Somebody Somewhere Bids A Kind Farewell to Us

 

It’s clear to me as it airs its third and (why?) last season that Somebody Somewhere has two very different but distinct places in television history. The first, as anyone who has seen the show knows, is that is one of the full-blown comic masterpieces of the 2020s, along with Reservation Dogs, Hacks and Abbott Elementary. (It remains to be seen if Only Murders in the Building can maintain its momentum and people have expressed doubts about the overall quality of the most recent season of The Bear.)

The second is far more exceptional: it is arguably the most un-HBO comedy series that has ever aired on HBO since it began its run of leading the revolution. And as anyone who loves those comedies (and I’ve been a fan of my share) the overall tone of almost all of them could be summed up as: cruel. It was assuredly true of the (finally) departed Curb Your Enthusiasm; definitely so of Emmy winners Entourage, Veep and Silicon Valley and while it was far closer to being darker than unpleasant, it’s hard to argue that Barry was gentle in how it treated anybody in the cast.  There’s little sympathy in any of the comedies in even the best HBO comedies I’ve seen for any of its characters, major or minor and its been the de facto trend for even the ones that didn’t work Avenue 5 is the most recent and I’ve avoided watching The Franchise because I have, frankly, gotten tired of this unpleasantness over the last few years – and in truth, I was getting sick of it long before Donald Trump entered the political scene.

I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised: the de facto trend for comedy over the first twenty years of this century has been constantly heading towards meanness and contempt in almost every comedy show on cable I’ve seen. It was essentially what you got from every single comedy on Showtime, from Weeds to Black Monday, with the sole exception of Kidding and until relatively recently FX has been most treating its comedies with a similar tone. (The one brilliant exception was Better Things.) It’s mostly been true for streaming overall, particularly in the work of Ricky Gervais on Netflix  the overall unpleasantness of so much of Transparent on Amazon, and I found The Great unwatchable. The tone’s gradually been lifting on the streaming services overall and Apple has been setting the pace, not just with the exceptional Ted Lasso but also such masterpieces as Shrinking and the very satiric Palm Royale in which every character is cruel but Maxine who is in dead sincerity.

Because the arc of the comedy universe now seems to be bending towards kindness on TV, not just streaming but also network and cable TV, I can mourn the departure of Somebody Somewhere not as the end of an era but rather as the end of a comedy that was part of a trend. Comedies across all platforms are becoming nicer and we laugh with the characters when they suffer rather than at them. What’s made Somebody Somewhere different as well as wonderful is not just the majesty of all of the talent of the characters led by Bridget Everett but by the fact this show takes place in the heartland  - small town Kansas – goes out of its way to focus on members of the LGBTQ+ community, who have found their outlets from society with each other and shows that their acceptance and battles are just as identifiable as the ones we see at Abbott Elementary and the Arconia.

In the third season Sam, once again played by the wonderful Everett, is facing the fact that the people she cares for the most are moving on with their lives and frankly becoming happier. Her younger sister Tricia (played by the wonderful Mary Catherine Garrison) has recovered from her divorce and now a single woman for the first time. Tricia is dealing with many changes, including that she is now a successful businesswoman (she sells gag pillows with a term so unprintable I’m not going to even hint at what it is), dealing with her son going to college and trying to move onward and upward. Joel (the always sublime Jeff Hiller) has found love with Brad (the always wonderful Tim Bagley) the singer he met in church and is now moving in with.  Fred is now happily married. Sam knows she should be happy. But it’s clearly getting harder for her to find happiness when so many of her friends are moving forward and as we’ve learned constantly over the past two seasons, she hates changes.

It's clear that in the interim between Season 2 and 3 Ed has passed away (a necessity when Mike Haggerty died during 2022) and the house where Sam and Tricia grew up in has been sold to a new tenant who Tricia doesn’t like interacting with and Sam is awkward around. (We’re not even a hundred percent sure of his name yet). This is another big loss for Sam and she’s clearly been trying to find a way to fill the gap in her life. We saw her spend much of the season premiere trying to find a way to adopt a rescue dog and after filling out the paperwork she went to the shelter, only to find another family had adopted it. Sam, who is stoic in public, broke down slightly in the car in the last minute.

And because Sam has clearly been working on other parts of her life, its very clear she’s having issues holding her tongues when it comes to the happiness in her friends. Fred told them at their annual brunch that he was going to stop coming, out of loyalty to his new bride who wants him to be on a health food kick. Sam and Joel were clearly hurt by this but it became even clearer how personal it was in last night’s episode when Fred’s wife came to see the gang and made it clear she was unhappy Sam had brought French Toast because she didn’t want her husband to be tempted by that. More to the point she said that Sam ‘brought Fred down’ which is remarkably cruel considering that Sam sang at their wedding. Sam was still dealing with this when the time came to pack up Joel’s house and she learned what Joel was giving up to move in with the man he loved.

Frankly I’m beginning to have doubts myself. There is no question that Brad loves Joel unconditionally. In that episode Sam went to give lessons to teach Brad to sing a love song to Joel that he had written but was terrified of performing, outside his oeuvre of opera. It’s clear that the way Joel looks at him shows how gone he is for him and the scene where he found the courage – after struggling – to sing the critical lyrics of the song were among the most moving the series have ever done. The two should be soul mates.

The problem is it’s clear that Brad has some issues that involve territory. We saw when Joel was trying to bring stuff over, he had problems letting appliances that Joel owned be part of this. And it’s one thing for Joel not to want to bring his piano over. But when we learned that Joel has given up the idea of having kids – something he’s wanted since we met him – we were as stunned as Sam was when she heard it. Perhaps it might have something to do with how the women in Brad’s church – which Joel left but Brad is still a part of – have a bizarre relationship with the two of them. Do they view the two as their token gay couple as Sam suggested? I suspect the show will deal with in the final episodes.

Sam, at the moment, has other problems, not the least of which is the state of her finances. The last scene of the episode showed her bank balance and it’s the kind of thing that really makes you realize how close to the poverty she is. The viewer has other concerns for Sam in the final season. Will she find love herself? Will she find happiness? Will the people around her find those things? These may seem to be minor concerns compared with the struggles we’ve seen at the Arconia or whether Deb gets the job in Late Night but Somebody Somewhere has always been the kind of show where the stakes have always been very low. That’s part of the reason fans like me have loved it the way we have for the past three years: we’re not worried about some ridiculous power struggle or the success of Pied Piper but the smaller, more realistic struggles that most of us have to deal with in our lives. For people like Sam and Joel, the small stuff is what they have to sweat and we laugh with them as they find their ways around it.

Somebody Somewhere has always had a tone that been closer to wistful than anything else with the kind of gentleness that are considered the hallmark of middle-America but which the far left looks down on and the far right tends to exploit for political gain. Everett and her cast have shown that, despite what some people say, there’s nothing really the matter with Kansas.

I will be sad to say goodbye to this show but I have one last hope. When Reservation Dogs ended its run last year the Emmys rewarded it by nominating it for Best Comedy and four other nominations after two years of ignoring it, despite the fact that they had been nominated for multiple awards, including the Peabody. Similarly the Emmys have basically ignored Somebody Somewhere for the past two years, while other awards show have shown in love – including the Peabody. Both of these shows, coincidentally, were set in Middle America. Perhaps the Emmys could bestow some laurels on Sam and her crew in Kansas. That would be…nice.

My score: 5 stars.

Saturday Night Live, 50 Years of Groundbreaking Political Satire, Introduction

 

 

Almost from the moment it debuted in 1975 Saturday Night Live has been breaking ground in political comedy. And for nearly as long it has been subject to immense attack from commentators from both sides of the aisle.

With the rise of Fox News and partisan politics it has been mostly a target of Republicans and the right wing, particularly since Donald Trump has become the de facto mouthpiece of the GOP. What might come as a shock to younger viewers is that for far longer, it has been a target of critique from the most strident left-wingers who frequently hold it to the standard that it somehow is not going hard enough in its approach to Republicans. I found examples of this in a book on comedy written in 1983 which argued that Saturday Night Live was not merely overrated but a failure in part because, in the author’s opinion, it had not gone hard enough after then President Reagan.

Not only is denying SNL’s approach to Reagan – in a later article I intend to show just how hard the show went after Reagan almost from the start of his Presidency to the end  - but it shows a problem the left frequently sees in regards to society. It seems to be arguing that the right portrayal of Reagan on a late-night sketch comedy show had greater political influence than journalism, Congress or the voter. And this view is reflecting currently when it comes to how current progressive publications look at SNL’s approach to Donald Trump today. It is a bizarre amalgam of the argument that their approach to satirizing Trump has failed because it either normalizes him in the public eye or hasn’t done enough to make it clear what a danger he is to the entire world. This is an immense burden to put on anybody, and it’s a ludicrous one to put on a late-night comedy show even one that’s been on the air as long as SNL has.

There is a huge disconnect between both sides as to the purpose of SNL’s political parodies of which it remains superbly gifted after fifty years: it is essentially to satirize those in power by point out their flaws for the purpose of humor first and only after that to make a larger statement. That statement is to be left in the mind of the viewer to realize. Saturday Night Live has never had any power, either now or at its inception, to influence the electorate. And those who want to point out the occasions it has – Chevy Chase’s impersonation of Gerald Ford, Tina Fey’s of Sarah Palin – give too much credit to SNL for that and not nearly enough to numerous outside factors. Entertainment’s job is to reflect the mood of the public and there is no evidence that it can do anything to shift the electorate’s opinion. If that was the case after Will Ferrell did his humiliating impression of W in 2000, Al Gore would have won in a landslide and we know that didn’t happen.

What Saturday Night Live has done – extensively and frequently brilliantly – is point out the flaws in our political discourse and political figures well enough to make us laugh hysterically. At the process, at the people and ourselves for voting them in. Its approach to political humor has changed slightly with the times but, when one looks it over the course of its run, not really that much. What has changed is how America views politics, the role of the 24 hour news network and the increasingly ridiculous nature of so much of our politics. And in the last decade there has also been increasing pressure from both sides that political comedy is doing America a disservice, with one side arguing it’s not treating politicians with any respect and the other arguing, just as loudly, that’s its not doing nearly enough to tell America how much danger its in from the other side.  Lorne Michaels himself has acknowledged that its much harder to be funny these days, particularly when so many people on either side truly seem to argue that politics is too important to be mocked.

That is, for the record, exactly why SNL is important today as it was when it debuted not that long after Watergate. No matter how dark the times are we have to be able to laugh at ourselves and the world around us. Some would argue that it’s a luxury we can’t afford; I’d argue it’s a necessity that we can’t reject. One of the tenets of America is the right to free speech and that includes the ability to mock those in power. If people have a problem with that I’d argue that the problem is with them.

I have spent the better part of a quarter of a century watching Saturday Night Live. And as I’ve mentioned in previous articles I have also watched an immense amount of SNL in syndication from the 1980s up until the 1990s when I began more or less watching it constantly. Given that, as well as my extensive knowledge on American history I believe that I have a better qualification to talk about the kind of political humor that SNL has done over the last half-century.

What this series will do is look at how, over the years, many of the greatest comedians on SNL have caricatured and parodies the political figures that have dominated the last fifty years. These include not only the Presidents who have served during that period but also many of the major political figures, some of whom ran for President, some of whom were in the background. It will also look at how the approached changed over the course of time, including in regard to many of those major figures. And it will look at how the show approached Donald Trump – though in this case I intend to focus on the period before he entered politics and not after, mainly because that part has already been extensively covered.

I hope to show that Saturday Night Live hasn’t changed in 50 years in its approach to politics: it’s still doing variations on what it did from the moment Chevy Chase started tripping when he portrayed Gerald Ford. However, I don’t think it has a moral obligation to change its approach at all; if anything it has  a far greater one to do exactly what its been doing for fifty years: keep pissing off the people in authority by making them look like idiots. And I actually think a good way to start show this is to show something that has been a constant throughout its entire run: showing that the political figures (with one glaring exception) have been good sports about it.

 

In the cold open of one first season episode we saw a performance of ‘The Dead String Quartet’. Four cast members were shown propped up at their instruments. Slowly but surely they began to fall over, producing a random chord. The final person to be knocked over was Chevy Chase, who fell off the stage. Just as he opened his mouth, the show cut to footage of Gerald Ford who said: “Live from New York, its Saturday Night!”

This might have been the first real indication of SNL’s place in the cultural Zeitgeist: the President that the show had been mocking since its premiere appeared on film to open it. More importantly it began a trend that SNL has continued ever since: major political figures showing up on the show not so much to entertain (they’ve only been sporadically good at it) but to show they’re fine with being mocked.

As George W. Bush has said recently he never took any of the impersonations that Will Ferrell or his successors did personally. “When you’re in public office, you have to accept that being laughed at comes with the territory.” That’s part and parcel with campaign even before television became part of it; you have to show you’re a human being and there are few better ways to do so then to show you can take a joke.

This happened sporadically during the first few years after Lorne Michaels left the show in 1980. Some elected officials began to host the show. Ed Koch famously did so in 1983 (his monologue where he compares Ronald Reagan to himself is one of the show’s highlights from the decade) and George McGovern and Jesse Jackson did in the lead up to the 1984 election. Jackson came off the best, mainly because he didn’t try to be funny and let the writers do it for him. This may have been clearest after his opening monologue when he left the stage and headed into the broadcast booth. Just before he got there, a warning signal went out, all of the technical people left – and were replaced by African-Americans. The audience laughed and applauded because even in 1984 it was very clear that you didn’t want to get Jesse Jackson upset about racial disparity anywhere.

It's not clear what Reagan thought of the satires on him but his son clearly enjoyed it. One of the highlights in the shows history came when Ron Reagan, Jr. hosted the show. In one of the best cold opens of all time, Ron talks to his parents who are away at Camp David and want to make sure everything goes well at the White House while their son is there. The segment then cuts to Ron Junior, decked out like Tom Cruise in Risky Business and cavorting around the White House to ‘That Old Time Rock and Roll.”

Political cameos were rare in the next decade, though there was a priceless one when Paul Simon, a regular host of the show since its founding came back, appeared on the show In December of 1987. He came out – and there was Paul Simon of Illinois, who at the time was campaigning for President. Simon the Senator was known for his stiffness on the campaign trail, so the two men’s interaction showed both at a comic highlight as the two explained how frequently they got mistaken for each other. “That explains why so many people were disappointed when I showed up at Ames last winter,” Simon the entertainer said.

It’s telling that during the 1990s both of the major Republican nominees for President, George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, not only seemed fine with the mockery they were undergoing on SNL but were more than willing to play along. When Dana Carvey came back to the host the show in 1995, George Bush Senior showed up in a filmed segment. “Now there’s a lot of things I could say about Dana Carvey. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent,” he said openly mocking Carvey’s constant catch phrases -which Bush never used. Dole took a step further appearing on SNL after losing the Presidency in 1996 and talking with Norm MacDonald the man who’d impersonated him for nearly two years. “I have to tell you, I never go around saying: “Bob Doles this’ or Bob Dole that,” he told MacDonald. “It’s not just something Bob Dole does.” After that laughter died down, he took a step further. “The thing is Norm; you’re just doing a poorer version of Dan Aykroyd’s impersonation of me. I know it, you know it, and the American people,” echoing Aykroyd’s catchphrase over the better part of years of cameos. Both of these, it should be said, went over far better than the decision to let Steve Forbes host in 1996, where he truly bombed.

 A highpoint came when Al Gore hosted in 2002. Gore, known for his stiffness on the campaign trail, was hysterical from beginning to end. There were two highlights: Gore in a filmed segment on the set of The West Wing with much of the cast, perching himself on the set of the Oval Office and refusing to leave when the shooting was done. “Well, he did win the popular vote,” Bradley Whitford said. Just as funny was Al Franken returning as Stuart Smalley (he had not yet entered politics) and having a session with ‘Al and Tipper G. John McCain actually hosted the show the following year and was willing to parody John Ashcroft on Hardball. “We’re investigating Shaquille O’Neal,” he told Darrell Hammond as Chris Matthews. “We understand he played a genie in Kazaam!” It’s telling that even after Tina Fey’s torching of Sarah Palin in 2008, he was willing to appear on the episode just prior to election day, preparing to move into his second career in home shopping. (One of the products he was offering: ‘McCain’s Fine Gold!”)

By that time, of course, both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama had made cameos on SNL during the 2008 Democratic primary. Other politicians showed up to mock themselves (David Patterson showed up to taunt Fred Armisen’s parody of him) and just before the New Hampshire primary in 2012 Jon Huntsman showed up on Weekend Update to talk about his campaign and asked Seth if he was registered in New Hampshire. All of which is to say that when Donald Trump was invited to host in the early fall of 2015, a decision that has been criticized at the time and that the cast members regret now, the show was doing nothing it hadn’t done over the past forty years. Saturday Night Live had a long and glorious history of invited actors and figures they had spent years mocking and as anyone who’d watched the show knows Trump had been mocked by the show for decades even before he’d started hosting The Apprentice. There was nothing radical or wrong about their action and they certainly did nothing to ‘normalize’ him in the minds of the public. (As I shall relate in a later article while the show found it hard to satirize Trump, they were accurate in many critical facets of his personality long before he got into politics.) The only difference was, of course, that Trump had no sense of humor and couldn’t take a joke.

What was likely more significant was that, after Trump hosted the show real-life elected Republicans have refused to cameo on SNL. Democratic candidates have been more than willing to do so  -Bernie Sanders showed up to appear alongside Larry David, Elizabeth Warren showed up alongside Kate McKinnon’s portrayal of her, and Joe Biden gave a recording cameo. There’s an argument a major sea change occurred in February of this year when Ayo Edebiri hosted the show.

The cold open featured Trump giving a town hall to women voters – and Nikki Haley was there questioning ‘Trump’. Haley was loose but willing to satirize herself and when Edebiri showed up to call her on her question about the cause of the Civil War, she gave an honest answer. The left excoriated SNL for giving Haley an audience. I’d argue it was the best thing not only for Haley but for future political discourse. For eight years the GOP has steadfastly refused to allow itself even the opportunity to be mocked on television. That Haley was willing to do so  - and took it in the spirit of those like Dole and Bush senior – actually gave me a glimmer of hope during what was increasingly a long and grim election year.

For obvious reasons the right is up in arms when last night Kamala Harris made a ‘surprise’ cameo on SNL alongside Maya Rudolph who has been impersonating her for five years. In my opinion the more interesting cameo came later that episode in one of the most on-point satiric political sketches SNL has done in years.

John Mulaney, who was hosting for the sixth time and who was a writer on the show for years previous, has always been one of the great talents to appear on the show during the last decade. I can’t say how much he participates in the writing process each time he returns but I suspect given the patterns that occur with his hosting (last night we saw what was the fifth Broadway satire of a quintessential New York Institution that comes with each Mulaney appearance) I expect he is welcome. Which makes me sure he wrote the sketch that I’m talking about.

In what his second guest host appearance in 2018 there was a brilliant sketch called ‘What’s Their Name?” in which Mulaney played a contestant who couldn’t recognize people he knew at work or had met on multiple occasions. Last night we saw ‘What’s My Name: Election Edition” Mulaney was again a contestant and Michael Longfellow took over the job of hosting. (I don’t know why Bill Hader wasn’t there but the show didn’t need him.”

Mulaney was playing the role of a white progressive who identified major political figures including Jack Smith. “You sound passionate about this,” Longfellow said. “This is the most important election in my lifetime,” Mulaney said with the solemnity of a progressive. “Democracy is on the line.”

Longfellow then said: “For $300,000, let’s her it from the man himself.” And out came Tim Kaine. “I was Hilary’s running mate in 2016.” Kaine said. “You know, in the most important election in my lifetime when democracy was on the line. What’s my name?” Mulaney’s face quivered with indecision. “Um, Tim Walz,” Buzzer. “Come on, it was eight years ago. That’s less than one Zootopia.” Kaine said. “Not only does he look like Tim Walz but his first name is Tim,” Longfellow said. “We’ll give you three choices. Tim Clinton, Tim Tim or Tim Scott.” Mulaney: “The first two sound  don’t real. Tim Tim!” “No, it’s Tim Scott.”

Kaine erupted. “I’m Tim Kaine.” “Sure you are.” Longfellow said. “I’m a Senator for Virginia. “Good for you,” Longfellow said as Kaine walked off in a huff.

The entire sketch is an instant classic but the part that drove it home was that when offered ten million dollars Kaine came back out – and Mulaney still couldn’t remember his name.

I don’t think this sketch will receive nearly the attention that Harris’s appearance will, regardless of the result of the election. But I’d argue it’s by far the most on-brand and accurate sketch SNL has done about the election. It skewers so many of the targets that are vital, the far left’s Trump derangement syndrome – particularly white progressives – their selective outrage and most importantly, their short memories particularly in regard to their causes. And most importantly, in the appearance of Kaine’s mocking everything that the Democrats have been holding dear for the last eight years – including his role in it -  shows a sign of self-awareness that viewers and indeed the rest of the political media and all around it might do well to keep in mind when they discuss how disastrous the results will be for the election regardless of who wins. The fact that I know that both sides are going to focus on the cold open rather than Mulaney’s sketch won’t surprise me in the least – anymore than it will anyone on SNL.

How Great Directors Have Left Their Mark on Batman, Introduction

 

Over the years my readers know that I’ve never truly liked the majority of comic book films I’ve seen. There are many reasons for this, some of which are personal to me but there’s one that as a critic that has only recently occurred to me.

When Martin Scorsese stated that Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t filmmaking he was excoriating by comic books fans. There are some who actually blame the decline of films since the last Avengers film on that which is ludicrous in many ways, not the least of which is I just can’t believe that there’s much overlap between the audiences of The Irishman and Ant-Man Quantumania.

The thing is Scorsese was right in what he considers the element of cinema and it’s not even something that dozens of other critics or indeed even fans of the movies haven’t said over the years. And it’s not the argument that these movies are formulaic: anyone who seen the last two films in Mad Max knows that there’s much to be seen in formula if its executed well. No the problem Scorsese has – and I doubt even the most sympathetic fan of comic book movies can argue – is that for every single movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they could just as easily have been directed by anyone for all the imprint they left on them.

Frankly no one should have been shocked that Chloe Zhao was not able to make any impression of the work she’d done in Nomadland on Shang-Chi. There was nothing of the man who’d directed so many Shakespearean masterpieces in Kenneth Branagh’s direction of Thor and none of the nuance he showed in Belfast. Ryan Coogler is a brilliant director and I don’t deny the significance of Black Panther but there was nothing of the subtlety of Fruitvale Station or the emotional intensity of Creed. And whatever imprint Joss Whedon made on The Avengers was solely because of the writing; when it came to directing I saw neither the subtlety in Much Ado About Nothing or the splashy fun of Cabin in the Woods.

And this has been true of comic book characters that are directly connected to the MCU, at least not yet. Sam Raimi’s three Spider-Man movies are all brilliant exercises in styles but they are tonal outliers compared to every other film he did before and since. Indeed, there’s an argument that in his low-budget movie Darkman (a film, in hindsight, that was nearly a quarter-century ahead of its time) is not only far more a Sam Raimi film than any of the Spiderman films but honestly a better superhero film in principle and execution. (It did inspire two straight to video sequels in the 1990s.) Marc Webb is a brilliant comic director and writer but was there anything of the person who gave us 500 Days of Summer in either Amazing Spider-Man film?

This happens less frequently in DC movies over the years. Richard Donner was able to leave his mark on the first two Superman films and even I can’t deny Zach Snyder does have a talent for this even if I don’t agree with his results. But for all the success of Wonder Woman if you didn’t know Patty Jenkins directed it, would you have known? I’ll grant you the majority of Jenkins’s work, aside from Monster has been in television but I’ve seen some of her work, particularly the undervalued limited series I Am The Night which in her two episode has more subtlety and flair than either of her movies for DC.  As for the other movies in the DC Universe, tell me seriously if I’d told you the same man who directed The Conjuring and Insidious also directed Aquaman and you didn’t already know that, would you have known? I didn’t until just now.

This is not, for the record, something that happens with other movies in other franchises. Denis Villeneuve left an imprint in Blade Runner:2049 which I did recognize while it was similar to Ridley Scott’s original. Scott has a different version for Alien then James Cameron did and both worked to a different extent and the most recent trilogy of Halloween films – especially the first – did allow for styles that I recognized of David Gordon Green that was both different from and similar to John Carpenter’s original. It’s even true for directors who take on completely different franchises and have worked in the MCU: Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot mysteries are Branagh films in a way Thor isn’t even though he directed them. Even the most recent James Bond films have allowed for some great directorial creativity -  Skyfall is considered one of the greatest Bond films ever made and that’s in large because Sam Mendes, who is a visionary director of the form was allowed free reign.

Only the comic book is so formulaic in not only its basic structure but what it can reliably tell in its plots that there is no room for any vision at all on the part of the director. This was, as I’ve said before, particularly true in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when the only real job of almost every film that wasn’t an Avengers movie, was to go in a set path with no real variation. Consequently the films might as well have been directed by anybody at all. And this has been the biggest problem with almost every single comic book franchise in history.

With one critical exception.

From the moment that Tim Burton unleashed the first Batman film on us thirty-five years ago directors have been able to do let their vision be freed on the big screen regardless of the formula of the comic book. It doesn’t make them all masterpieces by any means, quite a few of the films then and now have failed critically and financially.

But the difference between, say, the failure of Batman & Robin and Shazam: Fury of the Gods is radically different. Batman & Robin is no doubt the worst movie not just in the history of comic books (though I’m not convinced it’s as horrible as so many believe) but there’s imagination and fun in it. There’s a director who is devoted to a vision, however ludicrous or deeply flawed it may be, and is willing to let it fail on that merits. You can say many things about this film (and even the people who starred in it have). But it’s bad because it’s a horrible idea and badly executed. Fury of the Gods is a bad film because its unoriginal, formulaic and not even bothering to be that interesting. It’s dull, which is the worst thing you can call any film. Batman & Robin might no doubt fall into the so bad its almost good category, no one will say that of Eternals.

I think there are two reasons that, in my opinion, the Batman franchise has allowed filmmakers for more creativity in the majority of the films I’ve seen over the year. The first is probably how Batman, of course, isn’t a superhero the way other comic book characters are and that makes his problems different in the way that the rest of the characters in the world of comics, DC, Marvel or what have you. It may have strained credulity to many that Lois Lande never realized Clark Kent was Superman because he was wearing glasses, but each time he came back after mysteriously disappeared, he didn’t have a black eye or mysterious bruises to explain along with his absence.

Bruce Wayne is, as was actually said in one film, just a man in a cape. He has immense resources, great physical ability and though it’s rarely seen in the films so far, a great deductive mind. What he doesn’t have is the ability for bullets to bounce off his skin, magic bracelets or super-healing powers. If you cut him, he will bleed. The reason for the raspy voice and the mask is not just to disguise his identity but because it makes him seem inhuman when as we all know he isn’t.

There’s also the fact that while Batman has a rogue’s gallery of villains to face, they are all human. They may have the appearance of grotesqueries but they are costumed freaks the same way he is. Most comic books often argue the villains are variation on the heroes but considering that all of the villains are insane and Batman is fundamentally judged by the populace a different kind of threat, there is a presence of a morally gray area that you just don’t get in almost every other comic book. The best Batman films – like the best films overall – have us questioning how we see the world and there’s an ambiguity that we just can’t get with Captain America or Superman.

And that leads to the second reason for creativity that other franchises can’t or won’t allow: Batman is the darkest comic book franchise. I don’t mean in terms of lighting or camera work or even the nature of the villains: I mean that Batman, more than any other comic book character, is engaged in a war that everyone – save for himself -  knows is futile. The common enemy in every Batman film is an existential threat rather than a single man: crime. And well before Bob Kane even created the series our society knows that it is a war that can’t be won. The people around the Batman know this and its actually been said by numerous characters in individual movies. Usually Alfred is the one to say it but it’s been said by Selina Kyle and many of the villains themselves. Bruce Wayne is the only character in the movies who won’t admit it – and the best films not only show the personal cost to him but actually argue that he is himself is as crazy as the villains he chases because he won’t acknowledge it.

This can lead to the movies almost always being relentlessly grim but it also allows them to ask probing questions that few films, certainly not franchises of any kind, are inclined to ask. For that reason while several characters in comic books are increasingly archaic Batman has actually become more relevant as the years go by, not less. Almost every filmmaker who has helmed one or multiple Batman films is telling stories that are not merely about Batman against the villains he faced but about what it actually takes to wage these battles in the first place. The events of the 21^st century have, increasingly, been leading us to consider the questions that Batman has been facing indirectly for decades: how far are we willing to go to defeat our enemies? What is the point of morality when so many of the forces against us will not play by the same rules – or worse, use our own rules against us to their ends? Have we, in fact, been fighting the wrong kind of battles when it comes fighting crime in our cities? Batman, by even the most generous definition, is a vigilante who does his work outside the boundaries of the law, which means he predates the antihero theme that has dominated so much of the best of our popular culture in recent years. (There’s an argument that Joel Schumacher’s entries are the biggest failures not just because they don’t take Batman seriously but that they don’t take the battles he’s fighting seriously either.)

And over the years Batman himself has actually grown in the perception of filmmakers. In the first decade of films made about him Bruce Wayne was more or less secondary to the villains he fought and even Batman seemed like a ghost compared to them. As the 21^st century began, filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Matt Reeves have done much to make Bruce Wayne as significant as Batman and try to explain why he does what he does – something he is often loathe to explore. Interestingly the film that may have gotten closest to understanding Bruce Wayne’s psychology was the Lego version which while it is both a family movie and a satire, has a far more accurate interpretation as to the real reason why Batman is so devoted to saving Gotham – and why he’s ignoring the way he could move on.

I’ve found something of value in every Batman movie which is not something I find in most films in a franchise. Much of it is cinematic but far more of it is creative and intellectually. And I truly believe that it has to be because of the work of the directors who have, for better and (occasionally) worse are allowing to leave an imprint on Gotham in a way that directors just can’t in nearly any other comic book franchise.

In this series I intend to look in detail at all of the films to date that have taken place in the Batman universe. This will include both of Todd Philips Joker films as well as The Lego Batman Movie. Because this will be a chronology of films this series will not include the numerous TV series that take place in this world, either animated or live-action. I will likely be looking at Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond in my series on animated classics later on and there is a possibility that I will eventually include the recent HBO series The Penguin because it is directly tied to the Batman cinematic universe in a way that shows like Gotham aren’t.

My approach will be chronological but there will be certain limitations. Batman Vs. Superman will appear in the list but Justice League will not. And indeed the former will almost entirely be used to show not only Zack Snyder’s view of Batman is important but how his dealing with Superman shows how he views threats that are beyond the scope of what he is capable of. Similarly I don’t intend to look at any version of Harley Quinn (to my regret) but very well might look at Folie A Deux down the line because both Joker  films look at the world of Gotham and see Arthur Fleck’s struggle as a parallel of the one that Bruce Wayne faces – and perhaps more accurately shows how Wayne could have ended up in Arkham himself. Besides, there’s no better way to look an auteur than a musical version of Gotham.

Some of this, no doubt, has been covered before by writers on this very site. My version, as I mentioned, will look more at the role of the director and writer of the perception of Batman rather whether it is canon or even in terms of quality. Stephen King once had one of his characters say: “It is the tale, not he who tells it.” This is true for most franchise films. The Batman films are more likely standouts because more often then not, the latter is allowed to be true and we the viewer are the richer for it.