Batman: The Killing Joke

The legacy of Batman: The Killing Joke is a complicated one. The 1988 one-shot comic, written by the great Alan Moore before he swore off mainstream work, is controversial for being one of the most violent Batman stories, namely for the personal, sexual nature of its brutality towards the character Barbara Gordon. But it’s frankly that same brutality which makes its depiction of the Joker so unsparing and memorable, along with the haunting, fairly iconic artwork from Brian Bolland. It’s a story that needed an R rating to be translated to the screen the right way, even in animation.

The comic offers a possible origin of the Crown Prince of Crime in a series of flashbacks, while meditating on the hopeless, fatalistic dynamic between the Dark Knight and his greatest nemesis. The narrative for exploring that dynamic, however, involves the Joker committing some truly horrendous acts against Barbara, in a an elaborate plot to psychologically torture her father Commissioner Gordon. Criticism has been leveled against it for not just depicting violence against women, but depicting it solely as the impetus for the Batman-Joker storyline and then promptly moving on from it, despite the fact that Barbara is the victim of the comic’s most heinous suffering.

The film addresses Barbara's (voiced by Tara Strong) raw story deal in the most head-scratching way. It begins in her Batgirl days, with her on the trail of a mobster (Maury Sterling) who has a sick crush on her. The implication seems to be that giving her a blatantly sexist enemy to defeat somehow cancels out the trauma she receives later. That’s wrong-headed enough, but even worse is that the teacher-student dynamic between Batgirl and Batman (Kevin Conroy) is given a sexual tension, culminating in (seriously) a love scene that would be creepy (regular canon casts Bats as more of a parental figure) if it weren’t so laughable. These plot points add nothing but an air of sexism without even addressing what happens to Barbara in the Joker storyline. Or for that matter, anything in the Joker storyline; the first 20 minutes or so seem like a completely unrelated, unremarkable episode of the animated series tacked on to stretch the plot to feature length, only with a little more blood and swearing.

Minus that opening detour (and a happy mid-credits epilogue that defuses the horror about as much as the Ernest Hemingway quote at the end of Seven), however, you’ll find the greatest Killing Joke adaptation one could hope for. Bolland’s artwork comes to vivid, wicked life, retaining enough of the iconic look but changing things ever so slightly so as to burn the images onto the viewer’s brain anew. And Mark Hamill has never been better as the Joker, whom he makes possibly even more horrifying than the comic by bringing gleeful humor to the cruel proceedings. It is, like the comic, haunting, and horrifying.

It’s also, admittedly, just as problematic. In fact, its clumsy and misguided attempt to rectify things with the superfluous Batgirl drama, if anything, only creates more targets for its critics. Still, there’s no denying that a great adaptation of exactly what the comic is lies within this film.

Star Trek Beyond

A truth about Star Trek that holds for every incarnation: It’s good and bad. At its best, it’s capable of smart sci-fi, at different times cerebral and emotive. But the films as well as each individual series have also presented their share of frankly idiotic premises, forced and silly allegory, and flat-out bad stuff. And after two good movies, that truth is catching up with this rebooted series. Star Trek Beyond isn’t close to depths of, say, “Spock’s Brain” bad, but there is a noticeable leveling-off.

Instead of rebuilding continuity, this one returns to a standalone episodic structure that served the old films (mostly) well. But its plotting is as generic, bad-guy-of-the-week as it gets: While on their five-year exploration mission, the Enterprise crew travels into uncharted space in response to an alien distress call. Predictably, they come across a hostile enemy, get stranded and separated on a distant planet, and must race against time to stop an alien menace (Idris Elba) from unleashing an unspeakably destructive ancient weapon on the worlds of the Federation.

And, that’s about all there is to it. Oh, it looks good. There are some creative and uniquely designed environments and spaceships, which make for some exciting battles. But beyond the blockbuster flash, the film has nothing to say, none of the big, interesting ideas (even interestingly bad ones) that are the Trek brand. The closest thing to one is a last-minute twist, but it’s a twist so weak and inconsequential that the movie would have played little different if it were written out of the script.

Rather, director Justin Lin tries to apply his ensemble action-comedy formula he perfected with the Fast & Furious series. The results include admittedly good sequences (the initial attack on and boarding of the Enterprise in particular). But a dirt bike chase in the 23^rd century? It was already ridiculous when they did it with a dune buggy in the Next Generation crew’s kiss-off Nemesis. An even worse sin is making a Beastie Boys song into, quite literally, an integral plot device. Going gleefully silly and over-the-top and relishing in it works for a franchise built on car chases, but it just seems off for Star Trek. Way off.

Another thing that’s true of all Trek is that, like a starship, it’s only as good as its crew. This is why the original 1960s cast still ranks as the best, as they could do the good stuff but also ride out the bad as comedy, and sometimes even turn dreck into gold. This crew, while far from the icons their predecessors were, is pretty damn good, which is good news for Beyond. Pine makes a fun and solid Captain Kirk, if decidedly un-Shatner-like. Also, the cantankerous interplay of Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban), the comedic heart of the series when the late Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley played the roles, is played to the fullest, giving the picture its best source of humor. The cast makes a completely average summer product eminently watchable, which is more than can be said about some of the lowest points this franchise has seen over 50 years.

Ghostbusters

This could have been just another reboot of an old Hollywood property like we’ve seen a million times (and as it turns out, a pretty good one). Instead, it’s awash in a nasty sort of anti-hype after being attacked at every step of its production and marketing, by coordinated online misogyny for recasting the leads as female, or by nominal adults who contend that remaking Ghostbusters with any new players besmirches a beloved piece of their childhood (which really just seems like a sad attempt to legitimize said misogyny).

This sad turn of events is subtly acknowledged by the film itself, with a few barbs in the screenplay whose real targets are quite obvious. Also, Neil Casey’s bad guy in some ways embodies the type of socially inept, woman-hating troll with delusions of sophistication and superiority, not unlike the hordes of forum-dwellers who decided they hated this picture as soon as they heard about it. It does not dwell on the subject, though, and instead bests its haters the right way by being a well-made, well-acted, frequently hilarious movie.

It’s a clean reboot this time, with no narrative connections to the first two films (though references and cameos abound). In it, Kristen Wiig plays a scientist who loses her prestigious professorship at Columbia after a book on the paranormal she co-authored years earlier resurfaces. Coincidently, while confronting her estranged collaborator (Melissa McCarthy) about the matter, an occult-obsessed loner (Casey) begins summoning spirits around Manhattan. So, the two scientists, along with an eccentric inventor (Kate McKinnon) and a subway worker (Leslie Jones) with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city’s paranormal history, begin a small operation hunting apparitions run amok.

Even with its high concept and (for the time) impressive special effects, the original Ghostbusters was more understated than people seem to remember. Much of the fun and charm was in simply watching some of the best comedy actors at the high point of their careers interact with each other in situations both normal and fantastical. This new version carries on this tradition, with most of the laughs coming from the four superbly funny leads playing off one another. And they’re not simply gender-swapped versions of the original four. Each character is funny in ways different from their 1984 counterpart, and their interactions are funny in different ways. Despite hitting some of the same plot beats, each set piece is also new and original, never a retread and always funny. And Chris Hemsworth is completely hysterical as their indescribably dimwitted male secretary.

If there’s one thing the original did decidedly better, it’s that it kept a leash on the special effects, using them in funny ways but never overusing them. This one goes a little crazy with them in the final act. One might call it a spoof of overblown, CGI-cluttered action sequences, but it plays a little too straight to cut it as good parody. Fortunately, though, the jokes and banter make it to the other side of the mayhem, and things get back on track quickly with some truly great one-liners in a film full of them.

This Ghostbusters is how a reboot should be done, taking a familiar premise and doing its own new things with it. The result is not only something that doesn’t feel immediately stale, but one of the most fun pieces of entertainment in a summer that’s so far been pretty underwhelming. And yeah, I’ll admit it: after all the unwarranted hate this one got, it feels good to say that.

Finding Dory

Aside from dominating the animated movie game for some time (though Disney’s other animation arm presented a strong challenge for the crown this year with the great Zootopia), Pixar has also been notable for very, very grown-up pathos in a handful of its features. There was the gaping fear of loss and obsolescence pervading Toy Story 3, or the heartbreaking first few minutes of Up. Apparently, many audiences also felt last year’s Inside Out was a bevy of emotions, though while I enjoyed the film, it didn’t quite get to me like it did for some.

As for Finding Dory…well, by and large, it’s the type of joyful, vibrantly animated delight one would expect from Pixar. But pieces of it tread towards strong, even dark emotional territory. The picture nearly gets there, too, before hitting the brakes at the last minute.

In the film, set not long after Finding Nemo, the amnesiac blue title fish (Ellen DeGeneres) starts to regain memories of her childhood and her parents (Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy). To find them, she and her clownfish friends Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) travel across the ocean to an aquarium in California. Unfortunately, once there, Dory is caught, placed in a storage tank, and scheduled to be transferred across the country. While she enlists the help of the park’s residents in looking for her family, Nemo and Marlin hatch a rescue plan, no easy task on dry land.

Brooks is as on game as last time, if a little less comically cowardly, but it’s DeGeneres who carries the film, stepping up from comic relief to singular lead smoothly and effortlessly. Wisely, though, returning characters outside of the main cast are kept down to cameos or framing scenes, keeping things fresh with new faces and locations instead of treading the same waters. Each new scene and sequence is a fun and clever surprise, and every new player a funny addition, the standout being Ed O’Neill applying his perfected gruff deadpan to a broken, seen-it-all octopus. It all moves at a more urgent pace than Nemo due to time constraints laid out by the plot, but never seems too breathless or frantic like so much children’s entertainment.

It’s in the moments between the big, bold, fun stuff, however, that the film delivers arguably Pixar’s most potent emotion thus far. Flashbacks of the young Dory (Sloane Murray) lost and alone, unable to remember enough to even be helped, are devastating, and I’d imagine a little terrifying for younger viewers. In a series notable for its bright, lush colors, these scenes are darker, greyer, and muted, giving them a subtle intensity. And though there are still jokes at the expense of the title character’s short-term memory loss, its depiction is more sympathetic and reasonably realistic (aside from, you know, the fact that she’s a fish instead of a human). It’s often aggravating and dispiriting, but other times, it’s a challenge that feels rewarding to overcome. And yet, that positive feeling is mostly fleeting, for what it most often reveals is a sense that Dory’s quest will inevitably end in disappointment, lost on the innocently naïve fish but not the audience.

Things are ultimately wrapped up conveniently and nicely; toy with our feelings though they have, I don’t think Pixar (or the big mouse that owns them) is ready for a decidedly unhappy ending. And that works just fine, because the picture has so much else to enjoy. Still, after pushing the envelope for much of the movie, one wonders if Finding Dory would have worked as well (or better) if they had gone all the way. I think it would have.