Sun Tzu Said That

Just wanna say I absolutely loved this episode and I hope Sam Richardson guests again.

Not gonna lie, I felt bad for Blake. He probably should have gone in with an actual question for the panel though.

Jurassic Park came out in 1993, LA was 96. So even less of an excuse for the SFX to be as cheesy as they are. Also can y'all discuss this paywall shit without throwing judgements at each other? You know, no insinuations that people are poors or immature or anything. I'm also in the arts and I get it, but we can talk about this without potshots.

Uggghhhhh, Paul, Jurassic Park's Ellie Sattler is a paleobotanist, not an archaeologist. Jeez.

So hot right now

Gobbless that man.

I personally am loving how Harley has visually been re-imagined for Suicide Squad. The character hasn't been around too long so we're bound to see more play in interpretation, especially in a post-Nolan universe. I just hope the movie's good.

You say that, but we just this week had one of the most popular Batman comics totally trashed by golden child Bruce Timm. Anything's possible.

God, yes. As disappointing as DC's offerings have been lately, I don't want them to fall so far out of favor that we stop getting to see these movies made at all.

Hey, ain't nothin wrong with framing art you like. As an illustrator it makes me happy when anyone cares that much. Just try to go for real glass and not plexiglass. It's worth it.

Oh sweet, is it Killing Joke time? Fair warning, I care way too much about this stuff. I'm only spoilering the brand new content. I found the first half hour of new material to be confusing at best and borderline upsetting at most. I don't understand why they basically presented I'm confused as to how that was greenlit at all. Also, As a major fan of Batman, the Joker, and one of the nerds who holds The Killing Joke near and dear to my heart, I am incredibly disappointed with a few points of the adaptation. First, while no one really expects any animated movie to live up to Bolland's drawings, it seems like little effort was made to offer the same emotional impact through framing or voice work. A good example of this comes during one of the flashbacks. For reference, this is how the book shows the man Joker was being told some incredibly terrible news: The movie's version has this entire conversation take place in the far background and focus is put onto two minor characters instead. The book gives three panels that tell so much. The movie has a brief, detached frowny face instead. The flashbacks are full of a lot of this strange shift in priority which ultimately drains a lot of the emotion out of the Joker's past. My second major issue is the handling of the final joke. The book provides many layers to what is on the surface a pretty simple scene. You see Joker slipping back into the sane man he once was. You see Batman, the guy with arguably the world's biggest stick up his ass, actually smile and laugh at something for once. You see interaction between these two polar opposite characters that ends ambiguously. The only thing the movie salvaged from this scene was the ambiguity of the ending. I would really love to know why that scene was deflated so much. The first thirty minutes is entirely newly minted, fresh-out-of-the-2010s material. The short scene after that shows Barbara becoming Oracle is also new. Unfortunate is a pretty good word for a lot of what they decided was appropriate for Batgirl.

It's also possible that his training was completed just fine, but the act of clouding minds puts considerable strain on the user. Shiwan just found a way to recharge his batteries. This would explain Lamont only using his abilities when absolutely necessary and relying on a disguise when he's The Shadow. The movie definitely gives you the impression that Shiwan is much more knowledgeable about these powers than Lamont is. It would be interesting if Lamont only survived the war due to his latent psychic abilities and had to watch every "normal" comrade around him dying in the course of battle. Wondering why you were the only one who never seemed to be shot, much less seen by the enemy while everyone else got mowed down is enough to make anyone run off to Tibet.

A secret this movie took with it to its grave.

The only way having a disguise makes sense at all is if it's too much exertion on Lamont to maintain his mind-clouding abilities for too long. After the opening fight as The Shadow, he looks worn out. That could have been from his powers or it could have been from beating up some gangsters in front of an innocent mat painting. If there was ever a mention of the toll his powers might take on Lamont, it would have helped explain why he was caught so ridiculously easy and might have actually given his fight scenes some real stakes and tension.

They are so similar, in fact, that someone drew comparisons between them years back. Considering that The Shadow was one of the inspirations for Batman and has even been sort of appropriated by the Batman universe as The Grey Ghost, I'm okay with this.