Mighty Chin
Banned
That kid was the perfect joker. Shame to waste him.
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Gotham S2 |OT| Dawn of Altruism - Mondays 8/7c
- Thread starter TheOddOne
- Start date
unholyrevenger72
Banned
Bruce : "Alfred, I want to leave."
Alfred: "Don't Cockblock me Master Bruce"
Alfred: "Don't Cockblock me Master Bruce"
that's creepy, calm down and stop typing
however S2 Barbara is already 100 times better than S1 (minus the very end when this began).
Purple Cheeto
Member
A Batman tv show couldn't really be much worse than the Batman movies since they all ignored Batman canon and the underlying characteristics that make Batman, Batman. Or at least the things that make him more interesting than rich guy fighting crazy people. Literally none of the Batman movies explored any of the actual interesting aspects of the character, if you changed the costume and character name they could all be about a generic super hero without really making them any worse or better.
Personally my big problem with Gotham was that they didn't really try to do anything interesting with the setting or world and instead opted for one of those corny "the universe is tiny and everyone is interrelated some how" type worlds. Not having Jerome end up as the Joker is actually something I wouldn't have expected from this show given how awful they are at setting things up.
BodiesWithoutOrgans
Member
wtf killing
such a waste 
Jerome
Here is the problem I have with the word "canon" when it applies to Batman.
Batman's comics have been going on for so many years -- and characters have been rewritten and rebooted so many times -- that the word "canon" is beginning to lose some of its meaning.
A great example is Selina Kyle's origin story.
(I'm copying this stuff from a few wiki pages)
- In her first origin story, she is a cat burglar who goes by the name of "The Cat". It's explained that she married young to a wealthy man who beat her, and that's what motivated her into a life of crime.
- In Frank Miller's stories, she was a prostitute / dominatrix who works for an abusive pimp named Stan.
- In other stories, she's a rich socialite who attends parties.
- One of the comics implies that she might be the illegitimate daughter of mafia boss Carmine Falcone.
- In another comic, Maria Kyle (Selina's mother) commits suicide when Selina is very young. Her alcoholic father eventually drinks himself to death.
- In most comics, Selina Kyle was not a murderer. That's what separated her from other Batman villains. She walked the thin line between good and bad.
- However, Silver Age Selina Kyle was a consistent murderer. She would kill people on some of her appearances. This Catwoman would be moved to Earth-B, this Earth contains the characters and stories that were out of place. Since Catwoman was not a murderer, this was the only solution to getting rid of her Silver Age stories.
So what's canon and what's not canon? Is everything listed above canon?
He could be a no one like Fish Mooney
Think may be more fun that way since won't know what he turns into
Poodlestrike
Banned
That could be interesting. They kill him off without ever revealing his real name, so his grudge goes entirely unsettled. Nobody knows who he is, nobody knows who his family is, even in a meta sense.
!!
Awesome episode. Loved that he killed him off. He was awesome but I think this way it will suit the joker more.
This is probably the biggest thing that reading comics has taught me about canon...that it doesn't exist. Especially in comics.
What the show is actually ignoring is pre-established precedents from the comics that they show is vaguely mimicking. Which is what every new piece of storytelling really does.
And there's nothing wrong with that. After all, Paul Dini ignored established canon that stated that Harley Quinn didn't exist in the Batman universe. Now she does. A while ago, Joker couldn't be an immortal being. Now he might be, according to the story Zack Snyder provided. And on and on. That's how the Batman mythos grows and evolves. If all we did were repeat the same things over and over...well, there wouldn't be a point to that, would there? We'd be literally saying the same story again and again.
People think there are certain things Batman simply has to do, or can never do. Like kill, for example. But he did so not just in the burton films, but also the Nolan trilogy and probably hundreds of other stories. All that requires him to kill in the mainstream comics is DC's approval as well. A good writer can set up a situation where it happens.
The writing process is fluid, as are all characters, so it's silly to think there are certain unchangable aspects. And comics are essentially a writing process that never ends. Whereas, say, book writers write a character and fiddle around with it, changing their backstory again and again until they finally say they're done and send it off to be published, comics have writers switch off and revise the current work on a constant basis with no end in sight. What one writer will do, another will undo and redo it differently.
So yeah. Using "It's not faithful to comics" is the most empty possible criticism one can make of any superhero adaption.
Poodlestrike
Banned
I would argue that "unfaithful to the comics" as a criticism has its roots in the days of really, REALLY, terrible adaptations. Where they'd change a bunch of stuff and it would all be awful. Over time, the shorthand became the full phrase, and diversions from canon were viewed as the problem in and of themselves, rather than the quality of those diversions.
I think that the "Batgirl is Alfred's niece" complaints regarding Batman and Robin sort of sum up the issue. The problem isn't that Batgirl was Alfred's niece, it's that it was terribly, terribly done, but that takes longer to say, so here we are.
Possibly, but it applies often to other kinds of adaptations. For example, there are people who raged about any deviation the LotR movies made from the books. My point is that people mistakenly hold 'canon' to have some kind of special authority. Start any topic about fanfiction, and you'll get a slew of people who've never read a word of it come in and talk how it's inherently worthless because they're not the creators of original content and how it's disrespectful to mess with an authors original vision.
So people complaining about being unfaithful to comics might partially come from a history of bad adaptations, this is a symptom that's present in essentially every reconstruction of any story.
I was mostly right. Wait and see.
I don't get everyone's obsession with the Joker in this show. I hated Jerome and this whole copy cat idea. The Joker should only show up after Batman appears, he's supposed to be his ultimate counter an unstoppable force of chaos. The idea that he exists in any form before Batman arrives on the scene just ruins the uniqueness of his character.
EDIT:
On a different note, was anyone else weirded out by how Alfred was just ready to leave after Bruce "fired" him? Like, I kept waiting for him to crack a joke at some point and be like "you do realize you can't fire me, right? I'm your legal guardian until your 18, so you're kind of stuck with me."
EDIT:
On a different note, was anyone else weirded out by how Alfred was just ready to leave after Bruce "fired" him? Like, I kept waiting for him to crack a joke at some point and be like "you do realize you can't fire me, right? I'm your legal guardian until your 18, so you're kind of stuck with me."
If the only thing that makes the Joker unique or worthwhile is that he was showed up once batman showed up, that is one crappy character you got there.
Um, why?
In that case why don't we have a vigilante dressed as an Owl stalking around roof tops and taking down bad guys only to be killed by a laughing lunatic before Batman arrives on the scene?
Because a character who is defined by a single characteristic is shallow and hollow?
And you're not going to convince me of anything by throwing any sort of idea at me, however 'bad' you think it might be. Given a writer who is able to place meaning and significance, they can make just about anything work. Having another superhero before Batman in Gotham would be a perfectly acceptable premise of a story. You can depict it as Bruce taking inspiration from him, or wanting to do things unlike how he's doing, etc. It wouldn't even require a large amount of tweaking to an existing narrative of Gotham. We already have the Court of Owls who have ruled Gotham from the shadows, it's a short step from having a mythical Owlman who does work as a Hero to help craft the Court's good image. So if you're expecting me to reject an idea simply because it's different than what happens in most other versions of Batman, you're not going to get that from me. That just defeats the point of storytelling in general.
When Jerome pointed his gun at the guy with the apple on his head....
It reminded me of Jack Napier from Burton's Batman.
Yeah, they're doing a lot of callbacks to previous jokers.
I think you are misunderstanding my point, being unique is not a "single, shallow" characteristic. The point I'm getting at is that it cheapens either of these characters if they are just some other bloke and not something original. Why should anyone care who Batman is if he's the fifth winged superhero to parade about through the city night sky? Why does it matter if he appears at all if the vigilante thing has been going on for so long? Why is the Joker such a big deal if he's just another crazy laughing criminal?
Batman and the Joker, for that matter, are supposed to be unique concepts when they "arrive" in Gotham. They're supposed to be game changers on both sides of the law. Now, could you tell a story in which Batman and Joker are nothing special but just the latest corny dudes off the block? Sure, but what's the point of that?
Right, so what your saying is that him being created by batman makes him unique, and if he's not created that way, there's nothing unique about him. Your marking his creation as the single characteristic that makes him unique. And i'm saying, if that's all there is to him, you have a crappy character, defined by a single attribute. If that is the case, then he is, by simple mathematics, one dimensional. You have one aspect by which they matter, and if they don't have that, by your own admittance, they're nothing. That's just shallow writing, by any reasonable definition I've ever heard.
And to answer your questions, there are literally an infinite amount of possible answers. Maybe Batman is unique from the other winged heroes. Maybe he's more effective where they aren't, or maybe his doing things in a morally higher way makes him seperate from the other heroes. Maybe he lasts, where as the other winged heroes gave up after a certain amount of time. Or maybe he simply empathizes with the people on the ground, while the other guys have more of a detached attitude. You can make Batman unique in any number of ways. Or why not go the opposite way and say he isn't unique against them. There's no mandate that Batman has to be the super speshul hero that is more speshul than other heroes to be a compelling story, or else all stories about ordinary people (who are never truly ordinary, however mundane they are, would never be entertaining, which is obviously untrue). Or maybe even have your cake and eat it to, having him be initially much like the other winged heroes, then develop into something different from the other heroes. Or maybe have his story be a fall from grace sort of thing where he starts out really different, but then falls in line to what every other one did.
I'm not saying what your describing can't work, of Joker and Batman being the first of their kind being well written. Of course it can. We've seen it work. But that's not the only thing that can work. In fact, there's nothing that can't work, provided the writing does it right. You're just limiting yourself by closing off avenues of storytelling by saying any single arbitrary characteristic has to be a particular way or it renders the story meaningless. It's nonsense.
Well, then the question becomes why call it "Batman" or "Joker?" Why does he have to be a regular, human playboy whose parents are murdered? Why can't he be an alien from another world whose home planet is destroyed by an AI named "Joker." I'm sure you can make a very good story out of this as well. But, again, why still call it Batman and not something else?
Now, not every interpretation of the character has to be the same but when you start to change things so much it gets to a point where you have to seriously question why you are attempting to call it something it is no longer tied to.
Because it still carries a significant amount of traits enough to call it Batman and Joker. That's what comics are. Essentially every characteristic of Batman has shifted at some point, or atleast established that it could be shifted. Currently, Batman is Jim Gordon as essentially Robo-cop, using a gun and mech to get the job done. In that comic, while they were talking about who to select for the position, one of the prime candidates was a woman. Batman doesn't even have to be a man. There is nothing solid about him. The concept of 'batman' or any longrunning superhero isn't a character, it's an outline. He doesn't need to have any particular trait, just enough of them. There is no unchangeable 'core' of Batman. There's just the conglomerate of Batman. If you want proof of this, there are a great number of Iron Giant fans that consider it to be the best Superman movie. Or what about Secret Identity, clearly published as a Superman story which is literally not about the actual superman but a boy becoming actually superman. It's endless. So yes, you can have exactly what you described with Aliens and AI as well, and still call it a Batman and Joker story. Because it is only "a" Batman and Joker story, not "the" Batman and Joker story. That it's different than most means very little.
Edit: I also feel the need to point out that we've moved away from your original argument quite a bit. I concede that I'm an extremist on how I view writing in many ways and can acquiesce that many would not want a story about as significant a deviation from the common norms of the Batman mythos as making him an alien. But you weren't objecting to making Batman an alien, you were objecting to making batman not the reason that the joker came into being. Such an insignificant and arbitrary characteristic of a character whose most famous and recognized characteristic is that he has no definitive past! That is when things simply get absurd. If you are so attached to such minute and fickle characteristics that something as minor as the Joker preexisting Batman renders the character moot to you, then you really might as well just not read any more batman stories, and instead reread the ones you like endlessly. The point of continuing to write batman is that he does new things, even if you argue that there has to be a limit to how much you can change before he ceases to be 'batman', it's unreasonable to make it as restrictive as this.
Not just live action Jokers either. There were moments in the last episode and the one before that where he sounded like Mark Hamill's Joker. To the point where if you just heard the voice in those scenes I think one could have easily thought they were were hearing Hamill's Joker.
I really want to see how what Gordon did comes back to bite him in the ass. There is no way Penguin doesn't play that card if they're now gunning for him. The latest preview seems to suggest Gordon is expecting that to happen and looks like he's ready to deal with it.
IISANDERII
Member
I'm only season 1. I really enjoy the chemistry between Gordon and Morena Baccarani. She's always superb, Firefly, Homeland.
a secret-boss
Banned
Hmmm I wonder why
Okay so I got two of the best things this episode.
01) More scenes with Barbara and Galavan-sister, and they even went further this time.
02) They killed off that annoying character that is Jerome. I got my wish. Thankfully they offed him this soon. Perfect.
Great episode. Was probably the best of all of the superhero shows this week.
01) More scenes with Barbara and Galavan-sister, and they even went further this time.
02) They killed off that annoying character that is Jerome. I got my wish. Thankfully they offed him this soon. Perfect.
Great episode. Was probably the best of all of the superhero shows this week.
I still can't deal with his death. I would've really liked to see him turn into the Joker later on.
The point of having shows like Gotham is to retell the Batman mythos in a different light, with different interpretations, different origins for some people, different decisions, different events.
"But the Joker's origins should never be explained!"
That may be true for the mainline comics. But why create shows like Gotham if we are going to stick with the comic canon stories 100%? Cameron Monaghan really nailed the Joker's character with Jerome. A new interpretation of the origin for the clown would have been welcomed, at least in my opinion.
I enjoy the idea of the Joker being 100% mysterious and anonymous, but I also like when in some of the stories they give him a background, like Burton's Batman.
But oh well... Let's see what they come up with for the next Joker red herring....
googleplex
Member
BTW. Was anyone else really hoping the magician at the charity event was Zatara?
Septimus Prime
Member
So, do we still think Galavan is Razzle Ghul? If so, he could always just Lazarus Pit Jerome sometime in the future.
What? Who thinks that? He is totally court or court bait material. R'as wouldn't be like that and he wouldn't be interested in being in limelight in some random city.
Ha ha ha! Amazing stuff.
Poodlestrike
Banned
Like Chariot said, no reason at all to think Galavan is Ra's. More likely he's an original character.
I'm kind of hoping he's actually a Kane, because the meta reversal of the Kane name being wiped away would be amazing. Pretty sure we've already gotten at least one Kane-tagged thing, sadly.
Bruce getting his playboy mack on!
Discotheque
Banned
wow it's awesome that they got him back for penguin's dad.
season 2 has been firing on all cylinders imo, it's found it's tone and i can safely call it the best comic book show on air tbh.
season 2 has been firing on all cylinders imo, it's found it's tone and i can safely call it the best comic book show on air tbh.
Septimus Prime
Member
Yeah, I'm thinking he's Court of Owls, too. The only catch is that I also think the Wayne Enterprises board of directors is the Court, as well, and I don't think they're related to Galavan.
Poodlestrike
Banned
The thing is, the Court is an expansive organization. The Wayne Enterprises board could be members (or controlled by members), but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's not others.
Septimus Prime
Member
So, then, Theo Galavan is Talon (or Proto-Talon)?
Poodlestrike
Banned
He could be a Talon, yeah. Or descended from one.
The Talons are enforces, though, not power players. The way he was talking, his family would have had to have been pretty influential with the Court (assuming they were part of it at all), and then exiled, somehow.