Part two!

Now that I know what I am doing, I got this working a lot faster, still sort of primitive in the encoding, I dunno why but Youtube just hates uploading things in the quality I recorded them at, seriously the version on my computer looks perfect. Anyway like I said I think I figured out which things to play with to improve it, so future videos will look better.







I mention Lego Batman during this one, but get a bit distracted before I go into more detail, first off, the movie respects the intelligence of all age groups watching it, characters are consistent throughout and it's pretty darn funny too, so by all means check it out, this week it was that or The Great Wall, and that movie looks like shit, I feel I made the right choice.

Batman is a character who has really always been driven by his villains, he himself isn't really that interesting as we basically see him at the end of his arc, he is brooding, rich, handsome, smart, best face puncher. His only means of growth are through his villains, he has few friends and family, and pretty much does what he wants to do. He is a reactive character, in many ways his villains are more his social peers than anyone in polite society. Lego Batman pretty much runs with that, the plot being pushed by the Joker, who is upset that he doesn't think Batman cares about him, well, hates him, but same thing.

It's funny, but I felt uncomfortable, the Joker is not a nice character in any incarnation, and the idea that he should be treated with anything other than fear and loathing is weird to me, couple that with the ongoing theme that you always need your family no matter what and it just sort of becomes kind of creepy to me, they established that his villains, particularly Joker, are his family, then tell us you always need them, but Joker is horrible in any version other than this one, and hell in this one he is still trying to destroy Gotham, this isn't healthy.

I really hate it when movies give us the message that you should unconditionally love and trust your family and friends, earning trust is and should always be an ongoing process no matter the relationship, and forgiveness should never be automatic either, hell in this movie we see Batman be just that sort of untrustworthy abusive personality to Robin, it's played for laughs, ha ha look how callous Batman is, he referred to the orphan who idolizes him as 110% expendable, it's not funny to me, and that sort of shit should require more work to forgive than simply escaping the Phantom Zone and saying "I'm sorry".

Batman grows as a character, learns the usual lessons, and by the end of course becomes someone who might actually be admirable in truth rather than just in presentation, which is an arc only possible in a movie like this which doesn't see previous versions of the character as anything more than a loose guideline, but it was hard for me to get away from the criticisms I had above.

Mind you those problems aren't unique to this movie, and I can't really expect Lego Batman of all things to address that issue at all, let alone in the depth it needs, I mean, Lego Batman people. I read too much into things sometimes. It's a fun movie and that shouldn't be taken as a reason to not see it.