A few years ago a good friend and
comic shop colleague of mine coined the phrase pleb-dazzle. I'm not sure if he
invented it or heard it elsewhere (I like to think the former) but it struck me
as an excellent way to describe roughly 90% of the tat that we sold and about
90% of the franchises that tat was attached to. The first time I came across it
was in reference to Afro Samurai which people were losing their shit over and
in his esteemed opinion at least, wasn't worth the acetate it was painted on.
That's the defining feature of pleb-dazzle: on the very thin veneer of the
surface, it looks like it might be decent but if you scratch that surface for
more than a second, turgid lumps of tired old crap tumble out. The plebs
however, never scratch that surface, or if they do they don't recognise crap
when they see it or when it lands all over their shoes.
Batman:
Ninja is unfettered pleb-dazzle. In fact it shines so brightly amongst other
pleb-dazzle, they've crowned it King, complete with crown, sceptre and
ceremonial garb. Just like Starscream in Transformers: The Movie though, it
will be short lived as the next ill-conceived turd-fest emerges from the dark
recesses of some marketing executives tortured psyche, but now, Batman: Ninja
enjoys all the heady privileges that royalty deserves. The hype-train was
incredibly strong for this one. The trailer emerged in a sea foam of frothing
at the loins from the barren corners of the internet where the real nerds hang
out and despite coming from very much out of left field, there was a clamour of
anticipation. Batman you say? In feudal Japan? With all his arch enemies
redesigned to the style of the time? How could it possibly go wrong? Oh boy...
Let's
start with the obvious, before we even get into things such as plot or script
or voice acting (all three of which are employed incredibly loosely here);
Batman: Ninja suffers from a distinct and notable lack of actual ninja. In
fact, our titular hero doesn't do any traditional ninja related activities
other than disappearing in a cloud of smoke which is kind of his schtick
anyway. There is one slightly clever moment where he realises he doesn't have
any tall buildings to grapple out of trouble onto, but after that... nada. I
can only assume Batman: Samurai didn't have the right ring to it or they
struggled to work out how to get Batman poisoning his enemies in their sleep,
assassinating Shogun for the highest bidder and generally being looked down
upon by most of the warrior classes for being a sneaky little mercenary shit.
Let's be honest, artists have done what artists do; someone somewhere (here
meaning many people all over the internet) have redesigned Batman as a cowboy,
demon, pirate, accountant, taxidermist, Golf Pro, you name it. It was only a
matter of time before somebody did ninja (or samurai, whatever) and then ran
with it. Design-wise, this isn't bad, but it's pretty derivative and doesn't
really make me want to buy action figures, which let's face it, is the real
acid test of any good cartoon.
Assuming
that there is indeed more to life than action figures and cartoons, and more to
cartoons than good design, you might have thought they'd have put some time
into this magical thing I believe screenwriters refer to as plot. I imagine at
some point there was a meeting which had a heated debate over how to transport
modern day Batman and all his best arch villains into feudal Japan, but I can
only assume it took place late on a Friday when everyone was about to finish
for the week. Gorilla Grodd builds a time machine, shoots all the bad guys into
the past (and half way across the globe, because reasons) as well as a bunch of
good guys and Batman somehow arrives two years later than everyone else, just
so they can explain why Robin now has a stupid looking haircut and a monkey
sidekick. All the bad guys have taken over as shogun and are all building giant
transforming fortresses to battle each other. It's an overly simple set up for
an ultimately unfulfilling pay off, but most of all its just chock full of
stuff that make exactly no sense whatsoever. Aside from the random coincidence
of all of the major players being in the same place at the same time, we get
Batman asking the thugs who they work for when they're wearing very clear and
recognisable Joker masks, a middle section where the Joker has deliberately
hypnotised himself into memory loss so he can trick Batman into leaving him alone
to grow poisonous gas flowers which looks like it was animated while everyone
was high on Quaaludes, Grodd switching allegiances because the Joker stole his
thunder, all of the bad guys fortresses joining together like Voltron, Grodd's
army of monkeys who apparently have morphing powers themselves and are
apparently also capable of merging with all the bats in Japan to form a giant
Batman. The whole thing is a monstrous mess.
There
has been a lot of praise for the animation style though it would appear, but I
can't even really say it's the one saving grace here. I understand it's a
painstaking and long winded process, taking hours of dedication and graft to
produce mere seconds of film but somehow they've made it look the opposite,
like they did the hard design work then just punched it into a computer on
auto-animate mode. The best way I can think to describe it is like an extended
video game cut screen; you'd forgive the slightly jerky animation and overly
high concept plot if you were running around as Batman yourself beating up
other samurai and collecting parts of a time machine to get you home. As a
movie though? It really is just here to dazzle the plebs.
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