Frequently Stupid Questions: Public Domain Edition

Because public domain doesn't engender a lot of sympathy, I have decided to compile some answers to a lot of doubts people often have. I don't know if people actually feel like this, or if it's industry shills going around, but I think it's high time I addressed them.

I mean we're four years away from 2019. Copyrights have been extended for 40 years. Let's talk about this without emotionalisms.

Do you think you have a right to other people's rightful properties?

I don't think so, I know so. But so do YOU!

"Entitled" is a term that is often used to describe those  that want shorter copyright. After all, why should we have access to something we didn't create?

 But the thing is, we DO have a right. The American Constitution, not me, says that copyright exists for a limited time. Limited does not factor in if the guy made money in his lifetime, or if he doesn't want his works turned into a proto punk furry porn opera or if the guys made money from his work afterward aren't his kin. Limited means it should end at some point.

But Big Entertainment doesn't think it should end at "some point", therefore they got congress to unconstitutionally stretch the duration of works.  Look, here's some graphics explaining it.

I thought of showing the ref getting his payola far too late.

But what if an author doesn't make any money in the first x amount of years?

The idea here is basically we're supposed to to feel empathy for the poor struggling author. "Don't you want authors to get payed" is supposed to be followed by "yes, goddamn it, and the only way to make sure is to extend copyright 200 years more, woohoo!"

But here's the thing: this art/creation/invention thing is NEVER gonna be a sure thing. For every Batman that makes billions in comics, movies, cartoons, videogames and halloween costumes, there's thousands of Moongirls, whose owners just kind of forget, to ever bring out.

For this works(the majority), being wrapped up in red tape  for almost 100 years or more is a lose lose situation.  The work just sits there  unused, it doesn't  make anybody any money, but nobody can use it, unless the author released the work themselves.

Intellectual property is just as much property  as physical property, and a work  going to public domain is like the government stealing your house from you. What you own can't be taken away, right?

Intellectual property is not physical property, at least not like a house. It's more like...air.

Air is something that, except for  scuba divers and birthday balloons, is available enough that there is little need to hoard it. On the surface of the planet there is enough oxygen for us humans as well as cockroaches and giraffes and dung beetles. Only a truly spiteful god would insist that air should belong only to the plants that produce oxygen for 90 years so they can charge for it as they will. Most plants don't live that long.

But we want there to be more plants, because we just can't get enough of that wonderful Oxygen. So we give plants a break: we won't eat all their fruits, and rip out all their flowers, and chew on all their roots for a  time, so we can have more plants.

As we have more plants, we can start eating the older plant's fruits. We can pick their flowers and chew their roots. They have fulfilled  their purpose.

Well copyright is just that. We want more artists creating, inventors inventing, philosophers philosophizing and song writers twerking, so we say "for a time, we will subdue our urge and, indeed, our RIGHT to take something as intangible as the works of a mind, and duplicate it, remake it, remix it, retell it, to give you creators a break, so that ALL of us can eventually  see the benefits. We just want the air. That's why we held off."

The differences between a house and a song should be obvious. A house that you no longer have rights to cannot be inhabited freely by you. You can no longer do in the house as you see fit. But obviously, it has a limited amount of  people it can fit.

A song you have no rights to is a song anyone can sing, play, be reproduced by anyone. That includes you. It doesn't fit any normal definition of stealing.

Also, If you truly believed Public domain works are a form of theft, ethically you'd need to not participate in any of them. Hands up if you've ever said "I'm not watching if Bram Stoker's heirs aren't making money." "I'd be stealing to watch Les Miserables!" "I can't  watch Pride and Prejudice, the original author didn't authorize."

What a mighty fine thing, to rebuke the thief while spending  his loot! If you don't consider enjoying the spoils of the public domain tree stealing, then don't treat if falling into pd as theft.

Why can't you come up with your own stuff, you lazy assholes?

This is a fairly common one. After all, original works are highly valued, while derivative works are the devil's clogged, overflowing toilet.

Okay, first of all, originality isn't just in making brand new characters and stories. I thought the Avengers was pretty original, even though every one of it's characters is older than me.

Statistically, you hadn't been born when this happened.

So when characters are copyrighted we beg Marvel and DC to make them into movies and TV shows and games. We swallow up adaptations of A Song of Fire and Ice, The Walking Dead and many more. We get excited for the third remake of the adaptation of a comic from the 80's, and a new version of a toy commercial from our youths, in movie form.

But when somebody says it'd be nice if they went public domain eventually, the same people turn around and ask everyone else if can't make something new.

So let's not do that. Let's not say only lazy people want to work off of Tolkien's books, then rush off to pay for a LOTR MMORPG. Let's not say "just  make a NEW Superhero" only to bemoan how Wonder Woman isn't getting a proper movie, or her costume sucks, or is a Thin Israeli instead of a Muscly Greek( or a Thick Turk? I'm not sure what Amazons actually were). That's the result of "WB can make with Wonder Woman as it see fit."

Obviously there is financial value in owning a recognizable character, because otherwise there wouldn't be talks of remaking Highlander and Short  Circuit. But here's my beef: the handful of companies that  own your favorite shit have nothing to fear from Johnny Fanfiction and Suzie Kickstarter. They own tv channels, Radio Stations, Game Develpment houses. Copyright is supposed to keep you from giving up the creative world because everyone is copying you as soon as your work is done. Are you really gonna tell me Best Geek Ever's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a serious concern for Viacom when they have a whole  arm of channels and all I have is a fuckin' blog that we have to award them "only game in town" status FOREVER, too?

But what if they turn my(or my favorite) work into porn?

This could be fit under the wider banner of "what if they turn an author's work into something they hate?"  Like when WB did Alan Moore all wrong, or like when Hitchcock was locked out the editing room. Something like that  but now that it's public domain, it's somehow badder.

Or like when Alan Moore turned public domain characters into porn, My head hurts.

But I guess we hate porn now, huh? Ok fine. What would happen if you make a well known work, it becomes public domain, and you  get to see your work become porni-sized?

I'll answer the question with a question: what work currently in the public domain is more known for the porn version than the real? Which anything that has a porn version the porn version is more known than the real?

None. Porn is fairly forgettable and underground.  Axel Braun's superhero porn parodies aren't getting  on SuperheroHype's news page, that's for sure.

If you're a fan of a work and don't want there to be porns of it, bad news, kimosabe. If it's big enough, there's probably porn of it. From E.T. to  to the Room. From Mickey  to Dangermouse. From Robocop to The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo. Porn, bitch. Porn, motherfucker. That is our current world, where long copyrights reign, and  we charge kids who download mp3s thousands in fines. The world where we travel halfway across the world to arrest Kim Dotcom.

It's besides the point that your drawings of Jason fucking Freddy aren't competing with any official ones.

You, see, for the companies that own these works, "the dignity of the work" and "the artists original intentions and vision" are not the matters that keep them up at night.


And finally the answer would be, get over it. American copyright laws aren't  there to protect you from hurt feelings. Why talk such big game about freedom of speech  and so on, if we're gonna wimp out as soon as other people express themselves in ways we find objectionable?

It'll just lead to everyone making Batman works and nobody doing nothing else, you know?

The thinking, here is that a work being superpopular  and public domain would wind creating a great super-saturation of said work's derivatives. I use Batman as an  example because he's pretty popular and at 75 years, frankly should have lapsed years ago. But you can substitute him for Mickey, Superman, Harry Potter or the Ninja Turtles.

First of all, that's kinda the point. While copyright exists on a work, it removes competition from the originator. Like this.

No, really, that's pretty much it.

But we all know competition is the spice of quality, and if we had everyone be able to work on the same work...

Asylum WOULD Present Batman, like ALL  the time.

...the market would determine which is best. The market probably can't handle INFINITE Batman, thought, and I'm sure eventually it'd subside.

 How bad could it get? Well, zombies are a good example. They went public domain decades ago. While since there's hardly been a LACK of zombie happy works, there also wasn't a year where we only had zombie movies, games, and cartoons and songs.

And what would WB do in the face of such competition? Well, coming up with new stuff seems like  a solid plan. After having worked on Batman for so many years, they should have a reasonable advantage by 1995, and the new competition should force them to up their game.

And further, works further enriching the public domain would provide greater and greater possibilities. You guys are all excited for Batman v Superman and Avengers: Age of Ultron. In a world of reasonable copyright, both could have been a single movie, and be released in 2005.

In  a world of reasonable copyright, we could totally have  a Wonder Woman movie written by Gail Simone and Directed by Lauren Faust. And Capcom can continue to use Spider-Man in fighting games, even if Marvel would rather make it's own fighting games.

Sure, we might see some uninspired shit based on these works. But having Abraham Lincoln vs Zombies is a small price to pay for playing Resident Evil.

Oh, my childhood!

You just want free/cheaper stuff, you cheap bastards!

Maybe. I can't talk for everyone, but who doesn't like free shit? I wished I had millions  of dollars to buy pop culture icons wholesale , but until then I'm left with in the dishonorable position of making new stuff... or waiting until stuff falls into the public domain so I can take a stab at it. I've already done it and plan to, in the future, do it again. So maybe.

But why is that greedy, though? It's not like I want Batman all for myself. How come wanting works to be widely available in libraries and online, legitimately for anyone is greed, but fucking hording copyrighted works for 100 years is ok?

And this is about more than me wanting pop culture. Books on nature, technology, philosophy and history are being kept from being looked at, while American education languishes. These works could be made available to our young underprivileged that need it.

There are works withering away, that nobody can save from disappearing forever because they're copyrighted. Are we really gonna stand here and say those are acceptable losses, and that making money off of the long dead takes priority over keeping the long dead's words and art alive for future generations?

It's not a debate about whether   the public domain should exist at all, but you'd be forgiven for believing it so, as the current length and the last two extensions have blasted the public domain into basically not including anything from the 19th century.

What IS under debate is...

How long should Copyright be?

This is one that's been going on for literally hundreds of years(but not too many hundreds. 300 at most). Amongst people that do think over 75 is too long, there isn't a consensus. I've seen some say 30, 20, 15. Some even shoot for single digits or say that there should be no copyrights at all.


Personally, I feel the old 56 maximum  duration was fine, and I'd go for that. But instead of having to re-register every 23 years, you have to reregister  every 10 or so, with an accompanying fee.

Why? Well, if you really want the US Government to spend the people's tax dollars on going after the Megauploads and Napsters and Shareazas of life, you have to pay SOMETHING. What, do you think copyrights just protect themselves?

Also, it would prevent media from just becoming a game of "who can buy more." It would force companies to consider if they really want to own that IP, instead of forcing them to own the IP.

But what if an artist makes something something and it doesn't become profitable in that amount of time?

Ok, are there any examples like that? Author gives up on work, reaps rewards 50 years later? Is that a thing that happens that often, that the whole law must  be geared toward that?

Because if we're  gonna make the law based on what actually happens, then most works make most of their profit within a 5 year margin. and the most sensible copyright durations would be 14 years.

In either case, copyright is supposed to protect you enough that you keep creating, not maintain your shitty ass half a century spanning business model. What, if the creator can't create without getting blown, are we suppose to get them a girl, too?

It wasn't supposed to be Shakes. It just happened.

Why so much whining about stuff that never belonged to you?

Here's my beef with long copyright: If it was JUST that it's 95 years, and that we don't get stuff our own grandfathers enjoyed, I'd be okay. I'm not particularly interested in doing  my own Mickey Mouse shit.

But when I realised that they had gamed the system to actively deny us of any work lapsing, I snapped.

"Also, I suggest staying away from the tobaco."

It's like we were supposed to receive an inheritance, but then the bank  earning interests on the money decided to delay the reading of the will for 40 years. If you won't call it robbing you of the money, you can probably call it things like "unethical", "fucking underhanded", "extremely greedy", "unjust". And we're supposed to just sit here like stupid idiots and say "well, that's the law, and the bank is big and we're little"

Not so. An I'm certainly not just gonna wait until they do it again!

I was not born before the 76 extension. There was nothing I could do.  I was a boy during the Sonny Bono act of 98. I didn't even know what copyright was. There was nothing I could do. But if I can do something now, I will. I won't let my children go through the same thing.

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L.I.E.S. The DC movie schedule revealed!

Hello, you Gullible Gents and Overly trusty Dames. It's been a while since I've told you  Leaked In Early Secrets.  The truth is, I've been away on a self imposed exhile. I don't want to go too much into it, but I'll just say sometimes you get challenged to a fight to the death and you do it, but death fights are no fun. People could die on those. In fact, usually when no one dies, things went wrong.

"Let no bad happen" indeed.

So you may have heard some dame say that she got the list of movies DC's planning on making for the next few years. If you believe DC's going to have 3 movies a year, then I'll show you a green dog or 2.

That's not the REAL DC schedule! Let Uncle Batzarro show you how it's done, baby.I snuck into Warner's board room, disguised as a maid.  They didn't know they don't have any retro style maids, so it was easy.

In there, I overheard their true plan, spoken with the kind of confidence that gave us Teen Titans, Greem Arrow in Superjail, Metal Men, Flash and Justice League Mortal as news to chew, rather than as movies to watch.


2015

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I can't stop poking fun at this title.

(BAAt)man (They haven't written it or anything, but they thought that the idea of having a name that is also the logo, even if the name is screwed, was good enough to greenlight.)

Speedy (They actually mean Kid Flash/Impulse, but nobody corrected them that Speedy is Green Arrow's sidekick)

2016

The Wall ( They figured since Maleficent did mint at the box office, they'd get on that "gritty origin story about a woman" thing with Amanda Waller. In this version Amanda Waller begins as a member of a troubled teen help line called Anti-Suicide Squad, but then she somehow turns it into a paramilitary group)

Lobo (I've put this down at Lobo, but they kept refferung to him as "the guy with the claws" and asking if Hugh Jackman was available.)

"This guy. right?"

Justice League

2017

2Man 2Steel( Tyrese is in the shortlist to play Steel)

Not-Wonder Woman (I don;t know which Superheroine they meant, they kept saying "the other one" and "the really popular one" but every time someone said Wonder Woman they'd say no.)

"I'm pretty sure we've been selling clittoris necklaces on Hot Topic for awhile."

Blue Beetle/Red Tornado (They don't know if this is a good teamup, it was chosen with Dice and crayons.)

2018

Batman's Back (There's no story, just the idea to show Batman from behind in the posters)

Batman's Back in action

Captain Planet ("They've got Captain America, but Captain Planet will be huge overseas.")

Shazam v Sandman: The Revenge of Spider Jerusalem (  They envision it as a huge middle eastern adventure, which they assume would have to involve  Sandman and Spider Jerusalem by default. Spider Jerusalem in this is a huge spider.)

Batman v Santa Clause: Dawn of Jingles (For need of a holiday movie)

2019
Batman: Days of Future Bat (This one is a time traveling crossover betwen Burton Batman and Nolan Batman.)

Wonder Woman (After 2 hours they gave up on guessing who the other really popular heroine they own is.)

Justice League Mortal ("We have to reboot the Justice League franchise sometime, right?)

How you like me now, punks?

So there you go. The truth, only the truth and nothing but  L.I.E.S.! Batzarro: OUT! (Turns into a raven, flies away.

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Let's talk about Wonder Woman's body as if it mattered

"I wish Hollywood had some tricks to make people look not-as-they-are..."

Wonder Woman is one of the earliest female superheroes, and probably the one most people care about anyway. So going into Batman v Superman : Dawn of Justice, which had her first appearance in live action in decades must be pretty exciting for fans, right?

This is just as pointless as  #bringbackourgirls, except Zack Snyder might actually bring them back.

Oh, you wanna talk about Wonder Woman's body in what's likely to ammount to a cameo in Batman's movie? Fine. I like Wondy's body too.

There's 3 prevailing schools of thought on Wonder Woman's body: Jezebeline, Maximist, and Curvilinears. And none of the people who  profess these styles actually acknoweledge their titles, because I just made them up.

The Jezebelineans would love for Wonder Woman to not-give girls bad body image.  If Diana looks like a model they'll probably complain, even if 90 percent of all female actresses are like that anyway. DC comic heroes are easy to make a stand on while Black Widow rolls around in her  skintight jumpsuit, totally not getting a movie.

For them, there is a Wonder Woman.

For the record I like her movies. She's no Camryn Manheim, though.

They'd probably say I'm exaggerating. I am. But if you're gonna cast Wonder Woman exclusively for the Jezebelian crowd, without any accounting for anything else, this is your stop.

Maximists take this ficticional amazon's ficticional history seriously. "She's an AMAZON! She should have oak stumps for legs and abs that can take a tomahawk missile!"

For them,there is a Wonder Woman.

Don't know.

I mean, Superman and Batman are ripped. Why can't Wonder Woman be super ripped? Huh? Why is it? Is it because that's not nearly the most important thing when it comes to bringing this character to life? Huh? Is it?

The Curvilinears just want to see an accurate depiction of Wonder Woman's breasts. The character's long history has seen many changes in tone and style, but NEVER have her breasts been what we'd consider "small". They plan to be starring at that cleavage for a good amount of time, and they want to make good on that investment. For them, there is a Wonder Woman as well.

Va va va boom!

I guess that makes me a  Curvilinear as well. huh.

But in the end the people at WB chose this chick.

Those are some nice headlights.

There's bound to be a bunch of reasons why she got cast. How much money  she could bring to the movie chief among them. She's not the ideal actress for Wonder Woman we all picture in our head, but that just us. Some of us thought Thomas Jane would make an excellent Shadow the Hedgehog, and some of us thought HHH would make a fine Thor, and some of us thought  Heath Ledger would ruin the Joker forever. In the end we're proven wrong, we like the actor and we move on.

Or the Sonic movie never happens and we start to hate on  Jane over The Mist. Goddamit!

 

In either case, here's some of the questions you should be asking instead: How much screen-time will Wonder Woman actually have? What exactly will be her role in a movie titled Batman v Superman? Will she actually show in costume in the film? Will she use her magic lasso? Her invisible plane? Will we see Themyscira? Will Themyscira be actually a river near Turkey, like in real life?  Why is there not a sequel to the wonderful animated Wonder Woman movie? Why is there no Wonder Woman movie period, and instead we have to settle for her playing  a support role to Batman and Superman? Just asking, man.

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Naked Batman! 5 facts we'd have to live with if Batman where public domain...

This happened.

The maximum duration of a copyright used to be 56 years.  As we've discussed, this means that everything made before 58 should have reasonably lapsed into the public domain. In Batman's case this means most of his most well known characters and concepts would be available for all to use, free of charge and free of litigation.

I have brought this matter up to fans, and many of them are concerned. They can't even picture a world where you can  go ahead and make your own Batman. As much grief as fans can give companies like DC, many think Batman is rather safe in DC/Warner's hands.

Here's 5 realities of a world where Batman is public Domain.

5) DC still owns real Batman.

Let's face it, guys. We're not talking about a riot where we go into DC's office and rob them of Batman. As the day the first Batman comic goes public domain, this is what you'll have to work with.

He just threw a man by the neck! "Regular Exercise" my ass.

It's gonna take you a couple of years to get to "Batman as we know him" today, and by then the character will already be far, far from that. You get no Batmobile. You get no Batgirl, or Batmite or  Bane. Not for a while.

Nobody still like Jason Todd.

This is Batman and his nu 52 era buddies, some of them with Wikia pages longer than the Bible. By the 2030s all Batman related Wikia pages will have more words than the Bible. You don't get that, not initially. You get the starter Batman: an orphan richboy who wants to punches criminal while dressed vaguely like a bat.

Under previous, you'd already get to adapt this.

DC needn't fear your Batman. Unless...



4)Your Batman might be better than  their Batman.

He's Nicholas Cage. He's awesomer than most things by default.

A lot of people I saw were afraid of "any old fanboys" having their  terrible ideas on Batman.  Can you imagine what that would look like?

I don't have to. Fans all over the world are currently engaged in writting stories about Batman meeting Fluttershy or something. Fanfiction is already a thing, a thing widespead enough that WB hasn't put any major efforts to stopping it. Maybe some of this stories might be good, or great. Maybe all of them stink. At least some of them involve Robocop and Batman having sex. Frankly I opt not to read them.  I can safely ignore them and so can you.

But consider Sandy Corolla. A skilled filmaker who once made a couple of fanfilms starring DC characters, and sometimes Predator and Alien. Everybody loved those fan films. Most of us would have given Corolla our money to see the full films. But WB owns Batman, and he couldn't have secured any financing for a full film except from WB, which already had plans for Batman. Under previous law, Corolla could have taken his skills towards actually making such films. He could have asked another studio to finance them. He could have taken it to kickstarter.

Where's my "realistic" body armor?

Instead he didn't. Let's face it, guys, not all the people who could make great Batman stories work for WB and DC. Some of them might work at Marvel. Some of them might work at Image. Some of them might even work at Fox. The only difference between DCs writters and, fanboys, other writters is that  they are legally allowed to work on Batman. That's all.

However, they wouldn't all be anything close to "real" Batman because...

3) We would have a lot of weird takes on Batman

Well...he's more like a bat, isn't he?

In 1998 I saw The Mask of Zorro, a movie that followed a former bandit played by Antonio Banderas adopting the mantle of Zorro from perrenial pseudo-Hispanic Anthony Hopkins. It was a fun movie. But I kept wondering where it had left the original Zorro's mute butler. You know, from the TV series. Then there was the animated, future set series. I didn't see it much. Zorro's in the public domain, currently, so anyone can work on him and many do.

Naturally, once people get to working on Batman, they're not all going to want to have the same take. After all, that is the fun of public domain. Does Batman really have to be an only child? What if he had siblings? What if  Batman is  really Alfred? What if Batman is really a bat that, through training, became a human? Maybe we get Arronofsky's Batman where he's a bum helped by a big black mechanic named Big Al? Maybe one is just naked all the time.

This is especially true before some elements are public domain. After all, if WB still own the concept of Batman living in a cave, where will yours live? Your version should already be trying to distance itself from other Batmans, maybe yours sleeps in a casket, like Dracula. Maybe he goes back to the planet Bat or something.

It only  sounds stupid because they haven't done it yet. Eventually any and all this versions could find a place in people's hearts. We'll have many Batmans, and don't be surprised when not all of them are "Bruce Wayne, playboy billionaire orphan who becomes Batman at night

2) DC would not use Batman as much.

Jesus Christ!

DC likes Batman. He makes them a lot of money, and money's where it's at. Batman's in movies. Batman's on television. Batman's on cartoons. Batman's on videogames. Batman's on lunchboxes and sweaters and sweatshirts.

However, if someone else can make Batman, that's no fun anymore. WB, overwhelmed by greed, would probably begin promoting "their" characters a lot more, if Batman was usable by anyone. They'd probably promote some silver age character to Batman's spot of importance, if they could at all.

This would not be all bad. If Batman's as overexposed in the 2030s as he is now, a little winding down might not be as bad as it sounds. The character's never not been popular, but maybe it's best to not have 50 Batman products a month in your face.

1) You'd get Batman everywhere

SAFE!

If Batman was public domain today, do you think they'd put him in Street Fighter? In Final Fantasy? In Johnny Test? WWE? GTA?

Off course they would. More than a deluge of new Batman movies every year, it would result in 1000s of "appearances" in stuff. Think of it like this: imagine every cartoon version of Dracula you've seen. Imagine all his appearances in franchises that aren't adaptations of Bram Stoker's books. That's what we're looking at.

Even when the over-saturation reaches critical levels, you'll still see Batman show up every once in a while to help or hinder the characters in question. It wouldn't be rare. And maybe that's gonna be just fine.

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Swing and a miss! Tim Burton's Batmovies

Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow...

 It's about time we talked about Batman. I know this subject is  a fringe one and a taboo in the Internet, but we must break social boundaries of how acceptable it is to talk about Batman.

Dark Knight Rises is probably on it's way out of theaters( and I was entirely unable to catch it.) The end of the Nolan era for Batman, the innevitable reboot nipping at it's heels,  and the seeming endless ways Warner Brother can't get too far into it's Superheroes withouth returning to Batman are all the talk of the town.

Nestled between this conversations is a subtle discussion of Tim Burton's  two Batman films, and their underlying qualities. It tends to divide the geek populace into  two schools of thinking.

"Holy Crap, is your breath fresh!"

A) This movies are good, they opened the way for Superhero movies now, and are a reasonably good adaptation of the Batman mythos in a darker way than the old Adam West show.

B)This movies are bad, nothing like Batman, and are the inspiration for badly adapting Superheroes to the silver screen.

The only one who  likes this pairing is the guy on the left.

Not everyone holds this combination of opinions, but it's mostly what you'll find.

I could tell you that when I saw them I was very young. My dad dragged home a big old TV with awkward  microwave buttons so we could watch the Batman 89 movie before heading to one of my first remembered cinema goings(along with Pewee's Big Adventure. It's not my fault I'm a Burton enthusiast!) to Batman Returns.

While my little kid mind had to register a lot(and return from the lobby confused as to why Batman let  Catwoman lick his face.) of weirdness, I never the less considered it a great movie, and put it alongside Robocop, and Predator and Airplane as the best movies in the world.

But let's not make this about just me, or about the movies. The movies are qualified as being unnacurate to the books by many. And I sort of agree. But so what?

So what if Batman's "no killing code" gets switched to a "lot of times killing code?" So what if the films are rooted in impressionism rather than...whatever stylistic choice you're supposed to have for Batman. So what if the background of the character is changed and the origin, and it's not as dark as anything.



Let me tell you something. When Batman Returns was abuzz in the cinemas, my parents could afford 1 movie IN THE YEAR. The rest was black and white T.V.  And what did my local T.V. channels do as a response? EVERYTHING! They scrambled to run whatever Superhero show and movie they could, as long as we would watch. They Ran the Flash T.V. series and the old 70s Wonder Woman series. They Ran The Incredible Hulk. They ran Ultraman and I could swear they ran Kakero Spider-Man. They ran the Swamp Thing movie and they ran the TV show as well. They fucking ran the Adam West show.

Try harder, internet! I was mocking this before it was cool!

So, back to young me. I began absorbing. I did not know who Flash was in the comics if the movie was good. But I liked Flash. I liked Wonder Woman.  I liked the Adam West show.

Regardless of what the direct influence of Burton's movies, the indirect influence in my case was that a lot of  superhero elements where brought before me, which was good, because I could not even know where comics where sold, and when I saw them on the supermarket, coud not afford them(or my parents would not buy, because Batman looked like this, and had to perform surgery in a sewer on a baby. No, I could not forget that if I tried.).  My understanding of the superheroes would not expand much beyond what TV told me until the year 2000, where I discovered that internet people  would spend their time detailing the fictional life of Storm and Marrow.

What I'm saying is that Burtman(haha!) may be Batman in name only in a way. It may be campier than what we think. It might not fit our nerdy standards of today, where we sit down and pick aparts  which parts of Avengers are 616, which are Ultimate, and which are invented wholesale for the movie. The movies might only be enjoyable to me because I grew up with them. But they shaped me into the sexless, sociopathic nerd that writes too much about Tim Burton's wife I am today.

(Wait, is that a good thing?)

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Batman: Arkham Shitty

Oh. Acclaim. Why am I not surprised?

I heard you, guys. I wasn't on the internet, but I heard. You where talking about Batman Arkham City, the first game that apparently succeeds at the whole "Now you're Batman, in a wide open city, beating up  goons" thing.

I mean, let's face it, most Batman games have been deeply ingrained in preexisting genres like "Beat-Em-Up" or Racing"". That doesn't make them BAD games (being bad games made them bad games), but in terms of immersing you into the cowl and tights live of the Goddamn Batman, it felt a little...lacking. That is, until someone finally tried to give us the full Batman experience in  1998s movie tie-in "Batman and Robin" for the Playstation.

Hey, I said "tried". TRIED.

The interactive spawn of the filmic marketing machine that  put the lucrative Batman franchise out of theaters for 7 years, Batman and Robin  is a full on sim, with Bat Computer antics in the Batcave,  Batmobile driving down Gotham Park,  and the actual score from the actual movie. That last part is sort of amazing in the context that Spider-Man games always had this...stock music that felt like a slap to the face to the tunes Danny Elfman strung together. And hey, I do like Eliot Goldenthal's score for Batman and Robin. So sue me!

Be nice to the new neighbors, dear. They just went through a reboot...

However, the game is so poorly constructed, that any joy, even ironic, that could be derived is quickly smashed under the weight of some pretty garbage gameplay.

The game opens to a CG Full Motion pre-rendered Video of Gotham, where Mr Freeze is coming from underground in his Freezemobile as his minions  also drive recklessly in the streets. I guess this isn't crazy, considering his plan is to  burst into a museum to steal a diamond, Ice skate for a bit,  then use a rocket (with a bomb in it) to blast  off into the sky, then glide down on butterfly wings. He should have gone to Africa, where there's lots of diamonds and no Batman. Oh, well... there is one now, but not back then.

He did give me a sign. Now... to wait until he hits me more time.

Then Batman is in the Batcave, which immediately leads to you controlling him. You can press a shoulder button to switch between  running and "the batman strut", and another to switch between "detective" and "insecurely punching" modes. Detective mode has the option to jump in it, for some reason. And it also has the gadgets you would want to throw at a villain's faces.

Eventually, the player wanders into the vehicle platform, where  Batman(or Robin, if you so felt inclined, by wandering into the Robin ensigned closet.) and drives of in one of the vehicles into the big city.  The city itself is sparsely populated, and most of the citizens are, as expected, eccentric  criminals. Weird clowns and dominatrix gymnasts(but not THE Weird Clown or THE Dominatrix Lady Gymnast) are loose and stalking Gotham's two other inhabitants, while the police don't even bother. Luckily Batman's car is armed with a mosquito machine gun, and he  can blast away from the safety of his cockpit. Until he runs out, that is.

However, Mr Freeze isn't just after mere jewels, and has declared a holy war on  the Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder.  Every  half a mile two cars from the movie, a motorcycle, or a kamikaze ice cream truck will try to Benazhir Bhutto your ass. Unless you get off. Then they leave you alone. This would add entertainment and excitement to what otherwise would be a quick drive to the grocery store(of crime) if it weren't that the controls for driving are awful.

Ice Cream! Death to the Batman And Ice Cream!

Seriously, the get 'into the Batmobile and drive there' part is one of the worst  virtual driving things ever. I mean, I would rather play Multi Racing Championship than drive in this. Getting your car to drive straight is an unachievable goal, and you forget about Robin's motorcycle. Forget it. You'd think since they put the effort of putting it in the game and making it a significant part of it, they'd have put the effort into making it not fucking suck.

Eventually, after finding "clues" and  picking coins out of payphones  to put them in newspaper dispenser machines to get health(yes, BILLIONAIRE playboy Bruce Wayne isn't gonna fucking pay for his own newspaper) you get into the Museum, which doesn't fully exploit the over the top scene of the movie. Mr Freeze isn't even there. It is here that, if you haven't yet been killed by Ice-cream trucks yet...you will see this.

Aww... he got a shorter one just for Barbara!

That's the game over screen for the game. One of them, at any rate. You will see it every time more than 3 of Mr Freeze's men catch you.  Every time you  press an attack button, you should hear George Clooney ask the U.N. for permission to attack the person in front of him within the next decade as long as Venezuela puts half the money.  But whenever 3 of the Freeze Faithful gang up on you, they begin what is known in fighting game culture as an "an infinite" and to your local Gamestop as "why we still sell controllers". There isn't enough health(which comes in the form of floating double helix strains. Yes, Batman is going into town picking up people's genetic material and putting it in his mouth. Why do you ask?) and the controls aren't reactive enough.  And again, since  a significant amount of options that would be useful in combat, such as jumping and drawing gadgets are on detective mode, you will have to rely on the combat actions or learn to quickly change into detective mode to get out of trouble. And the movement is tank-like, yet imprecise.

What Killt de Dynasoars? Dere Ar Diffrent Teeorees about Dee Ecksackt CAUSE but mohst scientists agrree it didn't involve DEEICE AYGE!!

Eventually, The Caped Crusader or his Loyal Liege secure the diamond before the Iceman gets to cometh. Which leads you back to the batcave, where you have some pretty useless clues about where  Freeze will strike next. The next mission is a sordidly designed jewelry store, where you are supposed to  wait until the bad guys arrive so the mission can be done. Not waiting like , at a stake out, or perched and watching the people. Waiting as in, wander around an empty jewelry.  Go ahead and trip the alarm. Then it's waiting...with an alarm blaring.

This game is stubbornly obsessed with time. With making you wait. With making you get there in time. With  clues having to be at a particular moment. I kind of get why one would do that...but in a game this poorly constructed, it just adds another layer of confusion and frustration. This is Batman and Robin, not fuckin' Shenmue!

Hurry up and die! Gotta pick up the kids at soccer practice.

But the waiting isn't the hardest part, as Mr Freeze finally shows up to grab the gem and kill the heroes. Yes. Kill them. Yes. Yes. As I stood there, in front of a shuffling model with a pixelated Arnold Schwarzenegger face on it, whiffing away,  watching him do gymnastics, I was wondering what the hell was going on.  It is then that I realized that the fighting system is truly broken. He won the first one, of course. And the next few ones, too.  Then it hit me like a thunder strike: third person fighting rules had abandoned me. Everything I knew was a lie. The only truth is that  he needed to be a good sport about me kicking him and not hit back, because my hits are no good here, but his hits  affect me. Life isn't fair, Batman.

But, yeah, our heroes steal another diamond, yet Freeze...flies away.

I actually lost the next mission. Yes, you can lose and move on, like in True Crime. I don't see why the fuck you would want to lose, but in my case, I had no choice, as wandering the latest labyrinthine jewelry store aimlessly lead to a glitch in which Freeze's  henchmen who was supposed to steal the thingie froze(ha ha) there, and made the stage unwinnable. I could have tried again. But I could also have made this paragraph  a loosely put together  chain of profanities. I didn't want to do either.

And he's single. Ladies.

However the next mission is  exactly the same, but without the glitch, and I get my chance at revenge on fucking Frosty. I don't get what difference it makes who gets a diamond or not. And why are the jewelry stores so apart?

The a small release came. I wandered behind the Robin ensigned closet and noticed yet another closet, which enabled me to play as Batgirl. I thought she would be playable in a later moment, but I guess she was here the whole time. Though her vehicle, the Batcycle, is the humblest looking of the 3, it handles the best and has the least problem surviving  the sudden goon strikes that haunt the player. That's right: in a stunning reversal, Alicia Silverstone's Barbara Pennyworth  is the least bad part of Batman and Robin: the game. Sure, she looks like Pagan and sounds like Maya, but anything that makes this experience less bad is good.

No jokes about women drivers here. Unless you consider this a joke and this thing here a woman and the steering in this game driving.

After getting myself lost AND caught saving after the game was winnable, I found the botanical garden scene. You know, I'm not a bigshot game designer, but if you're sending the player looking for something called "Botanical gardens" in a city full of flat doors...maybe don't make it look like a garage door. I've been to a Botanical Garden, and it didn't look like  that at all.

Still, big scene. You don't get to bid over the toply for a woman that came out of a monkey suit, but you do get to fight scores of henchmen. And there's icicle mines. Also, there's some thing making the floor blue that kills you. Oh, and the bad guys like to attack with grenades now. And sometimes, they come out of unexpected places. I actually came in with full health every time, and they just knocked it right out of me. I discovered blocking and rolling. Still dying. It's like a very deep game of chess where all your pieces are pawns and kings and the other player has a shotgun. Then FROSTY shows up again. I thought he was in jail? Isn't Vivica A Fox gonna show up? She's in this movie, too!

So, if you can somehow brave the crazy fucking odds...you get your shot at Mr Freeze again. And this time, he means it! He's got a device that shoots ice randomly, he's building big ice pillars atop a giant hand, and he's not afraid of kicking you into the ground and freezing you before you get up. Your first instinct might be to run up to his face and beat the shit out of him. Mine too. It failed. He can easily destroy you in 2 seconds if he gets  3 hits in. Then I tried using the batgadgets to wear him down first.  It did not work particularly well. You might try patiently trying to gather gadgets from afar to wear him down. But if you wait too much, the machine explodes and you fall down for no good reason. Touching the device hurts you. Falling is easy and sometimes you can even fall through floors. His health goes down slooow, and there's two bars that each respond to different types of attacks. There are no indicators as to what you have to do. There is no strategy here: if you won, it is a series of coincidences that strung themselves together to enable your victory. It is the perfect boss fight. For the boss I mean.

Mah emoshons mede me wick!

Or is it? Will I be able to beat this? Am I going to quit and go back to playing enjoyable games? Find out next time in Batman: Arkham Shitty 2!

Continued in part Two!

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