As a comic book nerd, a former pro and a current critic, naturally I paid attention to reports of a new Batman short that premiered at the San Diego Comicon. The short has been getting props from all over the place, as an example of how a Batman movie ought to be.





Personally, I thought the thing was retarded. The acting is of short film quality, which is to say, it is very bad. Starting out at a pretentious fanboy jerk-off, with fetishized shots of Batman fastening is boots (with Velcro, no less) and chasing the Joker, it gets even worse with the introduction of that fucked up alien from Alien and a bunch of those fucked-up aliens from Predator. This is all at the service of some weird fascination genre fans have with crossovers. It is inept and pretentious at the same time, and manages to not have a single original idea. And it was shot on 35 mm film, which means someone like Wes Anderson could have made an amazing feature with the same budget.

To its credit, the film's production values are first rate (those look like real Alien and Predator costumes), albeit at the service of something just plain awful.

So why is everyone (well, all 100,000 comic book fans) so excited? Apparently, for comics fans the previous Batman films have acquired the sting of a childhood memory of being molested by an ugly relative, just like the television show (I stole this simile from The Comics Journal). Comic fans believe Batman deserves better than the admittedly terrible Batman and Robin, or even the previous Tim Burton "efforts," to use the term loosely.

Honestly, who cares? Okay, admittedly I'm writing about it, but we're talking about a man who responds to the murder of his parents by dressing up as a winged possum in vinyl and beating up people. A banal and primitive concept, meant to appeal to undeveloped minds, something the character has excelled at for sixty years. Batman is an idiotic character, and every appearance, every film, every television show and cartoon produces a net deficit in the free marketplace of ideas. Batman doesn't deserve better, because the mediocre doesn't deserve better.

Anyway, you can download the thing here. Be prepared to be blown away. If you're a complete fucking geek. Fuck you and your family.