Commencing adventure.....NOW! Name: Levi Age: 30 Goals: Future teacher/part time comedic/monster actor for fun. Let's see what happens! I'm into Doctor Who, Homestuck, Welcome to Night Vale, Star Wars, RWBY, Ava's Demon, The Adventure Zone, My Hero Academia and golly, a whole lot of stuff! I write, cosplay, study nature, and act! Banner by takaratime.
I will say I do love when a show contains 300 different genres: Oscar and Roderick are in a workplace comedy, Daemon is a grizzled cop trying to solve a murder mystery, Alyn is on a plucky hero’s journey, Aegon is on the world’s worst road trip, Larys is being forced to PLAN the world’s worst road trip, Aemond and Alys are in a supernatural romance, Helaena is living the coming-of-age of a young autistic girl with a mother who doesn’t understand her, Baela is in a tragic romance, Hugh is in a different tragic romance, Ulf is TRYING to live in a lads’ comedy, Rhaenyra is again in a story about the pitfalls of being a woman in power, Daeron is in a family horror thriller, Jeyne Arryn is the Miranda Priestley of Westeros, Ormund is in Succession, Gwayne is in Hell.
David Ellison is promising Paramount-Warner Bros. will grant theater owners legally enforceable contracts to release 30 movies per year. But
Doesn't have the money to do this, Paramount's film slate has been doing really poorly since Ellison took over so even if they rushed out 15 movie each by each studio as the article says it might not even drawn an audience, and it also neither deals with the labour issues mentioned in the AGs' lawsuit nor how a combined Paramount/WBD would control a significant chunk of the US' cable programming (ie would still be a potential monopoly situation).
Pondering about it some, I wonder if Batman: Caped Crusader's Joker isn't just based visually on Conraid Veidt's character of Gwynplaine from the film the Man Who Laughs but also his character Cesare the Somnambulist (sleepwalker) from his earlier film 1920's German Expressionist film the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari.
Like the swept back hair is definitely Man Who Laughs, but the eye and lip make-up is very much Cesare. Plus this poster for the movie kinda makes the possible influence more explicit.
It's also worth noting that Gwynplaine in the context of his movie isn't actually a villain (who was born a British aristrocrat, but when his father fell out of favour with the ruling monarch Gwynplaine was disfigured and sold to people who put him in a wandering freak show, only for years later the new queen to call him back to give him his money and titles back... only due to his disfigurement he's constantly mocked, so he eventually runs away to go back to his blind girlfriend) while Cesare is... kinda?
Basically the plot of the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari is kind of several stacked narratives and unreliable narrators on top of each other, but within the main context of Cesare, it's about a hypnotist who uses a sleepwalker (Cesare), who he keeps in a box/coffin, to commit murders for him... under the pretence of maintaining a fortune-telling scam? The hypnotist essentially displaying Cesare saying that he can predict when people die, and then sending Cesare out to murder the people whose deaths he "predicted" to make his fortune come true.
In terms of motivation, as we don't really know anything about Caped Crusader's Joker's backstory (aside from his saying he used to be idealistic and "clever" like Batman before his "eyes were opened" so we can't really tell if either Gwynplaine or Cesare's circumstances inspired his start of darkness beyond their both being played by the same actor in all honesty.
Considering the intentionally nebulous time period that Caped Crusader is based (any time between 1930 and 1950, approximately, having both references to the Great Depression AND the post-Second World War creation of America's suburbs under the GI Bill among its two seasons) the Joker's cynicism and embrace of a wonky version of Friedrich Nietzsche's work could be due to his being a World War One veteran for all we know.
On a meta level, it would kind of interesting of the German Expressionist influences on this version of the Joker did include Veidt's work as Cesare as that kind of draws a line to another creator who was instrumental in the retooling the character for the 1990s and beyond: Tim Burton.
The aesthetic of works like the Cabinet of Dr Caligari have long been cited as influences in Burton's (increasingly self-referential) style in the design of his movies, with it being especially prominent in the film Batman Returns, which directly references Cabinet.... Likewise, Cesare's entire vibe ended up becoming the inspiration for the cliched male Burton protagonist (Edward Scissorhands, for example) also.
Additionally, Caped Crusader's spiritual predecessor Batman: the Animated Series was originally greenlit in the first place to ride the wave of hype created by Burton's original 1989 Batman film and its sequel, with those two films' 1940s aesthetic heavily influencing the design and costuming in BTAS.
So much like how Caped Crusader's version of the Riddler was inspired by the original 1940s gangster character that inspired the Frank Gorshin version of the character in the 1966 show, Caped Crusader riffing German Expressionist cinema likewise also circles around to being a reference to an earlier Batman production too?
It is notable that a lot of the key directors and writers that are credited as being responsible for defining Film Noir as a genre, (Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger and so on) were all largely Austrian and German creators who had to flee to Britain and America following the rise of the Nazis due to the Nazis.
Fritz Lang, for example, was believed to have been commenting on the rise of the Nazis in his 1931 film M (with the criminal underworld establishing their own separate vigilante court being a reference to the rise of mob rule in Germany) while his follow-up 1933's The Testament of Dr Mabuse being more explicitly about the Nazis' use of terror tactics.
With this context in mind, one could infer that the themes of alienation, paranoia, the experiences of living in a world where the corrupt have absolute power that are deeply engrained in even modern noir or neo-noir fiction are reflections of the feelings and experiences of these original artists who were forced into refugee status due to the rise of fascism back home.
On a similar note actor Conrad Veidt, whose depiction of the lead character in the film The Man Who Laughs was the original visual inspiration for both the Joker in the comics and also explicitly in Batman: Caped Crusader itself, was himself forced to flee Germany due to the Nazis wanting him to denounce his wife, who was Jewish. While working in Britain and the US, he campaigned as a committed anti-fascist, donated thousands to child victims of the Blitz in London, with his last screen appearance in his lifetime before passing away of a heart attack at age 50 being as an explicitly villainous Nazi in the film Casablanca.
Amusingly, for all the links and influences that film noir has had on Batman media over the years, Otto Preminger, an Austrian actor and director who started in Hollywood as one of the originators of the Film Noir genre before building a career making films about social topics the state wished to censor, such as drug addiction, pre-martial sex, homosexuality etc., actually has a direct tie to Batman himself.
Namely, he was one of the actors who portrayed Mr Freeze in the 1966 Batman show, which is stylistically the opposite end of the scale in terms of what Batman media his prior work may have influenced, albeit indirectly.
An incredibly long treatise on how much Riddler Caped Crusader sucks, sorry Zatanna followers.
Ah, Riddler Caped Crusader...
I have one main thought on him and it's that they took inspiration from the wrong main character from Casino.
First off, I know that the writers did an actual reference there and based him off Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death, a noir film Frank Gorshin was taking inspiration from for his Riddler portrayal in the 60s.
I don't really care. It's a neat reference, but a character needs to be more than just an in-joke if they get this much screentime. Joker is a good example. He's based off Conrad Veidt, he's a serious, grim Joker who smiles but hardly laughs-- but he still uses Joker gas. He likes endless nihilism, he's a sadist, he still feels like the Joker. A dour, noir Joker, but still the Joker.
Riddler?
Guy says one pineapple grenade joke and then goes back to shooting people. He's an idiot. He's not the Riddler. He's Black Mask in Riddler's clothes.
I'd like to compare this to the other Caped Crusader villains. Did they make Harley not a psychiatrist? No. Did they make Gentleman Ghost not rob people and not be a ghost? No. Did they make Penguin not a crime boss, even when they genderswapped her? No!
Why did Riddler get an entirely new personality and new job and lose his gimmick outright? If it was just one or the other it could even work (it's a thing in Caped Crusader to switch motives or personality) but the problem with Riddler is that they lost his gimmick too, the one thing all other antagonists kept.
It makes him feel empty, because without the cerebral mind games he's basically just a mobster movie archetype. The Nicky from Casino. The Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas. Tony Montana without the redeeming qualities. The hothead who feels invincible and dies because of his own hubris.
Which if you've seen any actual mobster movie, has probably been done better in anything else you've seen, because it's not crammed sporadically in ten episodes. And because those mobsters probably had more interesting dialogue, because they'd often get some wit. This Riddler? Zilch.
When Riddler is around, the mobsters have left Gotham. He's a post-supervillain arrival, he's not a Falcone. The Falcones are a shoe-in for mobster movie archetypes too, but they don't put Carmine Falcone in a lizard coat and say he's Killer Croc because that subverts your expectations!
There's just nothing to Riddler besides the mob archetype. How interesting is he as a character, by himself?... uh, he's stupid and evil and even more evil and so one-note that he just gets shot and dies in Episode 7 because Joker needed that extra screentime to do something actually interesting.
What makes him special? The fact that he'd kill all friends? The fact that he's brutal and rules his new empire on his own whims? That's... not a unique personality. That would probably be the same as Oswalda with more bullets, and Oswalda got her gimmick in her water emphasis, which set her apart from just being another mobster.
Taking away Riddler's gimmick isn't just removing a funny voice and 'Riddle me This!' scene, it's literally stripping him of anything to distinguish himself from just another goon with a gun.
What maddens me more is that he could still be a mobster, the idea of him being a mobster isn't bad, it's that they took the most boring way out of it! When I say they took the wrong inspiration from Casino, I mean he should be an Ace Rothstein, or to use a real-life (more real life, Casino is based on real life) example, Meyer Lansky.
If they wanted to do a Riddler, he should've been a numbers man, an organizer. A mobster who keeps the books running, the cash rolling in, and everything in tip-top shape in the pyramid.
He should be called the Riddler because he orders people 'riddled' with bullets, not because he is the one riddling people because that also makes Thorne look like a moron for putting him in any authority for longer than twelve seconds.
How much more into the gimmick would that be? Infinitely! He could get frustrated at Batman knocking down his pyramid of crime, then suddenly chomping at the bit to be more involved with 'the Bat' because he's finally got a match with his brains!
Mobsters aren't known for being smart! Mobsters are often people who go into crime because an actual, societally-benefitting job isn't in their interests!
No wonder a different version of the Riddler would be obsessed, because for once someone gets his obscure book references, for once he has someone who can pick up wordplay, because they didn't quit fifth grade to harass shopkeepers.
For once he has met someone in his line of work that has more than just a trigger finger, an actual brain, and a sharp one, an educated one!
It could be so great, but they just missed it entirely!
Said it perfectly really! Saw a video on YouTube yesterday about caped crusader riddler and he was getting praise, it did make me think that his whole inferiority thing wasn’t horrible but the key factor of Eddie is still missing. His intelligence and the value he puts on it. It’s his skill his one key, his ego is based on it cause it’s the one thing that can get him what he wants and the one thing no one else (besides Batman) can beat him at.
Without that you just have any prideful shmoe.
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