in the making of this Batman film as he had the previous three, and died soon after its release.

00:35:26 -- Although she hasn't spoken yet, here we see Elle MacPherson, famous supermodel, portraying Bruce's girlfriend Julie Madison. Julie was Bruce's fianceé and first major love interest in the original comics, debuting in Detective Comics #31 (September, 1939) by Gardner Fox and Bob Kane. However, Julie broke off their engagement after her acting career took off, changing her name to Portia Storme and moving to LA in Detective Comics #49 (March, 1941) by Bill Finger. Here she mostly just fills in the requisite role of "love interest", but in a movie this packed with characters she doesn't have much to do and most of her scenes were cut before shooting began.

00:36:40 -- I like the detail that Isley's proposal is printed on paper with "RECYCLED" stamped across it.

00:38:35 -- This is actually a pretty good sequence in that it establishes that Isley's environmentalism is fanatical to the point of considering the deaths of millions of people to be acceptable, then establishes a reason for her to conisder Batman & Robin foes, then brings back the "selling some Wayne diamonds as a trap for Freeze" plan from a few scenes ago, thus giving all four heroes and villains a reason to show up in the same scene and meet each other. It's competent plotting, and it's a little sad that it's taken four movies for that to be a feature in a Batman script.

00:40:34 -- The whole idea of Batman and Robin, illegal crime fighting vigilantes, showing up to promote a charity auction would be unthinkable in a Batman comic published in 1997, but is pretty par for the course when it comes to the 1960s Silver Age comics that inspired this movie and the 1966 TV show.

00:43:16 -- Time for another edition of confusing editing. Poison Ivy falls backwards off the platform, back towards the stage. When she lands, it is in the arms of a bunch of oiled up dudes and she appears to have landed facing towards the stage, which in fact should be behind her. She stands up, with the oily dudes behind her and then turns, and now is facing towards the stage with the oily dudes forming a platform for her to walk on as she walks towards the stage. It kinda makes sense when you break it down to think about it, but it violates axis of action so many times as to just be confusing.

00:45:21 -- And then the illegal Dracula cosplaying vigilante with no legal name pulls out his special, personalized credit card that has been issued to his alias and is good through "Forever" (I see what u did thur), to the sound effect of an old fashioned cash register, because this movie is a cartoon. (And GothCard is clearly the least responsible credit card company ever). This whole sequence of the rich men vying for Poison Ivy's attention, up to and including Batman, is closely related to Ivy's first appearance in Batman #181, where she crashed a pop art gallery and essentially the same thing happened. That issue's main plot involved Batman fighting his attraction to Ivy and a conflict within the Dynamic Duo as Robin tried to save Batman from her influence. Oddly, Robin himself was not affected by Ivy, despite being a high school student.

00:48:27 -- Whereas Ivy's first comic book appearance had her becoming attracted to Batman as a "perfect specimen of manhood", instigating years of deadly seductions and so on, here she becomes attracted to Mr. Freeze for similar reasons. You can really feel the screenplay straining to find a reason for a plant-based villain and an ice-based villain to team up, given their completely incompatible objectives. About the only thing they have in common is a science based doctorate and being co-created by Sheldon Moldoff.

00:45:26 -- For some reason there is a tacky Gotham snowglobe sitting around on the stage of the Gotham Botanical Gardens.

00:48:53 -- Even Freeze's minions get little flanking vehicles to Freeze's big tank, because "toyetic"!

00:49:05 -- Everyone in Gotham drives old-timey cars in Schumacher's movies, because that's how the animated series looks!

00:50:06 -- The characterization of Batman and Robin here is NOT very Silver Age at all, however. This Dynamic Duo isn't the trusting, buddy buddy team of those days. The Batman here, who controls every aspect of his sidekicks in order to protect them because he doesn't trust them to be as good as him, is much more in line with the modern Batman comics of the late 90s and early 00s, while Robin's character here as angry and jealous feels more like the second Robin, Jason Todd. This conflict was going to lead to the Duo splitting up in the fifth movie and Robin becoming Nightwing. I do, however, question Batman's logic that the lighter and more streamlined Redbird would not be able to make the jump that the massive and bulky Batmobile is able to do.

00:50:45 -- And boom! Defeating Freeze is just that easy. On the one hand, I like that we have no idea what Batman even did to Freeze, just bam! and he's incapacitated. It reminds me of the classic opening sequence to the animated series. On the other hand, it totally puts to lie the earlier sequence that suggested Batman didn't think he could defeat Freeze on his own within 11 minutes. And finally, holy crap does this shot feel like the end of a toy commercial. I can almost hear the announcer saying "vehicles and playsets sold seperately".

00:51:13 -- In the original comics, as noted earlier, Robin was not taken in by Ivy's charms and fought to keep Batman from falling into her clutches. That was largely because Ivy wasn't targeting the Teen Wonder. It actually plays more believably here to have the (twenty-seven year old) Junior Partner be the one taken in by his hormones and the more experienced Main Hero to be the clear headed one.

00:54:21 -- After it's cameo appearance in the last film, Arkham Asylum receives a far more prominent position in this installment. This time the lightning is inexplicably green instead of inexplicably red, and for some reason I believe that more.

00:54:36 -- The interiors, however, have been redesigned from the white, modern, antiseptic look of the previous film to a Gothic, dark, crumbling dungeon. Arkham's appearance has never even been close to consistent in the comics, going from hospital to prison to dungeon and back, one of my biggest fan frustrations.

00:56:44 -- Hey, it's the blacklight neon gang from BATMAN FOREVER.

00:56:51 -- Bane's trenchcoat and fedora have disappeared between cuts.

00:59:32 -- Bruce has been seeing Julie for over a year. Akiva Goldsman doesn't even bother trying to explain what happened to Dr. Chase Meridian, which leaves three blonde ex-girlfriends of Bruce Wayne wandering the world aware that he's Batman, one of whom is an award-winning journalist and the other a published psychologist.

01:00:45 -- This scene wherein Bruce is having dinner with another woman, but sees Poison Ivy in her place, is right out of Batman #183 (August, 1966), which carried the second part of her original story.

01:01:20 -- Why didn't the garage motion sensor go off all the other times Barbara was going out and stealing motorcycles? You'd think of all the houses in all the world, Wayne Manor would have the best security system.

01:01:31 -- The song you're hearing is Moloko, "Fun For Me", one of many tracks featured on the critically acclaimed Batman & Robin "soundtrack".

01:01:51 -- And of course Gotham City has crazy themed motorcycle gangs. There's some fops, some Clockwork Orange cosplayers, the red-wig league, a bunch of juggalos, and some regular leather types.

01:02:06 -- And look, kids, it's Coolio!

01:02:34 -- In a nice bit of continuity, Dick still wears the "robin" helmet from the previous film.

01:06:05 -- So Barbara's parents died in a car crash, and she started racing motorcycles in illegal dangerous street races to "make the pain go away" and got kicked out of "Oxbridge" for it. And she's still doing it here in Gotham, because... ? This is the worst superhero origin ever.

01:06:35 -- And her motivation for doing all this is to win enough money to "take Alfred away from all this", because yeah, the main reason that Alfred is stuck as the butler to one of the members of Forbes Fictional 15 is that he lacks money, and you can win so much money street racing that he'll never have to work as a billionaire's butler ever again. Uh-huh. I love that her reasoning is that all Bruce has ever given Alfred is money, but that's all she has to give him, too! And neither of them have th

01:08:22 -- This entire sequence is taken exactly from the ending of "Heart of Ice", the animated series episode that redefined Mr. Freeze's character.

01:08:38 -- They were doing so well with Poison Ivy's look in this movie, essentially replicating her comic book appearance, until this scene where she's suddenly got these cones on her head like she's trying to pick up broadcast TV signals.

01:09:24 -- Along with Freeze's gear, the Arkham criminal property locker also featuers the Riddler's suit (nice continuity) and Two-Face's (poor continuity, considering he died in the last movie). There's also a weird stuff doll that I can't place.

01:12:00 -- I would comment on the ludicrous idea of the three villains surviving that fall, but Joker does stuff like that in the comics all the freakin time.

01:17:47 -- Gordon manages to pull a lever; which is the most he's accomplished in three movies.

01:19:20 -- Once again, the patented Movie Batman "just stand around and watch as the crooks leave, not even making an effort to go after them" method of crime fighting.

01:19:47 -- Hell, Ivy's still in the damn building! If you did anything other than stand there, you could easily still catch them.

01:19:57 -- Freeze really needs to get locking connectors for his big steel power cables.

01:21:07 -- This moment where Freeze's tear turns to ice was intended to be how "Heart of Ice" ended. The image of Mr. Freeze's tear turning to a snowflake was in fact the central one that inspired Paul Dini to write the episode, but in the end the animation team could never get it to look right and so Freeze simply cries a single ordinary tear in the cartoon. However the idea managed to survive successfully into this movie.

01:23:13 -- And of course, through the laws of Plot Efficiency, Alfred has the same disease as Freeze's wife! And it's in the curable stage! Somehow the "worst" Batman movie also has the tightest script, so far.

01:24:41 -- Barbara thinks she was "too late" to save Alfred. Uh-huh. Because while Bruce Wayne's money couldn't cure him of his disease, her illegal street racing money sure could! Her reasoning is that Bruce is bad because all Bruce has ever given Alfred is money, but that's all she has to give him, too!

01:27:31 -- And because we just haven't committed enough character assassination of Gordon over these four films, here's his final scene, whimpering after Poison Ivy and begging her to come back and make out with him.

01:31:36 -- Okay, so one, for a computer science major Barbara is the slowest typist ever. Second, Alfred picked the three-letter purely alphabetic password? Worst. And third, what's up with the computer's sultry come-on tone when it says "Access Allowed"?

01:35:19 -- Why does Barbara come up through the platform for the Batmobile? Why not through the staircase? Why are there lasers everywhere?

01:35:56 -- Barbara becomes Batgirl because she says so. She finds out who they are and just decides she wants to help. This is what we call an underwritten character.

01:36:00 -- Alfred anticipated this and designed a skintight rubber Batsuit for his own niece.

01:36:15 -- Batgirl's suiting up montage doesn't linger the way Batman and Robin's do because the director doesn't swing that way. Also, her suit's nipples can't be as overt because that would be pornographic. Y'know, in the way that erotic rubber nipples on a man's chest aren't.

01:36:16 -- Wait, so if Ivy just moved the signal to her hideout, why did she need to specifically get the one from police headquarters, which she needed to steal the keys for? Why not just paint a Robin signal on some giant Klieg light you could steal from some far easier location?

01:38:43 -- Victory. In the preparation. Also, why would you take the rubber lips off? Why wouldn't Ivy just kiss him now?

01:39:02 -- Batman's cape is visibly attached to his upper thighs and it looks ridiculous. Why would you even do that?

01:39:23 -- Batgirl's costume follows essentially the same design scheme as everyone else's. It's all-black and sexualized and it's main departure from the comic book version is that she has a domino mask instead of her iconic cowl. Which leaves the question of why she's Batgirl and not Robingirl or something. Apparently Schumacher didn't want to cover up Silverstone's face, although the costume was originally designed with the cowl in mind so all the Batgirl toys had one.

01:39:48 -- And then apparently they didn't have the time or money for a shot where Robin sticks his head out of the water only to be pulled back under, so instead they have a shot where Robin sticks his head out of the water, and then they reverse the footage to make him go back under. It looks hilarious. This happened in a big budget tentpole action movie.

01:40:36 -- Why does Ivy's plant throne suddenly eat her? Like, it's been totally cool with her this whole time, and then it decides to turn against her because, well, um...

01:40:44 -- Oh look, it's that exact shot of Robin coming out of the water again, only this time he makes it all the way out.

01:42:46 -- Hey, look, more vehicles! A bizzare Bat-ski-mobile thing for Batman, a hovercraft lookin' thing for Robin, and a regular motorbike for Batgirl which begs the question of why the hell the other two guys need special cars. Oh, right! Toys!

01:42:49 -- George Clooney is wearing Val Kilmer's special Batsuit from the climax of BATMAN FOREVER, just repainted with silver highlights. It doesn't really fit him that well.

01:42:53 -- And hey, Batgirl's got her cowl! She actually looks like Batgirl.

01:44:34 -- Annnnd, just like that, her cowl is gone. Everyone gets special "silver variant" costumes for this finale because a) we gave everyone a special costume at the end of the last movie, b) more TOYS! and c) erm... reasons? Even Batgirl gets one despite having only worn her regular suit in one scene. Also, note Clooney and O'Donnell's massive silver codpieces. Also, Alicia Silverstone gets silver mascara to match her silver mask, but the boys still wear black make-up. It's all very weird and arbitrary.

01:48:18 -- One, why does removing the source of the steroids REVERSE the process? Second, if it was that easy to defeat Bane, why doesn't everyone do that? And finally, Bane was a character explicitly created to break the Batman. Not only does Movie Bane not even fight Batman, but he's easily defeated by his two sidekicks.

01:50:10 -- And then our heroes leave poor scrawny Antonio Diego to lie there and die as the building explodes around them. Poor guy's probably going through some severe withdrawals too.

01:51:54 -- And so the former circus acrobat and the girl who took like twenty tries to break a three letter password are suddenly upgraded to "computer geniuses" because they are young people in a movie from 1997.

01:56:10 -- And then for some reason when they get home Bruce and Dick are back in their regular costumes, sans masks, and Barbara's not even wearing hers.

01:56:55 -- Why would you have cellmates at an institute for the criminally insane? And why would you let Freeze keep wearing his suit, when it clearly gives him superstrength and shit? And why would you pair him with the criminal who he teamed up with in a plot to kill absolutely everyone? And why is Ivy's hair purple? Well, at least this movie didn't have Batman killing off all the villains.

01:59:21 -- And then the movie ends with the three heroes running toward screen in front of the Bat-signal, because again, that's what we did last time. The three heroes run off into a sequel that never came. BATMAN & ROBIN was a critical disaster and underperformed at the box office. Warners had been impressed with dailies however, and during production had greenlit a fifth film for a 1999 release date. Titled BATMAN TRIUMPHANT, it would've featured Dick becoming Nightwing and going off to Gotham University, while Batman and Batgirl continue to fight crime. At University Dick would've discovered the villainous Jonathan Crane, aka the Scarecrow, and the Joker would return as a hallucination Batman would suffer while under Scarecrow's fear toxin. There were also roles for Harley Quinn and Man-Bat in the script. Schumacher intended to do this film darker, saying he owed Batman fan culture a "proper" Batman movie. But BATMAN & ROBIN's immense failure tanked not only the Batman film franchise, but indeed the entire superhero comic book genre for many years, contributing to the death of SUPERMAN LIVES, a CATWOMAN spin-off, and several other planned projects from both DC and Marvel. WB struggled with many attempts to reboot the series, including a Paul Dini script for a live-action BATMAN BEYOND movie, an absolutely insane Frank Miller and Darren Aronofsky script for an Aronofsky directed BATMAN: YEAR ONE with Christian Bale, then an Akiva Goldsman script for the team-up BATMAN VS SUPERMAN movie intended for Wolfgang Petersen and to star Bale and Josh Hartnett as Superman. Finally Bale would play Batman in the Chris Nolan and David Goyer project, BATMAN BEGINS.

01:59:44 -- The song you're hearing is "The End is the Beginning is the End" by the Smashing Pumpkins,  which is without a doubt the most successful thing to come from this movie, winning a Grammy. An alternate version, "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning", would be used in the trailer for WATCHMEN, brining renewed popularity to both versions. Billy Corgan wrote the song to be about Batman, but found more inspiration in the darker, 1940s version of the character than the campy 1960s version that inspired this movie.

02:01:51 -- The song you're hearing now is "Gotham City" by R. Kelly, which hilariously calls Gotham a "city of justice, a city of love, a city of peace for everyone of us".