Speaker 1: Warning warning.
Speaker 2: Today's episode contains spoilers for Batman, The Cape Crusader and
Speaker 2: The Crow and oh Spooky Denizens of x ray Vision.
Speaker 2: My name is Rosie Knight, and welcome back to x
Speaker 2: ray Vision, the podcast where we dive deep into your
Speaker 2: favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture. Coming to you
Speaker 2: as always from iHeart Podcast, where we'll be bringing you
Speaker 2: two new episodes a week every Tuesday and Thursday, and
Speaker 2: sometimes you even get extra episodes. Aren't you lucky? But
Speaker 2: let's not waste any time. Jason is currently on top
Speaker 2: of the Gotham Police Department lighting up the back signal,
Speaker 2: and that means it's time to jump into the second
Speaker 2: half of Batman Cape Crusader. First, we're covering episode five,
Speaker 2: then hopping into the Batmobile to chat with Mark bernardin
Speaker 2: writer for episode six, Night Ride, and what an episode
Speaker 2: that was. And then we dive into the Batcave to
Speaker 2: discuss episodes seven to ten. Finally we watched The Crow
Speaker 2: and we have thoughts. They are not the same thoughts,
Speaker 2: they are divisive thoughts. But first, in the airlock, we're
Speaker 2: recapping episodes five to ten of The Cape Crusader with
Speaker 2: the help of Mark bernardin.
Speaker 3: And now we're stepping out of the airlock to talk
Speaker 3: about episodes five through ten of Batman Caped Crusader, The excellent,
Speaker 3: the truly excellent Batman shockingly good. Episode five. Let's start
Speaker 3: here with the of the debut of Harley Quinn in
Speaker 3: the Caped Crusader universe. I loved this episode. Mea loved
Speaker 3: the thing changed. I love the tweaks they made to
Speaker 3: her origin story and just awesome. What did you make
Speaker 3: of it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: The stress of her regard. Written by Haley Gross, directed
Speaker 2: by Matt Peters, This is maybe my favorite episode. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I do think that you know, we're
Speaker 2: gonna have Mark bernardin here talking about night Ride, which
Speaker 2: I do think is up there with fantastic episodes. But
Speaker 2: you know what, I love this representation of Harley. I
Speaker 2: love how cute see she is when she's doctor quins out.
Speaker 2: I love that she is in this kind of romantic
Speaker 2: entanglement trying to date Rename and Montoya, which is really funny,
Speaker 2: the idea of like the question and Harlequin dating. I
Speaker 2: also like the version of Harlequin here, who has you
Speaker 2: know gone rogue had her breaking point moment without the Joker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's an agency there, there's Yeah, it's she wasn't
Speaker 3: corrupted in this mm hm. You know, honestly a really
Speaker 3: terrible and toxic way. She is the person in the
Speaker 3: driver's seat behind her own personal mania and turned to
Speaker 3: the dark side. And I found it very, very compelling.
Speaker 3: And I found the connection between the alter ego and
Speaker 3: the ego Doctor Quinzel and Harley Quinn to be that
Speaker 3: much more engrossing.
Speaker 2: Because and also she gets to have an alter ego,
Speaker 2: Whereas when harle and Quinzel becomes Harley Quinn in you know,
Speaker 2: whether it's Batman animated series or whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: the comic books, that becomes all of her. Whereas here
Speaker 2: we do get that duality and that cheery, funny, curvey, hilarious,
Speaker 2: cheeky Harley is there in Harleen, but she's far more
Speaker 2: dark and kind of deranged as Harley Quinn. And what
Speaker 2: I really like, I think any great Batman villain is
Speaker 2: like a mirror for Batman.
Speaker 1: I've written a.
Speaker 2: Lot about how in Batman Returns, Like one of my
Speaker 2: favorite things is like, you know, the Penguin is essentially
Speaker 2: like what if Batman's family didn't love him. Like he's rich,
Speaker 2: he's a son of Gotham, but he doesn't have any
Speaker 2: love for his parents. His parents abandoned him. He grew
Speaker 2: up without the trappings of what Batman has. And I
Speaker 2: really like here that Harley Quinn's journey is essentially like
Speaker 2: she does the same thing as Batman. She's trying to
Speaker 2: fix Gotham.
Speaker 5: But she's doing it in this it's a lot worse way,
Speaker 5: like in this completely deranged, like cruel way, and it's
Speaker 5: almost like Gotham broke her the way Gotham broke Batman
Speaker 5: and made him who he is.
Speaker 2: We get to see that here with Harlene and this
Speaker 2: kind of awful kind of torture that she's putting these
Speaker 2: villains through. And as again, just as you know, this
Speaker 2: is the kind of stuff we love.
Speaker 1: I also love that they.
Speaker 2: Use this episode as a way to showcase all these
Speaker 2: really outrageous old Batman villains that you would see in
Speaker 2: like sixty six Batman, like you know, King Tut and
Speaker 2: stuff like that that you wouldn't usually get to see.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I just I think this is like such
Speaker 2: a great example of what this show does well.
Speaker 3: Next up, Night Ride written by Mark Bernardon, directed by
Speaker 3: Christopher Berkeley, and let's just go to our interview with
Speaker 3: the writer of this episode, Mark Bernardon.
Speaker 2: Mark Bernardin is a screenwriter whose work has appeared in Vox, Macina,
Speaker 2: Castle Rock, and Masters of the Universe, among them.
Speaker 1: Any More.
Speaker 2: He's here today to talk about Batman, the Cape Crusader,
Speaker 2: and if we're very nice, he might even tease a
Speaker 2: little bit about Eyes of Wakanda, the new Disney animated series.
Speaker 1: Is coming soon. But we'll see. We'll start with Batman.
Speaker 1: We'll start with Batman.
Speaker 6: Hell, I'm good, I will tell you everything about Eyes
Speaker 6: of Wakanda.
Speaker 4: I will tell you he.
Speaker 6: Like, what's what's Disney gonna do?
Speaker 3: Like, what's Marvel good? That they're really cash, They're very chill.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's fine. It's not coming out for another year
Speaker 6: or so.
Speaker 1: Just tell everybody, get people excited.
Speaker 6: What's the worst that could happen?
Speaker 3: Mark, what's your origin story with Batman?
Speaker 6: My origin story with Batman begins, as I imagine many
Speaker 6: old men's stories begin with the sixty six Batman with
Speaker 6: Adam West, the first time I've ever seen the character.
Speaker 6: You know, and and depending on your perspective, that is
Speaker 6: either the best way to meet Batman or the worst
Speaker 6: way to be Batman. I choose to believe it's the
Speaker 6: best way because it's a kids show for kids, and
Speaker 6: I was a kid, and it was bright and colorful
Speaker 6: and it moved and you know, And I've read those
Speaker 6: sort of reappreciations of Adam West as of late, like
Speaker 6: I think when he just when he passed, even before then,
Speaker 6: the level of commitment that he had to that bit
Speaker 6: is astonishing. Like he never breaks. He is always just
Speaker 6: right down the middle. He is always the fixed point
Speaker 6: in space and time around which the mania of Batman
Speaker 6: can revolve. And like that is not easy to do,
Speaker 6: to be a straight man with, you know, and do
Speaker 6: the batusi straight man is so hard to pull off,
Speaker 6: but he sticks the landing every time. And so like
Speaker 6: it was that when I was a kid, and then
Speaker 6: later it slowly came back around to the Dark Knight
Speaker 6: returns to Frank Miller's book, you know, and Frank it
Speaker 6: was Frank Miller really like that in Batman Year one, yeah,
Speaker 6: or my two sort of the twin poles of Batman
Speaker 6: for me, And then just became a fan and then
Speaker 6: just started buying the books every month, and then you know,
Speaker 6: like never went that far back but kept going forward.
Speaker 6: And then Batman the animated series happened, which I think
Speaker 6: blew everybody's minds wide open, like, wait, this is what
Speaker 6: I just saw this Burton movie and I thought that
Speaker 6: was cool, But what is this now? And I think
Speaker 6: that that was a huge paradigm shift in lots of
Speaker 6: people's appreciation for this character in a real way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then you know, jumping forward to Cape Crusader, was
Speaker 2: it Ed Brubaker who brought you onto the project?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like I'd known Ed for a while through comic
Speaker 6: book circles and comic book writing circles, and he'd been
Speaker 6: on the podcast that I do with Kevin Smith Fatman
Speaker 6: Beyond once or twice, and every now and again we
Speaker 6: would text each other and just commiserate about TV writing
Speaker 6: and sort of and Swan he just and he just
Speaker 6: like popped up on the text. He was like, hey, man,
Speaker 6: do you want to write an episode of Batman? Does
Speaker 6: it say less? Say less?
Speaker 1: Like that's it.
Speaker 6: I'm in all right, The answer is yes, regardless of
Speaker 6: what the rest of the information is, I will happily
Speaker 6: write an episode of Batman. He was like, well, you know,
Speaker 6: we had a writer's room, and the writer's rooms kind
Speaker 6: of disbanded, but we have these episodes and like Wreckers
Speaker 6: writing one, and like I'm writing one of course, and
Speaker 6: Bruce's and we'd love for you to come aboard and
Speaker 6: take one on. And I said yes, because again, you know,
Speaker 6: if somebody asked you if you're a god ray, you
Speaker 6: say yes. My default answer to somebody offering me a thing.
Speaker 6: And it was a phenomenal experience in that I've never
Speaker 6: written Batman before. You know, I've been working in comics
Speaker 6: for almost fifteen years twenty years at that point, and
Speaker 6: never gotten a chance to swing at Batman. But to
Speaker 6: get to write Bruce Tim's Batman, you know, to get
Speaker 6: to write Brue Baker's Batman, to get to dig under
Speaker 6: the hood of that character and that world and find
Speaker 6: the lines between. And it was always weird, even in Batman.
Speaker 6: The animals here is right, he's got a car and
Speaker 6: a cell phone, but there's dirigibles and you know, like
Speaker 6: where are we? When are we? This weird future noir thing,
Speaker 6: and like this was even more so. It's like this
Speaker 6: is definitely in like thirties and forties, you know, but
Speaker 6: again he's got a batmobile and again like he doesn't
Speaker 6: have a computer. He has to go to the library
Speaker 6: to do research, but he's still like all of the
Speaker 6: weirdness of that world took just a little bit of
Speaker 6: time to calibrate too. But I mean, nobody knows Batman
Speaker 6: like Bruce Tim knows Batman, and so to get notes
Speaker 6: from Bruce Tim on Batman was the height of surreality. Yeah,
Speaker 6: it really was. It was just it was, it was,
Speaker 6: you know, kid nerd stuff.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about your episode, the Wonderful night Ride, episode
Speaker 3: six in the first season. Wonderful, wonderfully spooky episode with
Speaker 3: a great antagonist who I love that his bit is
Speaker 3: just he hates poor people and that endures. How'd you
Speaker 3: end up with this episode?
Speaker 6: You know, I think it was I'm not going to
Speaker 6: say it was like random luck of the draw, but
Speaker 6: it was. I think they were specifically looking for somebody
Speaker 6: of color to handle this episode because I think getting
Speaker 6: the Lucius Fox stuff right, getting the pop and midnight
Speaker 6: stuff right, getting the kind of class warfare stuff right.
Speaker 6: They very much, you know, did not want it to
Speaker 6: be an episode about race, but it they were very
Speaker 6: much like, no, it's an episode about class, which in
Speaker 6: a big city also functions like an episode about race,
Speaker 6: because that just tends to be the way that breaks down.
Speaker 6: And so it was you know, figuring out, all right,
Speaker 6: how supernatural is he? Like is he a llegit ghost?
Speaker 6: Is he a guy pretending to be a ghost, Like
Speaker 6: how are we hiding the ball on the truth of it?
Speaker 6: You know, and just being in Batman's pov like he's
Speaker 6: investigating this thing. The audience should believe what Batman believes,
Speaker 6: you know. And then when Batman rounds that corner into
Speaker 6: like wait a minute, like I punched him and he
Speaker 6: wasn't there and my hand is cold, and this is
Speaker 6: not just a guy in a costume. This is not
Speaker 6: special effects. This is real, you know, like just figuring
Speaker 6: out how to round that story out in the season
Speaker 6: in that has no other.
Speaker 3: Supervis Yeah, yeah, very notable, Like how.
Speaker 6: To make that all play? And I think it was
Speaker 6: it was rooting it in Gotham story, in Gotham history.
Speaker 6: It was rooting it in sort of you know, Lucius's
Speaker 6: perspective on it, you know, and also having conversations about
Speaker 6: what do you do with all of your money? Bruce?
Speaker 6: Do you want to be involved in this charity thing.
Speaker 6: Do you want to like, what is what is the
Speaker 6: responsibility of the hyper rich in a city like this?
Speaker 6: And to whom are you responsible? And that getting to
Speaker 6: be the kind of spine of that story. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm not going to say it wrote quickly, because they
Speaker 6: never write quickly, but at least I kind of I
Speaker 6: knew kind of what it was. Yeah, and it got
Speaker 6: to mostly be a standalone, you know, other than some
Speaker 6: of the like Harvey Dent, you know, running for office
Speaker 6: stuff and the ruper Thorn stuff like the little connective
Speaker 6: tissue to the rest of the season. But otherwise it's
Speaker 6: just it's an episode of The X Files where you know,
Speaker 6: Bruce Wayne is trying to figure out what goes bump
Speaker 6: in the night.
Speaker 2: And you, I mean, you mentioned that you've written comics,
Speaker 2: you've worked in animation before, but on a project like
Speaker 2: this where you are working with masters like Bruce Tim
Speaker 2: and what was it like to write the episode and
Speaker 2: then start to see the art come back, get to
Speaker 2: see the finished animation from this unbelievable team, Like what
Speaker 2: was that experience?
Speaker 6: Like, I mean, the when they started showing me somebody
Speaker 6: even the character design work, like writing is always in
Speaker 6: a bit of a vacuum, yeah, where you're just like,
Speaker 6: I'm putting these words on a page and hopefully they
Speaker 6: will become a thing that functions as drama. And so
Speaker 6: it's always abstract until it isn't, you know. And it's
Speaker 6: very much like the process with comics, where it's like
Speaker 6: I wrote this thing, and I think, and then somebody
Speaker 6: starts drawing it, and like the minute you begin to
Speaker 6: get you know, those finished pages in even pencils, even
Speaker 6: inks like it suddenly it's real in a way that
Speaker 6: it wasn't, you know, getting character design stuff, you know,
Speaker 6: to look at animatics, getting to like all of it
Speaker 6: just begins to claw its way into reality and leaves
Speaker 6: and bounds because animation takes forever to do so it
Speaker 6: can be months between like getting in any information to like,
Speaker 6: oh there it is. Oh that's that's cool. Oh they
Speaker 6: kept that, Like that's always fun. But the craziest part
Speaker 6: of it was that And I don't know if this
Speaker 6: is telling tales out of school or not, but when
Speaker 6: Bruce Tim gives notes, he's he has your script, he's
Speaker 6: printed it out, he's writing his notes in a red
Speaker 6: magic marker. And then he's drawing things in the margins.
Speaker 6: It's like this scene should look like this, and he'll
Speaker 6: draw like the train sequence, you know, or at least
Speaker 6: you're like, here's what the inside of the train should
Speaker 6: look like, Here's what the sort of courtroom scene should
Speaker 6: look like, here's what this thing should be and just
Speaker 6: to have like Bruce tim drawings in the margins was
Speaker 6: the like that was the giddiest part. Was like he
Speaker 6: actually read it and it was it moved him to
Speaker 6: draw thing. Yeah, that's that's Banana's I still am trying
Speaker 6: to get in to give me the actual physical hard
Speaker 6: copy of those notes. I bet he refuses to come on,
Speaker 6: come on, you know what I want. I'm not gonna
Speaker 6: sell an eBay, like, I just want to have it just.
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Speaker 3: The thing I love about this episode is, and you
Speaker 3: mentioned it being like a standalone is Bruce gets challenged
Speaker 3: in a way that kind of doesn't really happen in
Speaker 3: the rest of the series. Both on to your point,
Speaker 3: what he's doing with his money, and then the fact
Speaker 3: that his very can perception of what reality is is
Speaker 3: directly challenged in this episode. How did you balance like
Speaker 3: all that stuff, because you know, of course Bruce and
Speaker 3: Batman are such grounded characters, and now all of a
Speaker 3: sudden he's coming up against something that completely upends his
Speaker 3: idea of what the world is.
Speaker 6: Like the way they described Bruce and Batman to me
Speaker 6: was a bit like mister Spock, you know, like his
Speaker 6: his level of oddness, his level of like relying on logic,
Speaker 6: Like he wasn't quite on the spectrum, but he was
Speaker 6: definitely a little to the left of typical, you know,
Speaker 6: definitely neurodiversion in some way. And so the idea that,
Speaker 6: like mister Spock, when confronted with the impossible, still begins
Speaker 6: to absorb it and push through it and just get
Speaker 6: the job done. And so like, this was never a
Speaker 6: thing that was going to alter Bruce's or Batman's worldview.
Speaker 6: This was just a this is a weird blip, This
Speaker 6: is not the job. Like, I don't have to investigate
Speaker 6: how are there suddenly ghosts in the world. I just
Speaker 6: need to know what how to solve this particular issue.
Speaker 6: So it was never like we're going to shake him
Speaker 6: to his core with the existence of you know, paranormal.
Speaker 6: It was more he will take this information on board
Speaker 6: processes and use it to solve the problem in hand,
Speaker 6: which made it an easier dramatic problem to solve because
Speaker 6: if I suddenly have to have a Batman who's like,
Speaker 6: oh my god, everybody's dead. There's ghosts everywhere, like can
Speaker 6: I find my parents or my parents?
Speaker 1: Oh my god?
Speaker 6: Like that is a huge can of worms that nobody
Speaker 6: wants to open. So yeah, keep him on rails, keep
Speaker 6: him on task.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you did a great job with that.
Speaker 1: I think a lot about this episode.
Speaker 2: When the Gentleman goes goes through the wall and then
Speaker 2: Batman's like grasping at the bits left behind.
Speaker 6: What is this?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I think I think you really did that.
Speaker 2: So when you're approaching something like this right where the
Speaker 2: the KP Crusoder is a totally new kind of vision
Speaker 2: for Gotham, but you're taking on a character like the
Speaker 2: Gentleman Ghost who's from like the four E's from a
Speaker 2: flash comic Flash Aea, Joe Cuba, Robert Canada, Like these
Speaker 2: are big things. Did you go back and look at
Speaker 2: those things, or are you just like this is a
Speaker 2: new space, Like what can I do with this character?
Speaker 6: It was very much like a new version of an
Speaker 6: old character, and most of what had been part of
Speaker 6: that initial creation didn't apply anymore. Yeah, you know, so
Speaker 6: it was it was very much like, here's a new guy.
Speaker 6: Here's what he wants, you know, here's the obstacle to
Speaker 6: get in what he wants, you know, Like the for
Speaker 6: the longest time, it was what does he need money for?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a ghost.
Speaker 6: He's a ghost. He can't actually carry it with him, Like,
Speaker 6: so what does he need this money for? And and
Speaker 6: so figuring out like what his big issues were, what
Speaker 6: was his conflict, what was what was the thing driving him?
Speaker 6: And it was just like Gotham has turned into a sesspool,
Speaker 6: Like why all of these people who shouldn't be here,
Speaker 6: you know, we're giving them too much that we were
Speaker 6: handing out too many things, like I just need to
Speaker 6: find a way to balance the scales in favor of
Speaker 6: the aristocracy, and like that became the overriding character want
Speaker 6: and the only stuff that maintained with his backstory was
Speaker 6: the stuff that fed into that, you know, So like
Speaker 6: all right, so he's gonna be, you know, part of
Speaker 6: the Gotham like five founding families or whatever. But like
Speaker 6: the one that nobody liked, the one who was like
Speaker 6: they all got together like the Founder's club, and he
Speaker 6: was the one who sat in the corner. Yeah, it's
Speaker 6: like settle down, bro, Like, not about that life anymore.
Speaker 6: It's the new world. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, like, if you're getting all this money, guess how
Speaker 2: you could make people's lives bad. Just give them the money,
Speaker 2: all the poor people often that would actually help, which
Speaker 2: I think I think is a great that's a really great
Speaker 2: kind of mirror to the Batman question that we all
Speaker 2: always have, Yeah.
Speaker 6: That we all always have, which is, hey man, you
Speaker 6: know what Gotham really needs infrastructure, you know, like great schools,
Speaker 6: you know, maybe after school programs, you know what. It
Speaker 6: doesn't really need punching crime in the face.
Speaker 1: That's for you, that's what you need.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like you do that because you just like it.
Speaker 6: It's not actually helping Gotham very much, you know, which
Speaker 6: is what Alfred says in the movies, which is like
Speaker 6: it's an arms race, Like you know, you show up
Speaker 6: and suddenly there's a guy in a mask and then
Speaker 6: it invites conflict. It's a vision speech right from Infinity War.
Speaker 6: It's like power in fights. Conflict invites challenge, creates chaos.
Speaker 6: It's like, Man, if you just stay Bruce, Wayne and
Speaker 6: invested in Gotham, this probably would be a better place.
Speaker 3: Tell us about breaking this story. How much of the
Speaker 3: arc of the season was in place when you came
Speaker 3: to the project.
Speaker 6: I think they knew. They knew very much what the
Speaker 6: you know, they knew where we're starting, they knew where
Speaker 6: it was ending. You know, they knew all of the episodes.
Speaker 6: They wanted to tell that story. And so when I
Speaker 6: signed on, like they sent me about a page a
Speaker 6: page and a half of like here's kind of what
Speaker 6: this episode is. It didn't have all of the beats
Speaker 6: worked out, or didn't have all of the logic stuff,
Speaker 6: Like again we had to figure out what does he
Speaker 6: want with money? Was not a problem that had been
Speaker 6: solved in the writer's room. But and then they told
Speaker 6: me like, yeah, you're gonna have Pop a Midnight Like
Speaker 6: you know, it's going on his clue path to solving it.
Speaker 6: We can incorporate this character. I was like, we're doing
Speaker 6: popa Midnight? Bat man like, Okay, all right, I see you.
Speaker 6: Let's let's go, you know, And so then it became
Speaker 6: an extraction process. It became like here's the page in half,
Speaker 6: Let's blow that up into six pages. Let's blow that
Speaker 6: up then into fifteen pages, let's blow that up into
Speaker 6: thirty pages. And with each subsequent pass, you're just adding
Speaker 6: more detail, You're adding more character, you're adding more conflict,
Speaker 6: you know, like they knew they wanted a horse on
Speaker 6: a subway car, you know, cool, like how do we
Speaker 6: get there to how do we do it? Like, you know,
Speaker 6: we knew we wanted some kind of heist in the beginning,
Speaker 6: but we weren't entirely sure who was stealing. We knew
Speaker 6: the gentleman Ghost is going to be stealing a thing,
Speaker 6: we didn't know if he was robbing other criminals, if
Speaker 6: he was robbing whatever, Like let's make it a charities thing.
Speaker 6: Like all of that just sort of came out in
Speaker 6: the writing. But you know, the the idea of the
Speaker 6: gentleman ghost as a classist was there for the job that,
Speaker 6: you know, and so just and figuring out ways to
Speaker 6: amplify that story and figure out ways to make Lucius
Speaker 6: be both a victim and have agency, you know, for
Speaker 6: him not to sort of be be diminished in the
Speaker 6: presence of the gentleman ghost. You know, it's like the
Speaker 6: men the ghost shows up like up go as dukes
Speaker 6: in a proper like nineteen forties your dukes, the Marquis
Speaker 6: of Queensberry rules, Let's.
Speaker 1: Go for you when it comes.
Speaker 2: Something that I think was really really cool about this
Speaker 2: show and definitely something me and Joelle have talked about
Speaker 2: a lot, is like this does move away from kind
Speaker 2: of the way that bodies were drawn in Batman. That
Speaker 2: animated series had this very specific look that we still
Speaker 2: see on the incredible action figures that they do.
Speaker 1: It's kind of this inverted triangle look.
Speaker 2: No matter who you are, you're an inverted triangle, and
Speaker 2: it's so powerful and striking. But in Kate Crusader we
Speaker 2: get some real body diversity. There are all different kinds
Speaker 2: of bodies, there are all different kinds of characters. You're
Speaker 2: someone who's fought to make stories more inclusive and stuff.
Speaker 2: What was it like to come to a project that
Speaker 2: was already naturally doing that and thinking about things like
Speaker 2: class and thinking about things like body diversity, and thinking
Speaker 2: about things like what Goffam would really.
Speaker 6: Look like I mean, it's it was liberating, you know,
Speaker 6: because a lot of the time, you know, that fight
Speaker 6: is a fight that not many people are trying to have,
Speaker 6: you know, and some of that is just literally like
Speaker 6: and I never blame anybody for it, because it's a
Speaker 6: thing that I have personally had to divest myself of,
Speaker 6: divorce myself from, which is if you grow up, regardless
Speaker 6: of who you are, where you're from, the color of
Speaker 6: your parents, whatever it is, if you're growing up in America,
Speaker 6: you're growing up in a society that tells stories through
Speaker 6: a white lens. And for a very long time, the
Speaker 6: stories that I wrote were through a white lens because
Speaker 6: I grew up in the eighties, you know, I love
Speaker 6: action movies and like, who are my heroes going to be?
Speaker 6: If not Schwarzenigrancet alone and Bruce Willison and John Claude
Speaker 6: van Dam and like there was not a ton of
Speaker 6: like you get a call Weathers and like yeah, but otherwise,
Speaker 6: you know, or you get a Sorgeny Weaver, but otherwise
Speaker 6: the playing field is not particularly welcoming to anybody who
Speaker 6: was not that. And so teaching myself how to not
Speaker 6: default to that has been a process that I'm only
Speaker 6: now coming to, I think the end of so to
Speaker 6: come to and then every other show that I've worked
Speaker 6: on has been for the most part, you know, kind
Speaker 6: of through a white lens, which I don't blame people
Speaker 6: for because that's what America is. You know. Cassaroc was
Speaker 6: an interesting one in that, like, oh, we're telling a
Speaker 6: story about this black person who lives in a completely
Speaker 6: white town, So like is he how black is he?
Speaker 6: Like when did he connect with his own story, with
Speaker 6: his own history, with his own culture. That was part
Speaker 6: of that conversation. But to come to Cape Crusader and like, oh, yeah, no,
Speaker 6: it is. We we are reimagining what the forties could
Speaker 6: be in America. You know, we are. We are wildly diverse.
Speaker 6: We are we are incredibly you know, welcoming to everybody.
Speaker 6: And animation is better for it because, like, honestly, you
Speaker 6: want diversity of shape. You want the eye to be
Speaker 6: drawn in various different ways. Like if everybody is rare
Speaker 6: thin and whip it strong, like it's kind of boring
Speaker 6: on screen after a while. If everybody is just that
Speaker 6: inverted triangle walking on a pair of pins, it's like
Speaker 6: like we should have some larger people, we should have
Speaker 6: some shorter people, some sort of tall people, like it's
Speaker 6: it's it's it's the old Warner Brothers cartoons like we
Speaker 6: got tiny dog, we got big dog, Like that's that's
Speaker 6: the The elasticity of that is part of where you
Speaker 6: get the drama. And so to not have to to
Speaker 6: not have to like put up my dukes and try
Speaker 6: to have conversations with people about, you know, shaking off
Speaker 6: some of the rust of how we're creating a story
Speaker 6: was wonderful, like, hey, you guys already thinking about that
Speaker 6: great like let me, let me, let me help you
Speaker 6: think a bit more about, you know, ways that we
Speaker 6: can highlight how a place like Gotham is broken and
Speaker 6: how it's broken, and how incoming equality is one of
Speaker 6: the ways that that's broken, and how the gentleman goes
Speaker 6: is or of the avatar for keeping things the way
Speaker 6: they were, if not, if not making Gotham great again,
Speaker 6: like let's do it. Let's lean into it as far
Speaker 6: as we're willing to lean and and they were harberscent
Speaker 6: on board.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Papa Midnight was so wonderful to seem
Speaker 3: in this episode what a, what a what a great surprise.
Speaker 3: Tell us about Papa Midnight and what it was like
Speaker 3: integrating him into the context of Gotham.
Speaker 6: I mean, Papa Midnight is an awesome character and always
Speaker 6: has been, even in in you know, the back of
Speaker 6: my head, I always hear like Jeffrey Holder's voice, you know,
Speaker 6: like the Crab from like Sepassion from the Little Mermaid,
Speaker 6: like that that very deep. Hey, what do you need
Speaker 6: from me? Like that's always what's in my head, you know.
Speaker 6: And I love John and Huntsu's performance in The Constantine,
Speaker 6: Like Batman was always going to need a clue path
Speaker 6: to follow, it was always going to need information like
Speaker 6: that's that's how detectives work. Like I don't know everything.
Speaker 6: I've got to find things, and so how can I
Speaker 6: find out information? How can I do battle with a
Speaker 6: thing that I've never done battle with before? You know,
Speaker 6: I mean it was a bit of a jump for
Speaker 6: like Alfred to be like, I know a guy, and like,
Speaker 6: what is Alfred know wizards who live in this part
Speaker 6: of the city we're moving on? And how Alfred knows
Speaker 6: Papa Midnight.
Speaker 1: Yes, bud O pal you know, he's.
Speaker 6: A drinking buddy, like there's a there's a pub in
Speaker 6: the in the Bowery that they hang out at. But
Speaker 6: so it was always going to be a pit stop,
Speaker 6: like you needed to have that information from somebody, and
Speaker 6: they're like, we can do Papa Midnight. I was like,
Speaker 6: that's perfect, Like and for Papa Midnight to have his
Speaker 6: own agenda, for him to have his own wants, like
Speaker 6: I will help you if you help me, here's what
Speaker 6: I need, you know. I think there there at some
Speaker 6: point was a sequence or version of a scene where
Speaker 6: where you know, and spoilers if you haven't seen this episode,
Speaker 6: but come on, we're all here, we're all we're all planning. Yeah,
Speaker 6: where where Batman gives the spirit of the Gentleman Ghost
Speaker 6: to Papa Midnight. There had been a scene where Papa
Speaker 6: Midnight then goes to the back of his store and
Speaker 6: like you see a wall vials where he's just been
Speaker 6: collecting spirits and this is the like the latest of them,
Speaker 6: you know, whether it's some kind of like you know,
Speaker 6: supernatural jail, whether it's you know, I'm just holding onto
Speaker 6: this for for for my own advantages, unclear, But I
Speaker 6: was like that's cool, and they were like, I'm sure
Speaker 6: we're not building another animated set. We're here on We're
Speaker 6: here in the in the graveyard. This is perfectly fine.
Speaker 6: We just gotta we have to, we have to pay
Speaker 6: this off. So here's your spirit. What are gonna do
Speaker 6: with it? I don't ever know. I'll see you led
Speaker 6: to Batman and all he goes into the into the distance.
Speaker 6: But he was super fun. It was super fun getting
Speaker 6: to play with the supernatural, especially from Midnight's perspective. Who
Speaker 6: for him, it's pass him. It's just like this is
Speaker 6: just another day, yep, you know, which I think helps
Speaker 6: the Batman not be so gobsmacked by there being the supernatural.
Speaker 6: If everybody treats it like it's normal, then it's normal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't have to worry.
Speaker 3: There's a little button line which I thought that was
Speaker 3: perfect for doing exactly this the thing that you're talking about,
Speaker 3: where you know, Batman's like he hands over the spirit.
Speaker 3: He's like, I guess I do. I want to know
Speaker 3: what you're going to do with that, and Pabamanna, it's
Speaker 3: just like no, like, okay.
Speaker 1: It's done, don't worry about it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, which, which you know, ties back into the into
Speaker 6: the Lucius Fox conversation with Bruce, and it was like,
Speaker 6: there's this discretionary fund. Do I want to know what
Speaker 6: you do with this money? You probably don't. I remember
Speaker 6: like there was some early draft who was like, it's
Speaker 6: probably sex type stuff, right, You got a discretionary fund
Speaker 6: for for freaky free?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that man's pretty freaking and then he's.
Speaker 6: Pretty freaky and like that very quickly fell out of
Speaker 6: the episode.
Speaker 2: Making TV, making comics, making anything, it is a labor
Speaker 2: of love, and then you put it out there in
Speaker 2: the world and it exists and it doesn't belong to
Speaker 2: you anymore. What's it been like get to see how
Speaker 2: much people love this show and getting to see you know,
Speaker 2: it's the number one show on Amazon and people are
Speaker 2: responding really well to the Gentleman Ghosts. They think this
Speaker 2: is a super cool idea. They're loving the vibe of
Speaker 2: the show. What's it like to get to make something
Speaker 2: that hits with the right audience.
Speaker 6: It is always a surprise, because for as good as
Speaker 6: you might think it is, there's a lot of great
Speaker 6: stuff that nobody watches. Yep, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 6: of good stuff that just falls through the cracks, Like
Speaker 6: there's too much stuff in the world. You know, you
Speaker 6: can't watch everything even if you try to watch everything
Speaker 6: somebody recommended to you, like, it's impossible to do. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And so the the the surprise, the joy, the gratitude
Speaker 6: of an audience who like finds the work, appreciates the work,
Speaker 6: and then tells other people about it, like, hey, you
Speaker 6: want to watch this? This is pretty good? Like that is?
Speaker 6: That is? That's the dream, you know, to be able
Speaker 6: to channel a piece of joy from your childhood and
Speaker 6: fashion it into a somewhat new form and then deliver
Speaker 6: it into an audience who seems to have been waiting
Speaker 6: for it in a way you can't know four years
Speaker 6: ago when the process begins. You know, animation just takes
Speaker 6: forever to do, and it's always an article of faith
Speaker 6: that by the time we're done with this process, there
Speaker 6: will be an audience who wants it. And it doesn't
Speaker 6: always happen that way, so when it does, it is
Speaker 6: always just a treat to be like, oh they liked it.
Speaker 6: Oh I'm so happy now.
Speaker 3: Well, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 3: to join us. We really appreciate it. Where can people
Speaker 3: find your stuff? Plug whatever projects you would love to plug.
Speaker 6: The easiest way to find me is Instagram at Mark
Speaker 6: Bernardin on Blue Sky and threads the same. I'm no
Speaker 6: longer on the hell site because life is too short. Correct,
Speaker 6: I will I will plug. I will plug two things.
Speaker 6: I will plug Eyes of Wakanda, which is coming hopefully
Speaker 6: next year if not. I'm never entirely sure what the
Speaker 6: animation schedule is in Marvel, but like the show, I
Speaker 6: think is pretty much done, so that just depends on
Speaker 6: when they want to reveal it, release it. What have you?
Speaker 6: D twenty three that that little blip was promising that
Speaker 6: they have faith enough in it to pull to pull
Speaker 6: Ryan Coogler out of his Oakland layer and come down
Speaker 6: to Anaheim to talk about it. So yeah, I can't
Speaker 6: wait till people see that it was. It was so
Speaker 6: much fun to work on and some of those stories
Speaker 6: are are powerful in ways that I don't think we
Speaker 6: expected them in the in the room to be powerful,
Speaker 6: going places and telling stories that I don't think an
Speaker 6: audience will expect. And then I'm I'm launching a Kickstarter
Speaker 6: next week called Deepest Darkest. It's an anthology film that
Speaker 6: I'm making with a bunch of other TV writers of
Speaker 6: color that I know. We're each writing and directing a chapter.
Speaker 6: This is a story about secrets, about the secrets that
Speaker 6: we that are too extreme, that are too visual, that
Speaker 6: are too heady for us to ever tell anybody, except
Speaker 6: that there is one character that sort of wheezed throughout
Speaker 6: the anthology who's a bit like Dory and that she
Speaker 6: has no short term memory. She forgets things on like
Speaker 6: ten minute cycles, which makes her a perfect confessionist to
Speaker 6: listen to your secret, absolve you of your sins, and
Speaker 6: then forget everything you told her. And so it's a
Speaker 6: bit of like a Black Mirrory kind of anthology where
Speaker 6: we just we go dark on what's the deepest, darkest
Speaker 6: secret you have and then put her on the stage.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, that's that launches next Tuesday, the twenty
Speaker 6: seventh kickstarter. It's all over everything that I've told you
Speaker 6: about where I could be and yeah, that's the thing
Speaker 6: that's exciting me the most. Cool.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much, Mark it theightful.
Speaker 6: This was a blast, gang, Thank you for the invite.
Speaker 3: And we're back for our recap of the back half
Speaker 3: of Cape Crusader Season one on Amazon Prime Video, and
Speaker 3: we're on to episode seven Moving Target, written by Adama
Speaker 3: Ebo and Adan Ebo, directed by Christina Sada and oh Man.
Speaker 3: This is the episode that really drives home just how
Speaker 3: corrupt ends beyond redemption Gotham is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know they're calling Matt Reeves Batman Universe.
Speaker 2: I think they're calling it something hilarious, like the epic
Speaker 2: Batman Crime Universe. I feel like you probably don't need
Speaker 2: to have epic there, but I like the implication that
Speaker 2: the Penguin, the Batman, It's all going to be this
Speaker 2: exploration of crime and corruption in Gotham, and this episode
Speaker 2: definitely feels like it's totally seated in that space, like
Speaker 2: this is Assassin's This is people trying to kill Jim Gordon,
Speaker 2: the one good person in Gotham, the one moral compass.
Speaker 2: Also outrageous weird characters here, like on a matter Payer,
Speaker 2: who was created by Kevin smithan is.
Speaker 3: This his animated debut?
Speaker 2: I think this may well be his animated debut and
Speaker 2: uh and yeah, I just think that, to me is
Speaker 2: what this show does so well. It can take something
Speaker 2: that's completely outrageous and is in itself a joke. Because
Speaker 2: honomatter Payer is what we call you know, the biff
Speaker 2: bang pow sound effects, and make it into something that
Speaker 2: feels completely grounded, completely serious, and I think as well,
Speaker 2: like you know, for Kevin Smith, he he did a
Speaker 2: tweet and he was like, I can't believe that this
Speaker 2: Green Arrow villain created by me, Phil Hester Andy Parks
Speaker 2: is in the new Batman Cape Crusader, Like this is
Speaker 2: it's crazy to see my bad guy and Bruce Tim's
Speaker 2: return to Gotham, and yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Is so good.
Speaker 2: Also, so another I love how they've kind of made
Speaker 2: Barbara her importance in this series, whether it's on the
Speaker 2: Batman side, whether it's on the Gordon side, whether it's
Speaker 2: in the crime. They know how important Barbara Gordon is
Speaker 2: to Gotham, and this episode really leans into this way
Speaker 2: to get to Gym. She's also like fearless. I love
Speaker 2: the Ebo Twins. I think they're smashing it. So I
Speaker 2: was very happy to see them writing an episode like this,
Speaker 2: which was just such a joy.
Speaker 3: There's also the I found it so such a like
Speaker 3: trenchant commentary on like how fucked up Gotham is that?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that the entire scheme, which was just like
Speaker 3: a you know, they hit on Gordon spoiler you've watched
Speaker 3: it by now, I hope the Yeah, the Gordon threat
Speaker 3: was the distraction. The real person they were trying to
Speaker 3: get was Barbara. And the whole thing was said in
Speaker 3: motion because a guy wanted like a nicer prison cell.
Speaker 3: Like that's how cheap life is in Gotham.
Speaker 1: That's how cheap it is.
Speaker 2: Like that's and that's kind of like this interesting commentary
Speaker 2: as well on like is it just better to stay
Speaker 2: in prisons in Gotham, like rather than rehabilitate yourself and
Speaker 2: get out? Is life too expensive outside of prison where
Speaker 2: you'd rather just order a hit on someone so that
Speaker 2: you could get a little bit of a better accommodation
Speaker 2: inside as Yeah, they're doing some really cool stuff here.
Speaker 2: Years ago I wrote this piece when they announced that
Speaker 2: there would be like a GCPD series. I believe it
Speaker 2: probably would have been about twenty let's see GCPD series,
Speaker 2: but they were going to do like a Gotham CPD
Speaker 2: series based on the very beloved kind of comic book.
Speaker 2: And after the Batman, you know, I said, well, there's
Speaker 2: only one way you can do the show. Oh, this
Speaker 2: was in twenty twenty as well, so and I said,
Speaker 2: you got to a show where you're basically dismantling the
Speaker 2: Gotham CEPD because it's so corrupt. You can essentially use
Speaker 2: it as a space to explore the ideas of like abolition,
Speaker 2: or how would a city look without a police force?
Speaker 2: What use is a police force in Gotham when ninety
Speaker 2: percent of the police are corrupt. And I actually do
Speaker 2: feel like this show, again, kind of behind that guise
Speaker 2: of like it's an animated show and people think, oh,
Speaker 2: it's for kids or whatever, is actually interrogating those very
Speaker 2: same things. And this is just why I love the
Speaker 2: Matt Reeves Batman universe. I think he's doing so much
Speaker 2: of what we've all wanted our Batman stories to explore.
Speaker 3: Up next episode eight Nocturn, written by Haley Gross, directed
Speaker 3: by Matt Peters, and oh.
Speaker 2: It's about to start, baby, poor complex of episodes that
Speaker 2: are just gonna absolutely decimate you.
Speaker 1: He is going through it.
Speaker 3: A couple notable things about this episode. Of course, we
Speaker 3: get the long awaited in the context of this season
Speaker 3: turn of Harvey Dent towards his alter ego of two Face,
Speaker 3: and we maybe meet Robin potentially.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: I feel really bad for Harvey. Harvey has been mostly
Speaker 3: a scumbag throughout this season.
Speaker 2: Very interesting choice, by the way, as well, the idea
Speaker 2: that he was already corrupted rather than incorruptible until two face.
Speaker 3: Naked ambition all the way as he is trying to
Speaker 3: gain the mayor's office. And in this episode, you know,
Speaker 3: to speaking about the corruption of Gotham City, we understood,
Speaker 3: we come to realize just how deep Harvey Dent is
Speaker 3: with that corruption and the lengths he will try to
Speaker 3: go to to get himself elected. And yet there is
Speaker 3: still that bit of spine in Harvey that at the
Speaker 3: final moment he says, no, I can't.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to drop the charges.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna do it.
Speaker 6: I have to.
Speaker 3: This is not about it. It becomes like not about
Speaker 3: the mayor's office and not about his ambition, becomes about
Speaker 3: right and wrong. He does the right thing, and that
Speaker 3: is the thing that leads him to get acid thrown
Speaker 3: in his face and his turn to the dark side begins.
Speaker 3: I found this to via just a tragic episode in
Speaker 3: a lot of ways.
Speaker 2: I think so too, And I think what they did
Speaker 2: here that was very very clever is you know, we
Speaker 2: got on a mat payer in the last episode, and
Speaker 2: we do have like Anton Knight and we have Natalia Knight.
Speaker 2: So that is a little bit of like Batman weirdness
Speaker 2: here because they're sucking energy from people. But generally, I
Speaker 2: feel like when this moment happened where you get dense
Speaker 2: face being you know, disfigured by the acid, it felt
Speaker 2: much more horrific and much more like we were watching
Speaker 2: something where somebody, you know, acid attacks happened, and this
Speaker 2: felt much closer to that than the kind of usual
Speaker 2: pulpy strangeness of like, oh now he's two faced. Well, actually,
Speaker 2: this Dent has been balancing that line, as Joelle like.
Speaker 1: Perfectly put in these notes.
Speaker 2: She said, he's been balancing that line between like greasing
Speaker 2: the wheel and actually wanting to make Gotham better this
Speaker 2: whole time.
Speaker 1: So two face he already was.
Speaker 2: This is just like a really tragic kind of tipping point,
Speaker 2: and I just, yeah, I felt like they went serious
Speaker 2: when they needed to go serious, and it starts off
Speaker 2: this great kind of three part finisher for this season.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back after a.
Speaker 4: Quick break and we're back.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I just love the the balance of Dent and the
Speaker 3: way you come to understand that Harvey has crossed a
Speaker 3: lot of lines.
Speaker 6: He is.
Speaker 3: A self promoter, a nakedly ambitious guy, and at the
Speaker 3: same time, part of what drives him is he has
Speaker 3: rationalized all of this line stepping by saying, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: let me just get into the mayor's office and then
Speaker 3: I will have the power to really change this city. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And everything that I do, all the ways that I
Speaker 3: cross into the gray zone, that I you know, blur
Speaker 3: the lines between right and wrong, all of that will
Speaker 3: be worth it when I get there, because then I
Speaker 3: can really fix this city.
Speaker 1: Then I can do good.
Speaker 3: And then I can do good. And you know, he's he,
Speaker 3: I think, mostly crosses the line in a way that
Speaker 3: loses sight of that promise. But then he rededicates himself
Speaker 3: to that thing right at the moment when he's asked
Speaker 3: to truly corrupt himself beyond redemption and drop the charges.
Speaker 3: And the fact again that that leads to the attack
Speaker 3: on him, and that's the thing that pushes him over
Speaker 3: the edge is really sad and just really affective storytelling.
Speaker 2: And also as well, I think it takes away like
Speaker 2: some of the inherent ableism of like, oh, when his
Speaker 2: fate when he becomes disabled, he becomes evil. No, actually,
Speaker 2: him doing something good and sticking to his morals ended
Speaker 2: up being the reason that somebody attacked him. And now
Speaker 2: he has to deal with that duality. And also, obviously
Speaker 2: what lesson does that teach him that doing the right
Speaker 2: thing is going to be personally bad for him, And
Speaker 2: it kind of leads to these last two episodes which
Speaker 2: are just really tragic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go to the episode nine, The Killer Inside Me,
Speaker 3: written by Jase Ritchie, directed by Christopher Berkeley, and he
Speaker 3: we see Harvey Dent really just lose his grip. He
Speaker 3: had been trying to play this double game up until now,
Speaker 3: you know, doing bad things for the right reasons, with
Speaker 3: the hope that one day he could be the person
Speaker 3: who could fix the city. And he is coming to
Speaker 3: terms with the fact that in his mind it was
Speaker 3: never gonna work. It was naive of him to think
Speaker 3: that the city could ever be redeemed, and the only
Speaker 3: way now to deal with this city is by becoming
Speaker 3: the thing that the city respects, which is chaos and violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really sad to see this journey, and again
Speaker 2: we're really getting here this kind of duality of is
Speaker 2: this another reflection of Batman, like how does Gotham impact
Speaker 2: every person who lived inside it and out? Then and
Speaker 2: Bruce our friends here, so we get that even more.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I just think this is really sad because
Speaker 2: he is again seeking that justice against those who wronged him.
Speaker 2: And you could say Batman is doing the same thing,
Speaker 2: so how different are they? But obviously Dent takes it
Speaker 2: in a much more bleak direction, and yeah, it's it's
Speaker 2: really sad. And then you know, you get the ending
Speaker 2: where he goes to Arkham. He like willingly goes to
Speaker 2: Arkham Asylum because.
Speaker 1: He is again that good side comes out.
Speaker 2: And he's like, I need to be I need to
Speaker 2: protect Gotham from myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also need to be protected from myself.
Speaker 3: And that brings us to the finale Savage Night. I
Speaker 3: should say, by the way, that Killer Inside Me that
Speaker 3: is a reference to reference.
Speaker 1: To there's so many great Nuir nods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wonderful reference to the nineteen fifty two Big Jim
Speaker 3: Thompson novel The Killer Inside Me, which if you like
Speaker 3: like hard boiled pulp crime and you want fast reads,
Speaker 3: like two day, three day weekend reads, Big Jim Thompson
Speaker 3: pick up almost anything. And The Killer Inside Me is
Speaker 3: really cool because it's probably his most experimental novel where
Speaker 3: it just delves into the mind and the psychosis of
Speaker 3: a hardened killer in a really like in a way
Speaker 3: that is much more experimental than anything else that Big
Speaker 3: Jim Thompson has written.
Speaker 2: And also Jim Thompson Savage Night is another one of
Speaker 2: his novels, so they were really leaning into it here
Speaker 2: and I love it. This is not afraid to show
Speaker 2: its love for its noir influence.
Speaker 3: Savage Night written by Ed Bruce Baker, directed by Christina Soda.
Speaker 2: And yeah, Ed, here, baby, you know it's going to
Speaker 2: be good. He's a noir legend.
Speaker 6: Here.
Speaker 3: It is the conference between Batman, between Dent, between the
Speaker 3: Dirty Cops, and all of the threads that we've seen
Speaker 3: woven through season one coming to a head here in
Speaker 3: just like an incredible finale that, to your point, is
Speaker 3: an interrogation of Batman and his methods in a lot
Speaker 3: of ways, through the Dirty Cops through Two Face. It
Speaker 3: makes you think about what Batman is doing and really
Speaker 3: ask yourself and ask Batman, what makes you the hero?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, what's different about that?
Speaker 3: What's different about what you do.
Speaker 1: What's different about what you do?
Speaker 2: And also something that I love here is we get
Speaker 2: that moment after you know, Dent sacrifices himself once again,
Speaker 2: his goodness overcoming his kind of vengeance, right, but Batman
Speaker 2: almost loses it after that, and we get this great
Speaker 2: moment where he threatens to shoot Flass And I'm sure
Speaker 2: for a lot of viewers they were like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: so weird. One Batman doesn't kill, two why does he
Speaker 2: have a gun? But the original Golden Age, early Batman comics,
Speaker 2: he does shoot people and they do die, and he
Speaker 2: you know, hangs people out.
Speaker 3: Of free cold baby Fred.
Speaker 2: He was much more of that noirh hero that we
Speaker 2: were used to. So I loved that this was a
Speaker 2: throwback to that and also that ultimate conversation about you know,
Speaker 2: people say Batman doesn't kill, trust me go to ign.
Speaker 2: I wrote like a three thousand word piece on it.
Speaker 2: He does kill sometimes. So it's a very murky space.
Speaker 2: But I love that in this moment Alfred, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like what Alfred says. He says like Dent did
Speaker 2: lose his humanity, but you've still got yours, I will say.
Speaker 6: I also, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know if I agree with that, because I think
Speaker 2: dentse humanity is what made him sacrifice himself to save Barbara.
Speaker 2: But Batman is still able to nact is humanity. But yeah,
Speaker 2: like you said, this is a great interrogation of that,
Speaker 2: like the whole series. Really we talked to Mark about it.
Speaker 2: What does Batman do and is it useful?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And like is he I.
Speaker 2: Was recently writing about the new Sailor Moon movie, which
Speaker 2: is a two part ova on Netflix called Sailor Moon Cosmos.
Speaker 1: It's delightful.
Speaker 2: It actually adapts the final arc of the Incredible manga.
Speaker 2: But I wrote an article for IGN that was, like,
Speaker 2: the whole two part event is about the question of
Speaker 2: what happens when you become a superhero? Do the villains
Speaker 2: come to you or do you go to the villains?
Speaker 2: And by being a superhero, do you create the villains?
Speaker 2: And so it has this really great evocative storyline about
Speaker 2: that that I feel like it answers in a much
Speaker 2: better way than a lot of comics do because it's
Speaker 2: an ending, it's a true ending, so you can really
Speaker 2: answer that question. And obviously with Sailor Moon, it's about love,
Speaker 2: it's about compassion, it's about forgiveness. But I love that
Speaker 2: we're still having these conversations because we all know that's
Speaker 2: the biggest question. If Batman didn't exist, with the Joker exists, right,
Speaker 2: you know that's what we're always asking I speaking of
Speaker 2: the Joker, here he is.
Speaker 3: We get Little Teas season two, Loving Man season two.
Speaker 2: Baby, So somebody has been killing a series of victims
Speaker 2: with a toxin that makes them laugh uncontrollably.
Speaker 1: I wonder could be who kid me?
Speaker 3: I'm so excited for that. This series has retconned almost
Speaker 3: all the characters and certainly all of the Rogues Gallery
Speaker 3: in really fascinating ways. Yeah, and I wonder what they'll
Speaker 3: do with the Joker. I am so exciting, really excited
Speaker 3: to see.
Speaker 1: What they do with the Joker.
Speaker 2: I honestly think this is like quite a modern masterpiece
Speaker 2: of storyteller. I feel like we're very lucky to live
Speaker 2: in an era where we can get X Men ninety seven,
Speaker 2: which is fully embraced in the nostalgia and making us
Speaker 2: feel like we're back as kids again reading X Men,
Speaker 2: picking it up off the wall, watching X Men ninety two,
Speaker 2: and then get something like this that says, well, you
Speaker 2: are the kids who watched Batman, the animated series, But
Speaker 2: what if you've grown up with it, What if you're
Speaker 2: an adult now, which we all are, what would you
Speaker 2: like to watch? And it's something completely different. I mean,
Speaker 2: to get both of these in one year is incredibly lucky.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll be looking forward to that. Of next we're
Speaker 3: reacting to The Crow, the remake.
Speaker 7: Of the nineteen ninety one four Wow, nineteen ninety four
Speaker 7: action film starring a little Brother Scars Guard Billy Yeah, Billy,
Speaker 7: Billy Scars.
Speaker 3: It is uploxed, all right, Rosie the Crow twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five version.
Speaker 1: It's out.
Speaker 3: It's out now, directed by Rupert Sanders, starring Bill Scarsguard
Speaker 3: Fka Twiggs, and Danny Houston. Your thoughts about The Crow?
Speaker 1: Okay, surprising nobody here.
Speaker 2: I'm sure I actually thought this was a very enjoyable movie.
Speaker 1: I liked the reinterpretation obviously.
Speaker 2: Look there's a nineteen ninety four version of The Crow
Speaker 2: starring Brandon Lee, which was a movie he was making
Speaker 2: when he died because of an issue with a weapon
Speaker 2: onset that killed him.
Speaker 1: And that movie is iconic.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful, it's legendary, and I will say I think
Speaker 2: they should have not tried to do another version of
Speaker 2: James Obarr's The Crow, which is the comic book that
Speaker 2: it's based on, So all of that in context, I
Speaker 2: never thought this was a particularly good idea. I will
Speaker 2: say I do not think the marketing for this movie
Speaker 2: was good. I think it made it look like it
Speaker 2: was going to be a Suicide Squad esque edgy kind
Speaker 2: of nonsense fest, and actually I found it to be
Speaker 2: quite a romantic, sweet story that was also weird and
Speaker 2: then really really violent at the end.
Speaker 1: I feel like my letterbox review was basically.
Speaker 2: That I think it will come to be seen as
Speaker 2: like this Generation's like Queen of the Damned, so a
Speaker 2: movie where I think in the future people are gonna
Speaker 2: say I love this movie or Twilight.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: This also was giving big Twilight vibes to me. It's
Speaker 2: like the movie is not a brilliantly crafted movie, though
Speaker 2: it does look rather than nice, and it is a
Speaker 2: total reinterpretation. And my favorite thing about it is that
Speaker 2: they make Shelley a main character instead of essentially just
Speaker 2: fridging her, which would which does make sense in the
Speaker 2: context of the comics, because the comic is an exploration
Speaker 2: of grief by James Obarr, So that's why it happened
Speaker 2: that way. But for me, I actually feel like this
Speaker 2: does not deserve that crazy Rotten Tomatoes review. I think
Speaker 2: people it's easy to shit on a movie like this.
Speaker 2: And if you remember when Constantine came out, it was
Speaker 2: critically dragged. When you know Twilight came out critically dragged,
Speaker 2: When Queen of the Dam came out critically dragged, all
Speaker 2: of those movies. You could have many arguments about whether
Speaker 2: or not their cinematic masterpieces. But I do believe this
Speaker 2: movie will find its audience, likely in teenagers now who
Speaker 2: will find it, think it's cool, and then in twenty
Speaker 2: years will enjoy kind of the campy nature of it.
Speaker 1: So that's my feeling. Jason, how about you.
Speaker 3: I thought this was a bad movie, but with some
Speaker 3: interesting things about it, and certainly not a bad movie
Speaker 3: where I'm sitting there and I'm hating my life. You
Speaker 3: know this is not gonna let there be carnage type
Speaker 3: of situation, But also neither it is. Is it a
Speaker 3: Madam Web where.
Speaker 1: The camp that's true, it didn't go that far.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where the camp is so dialed up that it's
Speaker 3: kind of fun.
Speaker 1: With how bad it is.
Speaker 3: There's certainly campy elements to this start. Of the things
Speaker 3: I liked, I liked to your point. I liked that
Speaker 3: they significantly changed the original James O. Bar story that is,
Speaker 3: you know, a classic in the genre of fridging, and they,
Speaker 3: to your point, made Shelley more of an active participant
Speaker 3: in the story. I think Bill Scarsguard is wonderful, and
Speaker 3: I think FK. Twigs is really good, and I think
Speaker 3: it looks great. And I also loved the weirder like
Speaker 3: supernatural turns. That's was actually the most compelling stuff to
Speaker 3: me was like the weird shit.
Speaker 2: I think they should have gone weird weird could have
Speaker 2: found an audience quicker.
Speaker 3: So this is it's like part weird, part john Wick.
Speaker 3: And my opinion is that they should have picked a
Speaker 3: ling either get a lot weirder or get a lot
Speaker 3: more john Wick. Now the stuff that was, I think
Speaker 3: they made it hard for themselves because you know, the
Speaker 3: original Crow, the Crow when he comes back just can fight,
Speaker 3: and it's you don't need to explain why he was
Speaker 3: just a guy. But when he comes back supernaturally all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, like he's got martial arts moves. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you didn't wonder about it. In this movie, there's
Speaker 3: like this you know, he comes back, Eric comes back,
Speaker 3: and it is still just a guy and his really
Speaker 3: can just like absorb bullets, but he's not really able
Speaker 3: to fight really for the whole movie, and so you've got.
Speaker 3: What you've got is an action film in which the
Speaker 3: action is kind of just like not that compelling because
Speaker 3: it's a guy just getting shot over and over, yeah,
Speaker 3: and he doesn't know, he doesn't have like moves that.
Speaker 1: He uses, you know.
Speaker 2: And then at the end he just becomes incredibly proficient
Speaker 2: with the samurai saword and you get this kind of
Speaker 2: explosive anime level goal, which is another weird element of
Speaker 2: the film.
Speaker 3: And so I thought that they made it hard for
Speaker 3: themselves in that regard, Like I think it probably I
Speaker 3: think it's a better movie if you know, fuck the
Speaker 3: fact that Eric, you know, was like a part time
Speaker 3: like delinquent who didn't really work out and probably couldn't fight,
Speaker 3: like just make it so he could fight, just make
Speaker 3: it can fight, And I think that would have made
Speaker 3: it easier for them, But not a particularly great film.
Speaker 3: I also wonder about releasing it, Like I was asking myself,
Speaker 3: like why now? Why why now?
Speaker 2: I also was like in a world where and I
Speaker 2: love the theatrical experience, and good I did have a
Speaker 2: good theatrical experience watching this, but in a world where
Speaker 2: a movie like Prey, which was just so astonishing, ended
Speaker 2: up going straight to streaming and becoming a big hit.
Speaker 2: I feel like this, if this had gone to Netflix,
Speaker 2: it would have been the number one movie this weekend
Speaker 2: on Netflix. And sure it probably would have been because
Speaker 2: people are like, this is so bad, it's good, or
Speaker 2: you've got like watch the Crow and then you can
Speaker 2: watch the Old Crow on Netflix too, But like, this
Speaker 2: feels like it could have gone to streaming and had
Speaker 2: a more successful, less kind of like Rotten Tomatoes defined relationship,
Speaker 2: and it didn't make very much money at the movies.
Speaker 1: At all, So this is a dub.
Speaker 2: This is very wild to me that Lionsgate just went
Speaker 2: ahead with releasing this after Borderlands flopped.
Speaker 1: For them, So this is like a two in a
Speaker 1: row flop.
Speaker 2: Now, I don't feel like this deserved to flop, but
Speaker 2: it also doesn't feel like a movie that's coming out
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: It feels like a movie that's coming out in twenty ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the latest box office figures on a budget of
Speaker 3: fifty million is like less than eight million.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Lionsgate only had to make ten million dollars
Speaker 2: on this movie because that's how much they acquired it
Speaker 2: for distribution.
Speaker 1: But they may get there. They haven't even made that, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they may get there. But they may get there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Not a great not a great movie, but certainly one
Speaker 3: when it comes on streaming or is ratable, that I
Speaker 3: think is worth checking out.
Speaker 1: I think people will. I think I think it will
Speaker 1: find its audience.
Speaker 2: But I also think that this is a good lesson
Speaker 2: in like when you have something that is lightning in
Speaker 2: a bottle like the Crow, especially if somebody like an
Speaker 2: icon like Brandon Lee, yeah, passed away while making it,
Speaker 2: you know, the son of Bruce Lee. I think you
Speaker 2: just leave it be, man Like, just leave it be.
Speaker 2: Even though I enjoyed this movie, that's just my.
Speaker 1: Advice in the future. And that's it for our episode today.
Speaker 2: Guys, Jason had to run because he just bought himself
Speaker 2: a nice bat wing and he's taking a fight.
Speaker 1: I hope you all enjoyed it. Thanks again to Mark
Speaker 1: Bernardin for joining us.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned Tomorrow we are back with the Rings of
Speaker 2: Power episode. Join us for our recap of the season
Speaker 2: two premiere and an interview with All Round Legend and
Speaker 2: Rings of Power Executive producing director Charlotte Branstrom. That's all
Speaker 2: for now, bye.
Speaker 3: X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Ncepcion and Rosie
Speaker 3: Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive
Speaker 3: producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer
Speaker 3: is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and
Speaker 3: Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman
Speaker 2: and Heidi A discolled moderata