The end justifies the means?

Penguin

Miniseries (8 episodes)

Even though it was supposed to be shot in Gotham City, we do not see a single shot of Batman or any resemblance to his existence in this miniseries. After all, it is a spin-off from Batman 2022. It tells how Penguin turns to become a wealthy mobster that he is. It also serves as a cooling period before the first sequel to the trilogy comes out in 2027. This miniseries helps to maintain the DC Comic fans' interests before the dark-caped one makes his presence again. 

The series explores Penguin, aka Oswald Cobb, 's rise to power. Often ridiculed for his physical handicap, Mama's boy decides to fight his tormentors through his devious, twisted mind and planned outbursts. From a disfigured run-around nobody, he becomes a feared gangster. Along the way, he picks up a faithful, quick-thinking sidekick. His nemesis is a lady from a gangster family who Oz killed and pocketed his new designer drug.

At the end of the day, when one is well-heeled, nobody is bothered by how one acquires wealth. He simply slides into high society. Money sanitises everything. Evidence can be manufactured, security can be bought, and one can obtain the best justice money can buy. The end determines the outcome, not the means to reach it. 

Colin Farrell delivers an incredible performance as The Penguin. His prosthetics, receding hairline, and distinctive tilt in his walk make him virtually unrecognisable. 

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A musical horror?

Joker: Folie à Deux (Madness shared by two; 2024)
Director: Todd Philips

No matter how much they suck at anything, adults are not supposed to tell children they are wrong. They are supposed to be encouraged, only showered with positive vibes. It is believed to give them self-confidence and stretch them to greater heights beyond their capacity. 

Nobody is graded. Everyone gets a medal for participating. Everyone is a winner, and he is exceptional and made to believe. 

I have news for you. Go into the world and realise that nobody gives two hoots to you. Everybody is in a hurry. Nobody has time to listen and talk to you. Every man is an island.

To make matters worse, the others have no qualms about stepping on or over you to achieve their goals. Losing you is just one step closer to their goals. There is no time to coach or wait for you. It is a man-eat-man world out there.

Living under the hawking eyes of helicopter parenting or even chip-implanted surveillance, these snowflakes find themselves naked, exposed to the cruel elements of humankind. They once thought everyone was laughing with them all. Much to their disappointment, they realise that they were laughed at. They were not the Joker that everyone loved, but the butt of everyone's joke.

The question is when they will realise that reality and how they will handle it.

After the successful run of Joker in 2019, the filmmakers decided to push their luck. Joker (2109) did well as an evil, dysfunctional character from society's low rung, venting his anger in broad daylight in front of TV cameras. The audience felt for the Joker, and the movie garnered much attention and accolades. Riding on Joker's popularity, the scriptwriters must have taken his fans for clowns (or idiots). They roped in Lady Gaga to pair as Harley Queen, Joker's love interest. We get it that both characters were discontented with their parents and turned out dysfunctional. Both of them blame their respective parents for their predicaments. We get it. 

The shared madness between them and the periodic bursting into songs did not go well with fans. There should be something more concrete than occasional glancing between characters, falling in love, songs and soliloquies. 2/5.

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Sins of my Father?

The Batman (2022)

Director: Matt Reeves

Long ago, easily more than 30 years ago, when we were a newly married couple, I had the privilege of living a few doors away from a retired postmaster. Looking at us, just married and waiting to embrace life with all its vigour, he felt compelled to dispense his dose of unsolicited wisdom to us, to me especially, like to son he never had.

I remember him telling me that I should evaluate everything I did in life very carefully as its repercussions may reverberate not only during my lifetime but that of my wife, children and my next birth! In other words, my deeds spiralled to catch on to my linkages. I kept it stored in my biological memory bank for future reference.

Some years later, I heard of someone who had her past life analysed by a holy man in Tamil Nadu. She approached someone in this town which is reputed to have storage of palm-leaf inscriptions (olai) of all humans, Indians or otherwise. She wanted to know the reason for her stormy relationship with her beau. It was not too long later that her inscription was found. She was told it was a miracle they found hers quite so soon. (sure!) In her previous life, she and her partner were illicit lovers who had masterminded her then-husband’s murder and eloped to live apparently not-so-happily ever after. Hence, they have to endure punishment in this birth to repay back payments!

Batman these day are no more the comedic

slapstick kind of the 60's TV series. These days,

Batman movies are dark and deeply philosophical.

In a single stroke, that could be the answer to all the incomprehensible life dilemmas - why bad things happen to good people and vice versa, why children get cancer and babies get congenital syphilis! How is anyone going to repute something intangible as that? The buck stops there. There is no point in arguing further on something that cannot be disproved (or proved).

Over time I have realised that I cannot be responsible for all the wrongdoings of those dear to me. I cannot be held accountable if my adult child decides to rob a bank or misbehaves with the opposite gender. Likewise, do I have to pay for the karmic sins of my father?

Increasingly people are leading separate lives. They do not work or behave for the well-being of the collective. This is the century of self, where self-interest supersedes everything else. It is I that solely matter. Hence, no one will take in another fatherly or teacherly advice. “Just leave me alone. Just do your part in my life and get off my back. Like Frankie said, it did it my way; I want to live while I am alive. It’s my life!"

The question of the sins of Bruce Wayne's father comes to the fore in this bleak Batman offering. The Riddler, moving with the times, is now siding with the Occupy Wall Street movement and is going Batman's jugular. Thomas Wayne had made some unfulfilled promises. And Bruce has to pay for his father's sins.

Robert Pattison gives a stellar performance as the reclusive, brooding superhero who is finding answers for things that happened in his life, much like a handsome Dracula trapped in his blood-sucking ways.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Son of God vs. Bat of Gotham

Batman vs. Superman (2016)
Dawn of Justice

Gone are the days when superhero stories used to spur that feel good feeling, that warm feeling that assures us that the truth will protect us, that the good would always prevail over evil. That doing good is the only thing to do; that there cannot be any other way of doing things; that good would not hurt anybody. These days, however, we have come to realise that things in life are so straight forward, not so black or white, that they are not so cut and dry. Everything comes in shades of grey. We sometimes have to appear to be unkind to be kind in the end. Doing something seemingly good may turn out detrimental to another's intention. One man's meat may be another's poison. It may not pacify him to hear that the unfavourable action is actually for his good and that he should see the 'bigger picture'.

Part of this film delves with what is doing good and whether a good deed does indeed bring only a good outcome. Superman, who is seen here as a God-like creature who descends from the sky with his thunderous might to help humankind, does hurt innocent bystanders as collateral damage in his fight against evil. Just because his actions are perceived as done with purest of intentions, the pain is, nevertheless, hurtful. The rage, the feeling of powerlessness turns good men into monsters. Which lives count and which do not?

With this background, the story shows the gargantuan clash between Superman (who seem to portray God-like qualities, a two-dimensional view of life) and Batman (who represents the human cognitive faculty which tend to rationalise things rather than expect something wholesome). In between this clash, or rather in an instigating manner is the epitome of evil, the devil persona, Lex Luthor.

The media is the means of creating mass hysteria and fanning herd mentality to sway people here and there. People soon realise that they are not the centre of the universe and doing good is not a unilateral thing. It has repercussions. Criminals are like weeds, pull one, and it grows another. People hate what they do not understand, and they cherry pick what they like to hear. Everything believes that they are here for a reason, but some die before achieving anything. Others reach senescence without knowing they have completed.

In the modern world, God is said to be dead and the people through their mental faculties have killed Him. In this Godless world, Man is left to his own devices to fend for himself. With the constant lure of the evil forces that thwart him from his quest of taking the race to a higher level of civilisation, he can prevail. History has shown again and again that his race is a resilient one. Catastrophes after maladies have erased many more well-footed species on Planet earth, but he has survived it all.

Real life Batman

Heard about a Daniel Kish, a blindman who goes trekking, climbs trees and rides bicycles unaided. He had taken a radio interviewer on the trekking expedition deep into the jungle. The interviewer became worried as it was becoming late in the evening and she feared being lost in the dark. Then she remembered that her guide was blind. It does not matter to him; it was always night for him!

Daniel had his eyes enucleated for retinoblastoma at a young age. Growing up with an abusive father, the mother decided that her son should be left to fend for himself. He should not be restrained or mollycoddled as the world is indeed a cruel place, no place for weaklings.

As a young boy, a blind boy, he used to climb trees, fences and do all the things that his able bodied sibling used to do. Quite many a time, this wandering boy was escorted home by community policemen. He went to regular school and hated being treated as a second class student. He grew up independent after he self taught the science of echolocation which gave him spatial orientation to move around. In fact, he never knew what he was doing was complicated science!

After seeing a homeless blind man who had lost his eyes and job after a chemical explosion in a factory, he decided to start an NGO to help to train the blind to be independent.

His endeavour was met with much resistance - it is a known fact that the blind cannot be leading the blind!

Neurologists scurried to ascertain why some visually handicapped individuals are so independent whilst others are truly handicapped. The consensus is that in some other areas sensory perception  of the brain develop connexions to the visual area of the brain making the blind 'perceive'. Other undetermined stresses and demands in life could just push these synapses. In other words, there must be a push for the blind to want to see!