With the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3(SEGA Technical Institute, 1994), gamers were introduced to Knuckles the Echidna. This mischievous, dreadlocked antagonist was created by Takashi Yuda and his debut was made all the more impressive by virtue of the fact that Sonic 3 was too big to fit on one cartridge, which meant that Knuckles was the first of Sonic’s supporting characters to co-star in a main series videogame when Sonic & Knuckles (ibid) was released on this very day in 1994.
Story Title: “Carnival Night Conspiracy” (Parts 1 to 6) Published: 12 November 1994 to 21 January 1995 Writers: Nigel Kitching Artist: Richard Elson
The Background: After Sonic the Hedgehog rocketed to mainstream success and helped SEGA to usurp Nintendo to capture the allure of the videogame industry, SEGA capitalised on Sonic’s popularity not just with videogames but also a slew of merchandise, including cartoons and comic books. About six months after Archie Comics began publishing a weird amalgamation of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993 to 1996) and Sonic the Hedgehog/SatAM (1993 to 1994) cartoons, United Kingdom publisher Fleetway Editions Limited brought us “Britain’s Official SEGA Comic”, Sonic the Comic (StC), a fortnightly comic book that I collected diligently until its unfortunate end. While StC pulled much of its lore from the now defunct Mobius and Doctor Ovi Kintobor storyline that was popular outside of Japan at the time, StC quickly veered away from the source material to recast Sonic the a mean-spirited leader of a gang of Freedom Fighters made up of both recognisable characters and anthropomorphic characters adapted from the videogames. Like the Archie comics, StC often included someloose adaptations of the videogames that adapted the source material to fit with its noticeably different lore. After his introduction in a multi-part story loosely based on Sonic 3, Knuckles almost immediately graduated to his own back-up stories in the pages of StC. While these initially tied up some loose ends from that story and cherry-picked ideas from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, they soon evolved into their own beast entirely to expand on Knuckles’s vague backstory and craft a version of the character entirely unique to any seen in other Sonic media.
The Review: Although “Carnival Night Conspiracy” is Knuckles’ first solo story arc in StC, it wasn’t actually his first solo story; the Guardian of the Floating Island first appeared in a short story in a StC summer special, which basically showed how he met Dr. Robotnik and served as a tantalising prelude to his first multi-part appearance in the main Sonic the Hedgehog strip. “Carnival Night Conspiracy” takes place directly after that; thanks to Dr. Robotnik being unable to hide his true nature for too long, Knuckles soon realised that the egg-shaped dictator he had aligned himself with was actually plotting to merge the twelve Chaos Emeralds into six and absorb their powers. Fortunately, Knuckles was able to use the power of the elusive Grey Emerald (also known as the “Control Emerald”, kind of a precursor to the Master Emerald and something commonly found in Sonic lore at the time) to stop Dr. Robotnik. He then aided Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters to repent for exposing their secret base and, after a massive battle, left on frosty terms in one of Dr. Robotnik’s Egg-O-Matics. This is where we find Knuckles at the start of the story, making his way back to the Floating Island (as it was known then; “Angel Island” wouldn’t become its name until 1999), only to have his ride suddenly explode thanks to a self-destruct mechanism triggered by Dr. Robotnik. Thankfully, Knuckles wasn’t too far from his floating island home and bails out, using his unique ability to glide to reach safety. However, from the clouds above the island he spots a bustlingly casino city, one well-guarded by Dr. Robotnik’s Troopers and just one of many outposts and bases the mad scientist secretly constructed on the island without Knuckles’ knowledge. Insulted and peeved by this, Knuckles burrows his way into the heart of the city, confused by the bright lights and the purpose of the casinos and restaurants and unaware that he’s being watched until he’s confronted by a massive construction robot.
Knuckles reluctantly allows the Marxio’s to stay after being won over by their thrilling ride.
However, it’s no match for Knuckles’ super strength and he easily trashes it in one hit, but his heckles are only raised further when he barely avoids a sniper shot! Clambering up to confront his shooter, Knuckles is met by Carnival Night City’s owners and operators, the swindling conniving trio known as the Marxio Brothers. Led by the cigar-smoking Grouchio and made up of underpaid dogsbody Chicio and the mute Harpio, the Marxio Brothers are a composite of the comedians the Marx Brothers and the Super Mario Brothers and first appeared in StCsome years prior where they were in charge of the similarly-themed Casino Night Zone. Although he initially demands that they pack up and leave, Knuckles is won over by Grouchio’s silver tongue and the smarmy salesman pitches that their casino will help Knuckles spruce up his island for when his lost people eventually return and easily explains away Dr. Robotnik’s Troopers as being security guards they purchased. Naturally, Knuckles is sceptical, but still somewhat naïve to the wider world and awestruck by the technology and allure of modern Mobius, so he allows the Marxio’s to give him a tour and take a ride on a high-speed rollercoaster, completely unaware that the trio do actually work for Dr. Robotnik. Strapped tightly into the Hell House Ride, Knuckles enjoys the thrill of the rollercoaster and admires the amount of effort the Marxio’s went to make the ride dangerous and exciting, using his super strength to smash through any hazards that come his way and being so won over by the fun and exhilaration offered that he agrees to let the slimy conmen stay on the Floating Island. Overjoyed, Grouchio makes Knuckles a partner in their endeavour, granting him a luxurious office (to the echidna’s chagrin) and the title of “Marketing Consultant” ahead of them opening the park to the public.
Knuckles smashes the Marxio’s craft and then forcibly removes them from the island!
However, when Knuckles leaves to take care of Dr. Robotnik’s Launch Base Zone, the Marxio’s pursue him in their three-seater craft and Chicio accidentally lets slip that the egg-shaped dictator is bankrolling their entre endeavour. Though frustrated by his brother’s stupidity, Grouchio has no qualms about transforming their craft into a heavily-armed combat mech and unleashing its full might against Knuckles, who is summarily beaten into unconsciousness. However, right as the first guest arrive on the Floating Island and Grouchio is regaling Dr. Robotnik with their victory and promises of fortune, Knuckles recovers and redoubles his efforts, easily dodging their missiles and massive mechanical fists and tearing the craft apart with a superpowered uppercut. To stave off Knuckles’ wrath, Chicio redeems himself by calling in and hoard of Badniks and Grouchio wows the park’s guests by spinning the resulting destruction as a performance celebrating Knuckles’ victory over Dr. Robotnik. Unable to destroy the Carnival Night City with so many innocent lives at risk, Knuckles allows the Badniks to close in on him so he can destroy them all in one fell sweep and comes up with a simple, direct, and effective solution to his problem. By striking a fault line with one massive punch, Knuckles just breaks the entire Carnival Night Zone off the Floating Island! Thankfully, this severed chunk of rock contains just enough residual power from the Chaos Emeralds to allow it to slowly drop to Mobius below rather than plummeting down and killing the three, and it crashes before the startled eyes of a young boy who was unable to make the trip. With his mission complete, Knuckles orders the startled guests to vacate his island and stoically prepares to rid the Floating Island of every trace of Dr. Robotnik.
The Summary: I was super excited about Knuckles at the time; I was so stoked for Sonic 3’s release and absolutely captivated by this grinning, mysterious, antagonistic red echidna (often referred to as a “spiked monkey” in magazines). When he first appeared in the StC summer special, I couldn’t wait to see when he would make his StC debut and it seemed to take ages for him to show up, but boy was it worth it at the time! Then, after proving a formidable foe and a reluctant ally, Knuckles got his own back-up feature in StC beginning with this story and they quickly became my second favourite strip of the comic after Sonic’s. Nowhere is it more evident that “Carnival Night Conspiracy” was meant to be seen as an important feature, one second only to Sonic’s strips, than in the presence of artist Richard Elson, easily the comic’s most talented hand, who had illustrated Sonic’s stories for years and this definitely helps to bolster the tale as being important to the ongoing Sonic 3 adaptation in the comic at the time.
The story went a long way to establishing Knuckles as a bad-ass loner.
Knuckles retains much of his characterisation from his debut appearance; he’s hot-headed, proud, and incredibly naïve, easily awestruck by the ways of the surface world and manipulated by others. He is a little more guarded here thanks to being burned by Dr. Robotnik, but not so much that he doesn’t just forcibly eject the Marxio’s or that he can’t be won over by a rollercoaster ride. His focus is on safeguarding his home, however, and eradicating Dr. Robotnik’s influence from its surface; when the Marxio’s get in the way of that, and his reluctant hospitality, Knuckles doesn’t hesitate to fight back and trash their machine, but he’s not so single-minded in his vendetta as to endanger anyone’s lives. The Marxio’s have always been joke villains in StC but they work here as Dr. Robotnik’s proxies; Knuckles was never the airheaded, gullible fool in StC but many of the comic’s villains did manipulate and betray his trust, though the situation was a little different each time and he generally seemed to learn from each encounter. The primary thrust of this story, though, is to establish that Knuckles is a hot-headed loner who wants to live in peace and solitude on his island and that he’s an extremely tough physical specimen, able to glide, scale walls, and smash an entire chunk off his island with his incredibly strength. Lacking Sonic’s grating arrogance and proclivity for quips, Knuckles comes across as a bad-ass recluse who isn’t to be trifled with and who will unleash an incomparable wrath on anyone who threatens his home or tries to take advantage of him.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever read “Carnival Night Conspiracy”? Did you pick the issues up when they were first released and, if so, what did you think about Knuckles’ first spin-off? What did you think to Fleetway’s introduction and characterisation of Knuckles and the way they handled his backstory? Were you a fan of the Marxio Brothers? What did you think to Knuckles’ early crusade against Dr. Robotnik? Which of Fleetway’s Knuckles stories and/or characters was your favourite and why? Are you celebrating Knuckles’ big day today? Whatever you think about Sonic the Comic, and especially Knuckles, leave a comment down below or let me know by commenting on my social media.
In the decades since his first dramatic appearance in the pages of Detective Comics, Bruce Wayne/Batman has become a mainstream, worldwide, pop culture icon. The brainchild of writer Bob Kane, Batman was brought to life by artist Bill Finger and has been a popular staple of DC Comics and countless movies, videogames, and cartoons over the years. Today is “Batman Day” this year and I figured this was a perfect excuse to spend every Saturday celebrating comic’s grim and broody vigilante.
Story Title: “The Man Who Falls” Published: March 1990 Writer: Dennis O’Neil Artist: Dick Giordano
The Background: Seeking to capitalise on the success of Clark Kent/Superman in their Action Comics publication, the editors of National Comics Publications wanted more superheroes under their banner. In response to this, artist Bob Kane, inspired by pulp heroes like Kit Walker/The Phantom and Lamont Cranston/The Shadow and Leonardo Da Vinci’s sketch of an ornithopter flying device, drew up a design for a masked crimefighter dubbed the “Bat-Man”. This design, however, was wildly different from the image of the Caped Crusader we know and love today and it was only thanks to the long-suppressed influence of artist Bill Finger that the Bat-Man gained his iconic cape, cowl, and darker, more gothic uniform. In the years since his debut, Batman has become not only one of DC Comics’ most popular characters but also a mainstream cultural icon, appearing in numerous other comics, movies, cartoons, and videogames. Many writers and artists have brought their own flair to the Batman and his colourful cast of characters, but one of the most influential for me (and an entire generation) was Dennis O’Neil, who removed many of the camp aspects of the character and reimagined Batman as a grim but sociable detective and even put his own spin on Batman’s famous origin in this story, first published as part of DC’s Secret Origins line (1961; 1973 to 1974; 1986 to 1990; 2014 to 2015) that specifically focused on detailing the origins and backgrounds of their many superheroes and villains.
The Review: “The Man Who Falls” begins with anticipation; against a moonlight night sky, the Batman sits perched, ready to leap through the area and get the drop on a bunch of armed thugs. It’s something he’s done countless times before in the pursuit of justice, and never once has the Dark Knight ever entertained the notion that he would fail in his leap or to uphold his ideals. As he sits, poised for the jump, the Batman’s thoughts flash back to a time from his childhood when he did fall, tumbling through the rotten boards over a forgotten cave on his family’s estate as a child. There, bathed in darkness, young Bruce Wayne was overwhelmed by a hoard of startling, flapping bats; the boy cried out in terror, horrified by the experience, but soon found safety in the protective arms of his father, Doctor Thomas Wayne, who rescued young Bruce from the cave and admonished him for running off alone and putting himself in danger. Bruce’s mother, Martha, attempts to comfort him, assuring him that he was simply in a dark cave with scared animals rather than, as he believes, in Hell…but Bruce isn’t so easily reassured, and his thoughts remain haunted by his harrowing experience. Since then, the Batman considers whether he ever truly stopped falling deeper into the darkness; along the way, he watched others fall, including his beloved parents, who were viciously gunned down before his eyes, leaving only the broken shell of a child behind.
A traumatised Bruce travels the world looking for a purpose to put his skills and anger into.
Spurned on by this traumatic event, Bruce found himself desperate for a purpose, a direction, some way to make sense of everything. To get around the greed and pity of others, a teenaged Bruce crafted clever forgeries that enabled him to leave Gotham City and travel the world using his family’s wealth. He became something of a nomad, enrolling in various learning institutions but never staying very long, while also moonlighting on the streets amongst the poor and desperate. While others turned their nose up at him, dismissing him as a “rich snot”, Bruce consoled his feelings of isolation and loneliness with the knowledge that there would always be another train, city, or teacher waiting for him. At age twenty, his wealth and academic achievements were more than enough to secure him a place in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (despite his poor marksmanship skills), but he was only able to stomach it for six months; frustrated by the sheer amount of red tape and legislation, Bruce realised that he wouldn’t find whatever he was searching for within the governmental system. Instead, he journeyed to Korea, to a mysterious temple high up the frigid Paektu-San Mountains. After three weeks of patiently waiting, Bruce was graced with the presence of Master Kirigi; after five months of menial tasks, he was finally deemed worthy to begin his martial arts training and took to it with a finesse and skill beyond his years. This saddened his master, who believed that Bruce’s natural inclination towards violence would eventually destroy him and urged his student to let him teach him to move past the trauma that has so badly scarred him. As this would take another twenty years, and he had no intention of forgetting the lessons he’s learned, Bruce departed the next morning, travelling to France and learning the art of manhunting from a brutal mercenary known as Ducard.
After years of training and searching, Bruce adopts the terrifying persona of the Batman!
Protesting the man’s willingness to kill and shaken by his culpability in the murder, Bruce continued his travels and his studies; by his early twenties, he’d consulted with every prominent detective in the world save one: Willie Dogget. As gentle as Ducard was skilled, Dogget was also murdered before Bruce’s eyes and, in the scuffle with his murderer, Bruce indirectly took another life and was left wandering the frozen wastes of a mountain with little in the way of protection. Thankfully, he was rescued by an Indian shaman, one who wore the ceremonial mask of the bat and mused that Bruce had been “marked” by the winged creatures. Once he fully recovered, Bruce finally returned home to Gotham City, physically and mentally changed from his experiences and yet still pondering the true nature of his mission and its connection to the bats. Determined to put his skills to good use, Bruce’s first attempt at vigilante crimefighting is an abject failure that leaves him critically injured; humiliated, he retreats to his father’s library and contemplates the paradox of the criminal, a superstitious and cowardly lot who hide behind their guns. At that exact moment, the answer to all of his questions literally comes crashing through the window; a giant, terrifying bat that brings him both horror and an unexpected joy. In that moment, Bruce finally realises that he has to become something more than a man, something less than human and also more at the same time and dons his first ghastly visage as the Batman. Now, he is far beyond questioning his mission and his purpose; beyond fear, beyond doubt, the Batman leaps from his perch with nothing but confidence, committed to dedicating the rest of his life to taking such death-defying falls to bring justice to the same type of criminals that stole his childhood.
The Summary: “The Man Who Falls” is an extremely simple tale; Secret Origins was a publication known for little more than retelling, recontextualising, or reframing the origin stories of DC Comics’ characters but one thing I enjoyed about the book was that it often gave a new spin on the narrative. Rather than the stories always just being a clear-cut narrative, there was often a framing device employed so you had a little more substance to the tale, and “The Man Who Falls” utilises such a device to really emphasise the bleak, never-ending crusade of the Dark Knight. For the Batman, his life has become a nightly routine of life-or-death situations, to the point where he really doesn’t think anything of leaping hundreds of feet from the air, crashing through a skylight, and tackling armed thugs despite the fact that he could die at any moment during even such a simple and mundane task as that. The Batman has no time for doubt or fear; all that matters to him is an unwavering commitment to his mission to battle injustice no matter the cost, and “The Man Who Falls” showcases that very well purely through its artwork and the grim narrative boxes that deliver more insight into the Batman’s background than ever before.
The story delves deeper into Bruce’s background and training than ever before.
The story touches, albeit briefly, upon Bruce’s travels, that lost period of time between him losing his parents and returning to Gotham City to “become a bat”. Skipping over some of the intervening years when he was a boy, we find a teenaged Bruce Wayne travelling, searching for a purpose and a way to put his pain and anger to good use, and finding himself bored and unsatisfied by traditional academic environments. Still, while others question his focus and integrity, Bruce excels in his studies and has all the tools required to do whatever he desires, even pursue a career in the F.B.I. on his test scores alone, but remains unfulfilled and frustrated by the compromises and flaws of the traditional system. More than ever, we get a glimpse of the arduous physical and mental training Bruce endured on his travels and find that his childhood traumas not only left him ideally suited to mastering physical combat, but also on the path towards self-destruction and with a strong moral compass that’s only galvanised by witnessing (and being somewhat complicit in) further death. While the Batman’s original origin story was incredibly powerful despite its brevity, “The Man Who Falls” expands upon it beautifully, linking in with the events of Batman: Year One (Miller, et al, 1987) and emphasising that Bruce effectively was killed alongside his parents and what left that alleyway was a traumatised, driven child determined to put his anguish to good use no matter the cost.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
Have you ever read “The Man Who Falls”? What did you think to the way it expanded on Batman’s origin and background? Do you like seeing Bruce’s travels and training or do you think it’s best left ambiguous? What are some of your favourite stories and moments depicting Batman’s never-ending crusade and his early days of training? Whatever your thoughts, drop them below or leave a comment on my social media, and be sure to check out Batman content.
To celebrate the simultaneous worldwide release of Mortal Kombat(Midway, 1992) on home consoles, 13 September 1993 was dubbed “Mortal Monday”. Mortal Kombat’s move to home consoles impacted not only the ongoing “Console War” between SEGA and Nintendo but also videogames forever thanks to its controversial violence and I think that it’s only fitting that we continue celebrating this influential fighting series every September 13th.
Released: 21 September 1997 Director: John R. Leonetti Distributor: New Line Cinema Budget: $30 million Stars: Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, Brian Thompson, James Remar, Sandra Hess, Lynn Red Williams, Musetta Vander, and Reiner Schöne
The Plot: Despite Liu Kang’s (Shou) victory in the Mortal Kombat tournament, Outworld emperor Shao Kahn (Thompson) bends the Elder Gods’ sacred rules and assaults Earthrealm. With Lord Rayden (Remar) weakened, Liu Kang and his friends have seven days to recruit new allies and learn the key to stopping Kahn’s invasion before all of Earthrealm is annihilated.
The Background: As I’ve touched on before, competitive fighting games were all the rage in the nineties thanks to the many iterations of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior(Capcom, 1991). To compete with this title, developers Ed Boon and John Tobias, inspired by movies like Enter the Dragon (Clouse, 1973), Bloodsport (Arnold, 1988), and Big Trouble in Little China (Carpenter, 1986), created a tournament fighter thatchanged the genre thanks to its ultra-violent content. It was producer Lawrence Kasanoff who saw Mortal Kombat’s potential as a multimedia franchise and it was thanks to him, and director Paul W. S. Anderson, that we got the cult hit Mortal Kombat (ibid, 1995), which was both surprisingly profitable, widely recognised as one of the best videogame adaptations, and a principal influence on my PhD thesis. Unfortunately, you can’t talk about Mortal Kombat without mentioning its universally derided sequel. Rather than smartly infuse the relatively simply videogame lore with filmic inspirations,Kasanoff aimed to go bigger and more spectacular, stuffing the script with as many characters and references to the source material as possible in an effort to cater exclusively to Mortal Kombat’s growing fanbase. Paul W. S. Anderson passed on the director’s chair and only two members of the original cast returned for the sequel, which was full of cringe-worthy performances and terribly rendered CGI as New Line Cinema didn’t actually release the finished version of the film. This was reflected in the film’s dismal $51.3 million box office gross and scathing critical reception; everything from the confused narrative, underwhelming fight scenes, and the laughably bad acting has been highlighted as a negative, and rightfully so. Despite the film’s universally negative reception, Kasanoff’s multimedia ventures continued with the live-action prequel, Mortal Kombat: Conquest (1998 and 1999) but, while New Line Cinema initially had plans for a third film, the teases for it were cut from Annihilation and it remained in Development Hell for decades until the franchise was finally rebooted in 2021.
The Review: I was such a huge fan of the original Mortal Kombat movie as a kid, and even now I still regard it as probably the best live-action videogame adaptation ever made. That’s hard for me to say as I loathe what Anderson did to the Resident Evil franchise (Capcom/Various, 1996 to present) with his filmic endeavours (Anderson/Various, 2002 to 2016) but it’s true; I remember renting it as a kid, basing an entire birthday around watching it, and even the day I bought the VHS copy from a market stall. My anticipation for the sequel was so high and it seemed like we were waiting for so long for it to come out but, in reality, it was only a couple of years. When Mortal Kombat: Annihilation finally did come out, all I remember seeing of it was the poster and that was enough to get me excited as I was eager to see that cliff-hanger ending resolved, but I missed out on seeing it at the cinema as it wasn’t very easy to get to the cinema at the time, so I didn’t see it until it came out on VHS some time later. I don’t remember what I thought to the film as a kid; I was probably just super happy to see all my favourite Mortal Kombat characters brought to life and given more screen time, but I do have a vague memory of thinking it wasn’t as good as the original film and, as I’ve gotten older and rewatched and even academically studied the film, that opinion has only grown stronger.
Things are off to a bad start right from the opening and only get worse from there….
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation opens with a quick recap of the last film; scenes of Mortal Kombat’s best fights and memorable moments (purposely cut to excise the original actors from the footage) play over Rayden’s narration as he brings us up to speed and we’re brought back to the ending of the first movie, but with some noticeable and jarring changes. You’ll spot these immediately since James Remar sounds nothing like Christopher Lambert (still the quintessential Raiden for me and it baffles me that he hasn’t done more voice work for the character, at least) and definitely doesn’t look anything like him. Sporting an entirely new outfit and a far more obvious wig, Remar fails to convey the same enigmatic presence as his predecessor but it doesn’t end there; Liu Kang is also wearing a completely different outfit and both Johnny Cage (Chris Conrad) and Lieutenant Sonya Blade (Hess) have been completely recast. Even more egregious is that Cage has his trademark sunglasses back, despite the fact they were crushed by the monstrous Goro (Tom Woodruff, Jr./Kevin Michael Richardson) in a pretty memorable sequence in the last film. Still, none of that really compares to the absolutely atrocious visual effects slashing across the sky and the arrival of Outworld Emperor Shao Kahn. Originally portrayed as a gigantic semi-translucent, monstrous figure voiced by the immortal Frank Welker and bursting from the Temple of Light, Kahn is now a far less intimidating muscular brute garbed in a Halloween costume and surrounded by a gaggle of porn stars, Gladiators, and cos-players and immediately lacks all of the subtle menace and nuance of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s menacing Shang Tsung.
Liu Kang must go on a bizarre quest to rescue Kitana and find the power to defeat Shao Kahn.
Still, let’s continue on. Like the last film, our main character is Liu Kang (thankfully still portrayed by the endlessly likeable and charismatic Robin Shou, whose martial arts prowess is one of Annihilation’s few highlights even if his acting ability isn’t quite enough to carry this mess of a script), whose elation at having overcome his personal demons, avenged his brother, and safeguarded Earthrealm from Outworld is immediately cut short by Shao Kahn’s arrival. Although he learned to trust in Rayden in the last film, and that all the legends he grew up hearing about were true, despite his scepticism, Liu Kang is angered that their victory, which the Elder Gods decreed would keep Earthrealm safe from invasion for at least one generation, was all for nothing thanks to Shao Kahn finding a loophole in the rules. Liu Kang’s anger only increases when Cage is unceremoniously killed right before his eyes, and his first instinct is to avenge his fallen friend, only to be told that he’s “no match for Kahn” and must embark on a perilous journey of self-discovery to find the power necessary to overcome the Emperor. Rayden splits the heroes into teams for this mission, and Liu Kang’s demeanour (but not his crotch) is softened by the presence of the beautiful Kitana (Soto), with whom he had a flirtatious romance in the last film. Here, they are ready to take the next step in their relationship, but this is suddenly ripped away from Liu Kang when the Edenian princess is kidnapped by the returning Scorpion (J. J. Perry/Ed Boon). Fraught with guilt over failing to keep her safe, Liu Kang is guided towards the elusive Nightwolf (Litefoot), a Native American mystic who endeavours to teach him to harness his “Animality” by undergoing a series of tests designed to focus his mind, body, and spirit for his inevitable fight against Shao Kahn.
Sonya, angry at Cage’s death, reluctantly teams with Jax, the charismatic everyman with bionic arms!
Although she has a new face, wardrobe, and haircut, the first thing you’ll notice about Sonya here is that she’s reverted back to being an angry, embittered, distrustful, and overall unlikeable character. She’s absolutely devastated when Cage is murdered and desperate to make Shao Kahn pay, but blinded by her grief and rage so Rayden has her journey to some facility to reunite with her partner, Major Jackson “Jax” Briggs (Lynn red Williams). Initially, Sonya rejects this idea as she doesn’t want to lose anyone else she cares about, and she carries a chip on her shoulder throughout the film and basically has to learn the same lessons about trusting others as she did in the first movie. While Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is littered with chaotic and random fight scenes, at least Liu Kang and Rayden are focused on opposing Shao Kahn; Sonya has no chance against the Emperor but has no other clear antagonist to focus on since Kano (Trevor Goddard) is dead, meaning she’s forced to settle for “leftovers” like Cyrax (J. J. Perry) and Ermac (John Medlen). Thankfully, she’s partnered up with Jax; for a former American Football player and Gladiator, Williams does a really good job in this role and has a down-to-earth, relatable charisma to him. As an everyman character who has no idea what’s going on, he’s a natural conduit for exposition and it’s fun seeing him react to the bizarre events happening all around him. Jax’s “thing” in this movie is that he struggles with self-confidence; to that end, he underwent a surgical procedure to graft cybernetic prosthetics to his already muscular arms to give him a power boost. Jax’s arms are a valuable asset, saving his life and even allowing him to cause shockwaves by hitting the ground, but Rayden and the others teach him that they’re merely a tool and that his true power comes from within. Unlike Sonya, Jax ends up squaring off with a clear rival in the finale, the half-human centaur Motaro (Deron McBee) and, in the process, overcomes his insecurities and sheds his mechanical arms to deliver a pretty cathartic beatdown on Kahn’s monstrous minion.
The plot revolves around Kitana and Sindel, but the actors struggle to convey this drama.
While she was mostly relegated to an alluring figure and a secondary mentor in the first film, Kitana takes on a much larger role in the sequel. Although she only gets a couple of fight scenes and ends up locked in a cage for her man to come and rescue her, Kitana is right at the forefront of the plot since her mother, Queen Sindel (Vander), is the key to Shao Kahn’s illegal invasion. Stunned to find her mother alive (and in perfect physical health), Kitana is even more heartbroken to find that Sindel has been corrupted by Kahn’s influence and that her resurrection has allowed him to bring destruction to Earthrealm. Confused by this turn of events, Rayden consults with the Elder Gods who advise him that the love Kitana has for her mother can break Kahn’s spell, restore her, and undo the damage caused and he blindly follows their instructions, even sacrificing his status as a Thunder God (and debuting an absolutely dreadful new appearance in the process that is anything but Raiden) in order to reunite the two. Unfortunately, they’ve all been duped by the corrupt Elder God Shinnok (Schöne) and lured into a trap; Sindel laughs in her daughter’s face when she tries to profess her love for her and Rayden is left powerless, resulting in his death at Kahn’s hands and Kitana having to battle her mother in the finale. Unfortunately, neither Talisa Soto nor Musetta Vander have the acting ability to pull any of this off; both are obviously stunningly beautiful, but Kitana and Liu Kang have all the chemistry of a wet paper bag and Sindel is little more than a cackling pantomime villain. Remar also suffers in this regard; if he’s trying to channel Lambert’s stoic playfulness, he fails miserably and just seems bored and confused, even during his terribly shot fight against the Reptiles (Mark Caso, Paul Driver, and Sultan Uddin).
Though he cuts an intimidating figure, Shao Kahn is simply trying to please his overbearing father.
However, they’re all Oscar-winning actors compared to the absolutely dreadful Brian Thompson. I actually like Thompson; he always plays big, brutish thugs really well when he crops up in supporting roles but he has neither the size nor the charisma to impress as Annihilation’s lead antagonist. Essentially coming across as a poor man’s Kurgan (Clancy Brown; a fitting comparison, for sure), Shao Kahn is a loud, arrogant bully with an overdeveloped sense of grandeur and a taste of pomp and ceremony. Upon arriving on Earthrealm, he attempts to establish himself as a meaningful threat by surrounding himself with his generals and killing Cage, but is easily outmatched by Rayden. Indeed, Rayden is only stopped from killing Kahn right then and there because the Emperor takes Cage as a hostage, and Rayden is so stunned to see one of his chosen mortals killed that he doesn’t even make good on his promise to “take” Kahn’s generals from him. While the heroes go off on their confusing missions, Kahn returns to his throne room and is content to allow the seven-day merger of Outworld and Earthrealm to take place without his direct involvement. However, if his cheap plastic armour and rubbish skull helmet didn’t diminish Kahn’s threat enough, his contentious relationship with his father, Shinnok, certainly does. Chastised at every turn by the corrupt Elder God, Kahn quickly turns from a brutish tyrant to a meek child desperate to impress his father, and he absurdly takes his anger out on his generals at every opportunity. Even this doesn’t make sense; why kill your underlings when you’re in the middle of an invasion? And Kahn’s lashing out at Rain for failing to kill Kabal and Stryker is super weird considering Shinnok chewed him out for sparing Rayden. Imagine if Shinnok had just killed Kahn for that, as he does his general? Absolutely ridiculous! Completely devoted to his witch-like queen and confidant in his victory, Kahn allows his troops to wreak havoc across the globe (though we barely see any of this) and is fixated only on killing Rayden and conquering Earthrealm in order to earn his father’s respect. Where Shang Tsung was a scheming, charismatic sorcerer, Shao Kahn is little more than a thug with delusions of grandeur and it’s hard to picture anyone bending the knee to him since he exhibits little of the threat that Tsung did beyond his admittedly impressive physical stature.
The Nitty-Gritty: Contrary to my usual everyday mindset, I don’t actually like to be too negative in my reviews, or when watching movies or playing videogames or whatever, and when discussing Mortal Kombat: Annihilation for my PhD thesis I tried to come at it with a positive perspective. Primarily, this involved praising it for capturing the madcap nonsense of the franchise’s latter-day releases, like Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Midway Games, 1995) and its successor, Mortal Kombat Trilogy (ibid, 1996). These were fighters crammed full of characters, bonkers finishing moves, and which tried to mash together all the established lore and many of the contradictory characters, which made for a pretty chaotic gaming experience but one full of variety (even if many characters were just palette swaps and many of the violent finishing moves were pretty lazy). Still, if all you cared about was seeing your favourite Mortal Kombat characters in one game, these two titles had you covered and, in that respect, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation delivers in terms of fan service. The plot is also a pretty close approximation of Mortal Kombat 3’s (Midway, 1995), which depicted Kahn resurrecting Sindel and leading an illegal invasion of Earthrealm, and the iconic theme song by The Immortals is back and has even been tweaked to include the new characters seen in this film. Unfortunately, that’s about where the praise ends for, while Mortal Kombat: Annihilation does feature a bunch of characters, hardly any of them have any personality or nuance to them. Instead, basically every character that isn’t a lead protagonist or antagonist is treated as badly as Scorpion (Chris Casamassa) and Sub-Zero (François Petit) were in the first film. Rain (Tyrone Wiggins) is here, and even gets a few lines, but is he a conflicted Edenian prince with control of water and lightning? No, he’s just another ninja who gets smashed into a fiery pit for angering his master.
Almost every Mortal Kombat character is shoe-horned into the film whether it makes sense or not.
An extremely poor rendition of Baraka (Dennis Keiffer) randomly shows up, looking more like a guy in a rubbery Halloween costume than a vicious mutated cannibal, and Mileena (Dana Hee) even makes a brief appearance to wrestle around in the mud with Sonya but is she depicted as Kitana’s bloodthirsty clone or stepsister? Is she bollocks. Hell, Sonya even mistakes her for Kitana at first, which makes absolutely no sense as she doesn’t look anything like Kitana; maybe if she’d also been played by Talisa Soto, and Jade (Irina Pantaeva) and Baraka had been dropped from the script, Mileena could’ve played a bigger role but, as is, she’s just some hot chick in a magenta outfit for Sonya to fumble around with. This even carries over to the finale, when Sonya takes on Ermac (who has just one line and isn’t even named), who randomly splits into two (actually this is Noob Saibot (J. J. Perry), who also isn’t named and is given no context) to double-team her but why the hell should we care when we don’t even know who these masked morons are? Still, at least these losers feature onscreen; “two of Earth’s warriors, Kabal and Stryker” aren’t even given that luxury and this absolutely ugly looking CGI monstrosity gets way more screen time than it deserves. Sadly, this continues with some of my favourite Mortal Kombat characters. Sub-Zero (Keith Cooke) makes a dramatic return, now sporting his bad-ass eye scar and actually being the younger brother of the previous one. He comes sliding in to save Liu Kang from Smoke (Ridley Tsui), who’s actually a combination of Smoke and Sektor, and deliver some clunky exposition about how the cyborg was reprogrammed by Kahn to target Liu instead of him (as in Sub-Zero). Why was Smoke going after Sub-Zero? Does he have any relation to Cyrax? Was he Sub-Zero’s former friend turned into a cyborg against his will and did Sub-Zero even care that he just killed his friend? None of these questions are answered as the film pauses for a pretty awesome battle between Sub-Zero and Scorpion which, despite being something I and many Mortal Kombat fans missed from the first film, also makes little sense as there’s no reason given in the film for the animosity between the two beyond the filmic Scorpion being evil and Sub-Zero trying to protect Kitana. Even crazier is the part where, after losing Kitana to Scorpion, Sub-Zero delivers a heartfelt plea to Liu Kang that “[he] alone [is] not ready for what’s ahead” and then disappears from the film! I just…what?! You just said that Liu Kang needs allies but you couldn’t stick around to help? What could Sub-Zero possibly have to do that’s more important?!
Many of the characters are just there for the sake of it and make very little impact as a result.
This does lead Liu Kang to Nightwolf, but he’s another throwaway character; sure, he looks the part but all he does is speak in riddles, knock Liu Kang out with a tomahawk, and prattle on some trite about his “Animality”. It’s assumed that Jade killed Nightwolf while Liu Kang underwent his little nightmare sequence but who the hell knows, and why the fuck where there suddenly Reptiles waiting to attack the heroes after Jade betrayed them?! Nothing makes any sense, and it’s frustrating as all they had to do was have Kahn’s minions be Motaro, Sindel, Scorpion, Mileena, and Sheeva (Marjean Holden) and things could’ve been much more streamlined. Oh, Jesus…I haven’t even talked about Sheeva, have I? Rather than portray her using animatronics like with Goro, Sheeva is simply another pantomime villain with some prosthetic arms who plays next to no role in the movie and is unceremoniously killed off without even having a proper fight scene! There’s one very brief scene where she and Motaro get into it over who should replace Rain as Kahn’s right-hand man, hinting at the rivalry between their races, but Sheeva may as well not even be in the fuckin’ movie as she does absolutely nothing before being squashed by a cage! Motaro comes off a little better, but not by much; Deron McBee at least looks to be enjoying himself in the role, which requires little more than for him to stand around with his flex on and look tough, and the filmmakers actually did a decent job of rendering his horse-like lower half using clever shots, some practical effects, and CGI. He certainly comes off a lot better than whatever the fuck that demonic monster-thing is, and absolutely should have taken that creature’s place, but unfortunately has absolutely none of the screen presence or importance of Goro since he’s hardly in the movie and only seen as a relevant factor in the finale.
Liu Kang is ultimately able to best Shao Kahn and save Earthrealm once again.
So…okay….Mortal Kombat: Annihilation decides that the complex and bonkers lore of the videogame just isn’t enough for the big-screen and makes some changes. I can understand that; change is inevitable in the adaptation process, but apparently the simple concept of “good versus evil” wasn’t enough for this movie and they had to shoe-horn in this bat-shit crazy familial link between Rayden, Shao Kahn, and Shinnok that has never been seen before or since. Apparently, Rayden and Shao Kahn are brothers and, eons ago, they fought for Shinnok’s approval; Rayden won, but couldn’t kill his brother and both have held a grudge ever since. Shinnok sees both his sons as being weak; Rayden for valuing life and being compassionate and Kahn for not killing Rayden or being more forceful in his endeavours, but he favours Shao Kahn since he at least values strength and power over loyalty and empathy. This weird inclusion is treated like a big deal; Jax is especially perturbed by the revelation and the mortals are left investing their hopes in Liu Kang since Rayden’s trustworthiness is called into question. The film then asks that we give two shits when Shao Kahn murders this abomination of an adaptation of Rayden, but it all just falls completely flat and is meaningless since the entire film has been about getting Liu Kang ready to fight Kahn, not Rayden. When Liu Kang and the Emperor finally square off, it’s nowhere near the intense or engaging martial arts contest like Liu vs. Tsung; indeed, the focus on delivering high quality martial arts is noticeably lacking all throughout Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and, instead, Shao Kahn throws his weight (but not his hammer, because that would be too cool, I guess) around until Liu Kang finally taps into his Animality and transforms into, hands down, the worst CGI effect I think I have ever seen…only for Kahn to top it with his own monstrous transformation. The two butt-ugly affronts to eyesight slap each other about a bit before inexplicably transforming back and being forced to battle in Mortal Kombat (now altered to remove Kahn’s powers, something we didn’t see in the last film where powers were fair game…). The loss of his powers puts Kahn at an immediate and irreconcilable disadvantage and Liu Kang easily finishes him off; although Kahn is ripped apart when his stupid little dragon tattoo bursts to life upon his defeat, his death is a far cry from seeing Tsung impaled on those spikes. With Kahn defeated and Shinnok turned into Tetris (Alexey Pajitnov, 1984) blocks, Sindel returns to normal, Rayden is resurrected and promoted to an Elder God, and all of Earthrealm is restored. In fact, everything returns to normal…except for Johnny Cage, whose body I assume is just lying on the ground somewhere…but that’s okay because all of the heroes are some bullshit family now, I guess.
The Summary: Mortal Kombat set the standard for videogame adaptations; by drawing from some of the best martial arts movies and focusing on the relationships between the characters and crafting a fun, action-packed fantasy adventure, it absolutely delivered as an entertaining adaptation even without the franchise’s trademark gore. All of that goodwill was obliterated in the sequel, which took everything that worked in the first film and threw it out the window. No, sorry, not out the window; they threw it right in the fuckin’ bin! The only saving graces are the soundtrack, a handful of decent fight scenes (anything involving Liu Kang, Scorpion, and Sub-Zero), and seeing pretty much every single Mortal Kombat character brought to life but the execution misses the mark on almost every level. The acting is bad, the script is bad, the line delivery is bad; the new actors are dreadful, the costumes (while technically better) look far more like cheap cos-play than a high-budget production, and the CGI is more than atrocious…it’s God-awful! As nonsensical as the Mortal Kombat videogames could get at the time (and even now…), nothing makes sense in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation; why were those spheres in those tunnels? Who built them? Why? Why didn’t they just die when riding them? When Baraka falls into those flames, why is it recycled footage of Rain’s death? Why is Baraka even there? Why didn’t Sub-Zero help Liu Kang? Why did Rayden and presumably all those other lives lost in the attempted merger come back to life but not Johnny Cage? Just….I mean, holy God it is hard to defend this movie! Yes, Robin Shou is great. Yes, seeing Scorpion and Sub-Zero fight is great. Yes, Jax is a standout character, Motaro looks pretty good, and the film does a decent job of translating the bat-shit insanity of Mortal Kombat Trilogy to the screen but there’s just no heart, no logic, no sense to anything. It’s just a mish-mash of generally poor fight scenes, rubbish visual effects, appalling acting and a mind fuck of ideas and visuals that more resembles a music video than a coherent movie. It’s got some charm, and is probably appealing to kids hyped up on sugar, but your life would probably benefit from never watching this one even if it was for free.
My Rating:
⭐
Rating: 1 out of 5.
Terrible
Am I being too harsh on Mortal Kombat: Annihilation? Do you have any fond memories of this film? What did you think to the new cast and how did they compare to their predecessors? Which of the film’s fights was your favourite, and with characters would you have liked to see more from? Do you think the film juggled its many characters well or would you have preferred to see the cast cut down a little bit? Would you have liked to see a direct follow-up to this film or were you happy with the reboot we got? How are you celebrating Mortal Kombat’s release today? Whatever you think about Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, write your thoughts below.
In the decades since his first dramatic appearance in the pages of Detective Comics, Bruce Wayne/Batman has become a mainstream, worldwide, pop culture icon. The brainchild of writer Bob Kane, Batman was brought to life by artist Bill Finger and has been a popular staple of DC Comics and countless movies, videogames, and cartoons over the years. “Batman Day” falls on September 16 this year and I figured this was a perfect excuse to spend every Saturday celebrating comic’s grim and broody vigilante.
Story Title: “Daughter of the Demon” Published: June 1971 Writer: Dennis O’Neil Artist: Neal Adams
The Background: Following the huge success of Clark Kent/Superman, National Comics Publications set Bob Kane to work creating another masked crimefighter to add to their repertoire. Thanks to the long-suppressed influence of artist Bill Finger, the “Bat-Man” soon became not only one of DC Comics’ most popular characters but also a mainstream cultural icon. In the years that followed, the Batman defended Gotham City from numerous costumed supervillains, but perhaps none have been more captivating and intriguing than “The Demon’s Head” himself, Rā’s al Ghūl. Created by editor Julius Schwartz, writer Dennis O’Neil, and artist Neal Adams during a time when DC Comics were reinventing the Batman to shake off the camp trappings of the sixties, Rā’s al Ghūl was an enigmatic criminal mastermind akin to a James Bond villain. His vast criminal empire, lofty goal of ending all worldwide conflict by any means necessary, and international flavour made him both a dark mirror of the Dark Knight and an evolution of the Fu Manchu stereotype. A new villain for a new era in comics, Rā’s al Ghūl would continually plague Batman over the years thanks to the rejuvenating properties of his “Lazarus Pits”, which allowed him to stave off injuries and death and the cost of his keen intellect, and he was a pivotal figure in DC Comics thanks to the influence of his daughter, Talia, with whom Batman would have a volatile son. Rā’s al Ghūl has made numerous appearances outside of the comics, usually as a master manipulator; he was excellently voiced by the eloquent David Warner in the DC Animated Universe, often cropped up as a puppet master in various Batman videogames, and made appearances in DC’s live-action television shows (however ill-fitting these might have been) courtesy of Matthew Nable and Alexander Siddig. Liam Neeson expertly brought the character to life in Batman Begins(Nolan, 2005) and Rā’s al Ghūl has consistently been regarded as one of Batman’s most dangerous and formidable villains due to his complex nature and the influence of his League of Assassins.
The Review: “Daughter of the Demon” takes place during a transitional time in the Caped Crusader’s life and portrayal; in an effort to curb ludicrous claims about the Dark Knight’s sexuality and to simplify his entire persona, Bruce Wayne moved into a luxury penthouse in the middle of Gotham City alongside his faithful butler and father-figure, Alfred Pennyworth, and Dick Grayson/Robin grew into the “Teen Wonder” and moved away to Hudson University. This provides some context for the opening panels of the story, which see the colourful youth sneaking back into his dormitory and being dramatically gunned down by two unseen assailants! As horrified as Bruce is to learn that Dick hasn’t been seen for a few days, he’s even more startled when a photograph of the captured (but seemingly alive) teen arrives at his penthouse with a threatening note addressed to the Batman! Bruce wastes no time in suited up as Gotham’s grim avenger and swinging his way over the Wayne Manor in order to run tests on the note and the photograph at the Batcave. It seems that, when they moved, they didn’t initially kit the penthouse up with all their crime-fighting equipment as Batman is forced to make the trip using his trusty Batrope rather than the Batmobile, but such concerns are immediately forgotten when Batman is greeted by the enigmatic figure of Rā’s al Ghūl and his hulking bodyguard, Ubu.
When Robin and Talia are kidnapped, Batman teams up with Rā’sto find them.
Having deduced that Bruce Wayne and the Batman are one and the same through deduction, research, and observation (being the Batman requires wealth and resources, after all, a “hole” that Batman vows to “plug” in the future), Rā’s comes to Batman seeking his aid since he received a similar note showing that his daughter, the beautiful Talia al Ghūl, has also been kidnapped. Having encountered the Batman in a previous story, Talia spoke highly of his deductive skills, making him the natural choice to seek for assistance and Bruce lives up to his reputation by analysing both pictures under a “microscopic spectograph” [sic] and discovering small traces of a certain herb used in ceremonies by an Eastern cult known as the Brotherhood of the Demon, who operate out of Calcutta. The three board Rā’s’ plane (with Batman noting the strength and loyalty of the overzealous Ubu) and, on the long flight to India, Rā’s comments on Batman’s stoic demeanour and Bruce grimly responds that he is compartmentalising on the task at hand and will grieve later, if necessary which, of course, detours the story into a flashback of how young Bruce Wayne saw his parents murdered before his eyes. Of course, we all know the story: Dedicating his mind and body to the eradication of crime, he was inspired by the appearance of a bat to become the Batman and then found a kinship in young Dick Grayson, whom he trained to become his crimefighting partner. Once they land in Calcutta, Batman begins his investigation in earnest, benefitting from the terror his unfamiliar guise evokes in the local street scum and even threatening them with death for information on the Brotherhood of the Demon. This bluff pays off and leads the three to a building at the end of a nearby alleyway, wherein Batman is set upon by a ravenous leopard! Acting swiftly, he locks the cat’s jaws open with his elbow, overpowers it, and nonchalantly breaks its neck with only minor wounds.
Batman outs Rā’sand is stunned to find he’s being groomed as the villain’s successor!
Remarking that the leopard had been well trained to act as a guard, the Batman discovers a convenient map pointing them in the direction of the Himalayan Mountains, and the three make haste to the frigid heights of Mount Nanda Devi. Easily picking up the trail, the Batman makes use of some handholds that have recently been hacked into the ice and leads the expedition up the mountain, only for them to be shot at by a sniper; while Ubu tends to his master, the Batman spectacularly swings into action to punch out the shooter. Afterwards, Batman notes the presence of a helicopter and several other armed guards, but his inner monologue suggests that he’s figured out what’s really going on; he calls the gunmen’s bluff and easily makes his way into an elaborate chamber, where he frees Robin and launches into an angered tirade against the so-called Brotherhood of the Demon that reveals Rā’s was behind everything. He was immediately tipped off when Rā’s showed up at the Batcave right after Robin was kidnapped, and when Ubu insisted that his master go ahead…unless there was immediate danger nearby, and finally because the two brought them to the exact mountain they needed to investigate despite the map not specifying the Brotherhood’s precise location. Furious and insulted by the deception and the run-around, Batman relishes in taking his anger out on the Brotherhood’s minions alongside Robin, unmasking their “Supreme Leader” as none other than Ubu and engaging with the musclebound brute in a short, but decisive, clash that sees the Batman effortlessly avoid the big man’s swings and lay him out with an uppercut to the jaw! Rā’s commends the Batman’s physical and mental prowess and reveals his intentions behind the whole charade: Talia is in love with the Dark Knight and Rā’s wishes to retire from his vast organisation and have Batman take his place as his successor…and son-in-law!
The Summary: When I was a kid, comic books weren’t that easy to come by in the United Kingdom so I mainly got my Batman fix from yearly annuals, with many of them being from the seventies and eighties. Consequently, Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ version of Batman was the one I knew best, so “Daughter of the Demon” ticks a lot of boxes for me. The artwork is spectacular, with large, well-defined, and realistic depictions being at the forefront; while I’m not a fan of the Batman’s yellow oval symbol or blue-and-grey ensemble, Adams always drew him in dynamic and powerful poses, even when he’s just standing their with his caped wrapped around him or sitting and brooding. Having said that, it’s a bit weird that the Batman doesn’t have his car or at least a makeshift Batcave a little close to his penthouse; having to swing all the way across Gotham and out to Wayne Manor seems unnecessarily laborious, but it’s barely a factor in the story, though it might’ve saved some panels and been just as easy to simply have Rā’s and Ubu show up at Bruce’s penthouse. Rā’s himself is a well-spoken and mysterious figure; appearing to be a wealthy and influential man of culture and of high intelligence, it seems almost too convenient for him and the Batman to join forces but, in the context of the story, it makes sense as Bruce is clearly impressed and stunned that someone was finally able to figure out his true identity.
A startling debut for one of Batman’s greatest foes let down only be a weak finale.
We later find out that he knew all along that Rā’s was behind the whole plot and had simply been playing along to rescue Robin; along the way, Batman dishes out some sass to the brutish Ubu and demonstrates his keen mind and attention to detail alongside his unmatched physical prowess. This is enough to impress Rā’s in the end, but we wouldn’t actually see a resolution to this dangling plot thread for some time; the following issue doesn’t continue this story and next time Rā’s showed up, it was a similar test of Batman’s fortitude and skills. They wouldn’t have their iconic shirtless sword fight until over a year later either, meaning that all the intrigue and excitement this story builds around Rā’s is kind of squandered as it doesn’t really go anywhere. This is a bit of a disappointment as it was an interesting debut for one of Batman’s most cunning and ruthless foes; the idea of someone, especially a well connected individual like Rā’s, being privy to Batman’s dual identity is shocking and something that helped set him apart from the Dark Knight’s other rogues, but we wouldn’t learn more about the Demon’s Head, his organisation, or his motivations and physical skills for some time, retroactively making this story a bit random and unfulfilling in a lot of ways.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
Have you ever read “Daughter of the Demon”? What did you think of Rā’s al Ghūl’s first appearance and his surprising knowledge of Batman’s true identity? Did you cotton on that Rā’s was behind everything? What are some of your favourite Rā’s al Ghūl stories? Which interpretation of the Rā’s al Ghūl, whether animated, pixelated, or live-action, is your favourite? Whatever you think about the Rā’s al Ghūl, share your thoughts below or leave comment on my social media, and be sure to check out my other Batman content!
On this day, 8th September 1966, the first episode of Star Trek (1966 to 1969), “The Man Trap” (Daniels, 1966), first aired. Since then, Star Trek has become a massive cultural phenomenon that endures to this day, spawning numerous continuations, spin-offs, and ancillary media to become, perhaps, the most influential science-fiction franchise of all time. Accordingly, the 8th of September has been deemed “Star Trek Day” and is thus the perfect excuse to dedicate some more time to, and celebrate, this massive sci-fi franchise.
Released: 1 June 1984 Director: Leonard Nimoy Distributor: Paramount Pictures Budget: $16 million Stars: William Shatner, Christopher Lloyd, DeForest Kelley, Robin Curtis, Merritt Butrick, and Leonard Nimoy,
The Plot: Still reeling from the death of his friend, Captain Spock (Nimoy), Admiral James T. Kirk (Shatner) is shocked to learn that Spock placed his “katra” in the mind of Doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Kelley). Determined to reunite Spock’s spirit with his restored body on the Genesis planet, Kirk defies Starfleet’s direct orders but soon comes into conflict with a hostile Klingon, Kruge (Lloyd), who wants Genesis’s secrets for himself.
The Background: Despite grossing almost $140 million, Paramount were disappointed with Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Wise, 1979), which was met with mixed to negative reviews. Since the studio placed most of the blame on Star Trek-creator Gene Roddenberry, it fell to Harve Bennett to pen the far more critically lauded sequel. Although Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Meyer, 1982) made less at the box office than its predecessor, it was incredibly influential and is widely considered one of the best Star Trek movies. Paramount’s eagerness to capitalise on Wrath of Khan’s success was matched by Nimoy’s renewed interest in his iconic character and the actor readily agreed to return and to direct the third film. Bennett and Nimoy collaborated on the script to come up with a plausible way to bring Spock back from the dead using inspiration from the television show, and it was Bennett who came up with the idea to destroy the Enterprise to subvert audience expectations. With a slightly bigger budget than Wrath of Khan, the filmmakers were given more money for special effects scenes; Industrial Light & Magic produced the effects and models for the film, including an elaborate Spacedock and a large and threatening Klingon Bird of Prey, though many of the interiors were redressed sets to save money. While friendship, specifically the bond between Kirk and Spock, was at the heart of the film, Nimoy wanted The Search forSpock to be operatic in its scope, and to develop the Klingon species beyond the television show to be allegorical stand-ins for Soviet Russia. With a worldwide box office of $87 million, The Search for Spock was the lowest-grossing Star Trek movie at the time; reviews, however, were generally positive. Its grandiose scope was praised, as was the direction and chemistry between the actors, though the film has been criticised for being overplotted and arbitrary. In the years since, The Search for Spock has gained something of a cult following; while I often regard it as inferior to The Wrath of Khan, some believe it’s an under-appreciated entry in the series and have attempted to sing its praises as a result.
The Review: I hate to be cliché, but The Wrath of Khan is definitely my favourite of the classic Star Trek movies (although, truth be told, I have a soft spot for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier(Shatner, 1989), which I feel is an under-rated entry). I think a lot of this is because The Motion Picture was so dreadfully God-awful, and the second film just nailed the characterisations and atmosphere that I was looking for in a Star Trek film. It also helps that Spock’s death was so tragic; Kirk’s eulogy is still one of the most heart-breaking scenes in cinema for me, even though I know full well that Spock returned just two years later. It’s interesting to me that The Wrath of Khan included a tease for this; it’d be so easy to retroactively extend the recap of the last film at the start of this one with new footage of the “Remember” moment between him and Bones, but the producers clearly never intended Spock’s death to be permanent when they made Wrath of Khan, which you could argue diminishes Spock’s sacrifice somewhat but I’d still say it’s a deeply emotional scene regardless. If Spock’s death hit me hard, it practically cripples Kirk; in the last film, it was stated that Kirk had “never faced death” and that he didn’t believe in a “no-win situation”, meaning he was arrogant enough (even in his advancing age) to think that he could think, fight, or talk his way out of any situation to avoid having to face such a loss. Consequently, Spock’s death hit Kirk like a brick wall and he’s still carrying the grief and guilt of that loss at the start of this film, despite having discovered and built a fledgling relationship with his recently discovered son, Doctor David Marcus (Butrick).
Determined to undo his greatest failure, Kirk defies orders to reunite Spock’s soul with his restored body.
Already struggling to cope with the loss of his dear friend, and feeling like he’s left a part of himself on the Genesis planet with Spock’s corpse, the suggestion from the last film’s finale that Kirk has rediscovered his zest for life has been replaced with a sullen despair at how empty the Enterprise feels with Spock dead and David and Lieutenant Saavik (Curtis) off exploring Genesis. In addition to these concerns, and the strange behaviour of Bones, Kirk is astounded to learn from Admiral Morrow (Robert Hooks) that the Enterprise is to be decommissioned rather than refit since Starfleet feels “her day is over”. This continues the themes of age established so well in the last film and, when his attempts at diplomacy are rebuked since Starfleet has designated the Genesis planet as top secret, Kirk is compelled to steal his ship to reunite Spock’s spirit with his body. This mission is only made possible thanks to the arrival of Spock’s father, Sarek (Mark Lenard), who initially believes Spock passed his katra to Kirk and rebukes the Admiral for leaving his son’s body behind. Reviewing footage from the last film and realising that Spock’s soul dwells in McCoy, Kirk is once again reinvigorated and happily defies Starfleet orders to try and make up for his previous failure and restore his beloved friend. Kirk is stunned when Bones starts begging (in Spock’s voice) for help and to be returned “home” to Vulcan. Bones’s mind has been fractured by Spock’s consciousness, which intrudes upon his normally grouchy demeanour and results in some amusing scenes where Bones (who was routinely aggravated by Spock’s cold, logical nature) despairs over the illogical nature of alcohol and unsuccessfully attempts to perform the Vulcan nerve pinch. The Search for Spock gives Bones the rare opportunity to be more than the cantankerous ship’s doctor; Kelley now channels Nimoy’s mannerisms and line delivery into his performance, and Bones is left both perplexed by his condition and resentful towards Spock for lumbering him with such a burden in, what he sees as being “revenge for all those arguments [Spock] lost” to him.
The ruthless Kruge will do anything to get his hands on Genesis, even killing Kirk’s son!
Honestly, it’s been tough for every subsequent movie since Wrath of Khan to top the malicious menace and scene-stealing threat of Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán) but The Search for Spock certainly gives Kirk’s most infamous rival a run for his money with Kruge. Although Star Trek movies overly relied on the Klingons as a persistent antagonistic force, this maniacal Klingon commander is probably their most memorable villain thanks to the grandiose and operatic performance by Christopher Lloyd. Barely recognisable under the Klingon’s heavy make-up, Lloyd exudes menace and is absolutely captivating in every scene thanks to a barking, sinister eloquence. Kruge’s cold-blooded ruthlessness is established right away during his introduction when he casually executes his lover, Valkris (Catherine Shirriff) since she viewed the Genesis data. A cruel and calculating villain who is determined to bring honour to himself, his crew, and the Klingon Empire, Kruge commands absolute authority onboard his monstrous Bird-of-Prey; when his gunner (Bob K. Cummings) lands a “lucky shot” on the Grissom, Kruge is outraged and vaporises the Klingon since he “wanted prisoners” (this immediately paints him as going against Klingon tradition as Kirk stated in the last film that “Klingon’s don’t take prisoners”). Having witnessed the destructive potential of the Genesis Device, Kruge is obsessed with obtaining the secrets of Genesis for himself and use it as a weapon to establish himself as the premier Klingon force in the galaxy. So consumed by this desire is Kruge that he refuses to listen to pleas for mercy; gleeful at having David and Saavik as leverage to force Kirk to give in to his demands, he thinks nothing of ordering one of them killed and, in that moment, earns Kirk’s wrath after his proxy (Dave Cadiente) murders David in cold blood.
While the rest of the crew don’t get much to do, David and Saavik try to help the restored young Spock.
Spock’s death is like a heavy weight baring down on the entire Enterprise crew; Commander Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) reluctantly takes Spock’s place as interim Science Officer for their journey back to Spacedock, made possible thanks to chief engineer, Commander Montgomery “Scotty” Scott (James Doohan). Although the Enterprise suffered massive damage in the last film, Scotty fixes it up for the trip back and promises to fully repair it within two weeks (rather than eight). Despite receiving a promotion to Captain and being assigned to Starfleet’s greatest ship yet, Excelsior, Scotty is dismayed about the Enterprise’s decommissioning since he has put so much of himself into the ship and is only too happy to assist Kirk in stealing the Enterprise. Although Commander Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Lieutenant Commander Hikaru Sulu (George Takei) are instrumental in freeing Bones from Starfleet custody (Sulu even gets a quick fight scene out of it) and stealing the Enterprise, the crew still don’t get much to do other than stand around, frantically pilot the ship, and react with dismay when David is killed, though they willingly stand by Kirk out of sheer loyalty despite knowing that they will all face a severe court-martial for their actions. Since the Genesis planet is such a scientific wonder and a controversial subject, Morrow forbids any talk or travel to the planet. David and Saavik are onboard the science vessel Grissom and marvel at the various terrain, weather, and geological properties of the planet. Notably absent is David’s mother, Doctor Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch); Kirk takes her place as the narrator of the Genesis Device and David is now the principal scientist behind the technology, which is revealed to have used experimental “protomatter” to stabilise the device and create “life from lifelessness”. Despite her cold, Vulcan logic, Saavik is clearly disgusted by David’s recklessness, which has resulted in the planet becoming violently unstable and teetering on the bring of destruction, spawning mutated parasitic lifeforms, and had the unexpected side effect of restoring Spock’s body and forcing him to rapidly advance from a child, to a youth and, finally, to a full-grown adult. Essentially a mindless, agonised, and confused form, Spock is comforted throughout his tumultuous changes by Saavik but incapable of anything other than tortured screams as his body rapidly changes and he suffers the painful effects of “Pon Farr”. The Search for Spock introduces some interesting twists to Vulcan society; it is apparently the way of their species to transfer their consciousness to another before death, but it’s not made clear how their katra is normally restored to their body as the ritual is said to not have been performed since “ages past”(“and then only in legend”, hardly inspiring confidence) and it’s not as if dead bodies are routinely restored to life like Spock’s was here.
The Nitty-Gritty: The Search for Spock was probably the most ambitious Star Trek movie to date in terms of its visual effects; model shots and traditional cinematic techniques like matte paintings and practical props are aplenty here, though admittedly many ships are repurposed from previous Star Trek movies. While the space battles aren’t as prominent as in the last film since the Enterprise is in no condition for combat and is manned by a skeleton crew, Kruge’s Bird-of-Prey still makes an impact with its fearsome design and destructive phaser blasts. Much of the film is set on the tumultuous Genesis planet, a man-made world best by chaos; snow, desert, forests, and mountains are scattered haphazardly across the surface and conditions constantly change in violent ways. The planet appears to be directly tied to Spock’s physical and mental wellbeing, meaning when he suffers the agony of Pon Farr the climate shifts and ominous thunderstorms blare overhead. This allows for a great deal of variety in the film’s locations, and we even get to see a little variety off-planet as Bones tries to charter a ship in a seedy bar and Kirk and the others have to liberate him from a holding cell at Spacedock. Spacedock itself is finally explored as well, and much grandeur is made of the Excelsior, which results in some amusing scenes when Scotty sabotages the trans-warp ship and the Enterprise barely manages to escape from Spacedock before crashing into the doors.
Kirk’s mission results in him suffering even greater losses in the pursuit of being reunited with his friend.
Despite having devoted himself to the ideals and expectations of Starfleet, Kirk doesn’t hesitate to defy Morrow’s direct order; although he emphasises that he doesn’t expect his loyal crew to follow him further than to the Enterprise, he’s grateful for their support in journeying to Genesis even though he knows that it means they’ll all face punishment for their mutinous actions. Still, the chance to reunite Spock’s immortal soul with his restored body is seen by Kirk as worth the risk but comes to cost Kirk more than he bargained for. Although the Enterprise manages to put up a fight against Kruge’s Bird-of-Prey, a stalemate ensues when Kruge threatens his hostages to learn the secrets of Genesis. When the Klingons attempt to kill Saavik in a demonstration of power, David desperately defends her and is killed in the process. This loss hits Kirk hard; seeing Kirk collapse in stunned shock, his distressing cries of “Klingon bastards…you’ve…killed my son!”, is disturbing not just to his crewmen but also the audience. After a lifetime devoted to gallivanting across the stars and having missed out on most of David’s life, Kirk was just finally starting to build bridges with the misguided scientist when Kruge’s order ripped him away from him with a violent callousness that only galvanises Kirk’s hatred for the Klingon species for years to come. As if this tragedy wasn’t bad enough, Kirk is forced to sacrifice his beloved ship; since the Enterprise is still suffering from her battle with Khan, the ship ends up summarily disabled by Kruge’s firepower and Kirk is forced to activate the self-destruct sequence to take out Kruge’s boarding party. Thus, for the second film in a row (and for a second time in a row), Kirk (and the audience) are forced to endure a disastrous loss; the visual of seeing the iconic starship burst apart and then careen through the sky as a flaming husk is a powerful one, one that is just as harrowing for Kirk as the loss of his friend and son since he’s literally giving up the most important aspects of himself to bring Spock back.
Ultimately Kirk bests Kruge and Spock’s spirit is restored, much to the joy of his crewmates.
Still, the sacrifice enables Kirk and his crew to beam safely to the Genesis planet, where they’re stunned to see Spock restored and suffering from his unnatural aging. Despite the planet being ravaged by severe storms, Kirk takes the time to cover up his son’s body, and then lures the callous Klingon commander to the planet’s surface by promising him the knowledge he desires. Although Kirk convinces Kruge to beam the others to the Bird-of-Prey, Kruge spitefully refuses to take Spock along and, refusing to back down even though the planet is literally being torn apart around them, a final confrontation between Starfleet’s most celebrated commander and the vindictive Klingon ensues. Naturally, Kirk is no physical match for the superior Klingon, but he’s fuelled by a need to avenge his son and protect his restored friend; this, in addition to the constantly shifting, “exhilarating” landscape, essentially means the two are almost on equal ground. With flames and lava spewing around them and the ground cracking apart, Kirk ultimately sends his hated enemy plummeting to the molten rock below when Kruge refuses Kirk’s attempt to save his life. Feigning Klingon, Kirk and Spock are beamed to safety and his crew easily take control of the Bird-of-Prey and pilot it to Vulcan. There, much to Sarek’s dismay at Kirk’s losses and gratitude for his heroics, the Enterprise crewmen witness an ancient ritual in which a wizened Vulcan priestess, T’Lar (Dame Judith Anderson), successfully transfers Spock’s katra from Bones’s mind and into Spock’s restored body. Although T’Lar stresses that the “fal-tor-pan” poses a great danger to both Bones and Spock, the re-fusion is successful with very little fuss and fanfare and, while understandably confused, Spock soon recognises his friends and crew as they joyfully gather around him, grateful to have their companion returned to them despite the heavy price they paid.
The Summary: There’s a stigma that all the odd-numbered Star Trek movies are “bad”. I can somewhat understand this given how terrible the first film was and how some seem to suffer more than others, but I’ll never concede that the ultra-dull Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Meyer, 1991) is better than The Final Frontier (because…it’s not!) and, similarly, The Search for Spock also bucks the trend a bit. I think the biggest issue facing this film is that it followed the universally lauded Wrath of Khan, and the entire thrust of its plot is undoing one of the most memorable and impactful moments of that film (and in all of Star Trek), all of which place the film at a severe disadvantage from the get-go. I think viewing it now, with the benefit of hindsight and in the grand scheme of things, helps to elevate The Search for Spock’s stock somewhat; the film is a great continuation of the themes and characterisations established in the last film, and aims to be a feel-good coda to Wrath of Khan’s dour ending. The conclusion of The Search for Spock largely delivers on this, with the crew’s elation at Spock’s return being evident but the film is actually one of he bleakest and most tragic Star Trek movies. David, a character who really got the shaft and could’ve been moulded into a young, fresh-faced addition to the aging cast, is unceremoniously killed before we ever really get the chance to know him and what could be more impactful than the death of a beloved character like Spock than seeing the Enterprise go down in flames? The film also seems to undo or walk back many of the messages of the last film, with the needs of the one now outweighing the needs of the many, but the underlining message of The Search for Spock seems to be one of hope. If you have a chance to redeem a mistake or save a loved one, you must do everything in your power to fulfil that, whether that means defying your superiors or sacrificing your livelihood. It’s a poignant theme that definitely underscores the bond between Kirk and Spock, but I can understand how it’s a little muddled amidst all the tragedy that befalls Kirk in service of this mission. Ultimately, The Search for Spock is a pretty decent third entry; it’s worth it for the amusing moments, Christopher Lloyd’s stellar performance, and the continuation of Kirk’s character development into a more jaded individual. While it doesn’t quite live up to the standards of the last film, I still rather enjoy it as one of the more under-rated Star Trek films.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Where does Star Trek III: The Search for Spock rate for you amongst the other Star Trek films? What did you think to it as a follow-up to The Wrath of Khan and do you think it succeeded, or failed, to match its predecessor? Did you enjoy Christopher Lloyd’s portrayal of Kruge? What did you think to his ruthless methods, the killing of David, and the destruction of the Enterprise? Were you happy to see Spock’s return or do you feel like the cost was too great? Which Star Trek captain, crew, show, or movie is your favourite and why? How are you celebrating Star Trek Day today? No matter what you think, leave your thoughts down below or leave a comment on my social media.
In the decades since his first dramatic appearance in the pages of Detective Comics, Bruce Wayne/Batman has become a mainstream, worldwide, pop culture icon. The brainchild of writer Bob Kane, Batman was brought to life by artist Bill Finger and has been a popular staple of DC Comics and countless movies, videogames, and cartoons over the years. “Batman Day” falls on September 16 this year and I figured this was a perfect excuse to spend every Saturday celebrating comic’s grim and broody vigilante.
Story Title: “The Riddle of the Human Scarecrow” Published: September 1941 Writer: Bill Finger Artist: Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson
The Background: Once Clark Kent/Superman proved to be a massive success, National Comics Publications (as DC Comics was then known) were eager to add more superheroes to their line-up and charged Bob Kane to create a new masked crimefighter. Thanks to the long-suppressed influence of artist Bill Finger, Bob Kane’s “Bat-Man” concept quickly became one of comicdom’s most popular characters and a mainstream cultural icon thanks to a slew of successful and profitable multimedia ventures. Over the years, the Batman has matched brain and brawn against many colourful supervillains, but perhaps none have challenged his reputation as a fearsome symbol of terror more than Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow! Created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, the Scarecrow was heavily inspired by Ichabod Crane, the slender protagonist of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving, 1820); though he only made two appearances during the “Golden Age” of comic books, the Scarecrow has become a recurring member of Batman’s rogues’ gallery, often as a manipulative and unhinged master of fear who gasses or doses up his victims to drive them to near hysteria. The character was a prominent villain in the DC Animated Universe, where his design was radically altered to make him scarier and he was responsible for one of the most disturbing episodes of The New Batman Adventures (1997 to 1999). He also played a memorable role in the Batman: Arkhamvideogames (Various, 2009 to 2023), where he sported a Freddy Kreuger-inspired design, and made his big-screen debut in Batman Begins(Nolan, 2005), all of which has helped add to the villain’s mystique as one of Batman’s more twisted and cerebral foes.
The Review: The Scarecrow’s ties to Sleepy Hollow are immediately apparent from the first splash page of his debut story, which depicts him as a huge, gaunt scarecrow lumbering across a moonlit field surrounded by bats and gnarled trees, certainly evoking a gothic, supernatural horror more than anything. But, as we soon learn, behind this terrifying visual is a man; a very disturbed man, at that. Flashback panels tell how young Jonathan Crane delighted in frightening birds as a small boy and this obsession with fear (both causing and studying it) carried through to his adulthood, where he became a Psychology teacher “in a university” notorious for his extreme methods as much as his haggard appearance. Crane brings a gun to his class to demonstrate the psychology of fear; the mere sight of a gun, of having it pointed your way, inspires dread but hearing it go off, seeing it destroy a vase, only increases the emotional response, something Crane is absolutely fascinated by. Crane is shunned by his peers since, rather than spending his salary on some decent clothes, he resembles a scarecrow in his old, drab attire and buys books instead. Enraged by their dismissive comments and prejudice, Crane formulates a plot to acquire the wealth deemed so important by others using a dramatic and powerful symbol: the scarecrow, a “symbol of poverty and fear combined”. The Scarecrow immediately sets about establishing a protection racket by preying on Frank Kendrick, a local businessman whose partner is suing him for embezzlement. The Scarecrow offers to “scare” Kendrick’s partner, Paul Herold, in return for a fee, and Kendrick is…I dunno…intrigued? Curious? Certainly not terrified and the Scarecrow doesn’t really demonstrate anything that makes him a valid investment beyond his straw outfit…
Fear-obsessed Dr. Crane begins a campaign of terror under the guise of a scarecrow.
Regardless, Kendrick agrees and the Scarecrow makes good on his promise not by his trademark fear gas or any kind of elaborate gimmick, but by simply wounding Herold with a gun shot and promising to kill him if he doesn’t drop the suit. Conveniently, Batman and his colourful sidekick, Dick Grayson/Robin, are on a rooftop nearby and hear the gunshot; they swing into action when they spot the curious human scarecrow making his escape. The Scarecrow surprises them with his swiftness and effectively holds them off with a few shots from his pistol, a good wallop to the Batman’s head, and by tossing a trash can at Robin and slipping away “with queer grasshopper leaps”. Naturally, Kendrick is fingered as the prime suspect in hiring Herold’s attack, but he denies everything, and Herold’s refusal to drop his lawsuit results in another visit from the Scarecrow that leaves him dead as “The Scarecrow warns only once!”, leaving Kendrick horrified. He still pays, however, which is lucky as Crane’s unorthodox teaching methods cost him his job; Crane barely even cares, however, since he now has a big wad of cash and a reputation in the criminal underworld. The Scarecrow sets about bolstering this reputation by offering his services to Richard Dodge, whose department store is going under thanks to a rival store, so he offers to scare customers away and back to his shop, which he does through his mere appearance and the use of smoke bombs, which drive the crowd into a frenzy. Coincidentally, Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson happen to hear about this riot on the radio and, suspecting a link between Crane and the Scarecrow after the university president (who is conveniently a friend of Bruce’s) nonchalantly mentioned Crane’s wad of cash, Batman and Robin rush to the scene. They find the Scarecrow in the act of smashing up the store with a baseball bat and Batman flings some really weird and cringey one-liners and quips at the Master of Fear during their far more even rematch.
Despite proving a surprisingly slippery foe, the Scarecrow is finally apprehended.
Still, the Scarecrow proves to be a slippery and surprisingly physically capable opponent, as well as highly adaptable; he has Batman on the ropes and at gun point at one point and is only stopped from shooting him, and finishing him off with a “bomb” (potentially meant to be a grenade? Who even knows?), by the timely intervention of the Boy Wonder. Discovering that the only thing the Scarecrow stole were a couple of rare books is all the proof Batman needs to deduce that Crane and Scarecrow are one and the same and he proves his theory by infiltrating Crane’s home under an elaborate disguise and spotting all his rare books. Crane is not so easily fooled, however; by use of the lost art of…looking out his window…he sees that his visitor was really the Batman and heads out to kill Dodge to cover his tracks, only to find Batman and Robin waiting for him. Armed with his trusty pistol and giving them the slip with his “queer grasshopper leaps”, the Scarecrow flees to a nearby playground, where he almost shoots Robin but for an errant swing bashing him in the head. The Scarecrow is even able to hold off the Batman with his punches, boasting that he’s “as good as fighting as [he] is”, but is ultimately undone when he tries to retrieve his gun and gets unbalanced by Robin and a see-saw and then punched out by the Dark Knight. Impressed by his newest foe, who “gave [him] the fight of [his] career”, Batman literally drags the Scarecrow’s unconscious body off to jail, where Crane vows escape and continue his reign of terror.
The Summary: “The Riddle of the Human Scarecrow” is certainly a bizarre early-Batman tale. There isn’t really a “riddle” to the straw-faced villain, so to speak, as we learn everything about him within the first few pages, including hints towards him being psychologically damaged as a boy and his obsession with wealth, knowledge, and fear. Batman and Robin barely even stop to wonder who is under the burlap sack and only happen upon clues to his true identity through sheer luck and massive coincidence, so it’s not as if they spend hours toiling away studying evidence or being bamboozled by the their new foe’s identity. Indeed, they only happen across the Scarecrow out of dumb luck and are only alerted to his crimes because of newspapers and radio broadcasts. If the Scarecrow had employed his fear toxin here to kill through a more unconventional means it might have helped to make the title more relevant and give the character more menace and intrigue, but he just runs around dressed as a scarecrow and shoots people, clearly as a hired gun, so I think a title more akin to “The Menace of the Human Scarecrow” would’ve been more appropriate.
While his methods are quite different from what we’ve come to expect, the Scarecrow is a tricky foe for Batman.
Interestingly, since this is a longer Batman tale than some other debuts I’ve read, quite a bit more time is spent on developing Crane and establishing his character; he’s resentful that his peers place so much importance on wealth and combines his obsession with fear with his desire for affluence into a horrifying visage. He sells himself as an intimidating thug who can terrify a person’s business rivals for cash, but goes about this in a manner so mundane that it really isn’t befitting of his theatrical getup. He simply shoots people and tosses smoke bombs, something any hoodlum can do, but makes the front page because he happens to be dressed as a scarecrow. Despite being a gaunt, wiry, and somewhat middle-aged man, Crane is surprisingly nimble, athletic, and physically gifted; much time is spent emphasising his speed and agility and he’s more than capable of fending off Batman and Robin either using his wiles or fisticuffs. This is probably the most unrealistic aspect of the character and I much prefer the Scarecrow as a psychological challenge rather than a physical one, but this “Crane Style” of fighting has come up before and is known to catch Batman off-guard so I can just about forgive it. What I can’t forgive is how clueless and ineffectual Batman and Robin are; they stumble across the Scarecrow and are easily bested, are hounded by the police (and even have to fight them off at one point), are almost killed by the villain on more than one occasion, and make absolutely no effort to investigate the Scarecrow, relying purely on the convenient clues dropped by other characters. Batman’s one piece of innovation has him dressing up as a civilian…over his Batsuit…and then revealing his subterfuge right outside Crane’s window and it’s only through their teamwork (and the will of the writer) that they’re able to finally topple the Scarecrow. Overall, I enjoyed the parts of this story that focused on Crane and his strawy alter ego; the Scarecrow has a lot of visual and motivational potential, but without his fear gas and his more psychological aspects he comes across as just weird guy in a suit shooting people for cash.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever read “The Riddle of the Human Scarecrow”? What did you think of the Scarecrow’s debut and his surprisingly direct methods of inspiring fear? Were you surprised at how lazy and ineffectual Batman and Robin were and how physically capable Crane turned out to be? What are some of your favourite Scarecrow stories? Which interpretation of the Scarecrow, whether animated, pixelated, or live-action, is your favourite? Whatever you think about the Scarecrow, share your thoughts below or leave comment on my social media, and be sure to check out my other Batman content!
Released: 15 May 2003 Director: The Wachowski Brothers Distributor: Warner Brothers Budget: $127 to 150 million Stars: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Laurence Fishburne, Lambert Wilson, and Randall Duk Kim
The Plot: After shedding the artificial reality of his mundane life and realising his destiny as “The One”, Neo (Reeves) is conflicted between his duty and his status as a saviour to the remnants of humanity. As the machines prepare an all-out assault against Zion, Neo must unravel the mystery of his purpose and face the fight of his life when his old enemy, Smith (Weaving), inexplicably returns with the power to endlessly duplicate himself!
The Background: Back in 1999, up-and-coming writer/director duo Andy and Larry Wachowski (as they were known then) brought together an impressive mixture of martial arts, philosophy, and science-fiction that pulled heavily from manga and anime and made an instant and lasting impression on action cinema by popularising “bullet time” and wire-assisted kung fu (or “wire-fu”) in movies. The Matrix was a smash at the box office, and with critics, and the Wachowskis made the bold decision to follow it up with not one film, but two, filmed back-to-back and accompanied by a bunch of tie-in multimedia, including comics, videogames, and a series of animated shorts. Seeking to push the boundaries of the mind-bending concepts and special effects pioneered in the first film, Warner Bros. set up ESC Entertainment to develop the technology needed to bring their vision to life once more. Virtual cameras, incredibly detailed facial capture programs, and optical flow techniques, among others, allowed the duo to better manipulate the virtual space and pit Neo against hundreds of Agent Smiths in the memorable “Burly Brawl” and the producers even constructed a 1.5-mile freeway specifically for an action-packed chase sequence.Going bigger with the action and spectacle paid off dividends at the box office as The Matrix Reloaded made over $740 million worldwide, though critics were divided on the increased focus on philosophy and its complex narrative. Unlike the first film, which was relatively straight-forward, The Matrix Reloaded spawned endless readings and discussion with its dense themes, though many praised the intense and spectacular action sequences and fight scenes. Audiences didn’t have to wait long for the third, far more contentious entry, though it would be nearly twenty years before Warner Bros. decided to revive the franchise. Still, I’ve always enjoyed this second Matrix movie and, since today is Keanu Reeves’ birthday, this seems like the perfect time to revisit it once more.
The Review: It’s still pretty crazy to me to think back to The Matrix, which was a huge deal when it came out. When my friends and I had sleepovers, The Matrix was usually always one of a handful of films we would put on and we were all enthralled by the action, the special effects, and the concept of machines having overrun a post-apocalyptic world and subdued us all in a virtual reality environment. The hype for the sequel was pretty high, as I remember; The Matrix opened up so many philosophical and layered discussions that it was probably my first experience of really intense fan debates and speculation about where the series would go in the sequel, especially regarding the expansion of this fictional world. I don’t recall if I watched The Animatrix (Various, 2003) before seeing this film, but I know I didn’t play the videogames (and have still yet to do that), so I went into this with only my affection for the first film and the anticipation of the trailers behind me, both of which were more than enough to excite me.
For all his power within the Matrix, Neo remains a conflicted and doubt-ridden saviour.
The Matrix Reloaded takes place some six months after the events of the first film and finds Neo in a much more comfortable position than he was throughout The Matrix, where he was mostly confused, overwhelmed, and struggling to pick between panic, adrenaline, and instinct. Now garbed in an all-black ensemble that resembles an all-in-one suit and cape, Neo cuts a confident and awe-inspiring figure thanks to having unlocked incredible and unprecedented powers within the Matrix. This allows him to sense the presence of Agents of the system, view the Matrix’s code at will, perform superhuman and physics-bending actions, and, of course, to fly through the sky at the speed of sound. While many in Zion, the last human city, don’t fully understand Neo’s abilities or question his status as their saviour, there’s no doubt that he’s easily the most powerful character in the film when plugged into the Matrix. While other characters are forced to run from the Agents, Neo can engage them in hand-to-hand combat and best them without much difficulty, even when going up against “upgrades” like Agent Johnson (Daniel Bernhardt). However, as formidable as Neo’s physical abilities are within the Matrix and as celebrated a figure he is amongst a certain sect of Zion’s inhabitants, he remains a fallible man plagued by self-doubt that’s only been exacerbated since being heralded as a saviour and the growing pressure he faces at being the literal key to the survival of humanity. As before, he seeks guidance from the Oracle (Gloria Foster), who continues to bombard him with riddles regarding his true destiny and turns to his lover, Trinity (Moss), for support and solace as he struggles to meet the lofty expectations placed upon him and combat the incredible power of his old enemy, Smith, when he makes an unexpected return.
In addition to being Neo’s rock, Trinity is a bad-ass character willing to sacrifice herself for him.
While Trinity was very much a catalyst for Neo’s unplugging and guiding him towards realising his true calling as The One in the first film, here she’s reconfigured the centre of Neo’s world. While the chemistry between the two characters (and actors) is incredibly lacking, with both being quite wooden in their passion and delivery (beyond when they’re sucking face or getting raunchy during a sweaty rave), the film goes out of its way to emphasise that their connection, their true love, is central to Neo’s relationship to humanity. Still a forthright and capable figure, Trinity is far more than just Neo’s arm candy or a damsel in distress; she’s treated as one of his strongest supporters and an equal and given her fair share of action scenes thanks to her taking the lead on liberating and safeguarding the Keymaker (Duk Kim) using her motorcycle skills. There’s no question that Trinity is a formidable and bad-ass fighter and shooter; even when fighting alongside Neo, who can basically do whatever he wants in the Matrix (though, oddly, rarely ever does this), Trinity holds her own but all the physical skill in the world don’t stop her from taking offense when Persephone (Monica Bellucci) demands a passionate kiss from Neo before she agrees to betray her husband, the condescending Merovingian (Wilson), so they can get to the Keymaker. While Neo and Trinity don’t really have the greatest chemistry as a couple (which is potentially due to everyone assuming a stoic demeanour within the Matrix), their love is much envied by Persephone, who has grown weary of her husband’s cheating ways and pompous arrogance and longs for the days when he was more like Neo (a throwaway line that many took to believe that the Merovingian was once a One), but warns that their love is doomed to end in tragedy. Accordingly, Trinity plays a huge role in the film as Neo finds himself plagued by nightmares of her impending demise during a bombastic action scene; fearing that his visions may come true, and desperate not to lose her, Neo asks that she stay out of the Matrix for the finale, which sees the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar team up with other crews in a multi-staged assault to get Neo plugged into “The Source”. However, when the crew of the Vigilant is destroyed during a Sentinel attack, Trinity has no choice but to enter the Matrix to complete the mission and, in the process, Neo is faced with his greatest choice yet as he must pick between literally saving the last remnants of humanity from the machine’s reprisals or saving the life of the woman he loves.
Morpheus is now a questionable figure whose beliefs and methods are the subject on ongoing debate
A pivotal and memorable character in the first film, Morpheus (Fishburne) undergoes a significant character shift here from wise and benevolent mentor to a figure of some controversy. As presented in The Matrix, I always saw Morpheus as a crucial figurehead in the Zion hierarchy but it turns out that he’s actually something of a religious zealot; many in Zion not only question is unwavering belief in the Oracle, Neo, and the prophecy of The One but also see him as a reckless, disobedient, and dangerous individual who often acts against the interests of the ruling council. Labelled as “crazy” by some and treated with contempt by Commander Lock (Harry Lennix), whose concerns are more realistically focused on the impending assault from the machines, Morpheus jarringly loses much of his mystique and becomes a much more layered and human character as a result. This is aided by the presence of Captain Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) of the Logos, a sceptical character who once had a romantic relationship with Morpheus that was forever changed after Morpheus first met the Oracle and learned that his destiny was to find The One. Clearly still harbouring feelings for each other, their relationship is frosty, to say the least, thanks to Niobe now being with Lock and her resentment towards The One and Morpheus’s devotion to his beliefs. Still, it’s not as if everyone doubts Morpheus; Neo and Trinity still hold him in high esteem for showing them the truth, Councillor Hamann (Anthony Zerbe) and others on the council treat him with reverence and respect even if they don’t fully believe the same things he does, and he’s revered as an influential figure, regardless of his beliefs, who can inspire the citizens of Zion to rise up against the fear of their impending destruction and therefore face the oncoming attack with gusto. Within the Matrix, Morpheus plays a largely supporting role but sparks up a bit of a rivalry against Agent Johnson and plays an important part in helping Neo fend off the Merovingian’s minions, though his primary role within the virtual reality environment is to be a stoic and implacable believer in Neo’s abilities and destiny to lead the human race to victory regardless of the odds, the risk, or the concerns of others. Indeed, Morpheus is completely nonplussed by his doubters; it’s only when Link (Harold Perrineau) questions his decisions that he steps in, and his faith is even rewarded as Neo arrives to save him when he “prays” for help during the chaotic highway chase. However, his unwavering devotion to the cause is shaken in the finale, when he sees his ship destroyed before his eyes and stunned to find that Neo’s insertion into the Source didn’t out-right destroy the Matrix as he was led to believe.
Neo’s abilities cause a stir within Zion, with some sceptical and others devouted to him.
Naturally, given that The Matrix Reloaded is a much bigger film than its predecessor and actually shows just how large and complex the steampunk underground city of Zion is, the film includes a large number of supporting characters. The Nebuchadnezzar has been reduced to a four-man crew, with newcomer Link acting as the ship’s operator; Link is still getting used to his role and processing not only Morpheus’s unwavering faith in Neo and the prophecy but also Neo’s incredible abilities, which he’s seen first-hand and has turned from a sceptic to a believer. The aforementioned Niobe, Hamann, and Lock are three of the principal figureheads of Zion, with each one offering another wrinkle to the film’s greater focus on philosophy and the question of choice and destiny. Lock is a pig-headed, militaristic man who wants every resource possible at his disposal to effectively barricade Zion and fend off the impending attack and is constantly frustrated at the council’s insistence of wasting manpower and ships following Morpheus’s mad beliefs but, while he might be a hard-nosed blowhard, his devotion to the safety of Zion is never in question. Niobe remains torn between her lingering feelings for Morpheus and her scepticism regarding The One; while she has little faith in this, she does believe in Neo’s character and volunteers to help the Nebuchadnezzar get Neo to The Source, much to Lock’s chagrin and jealousy. Amusingly, Neo is actually more perturbed by his believers than the sceptics; he’s visibly uncomfortable when Zion’s citizens offer him gifts and beg him to watch over their friends and family as part of the film’s explicit and unashamed Christ metaphor and aggravated by the hero worship piled onto him by The Kid (Clayton Watson), an overly enthusiastic youngster who yearns to join Morpheus’s crew to fight alongside his hero. Finally, Hamann walks the line between practicality and faith; having lost much of his life to the virtual reality of the Matrix, he seizes every waking moment and is clearly awestruck by Neo’s abilities, which he believes are a greater design even if he doesn’t fully understand what that is.
Suspicion surrounds many allies when they’re revealed to be programs of the system.
Hamann also lays the groundwork for the film’s overarching theme regarding control; the humans use machines to maintain their lives, while fighting other machines looking to kill them, and the balance between the two, their duel capacity for life and death, plays a pivotal role in Neo’s ultimate destiny when he’s faced with the choice between giving into a greater power or smashing the system that maintains so many lives, even if only in a form of slavery. This is in stark contrast to the Oracle, an enigmatic and cryptic figure who continues to pick and choose what information she gives out. Quickly revealed to actually be a program, and thus part of the system of control within the Matrix, the Oracle’s trustworthiness and true motivations are briefly called into question by Neo, despite his gratitude to her for helping guide himself towards his great destiny. Believing that the war between needs to come to an end and that both races need to find a way to co-exist, the Oracle adds to Neo’s considerable load by expositing that he must reach The Source to complete his destiny and that he’s as much a slave to his choices and fate as she is to her programming. It’s through conversations with the Oracle that we learn more about the Matrix and get a sense of just how complex The One is; it’s not merely about bullet time or humbling Agents, it’s a coding system that holds the key to humanity’s salvation, and the weight of this responsibility weighs heavily on Neo’s shoulders. This time, the Oracle is accompanied by a bodyguard, Seraph (Collin Chou), a program designed to safeguard her at all costs; he doesn’t say much but makes an immediate impression by going toe-to-toe with Neo in order to “truly know him”. When Neo and the others finally reach the Keymaker, they find a wizened old man with a collection of keys that allow one to travel vast distances through doors and even traverse backdoor corridors in the Matrix’s coding. The Keymaker represents the film’s focus on everyone having a reason and a purpose; his purpose is to make the keys and to know how to access The Source, and protecting him from the Agents becomes the protagonist’s highest priority in their desire to end the war.
While the Merovingian and the Twins are more interesting than Agents, they’re wasted potential.
This mission is, as ever opposed by the Agents; these men-in-black antagonists remain as formidable as ever, able to jump to new host bodies, dodge bullets, and proving a persistent threat even when Neo is around thanks to having been “upgraded” to give him a bit more of a fight. Their threat is eventually lessened not just by Smith and his inexhaustible army of clones but also the presence of the Merovingian, a charismatic and self-aggrandising “Exile” who has amassed an army from previous versions of the Matrix (inexplicably meaning that vampires and werewolves make a very brief cameo) to establish a vast network for programs, like himself, who wish to travel beyond the restrictions of the virtual reality world. A self-styled “trafficker of information”, the Merovingian is arrogant and patronising to the heroes, unimpressed with their grandeur and what he sees as their lack of knowledge about what they want and why. Seeing them as little more than lapdogs for the Oracle, he dismisses their demands and shows no fear of Neo’s powers, having “survived his predecessors” in the past. Oozing disgust and disdain, the Merovingian lives only for his own self-gratification; he delights in creating programs that cause physical and sexual stimulation, regularly cheats on his wife, and desires only to acquire more power and knowledge through whatever means necessary. While Hamann muses on the duality of control, the Merovingian delivers a twisted diatribe on the illusion of choice; although he’s speaking in the context that people are unable to deny their true natures, his perspective is actually not a million miles away from the truth as Neo eventually discovers that the choices everyone makes (especially those connected to the Matrix) are not of their own free will but dictated to them by the system’s methods of control and also all part of the greater cycle of death and rebirth inherent to the nature of the Matrix. His primary underlings, and one (two?) of the film’s more wasted opportunities, are the Twins (Neil and Adrian Rayment), albino, dreadlocked sadists who can assume gruesome, incorporeal forms and attack with straight razors and can even heal their wounds with a thought (something that, like almost everything about them, is unfortunately not elaborated upon). Sadly, these two have very few lines and, despite being central to some of the second act’s biggest action scenes, end up underutilised and ultimately wasted as they fail to retrieve the Keymaker, or really cause much of a problem for Morpheus and Trinity despite being more threatening than the regular Agents, and are then promptly taken out by a car explosion (despite clearing turning incorporeal), meaning both the visually impressive Twins and the eloquent menace of the Merovingian boil down to some philosophical musings and adrenaline-fuelled action sequences and little else. It’s such a shame as the Twins look and fight so cool, and really stand out against the black-suited Agents, so I would’ve loved to see them have a greater role here or in the next movie, but you could honestly remove them from the film (or replace them with Agents) and the plot wouldn’t even suffer in the slightest.
Now able to duplicate himself, Smith threatens to overrun everything and everyone in the Matrix.
On the other hand, Smith is back in full force; now literally unplugged from the system he once rebelled against, Smith is exploring his newfound freedom by indulging every sadistic desire that comes to mind and literally spreading himself across the Matrix using his newfound copy ability. With a violent thrust to the chest of an Agent or human, Smith can override their code (both digital and genetic) and create an exact duplicate of himself, with all of his powers and personality, though a “prime” version remains at the forefront. Like everything in The Matrix Reloaded, Smith’s survival and new abilities is the subject of discussion in the film, with Smith musing that Neo somehow overwrote or passed on a piece of himself when he destroyed him at the end of the last film and then promptly dismissing it as “irrelevant” compared to his new purpose in life, which is to eradicate all life within the Matrix and replace it with himself. As formidable as Smith was before, his threat is now magnified to an almost incalculable degree as more and more of his copies swarm in to overwhelm Neo; even though Neo is able to fend them off and trump Smith with his ability to fly (and can even resist Smith’s infection through sheer force of will), he can’t simply destroy or erase Smith with a thought (although…he should be able to do this, but that wouldn’t be very visually exciting now, would it?) and he’s forced to flee, giving Smith the chance to make more and more copies and continue to show up at the worst possible times to hinder their mission. Though Smith’s desire to kill Neo and the others aligns with that of the Merovingian and the Agents, he is allied with neither of these forces and actually copies himself to their minions to increase his power; so evolved is Smith that he even overtakes the body of Bane (Ian Bliss), a resistance fighter, to allow a version of himself to wander around in the real world! Although this wouldn’t be fully explored until the next movie, we do get a glimpse of how sadistic Smith is as he cuts his human form and attempts to stab Neo in the real world before being interrupted, and even plays an active role in sabotaging the humans’ mission in the third act simply because he gets a sick thrill out of causing death and destruction.
The Nitty-Gritty: Like in the last film, music plays a huge role in The Matrix Reloaded; composer Don Davis put together a whole bunch of memorable and catchy beats to accompany the film’s biggest moments, such as the Burly Brawl and the highway chase, which were collaborations with Juno Reactor, in addition to a great tie-in song by P.O.D. Diegetically, music is pivotal to rallying the people of Zion; it’s a surreal inclusion in the film, but the big sweaty rave scene galvanises the people, with all their doubts and fears, in a celebration of life. Highly sexually charged, the scene shows how passionate these people are at embracing their lives, even though the real world is hard and dangerous and lacks the creature comforts of the Matrix. Still, Zion is doing a lot better than I ever imagined from the brief descriptions in the first film; despite the revelation that humans have been fighting the machines for 100 years, Zion is a bustling, steampunk-inspired metropolis filled with rudimentary dormitories, a huge dock, defensive cannons and blast doors, an independent virtual reality security system, and even a water recycling and processing plant and the means to heat, feed, and clothe all of its citizens. There’s never a question that Zion is lacking in these resources, only that some are extremely basic (clothes, food, and possessions) and others are unbelievably advanced (their ships and technology), and I do find myself asking how they make their clothes and built all that stuff. It’s somewhat implied that they repurposed a lot of the machines’ technology to their own ends, but actually building such a large and self-sustaining city seems beyond the capabilities of the few human liberated from the Matrix, and the actual implied truth is far more ominous.
The Burly Brawl and chateau fights show off the new technology and Neo’s incredible powers
Without a doubt, The Matrix Reloaded is much, much bigger than the first film; with at least double the budget, the film is able to present far more visually interesting and technologically impressive fight and action scenes. Fights are much longer and more detailed, slicker and contain more combatants and movements at any one time, and bolstered by an abundance of wire work and CGI to bring Neo’s gravity-defying moves to life. The film’s big action scene is the Burly Brawl, wherein a seemingly inexhaustible swarm of Smiths pile onto Neo in the middle of an urban playground; while it’s true that many aspects of this sequence haven’t aged as well as others in the film (or the first movie), it remains an exciting and surprisingly long fight scene as Neo (or a rubbery representation of him) fends off Smith after Smith with blows, throws, and a strangely bendy steel pipe. While I find it an exhilarating display of Neo’s superhuman abilities, the fight goes on so long that it almost becomes a little ridiculous, but I suspect that might’ve been the point thanks to the bowling pin sound effects used when the Smiths are knocked down. Punctuated by some fun wire-fu, effective use of bullet time, and dynamic camera shots, the Burly Brawl is primarily there to show off the technology that’s been developed since the first film, to paint Neo as an absolute bad-ass as he holds his own against the Smith army, and Smith as this relentless, unstoppable force that’s desperate to tear his hated enemy apart. The chateau brawl is a similarly visually engaging fight, but very different; not only is it more claustrophobic due to taking place in a more enclosed space, it also features much more weapon combat, more diverse combatants, and more variety as Neo isn’t just swatting away hundreds of guys in suits and he actually gets a chance to show off a few fancier movies. While the Merovingian’s minions number far less than Smiths army, they’re no less formidable; made up of programs exiled from older, far more primitive versions of the Matrix, they’re assumed to be somewhat supernatural and, unlike Smith, actually cause Neo to bleed thanks to favouring bladed weapons. This means their fight is exciting in wholly separate way as Neo must flip about, balance on bannisters, and use swords and sai to fend them off.
The action comes thick and fast and showcases the awesomeness of Neo’s abilities within the Matrix.
On the flip side, we get a noticeably subdued exchange between Neo and Seraph; while it’s clear that Neo isn’t exerting anywhere near the power as he was against the Agents or Smith, it’s still a fun fight that includes an impressive one-handed cartwheel from Neo and is a great shorthand to show that Seraph is no slouch when it comes to fighting. Things ramp up again for the highway chase, another obvious standout action sequence; this is an adrenaline-fuelled sprint that features Agents desperately overtaking bodies to chase after Trinity and the Keymaker on a high-speed motorcycle, Morpheus battling Agent Johnson on top of a trailer truck with a samurai sword, and the Twins ghosting through vehicles and tangling with Trinity in close quarters from the back seat of a car. The action then suitably ramps up for the third act as Trinity is forced to storm a power plant full force, which is actually the explosive opening sequence of the film and serves to show just how capable she is even without code-bending abilities. As fun as all of these action sequences are, however, the true highlight of the film for me is Neo, now liberated from many of the shackles and doubts about himself that held him back in the last film. We saw a glimpse of what The One was capable of when he easily fought off the Agents with one arm, destroyed Smith, and then blasted off into the sky but, here, Neo practically has no equal. He can rocket into the sky at will, blast down the streets and supersonic speed, and even enter the code and physical body of others to remove bullets. However, despite what you and many of the characters think, he’s not some all-powerful God; he can bleed just as easily as anyone, is as conflicted by self-doubts as any of us, and his fight scenes aren’t just a simple case of him blinking his opponents out of existence. He still has to stop bullets in mid-air, dodge blades, and tackle his foes hand-to-hand and the film generally tries to both make him look powerful and vulnerable at the same time by throwing multiple opponents at him at once to give him something resembling a physical challenge.
Neo vehemently rejects the system’s control and discovers new aspects of his powers in the process.
Neo’s biggest challenge, however, is emotional; terrified at the idea of losing Trinity and burdened by the weight of expectation, Neo is still trying to find his way in this complex world where he has so much power but little understanding of what he’s actually supposed to do with it. Luckily for him (but not so lucky for some segments of the audience), Neo has his destiny spelled out to him, in a fashion, in the finale when he enters The Source and comes face-to-face with the Architect (Helmut Bakaitis), a conceited and haughty program who claims to have created the Matrix. In what essentially amounts to an overly complicated version of the dressing down Mr. Rhineheart (David Aston) gave Neo (then Thomas Anderson) in the last film, the Architect explains (using condescending words like “concurrently”, “apropos”, and “ergo”, which I have since added to my vocabulary) that Neo isn’t as special as he first thought. Instead, he is the fifth “One”, an unavoidable anomaly that the machines expect to crop up as a side effect of giving everyone plugged into the Matrix a choice to accept or reject the program. While only a tiny percentage of people do this, they eventually grow into Zion and a resistance effort and, with each generation, the machines cull Zion’s population and have The One reboot the Matrix, taking a bunch of its inhabitants to rebuild the city and start the cycle over again. Neo is aghast at the idea that he’s as much a part of this system of control as anything else and vehemently rejects the Architect’s demand that he fulfil this function to allow the human race to continue limping along for, if he chooses not to, Zion will be destroyed and the Matrix itself will suffer a “cataclysmic system cash” that will kill everyone plugged into it, thereby causing humanity’s extinction. However, unlike his predecessors, Neo has a far more specific human attachment, Trinity, and he chooses not to go along with this plot in favour of rescuing her even if it means the death of his species. While I admit that I’ve read more into this scene using interpretations and essays and such, I really enjoy it as a deep dive philosophical discussion regarding choice and control; it’s also really fun seeing Neo’s multiple reactions reflected in the television screens, which actually let him showcase some emotion as he vehemently rejects the “old white prick’s” overwhelmingly arrogant diatribe. Neo barely even gives the Architect’s ultimatum a second’s thought; he chooses to save Trinity, adamant that he’ll be able to fight against the resulting disaster but, while he does save her, things immediately go downhill soon after: the Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed, Bane is found comatose and accused of sabotage, and Neo passes out after exhibiting electromagnetic powers in the real-world for a dramatic cliff-hanger ending!
The Summary: I’ve spoken to a lot of people over the years who’ve told me that they don’t understand The Matrix, and I’ve never understood this; the first film is pretty simple (humans are trapped in virtual reality by machines in a post-apocalyptic world) but The Matrix Reloaded definitely confuses things and I can totally understand how some people were left a bit baffled by the lengthy, vague discussions regarding fate, choice, and the nature of humanity. While the films have long been the subject of academic debate, these discussions really ramped up with The Matrix Reloaded, which hinted at there being so much more at work in this sci-fi world than we originally believed; Morpheus had a questionable reputation, not all programs were malevolent, and Zion was this impossibly self-sustaining city. Questions were raised about whether or not the real world was also a simulation, people wondered if the Merovingian and Seraph were former Ones, and all of a sudden The Matrix turned from a thought-provoking piece of visually stunning sci-fi cinema to this absolute mind bender of philosophy and metaphysical debate. Personally, I’ve always really enjoyed this. The Matrix Reloaded is a thinking man’s sci-fi film, one that’s maybe a little too vague and a little too clever for its own good but which always has me engaged whether characters are throwing punches or discussing the self-destructive nature of love and choice. The action and fight sequences are absolutely thrilling, and probably the best in the series thanks to how consistent they are; sure, some effects haven’t aged all that well, but I loved seeing the multiple Smiths dog-piling Neo and watching Neo fend off numerous enemies at once with a slick efficiency. It’s not a perfect film, of course, and hindsight makes me wish the filmmakers had done a few things differently (the Matrix-within-a-Matrix might’ve been good, giving the Twins a bigger role, and maybe making Morpheus a little less controversial would be just three examples), but this is still my second favourite of the entire franchise. While even I, as a big Keanu Reeves fan, have to admit that Keanu was disappointingly wooden throughout much of this, Neo’s mannerisms and stoic proficiency paint him as an effortlessly cool hero, and I love that even after finding himself he’s still conflicted and how the world is just made more complex following his awakening as The One. It’s maybe a little too heavy-handed to put on all the time, but The Matrix Reloaded remains an exciting, visually and intellectually stimulating film that never fails to impress or entertain me and I think it’s well worth a deeper consideration as there’s a lot to sink your teeth into here, even if the payoff for all its plot threads didn’t exactly deliver as many might’ve hoped.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
Are you a fan of The Matrix Reloaded? What did you think to the progression of Neo’s character and his powers? Were you a fan of Smith’s copy ability and what do you think to the action scenes? Did you enjoy the film’s characters and concepts or do you feel like it became too bogged down in philosophy? What are some of your favourite fan theories regarding the franchise from back in the day? How are you celebrating Keanu Reeves’ birthday today and what are some of your favourite roles of his? Whatever you think about The MatrixReloaded, drop a comment below or let me know your thoughts on my social media.
“Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines”.
Released: 2 July 2003 Director: Jonathan Mostow Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures / Columbia TriStar Film Distributors International Budget: $187.3 million Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken, and David Andrews
The Plot: Years after ensuring that the malevolent artificial intelligence known as Skynet doesn’t come into creation, John Connor (Stahl) is haunted by dreams of an apocalyptic future. His fears come to life when an all-new Terminator, the T-X/Terminatrix (Loken), travels through time to murder prominent members of the future Resistance. John’s only hope is a reprogrammed T-850 machine (Schwarzenegger) that has been sent not only to protect him…but also his future wife!
The Background: Since The Terminator (Cameron, 1984) was an unexpected financial success, there was little doubt that a sequel would soon follow. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (ibid, 1991) not only out-did its predecessor but is frequently regarded as one of the greatest movie sequels. Although the man behind the franchise, James Cameron, and his co-writer were adamant that T2 marked the natural end for the story, producer Gale Anne Hurd and Carolco Pictures both pushed for a third film, and Cameron became involved after working on the theme park ride T2-3D: Battle Across Time. After Carolco filed for bankruptcy, 20th Century Fox negotiated with the stars and filmmakers to try and get the project off the ground, but financial concerns soon saw the rights fall into the hands of Andrew G. Vajna and Cameron eventually giving his blessing for a third film to be made without his involvement after repeated attempts and missed opportunities to purchase the rights for himself. Although initially reluctant to return without Cameron, Schwarzenegger was advised by the director to reprise his role for the money, if nothing else, which ultimately led not only to his staggering $30 million salary and him putting up $1.4 million to complete an elaborate chase scene. Schwarzenegger worked daily to get back into peak shape for his most iconic role, and even had a gym on set to work out in; however, he returned without co-star Linda Hamilton, who declined reprising her role as Sarah Connor due to being unimpressed with the script. Although Edward Furlong initially signed on to return as John Connor, his substance abuse problems led to him being replaced with Nick Stahl, a decision which alienated some fans. Kristanna Loken beat out the likes of Famke Janssen and Vin Diesel for the T-X role, who was once again brought to life by the legendary Stan Winston and Industrial Light & Magic, who used a combination of miniatures, practical, and visual effects brought the new semi-liquid metal Terminator to life. Although Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines impressed with a $433.4 million box office, reviews were dissatisfied with the film’s mindlessness and redundant narrative. Terminator 3’s derivative nature and tone-deaf humour marked it as a low point for the franchise, rather than a return to form. Even a coupleof tie-in videogames and Schwarzenegger’s return to his most famous role failed to impress, and it wouldn’t be long before the franchise rights were once again shopped around to a new owner.
The Review: Personally, as much as I love the Terminator films, I never actually found myself clamouring for a third entry. At least, not one that continued the story past the second film, anyway. I always thought there was potential in a prequel, though, one set during the Future War and showing John Connor’s struggles against the machines. I’ve always felt that it was a missed opportunity that we never got to see this sweeping shot of an army of Arnolds marching over a skull-littered, post-apocalyptic wasteland firing lasers at hapless Resistance fighters. On the other hand, I was mildly excited for Terminator 3 simply because it would be the first time I’d get to see a Terminator movie at the cinema, and the trailers had done a relatively decent job of selling the film as an action-packed spectacle, but this would be the start of a downward spiral for the franchise in which far too many sequels and spin-offs sought to ape the franchise-changing success of Terminator 2 rather than actually try something new.
Haunted by nightmares of the Future War, John is stunned when the Terminator reappears in his life.
Having narrowly escaped with this life after the events of the second film, John Connor is all grown up and has inherited his mother’s paranoid and nightmarish visions of a war-torn future. In the years between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) has died of leukaemia, but had managed to stay alive (against all medical logic) just long enough to ensure that the world didn’t end on August 29th, 1997 as Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) had once warned. The world continued on as always, but John was forever traumatised by her loss and his knowledge of a world overrun by killer machines, so he took himself off the grid and went on the run, drifting from place to place and job to job before, conveniently, ending right back where he started in California. So distracted by his nightmares is John that he takes a nasty fall from his bike and is forced to break into a veterinarian’s to patch himself up, and in the process coincidentally runs across an old flame of his, Katherine Brewster (Danes), who he’d once made out with as a kid. John’s reputation proceeds him, however, as Kate remembers his foster parents dying and him disappearing under suspicious circumstances, but he’s forced to reveal the truth about himself, and what happened all those years ago, when they’re attacked by the T-X and saved by the Terminator. Like Sarah before him, John is stunned to see the familiar, grim-faced cyborg return; so stunned, in fact, that he inexplicably believes the machine to not just be the same make and model as the last Terminator but to literally be his former father figure, which I guess you can chalk up to the shock of learning that their efforts to stop Skynet’s creation and the onset of Judgement Day simply delayed the inevitable. I never quite “got” the Nick Stahl experiment; he popped up in a few films around this time and he just never really clicked for me. He plays John as a neurotic, quirky, and melancholic drifter, one who feels beaten down by the expectation placed upon him by his mother’s teachings (and, apparently, fate) since he feels ill-equipped to be the future saviour of mankind. Thus, John does everything he possibly can to once again rally against this desolate future; his focus remains not on surviving the oncoming nuclear apocalypse, as the Terminator emphasises, but on stopping it altogether by infiltrating the source of Skynet’s creation, now shifted to Cyber Research Systems (CRS), and his entire character seems to be in this limbo between abject denial of the obvious truth staring him in the face and a resigned acceptance that the world expects more than he is prepared to give.
Unassuming Kate’s feisty nature soon reveals a capable fighter buried beneath her exterior.
New to the lore is the idea that, in the future, John will have a wife and child; thanks to the events of Terminator 2, the timeline has shifted, delaying Judgement Day and altering the future somewhat, to the point where the future Kate ends up being the one who sends the reprogrammed Terminator back through time to act as John’s protector once more. In the present day, however, Kate is little more than a naïve and under-appreciated vet; her priorities involve little more than registering gifts for her wedding to kindly, one-dimensional milksop Scott Mason (Mark Famiglietti), tending to the animals under her care, and trying to build bridges between Scott and her overprotective father, Lieutenant General Robert Brewster (Andrews). Kate acts as the audience surrogate here and, though there’s a brief suggestion that she’s not entirely sure about her upcoming wedding, her simple life is turned upside down in the most violent way possible when the cyborg killers literally come crashing into her vet in search for her. While she’s confused and overwhelmed, Kate is a pretty feisty character; she tricks John and stuns him with a taser, locking him up in a cage until she can figure out what’s going on, and even tries (futilely) to fend off the Terminator when it manhandles her for her own safety. Believing herself to be the victim of an elaborate kidnapping, Kate is sceptical of John’s claims about the future and the machines and escapes at the first opportunity, only to witness Scott transform into the T-X before her eyes and be faced with the undeniable truth that Skynet is a very real, very much impending threat. Kate barely even mourns Scott, however, and instead focuses on safeguarding her father from the T-X and using his connection to CRS to help them locate the Skynet mainframe. In the process, she undergoes a transformation not a million miles away from Sarah’s in the first film (John even remarks that she “reminds [him] of [his] mother”) that shows a glimpse of how proactive and capable she can be under stressful situations. Though she is adamant (nay, disgusted) that she and John will never be a couple in the future, she’s the first of the two to piece together that their mission wasn’t to prevent Judgement Day, but to survive it, and accepts their fate much faster than John in the finale. Kate brings an interesting perspective on the Terminator, one similar to John’s in the second film, as she addresses it as though it’s a person rather than a machine, and, through her curiosity, we learn that the Terminator might not be capable of human emotions but seems nevertheless despondent at the idea of failing its mission, which John later uses to snap it out of the T-X’s corrupting nanites.
In addition to being a protector, this Terminator uses basic psychology to strengthen the humans’ resolve.
While Arnold naturally slips back into his most famous role looking like barely a year has past since his last appearance, the Terminator once again undergoes a transformation for its third outing; although it still has a fancy for leather jackets, sunglasses, and stoic quips like its predecessor (and even has recognisable traits like checking for car keys under the sun visor and ensuring it doesn’t kill), the titular Terminator is, naturally, a completely different machine than before. Hell, it’s actually a different model entirely, being a T-850 rather than a T-800, which actually translates to a few notable additions and alterations, but it’s made explicitly clear that this once fearsome unstoppable killer and heroic father-figure is now a figure of comedy as, rather than ripping apart street punks or tossing aside a bar full of bikers to get its threads, this Terminator wanders into ladies’ night and accosts a male stripper. Additionally, this Terminator is powered by two highly combustible hydrogen fuel cells, making it functionally more vulnerable than its predecessors, and second is its programming in basic human psychology. This allows the Terminator to lie, cross-examine, and offer insight into the mental welfare of its charges (though it admits that its database “does not encompass the dynamics of human peer bonding”), and is largely used to comedic effect as the Terminator awkwardly encourages the two to mate, gets offended at being labelled a “robot”, and barks commands to the hysterical Kate in an effort to calm her down. One scene where this really comes into play is when John, overwhelmed at the burden he’s been forced to carry since he was a child, has a complete breakdown in his mother’s tomb and the Terminator calls his bluff, threatening to choke the hysterical John until he spits vitriol in the Terminator’s face since “Anger is more useful than despair”. This means that, while this Terminator is absolutely a protector figure, it’s far more blunt and less patient with the human protagonists (especially John, who is in real need of a kick up the ass that the Terminator is happy to provide) and concerned only with safeguarding them to meet their destiny. Another difference that is really underplayed is the fact that this Terminator wasn’t chosen at random; it infiltrated the Resistance and utilised Future-John’s emotional connection to its model number to terminate him. It was then reprogrammed by Future-Kate and sent back to protect him, meaning that John is faced not just with the inevitability of his eventual death but also forced to rely on the machine that will one day kill him, and the Terminator consequently only follows Kate’s orders. Again, this is largely played for comedic effect but there was some real potential behind this concept, and the Terminator even seems to deliver John a warning in the finale (“We will meet again”) to perhaps enable him to avoid his fate.
The T-X is a faster, more efficient, anti-Terminator Terminator that’s full of underutilised abilities.
As outclassed as the Terminator was in Terminator 2, there’s no question that it’s on the backfoot this time around; the Terminator even admits that it’s an “obsolete design” compared to the Terminatrix, an apathetic and alluring cyborg assassin that has both a metal endoskeleton and a liquid metal exterior. Somehow, this allows the T-X to shape-shift like its predecessor (I guess the endoskeleton is liquid metal, too…which only raises more questions about how it survived the trip through time…) but the T-X rarely uses this ability; instead, it relies on its ability to transform its arms into weapons. And not “knives and stabbing weapons” like the T-1000 (Robert Patrick); this bitch creates an energy cannon and a flamethrower, though, again, this ability is rarely utilised. The T-X seems to be on a tight deadline here as there’s no question at all that it’s the villain of the film since we see it tracking down and murdering John’s future lieutenants (who are young kids, no less) in cold blood rather than make any attempt at subterfuge. The T-X has other new abilities as well; it can grow its breasts to distract men, identify humans by sampling their blood, and is able to infect and remotely control computer systems and machines using a kind of nanotechnology. This allows it to chase after its prey by controlling police cruisers (which is pretty inconceivable since there’s no way they’d be able to drive in the way she controls them), taking over the T-1 machines at CRS, and even corrupts the Terminator’s systems to set it against John and Kate. The T-X is every bit as formidable as the Terminator, easily overpowering it and taking its shots in their brawl, but is portrayed as being both faster and more powerful in every conceivable way, which contributes to the Terminator’s primary plan of escaping to safety rather than trying to tackle it head-on. The T-X isn’t entirely vulnerable, though; rocket launchers soon damage its arm and it’s rendered temporarily helpless thanks to the magnetic pull of a particle accelerator, but it’s a pretty vicious and vindictive machine; it not only hunts down and murders John’s future allies in cold blood, but shoves its hand through a police offer’s stomach in the film’s bloodiest sequence. I know Kristanna Loken from the under-rated Mortal Kombat: Conquest (1998 to 1999) and this basically remains her biggest film role to date; she does a decent job of portraying an emotionless killer cyborg but, like the Terminator and T-1000 before her, also adds a lot of nuance to the role. The T-X becomes visibly frustrated at the Terminator’s interference and screams with rage, scurrying about like an insect as it desperately tries to fulfil its mission in the finale.
The Nitty-Gritty: If you’ve seen Terminator 2, then you’ve basically seen everything Terminator 3 has to offer. The film borrows so much from its predecessor that it’s not even funny, which is super ironic considering the film offers a more comedic slant on moments such as the Terminator acquiring its clothing (now from a male stripper who doesn’t seem to match Arnold’s dimensions in the lightest), exhibiting personality and humanity, and even offering neutered versions of actions sequences like the assault on Cyberdyne and CRS, respectively. Consequently, many of the same themes from the second (and first) film carry over here; there’s a focus on fate and destiny, the inevitability of our own destruction, and the dangers of artificial intelligence, but the fundamental message of the Terminator franchise has been twisted simply to justify the existence of this film. Previously, the message was “The future’s not set. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves” but it turns out that this was a bit of a misdirect; Judgement Day is now seen as “inevitable”, the creation of a destructive A.I. unavoidable, and it no longer matter show hard the characters fight or deny this fact, humanity is doomed to be driven to the point of complete destruction. This means that Terminator 3 has a far bleaker tone than the last film, which ended on a message of hope, and instead skews the narrative into one where it’s somewhat implied that everything that’s happened (including the future messages) has been to get John born, trained, and to safety so he can lead humanity to ultimate victory rather than trying to avoid this outcome altogether.
Since Judgement Day is now “inevitable”, the machines certainly do rise by the end.
Although Sarah is dead, her presence is very much felt throughout the film; one of the many demons John is trying to hide from is the teachings and expectations she placed upon him and, while he loved his mother and clearly misses her, he also resents her for tainting his childhood and screwing him up with stories of war against the machines. Although she held on to ensure that Judgement Day didn’t happen, it turns out that Sarah was also unable to shake off her fear and paranoia and had a casket full of armaments buried in place of her remains, which helpfully enables one of the film’s more visually interesting shoot-outs. Earl Boen makes a surprising and amusing return for his cameo as Doctor Peter Silberman, which sees him offering some mild comfort to Kate and then fleeing in fear at spotting the Terminator, and there are so many mentions of Terminator 2 that it’s genuinely hard for the film to stand on its own two feet. Interestingly, and disappointingly, Terminator 3 fails to borrow the iconic Terminator theme until the end credits; Marco Beltrami’s score is suitably machine-like and has traces of Brad Fiedel’s memorable work laced throughout it, but it’s just not Terminator without the “duh-duh-dun-duh-dun” at the forefront of the soundtrack. And yet, Robert Brewster heads up CRS, which acquired Cyberdyne’s assets and is in the midst of struggling with a particularly aggressive computer virus throughout the film. Although his technicians insist that Skynet will be able to identify and eradicate the virus, Brewster is reluctant to activate the advanced artificial intelligence as he’s uncomfortable with handing over that much power and responsibility to a machine. Unfortunately, he’s over-ruled by his superiors and John and Kate are unable to get there in time to stop him from bringing Skynet online; he realises all too late that Skynet was the virus and that he has effectively doomed humanity to near extinction from the self-aware A.I. Gunned down by the T-X, Brewster pleads with John to get Kate to safety and provides them with the location of Crystal Peak, and their last hope at stopping the nuclear apocalypse.
The film has some decent action and fight scenes, though there’s a heavy reliance on CGI.
Visually, Terminator 3 is still pretty impressive; the opening rendition of the Future War, in which we see an army of Terminator endoskeletons carving a path of destruction across a smouldering battlefield, are as harrowing as those of the previous films. Additionally, this is the first time we actually see the Terminators arrive in the past in full detail, which was cool as I’d always wondered about how they actually materialised in the past. Although the effects have definitely moved more towards CGI than practical puppetry and animatronics, traditional effects remain a constant highlight. Not only does the Terminator cut open its abdomen to remove its damaged fuel cell, but the T-X’s armaments (no pun intended…) are largely practical, and there’s some pretty enjoyable throwdowns between the two machines once they swap out their weapons for hand-to-hand combat. However, the appeal of these fights is, again, more comedic than tense; the T-X grabs the Terminator’s crotch, the two smash each other into toilets, and the main thrust of their combat is based around the once terrifying cyborg killer being manhandled (or, I guess, machinehandled?) by a smaller, female variant against which it has very little chance of success. While the big chase scene is pretty thrilling and involves a lot of destruction, it’s hard to not spot the overabundance of CGI used to flip cars and send the Terminator crashing through walls. Similarly, it’s a bit of an awkward effect when the Terminator reattaches its severed head, though the CGI does allow for probably the best battle-damaged look for the Terminator in the finale. Additionally, the T-1 machines are entirely practical, which makes for some fun (and deceptively impactful) scenes of them trundling around CRS and gunning down technicians like hulking Grim Reapers, and the effects used to bring the Future War to life are better than ever, but a lot of the gritty, weighty, mechanical feel of the previous films is lost in favour of a sleek shine that gives the Hunter Killers (HKs) and the T-X’s endoskeleton a glossy, almost alien aesthetic but also makes them feel very fake. Say what you will about the jerky puppets and stop-motion effects of the first film but I never felt like the Terminator wasn’t “there” in the scene but, here, fights and sequences often boil down to CGI ragdolls flailing about like action figures, which somewhat undermines any dramatic tension we’re supposed to feel.
The TX is destroyed but the world is nuked regardless for an unexpectedly bleak ending.
In fact, dramatic tension is difficult to find anywhere in Terminator 3 because the awkward focus on making jokes, quips, and gags even when the characters are fleeing for their lives or discussing the extinction of humanity. The Terminator throws up a “Talk to dah hand”, which severely dates the film, casually mentions how it assassinated John, and much of its delivery is meant to illicit a chuckle from the audience, which really creates a very tone-deaf film. Moments of levity were few and far between in the last two films, but when they popped up they were natural and didn’t feel anywhere near as forced; when the Terminator snapped “Fuck you, asshole”, it was an amusing glimpse at how human the killer cyborg could be, and the T-1000’s “Say…that’s a nice bike” had an air of menace to it that was only exacerbated by how callously it murdered people previously. Here, the Terminator is going out of its way to shop for designer sunglasses, roughly grabbing John and Kate to assess their physical wellbeing, and spitting out bullets and admonishing Kate all for a cheap laugh and it’s jarring not just for the franchise but in the context of the film. As soon as the Terminator acquires John and Kate, it tries to get them to safety so they can survive the inevitable blast zones, but is constantly derailed from its mission by John and Kate’s insistence that they try to stop the war. Despite continuously emphasising that the war can’t be stopped since there’s no time and they’ve no hope of fighting the T-X, the Terminator is duty-bound to go along with their commands, but John is distraught to find that Crystal Peak doesn’t contain Skynet’s system core but a fallout shelter for governmental officials. The Terminator (literally) crashes in to battle the T-X one last time, ultimately sacrificing itself by jamming its remaining fuel cell into the T-X’s mouth and ending its threat, leaving John with the stark realisation that the future he has long feared and rallied against is finally coming to pass. In a poignant moment that the film in no way earns, the bombs drop as John and Kate embrace in the bunker, begrudgingly left with no choice but to prepare for the fight of their lives, and ending the film on a depressingly bleak note that is decidedly at odds with the majority of its more comedic runtime.
The Summary: It’s hard to deny that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was a massive misfire; rather than trying to do something fresh and new with the franchise, the film settled on being a poor man’s rip-off of Terminator 2, something that would unfortunately continue to plague the series going forward. I get it, I honestly do; if you’ve bought the rights to the Terminator films, you want Arnold back and you want to try and recreate what worked before, but there were so many other avenues that the filmmakers could’ve gone down here. The idea of Skynet hunting down John’s lieutenants has a lot of potential, and could have been the focal point of the film; maybe John could’ve taken on the Kyle Reese role to protect Kate from the Terminator, which would not only draw a bit more from the first film but also allow Arnold the chance to do something a little different by portraying a evil version of his most iconic character once more. Or, even better, do the Future War and show the Resistance fighters battling the machines, which was probably beyond the budget of this movie, but the end result was got is a conflicting, confusing mess of a film that isn’t sure if it wants to be a family friendly action comedy or a dour science-fiction movie laying the foundation for a devastating apocalypse. The tone and atmosphere is all over the place, completely negating any of the high points (and there are some, like the car chase, the Terminator-on-Terminator fight scenes, and the dour ending) and leaving a sour taste in the mouth since it literally feels like we just watched a budget version of Terminator 2. It’s no surprise that, when viewing the timeline of the Terminator movies, it’s pretty easy to skip this one; while Kate does eventually make a return, pretty much every Terminator production after this just ignored this one and I can’t say that I blame them as it’s a pretty disappointing and unnecessary retread of ground we’d seen done bigger and better back in 1991.
My Rating:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Could Be Better
By any chance, did you enjoy Terminator3: Rise of the Machines? How do you think it compares to the first two films and the other sequels? Were you a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance and the changes made to his character? What did you think to Terminatrix and its abilities? Were you a fan of Nick Stahl’s take on John Connor and what did you think to his relationship with Kate? Did you enjoy the greater emphasis on CGI this time around? How are you celebrating Judgement Day today? No matter what you think about Terminator3, and the Terminator franchise, feel free to s leave a reply down below.
Gillian Church posts regular Writing Prompts on her Horror Prompts Instagram account and I like to take part with a few snippets and pieces of flash fiction.
The Prompts: Cage, Timer, Fur, Froth, Unbearable, Translate
The Submission: The wait was unbearable. Ever since that heavy, rusted door had slammed shut, the timer had been counting down and I was left to stare, terrified, at the beast that frothed at the mouth in its flimsy cage.
Perhaps it was the sheer terror, the blood loss from the stump where my leg had once been (the creature lapped at my tacky blood trail hungrily with a forked tongue), or perhaps it was the drugs, but I just couldn’t translate the situation properly in my head.
All I could do was watch, helplessly, as the timer reached zero. The cage door burst open, and that slobbering, rancid thing was on my, its matted fur reeking of decay, its teeth sinking in…
What did you think to this piece? Did you submit anything for Gillian’s prompts? Have you ever written any flash fiction before? I’d love to know what you think to my snippets and writing prompts, so feel free to sign up and let me know what you think below or leave a comment on my Instagram page. You can also follow Gillian Church and Horror Prompts to take part in regular writing challenges.
Easily Marvel Comics’ most recognisable and popular superhero, unsuspecting teenage nerd Peter Parker was first bitten by a radioactive spider and learned the true meaning of power and responsibility in Amazing Fantasy #15, which was first published in August 1962. Since then, the Amazing Spider-Man has featured in numerous cartoons, live-action movies, videogames, action figures, and countless comic book titles and, in celebration of his debut and his very own day of celebration, I’ve been dedicating every Saturday of August to talk about everyone’s favourite web-head!
Released: 28 June 2004 Developer: Treyarch Also Available For: Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Mac-OS X, N-Gage, Nintendo DS, PC, PlayStation Portable, and Xbox
The Background: Back in the day, it seemed like every single cinema release was accompanied by a videogame adaptation, whether they warranted it or not. Naturally, considering his popularity, Spider-Man has a long and varied history with videogame adaptations across numerous platforms, and developers Treyarch began development of a tie-in to Spider-Man 2(Raimi, 2004) soon after the success of the first movie. No strangers to the wall-crawler, Treyarch sought to dramatically improve upon their previous efforts by incorporating a large populated recreation of New York City, expanding on the film’s story, and placing a heavy emphasis on Spider-Man’s web-slinging. The new system, which utilised ray casting to automatically map infinite points where players could attach webs to swing from, was developed by designer Jamie Fristrom and has long been the subject of praise amongst fans of the videogame, and the character. Indeed, Spider-Man 2 has been met with a surprising amount of positivity for a videogame tie-in; while some of the more repetitive aspects were criticised, reviews praised the combat and controls, seamless open world and mission variety, presentation, and even the minigames. Even in the face of its bigger, more graphically impressive successors, Spider-Man 2 is often lauded as one of the character’s greatest videogame outings; the praise for this game is so great that I was actually a little intimidated to try it out for this review, which is my first time actually playing it.
The Plot: Two years after the events of the first game, Peter Parker is struggling with his personal life and his responsibilities as the superhero Spider-Man. Unable to ignore the threat posed by criminals and supervillains alike, Peter’s social life begins to suffer, but his powers are put to the ultimate test when renowned scientist Doctor Otto Octavius becomes a four-limbed madman and threatens the entire city!
Gameplay: In a change of pace from its predecessor, and basically every Spider-Man title released up until that point, Spider-Man 2 is an open-world adventure in which you’re given free reign to use all of Spider-Man’s amazing abilities throughout one of the largest and most faithful digital recreations of New York City ever seen at that time. Unlike the previous game, which was basically a reskinned version of Neversoft’s fun but limited 2000 adaptation of the web-slinger, Spider-Man is hardly ever trapped in an enclosed environment and thus a primary focus of Spider-Man 2 is on swinging around the city, stopping random crimes and helping non-playable characters (NPCs) with various issues. Thankfully, Spider-Man is more than equipped to handle everything the game has to throw at him, and the controls and combat options have been revised to accommodate this new focus. Spider-Man can attack enemies or interact with objects and NPCs with the Square button; successive presses in conjunction with directional inputs and the Triangle and Circle button will see him pull off combos, often involving webbing and tossing his enemies, and you’ll awkwardly home in on the nearest enemy when in air combat as well. You can stick to walls by pressing Circle, which is also used to evade incoming attacks and bullets whenever Spider-Man’s spider sense goes off (as indicated by his glowing head); this also fills up your “Spider Reflexes” meter and allows you to execute a counter attack but I found evading (and the combat in general) to be a little clunky and haphazard at times, especially as even New York’s most common thugs can take quite a beating and even block against your attacks. Triangle shoots a web; holding the button will temporarily tie enemies up, pressing up and Triangle fires a ball of impact webbing, and you can even use your webs to disarm foes, though it’s next to useless against most bosses and mechanical enemies. Spider-Man jumps with X; pressing it twice performs a double jump and you can hold the button to charge a big jump and executing a jump at the apex of a web sling is crucial to covering vast distances when swinging about. Holding down L2 sees Spidey spring or get a boost to his swing, Triangle (and in conjunction with Circle) will allow you to pick up injured NPCs or grapple thugs, and you can press down to lock-on to nearby targets.
Combat is much improved but the highlight of the game was the ground-breaking web-slinging.
Once the aforementioned meter has a bit of blue in it, you can press L1 to activate your Spider Reflexes, which effectively functions as a form of bullet time, slowing down the action until the meter depletes or you press L1 again and allowing you to better dodge and attack enemies. The meat and potatoes of the game, though, is in the web-slinging; the game offers two options for this, “Easy Swinging” and “Normal Swinging”, with the latter requiring more input from the player to direct Spider-Man’s swings. Either way, R2 sees you throwing a web and swinging through the city but, unlike in every other Spider-Man game before this, you can only web-sling when there are buildings or suitable purchase holds nearby. This means you’ll see Spider-Man veer to the left or right as he shoots webs at the nearest building and allows for the most realistic and innovative web-slinging ever seen. Spider-Man can also eventually web-zip by pressing L2 and R2 together to quickly cover flat distances and you can easily speed through the skyscrapers by attaching to buildings and gaining extra height with your jumps, though you can’t clamber up your web as you swing as in other games, which can make chasing through the city a bit frustrating at times. Equally annoying are the number of dead ends and the various heights of the city’s buildings, which can interrupt your flow; thankfully, the onscreen mini map is a great help for getting around and spotting crimes in progress, side missions, and directing you towards your next story-based objective. You can review these at any time from the pause menu and expand the map out by pressing ‘Select’; this displays the current time and all landmarks and places of note, but sadly doesn’t include the option to place waypoints so you still have to manually read the map and follow the onscreen indicators to get to objectives. Spider-Man 2 is split into chapters, beginning with a simple and in-depth tutorial where Bruce Campbell’s disembodied and snarky voice teaches you the fundamentals of gameplay. To progress through the story, you need to complete story-based objectives; generally, this amounts to following the compass to a certain place in the city to advance the story or confront a boss, but you’ll also need to earn “Hero Points” and acquire new abilities from the various shops dotted across the city.
There’s always someone in peril, or a crime to stop, or a race to be had.
Hero Points are earned from stopping crimes, rescuing civilians, completing time trial races, and other similar distractions; it’s a bit annoying that the game effectively grinds to a halt while you work to obtain the required Hero Points, but you get a fair amount for each side quest you complete and it’s not as if you’re short on things to do. It seems someone’s being mugged or needs help every thirty seconds, and you’ll often stop a burglary only for a child to lose their balloon across the street or an armoured car be attacked a block over. Sometimes, you’ll help an NPC only to be jumped by a gang of thugs in a sneak attack; other times, criminals will hijack vehicles to make a quick getaway and you’ll need to chase them down and land on top of the car, which can be tricky unless you lock-on to it. Once on the roof, you need to pound away with Square and dodge their bullets with Circle until they’re forced out for a fistfight and, as the story progresses, you’ll find burglars and shoot outs often culminating in one of these chase sequences. You’ll also run into Felicia Hardy/Black Cat numerous times throughout the story; each time you do you need to chase after her as she leaps and grapnels around the city, which can be aggravating as she makes erratic turns and it’s difficult to stay on the rooftops. Similarly, you’ll need to chase after Dr. Octopus when he makes an escape in a helicopter and can take on timed challenges where you must race through rings, and the game’s pretty unforgiving, slapping you with failure if you even remotely fall behind or stay too far. More often than not, you’ll face a timer as you race to story-based locations, with the final race to Dr. Ock’s lair being the tightest of them all, or be asked to deliver pizzas and swing over to specific points on the map or skyscrapers to automatically take pictures, or will have to quickly crawl up buildings to rescue civilians in danger or falling, or quickly take injured civilians to the hospital. There’s quite a lot to do in this regard, and it’s fun to pop over to the Daily Bugle and change to Peter Parker in the men’s toilets, but the variety of these side missions soon wears thin as you repeat the same cycle of requests over and over but with more enemies or a tighter time limit.
Graphics and Sound: It’s obvious that a lot more time and effort went into Spider-Man 2 compared to its predecessor; most videogame tie-ins suffer from a rushed development schedule, and this is often reflected in their length, variety, and presentation but Spider-Man 2 does pretty well in all three regards. Spider-Man’s character model is much improved compared to the last game, with far more animations when he’s web-slinging and battering crooks on the streets; Spidey even runs along buildings when he swings close, can perform a variety of mid-air tricks with well-timed jumps, and NPCs will even automatically dodge out his way and throw insults at him when he runs or swings through the streets. Sadly, the enemy models and NPCs don’t fare nearly as well; you’ll see the same polygonal faces and voices repeated over and over, but it’s hard to begrudge this as this was symptomatic of the games of this era. What I can’t defend, however, is the soundtrack and voice acting; once again, the game opts for a soundalike to Danny Elfman’s iconic Spider-Man score that just doesn’t work as well and suffers from awkward looping or disappears entirely for no reason. Only a handful of the movie’s actors returned to voice their polygonal counterparts as well; while Alfred Molina continues to shine as Dr. Octopus, both Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst sound bored to death recording their lines, though I did enjoy that Spider-Man throws quips and monologues to himself as you play. When the character models are used for in-game cutscenes, the game also falls apart under close scrutiny, though the higher quality cinematics fare much better, despite the rubbery appearance of the models, and I liked how the film’s events were recreated but also altered and expanded upon here, even if sub-plots like Peter losing his powers were dropped.
It’s lucky for the ropey cutscenes and voices that the digital recreation of New York is so good.
Naturally, the game’s biggest selling point is the sprawling and bustling recreation of New York; all the landmarks you associate with the city are present and accounted for, alongside recreations of locations from the films such as Peter’s apartment, the Daily Bugle building, Dr. Octopus’s pier lair, and the pizza parlour (though relocated and redesigned here). Not only can you web-sling across the city without any noticeable slowdown or load times, the game also includes a day and night cycle and the story is geared towards pushing you to visiting new areas, such as Roosevelt Island, the Statue of Liberty (accessible only by hitching a ride on a helicopter or using Mysterio’s UFO-like drones), Central Park, and Oscorp. 90% of the game takes place outside amidst the city skyscrapers; traffic and pedestrians mingle around down below, crime is rampant, and the enemies you encounter even change as the story progresses. While you can only enter a handful of buildings, those that you can offer some rewards, such as interacting with the Daily Bugle staff for tasks or purchasing upgrades. The handful of other times you’re forced into a warehouse or an open-air stadium, it’s for a close-quarters boss battle or to take on one of Mysterio’s challenges, meaning the only interior of any real note is Mysterio’s madcap “funhouse” that sees you venturing into a hall of mirrors and through upside-down environments. The thrill of swinging through New York is definitely palpable but I’d be lying if it doesn’t lose its appeal pretty soon; with no options for fast travel and only one real collectible on offer, there’s not really much to see beyond the digital recreation of the city or to do beyond stopping the same crimes over and over.
Enemies and Bosses: As you swing about the city in your colourful underoos, a gaggle of the dregs of society will inevitably crawl out of the woodwork to cause trouble in the streets. New York is rife with purse snatchers, bank robbers, and armed gangs who love to rob armoured cars and get into shoot-outs with the cops or hijack passing cars and you’ll get to beat the ever-loving piss out of them all multiple times. Most enemies you encounter will simply try to bash your head in, but others have crowbars and bats or can guard against your attacks, requiring you to execute a counter after dodging their attacks. The worst are those armed with guns as Spider-Man doesn’t do too well when riddled with bullets, so it’s best to either disarm them, web them up, or try to take them out early, which can be easier said than done when you’re literally surrounded by enemies on all sides. Eventually, New York will also be attacked by Mysterio’s robotic drones, which fly about the place and blast at you with lasers; these can be tricky to hit as mid-air combat is actually less refined than in the previous game in many ways, though that weird homing function comes in handy here. Herman Schutlz/The Shocker’s goons also end up terrorising the citizens as well, firing high velocity blasts to send you flying, and all of the game’s enemies except the robots can take quite a beating before they go down. You’ll also have to contend with three mech-wearing goons in one particular mission that sees Spidey and Black Cat gate-crash an auction. This mission is one of the game’s toughest, on paper, due to the sheer number of bullets, enemies, and explosions happening all around you but an easy way to get past it is to simply swing about back and forth overhead; eventually, the mechs will take each other and most of the other enemies out, leaving you to pick up the scraps.
After tangling with the Rhino, Black Cat lends a hand in two annoying battles with the Shocker.
Disappointingly, though, Spider-Man 2 only contains four actual bosses, but you’ll face some of them more than once, at least. The first one you battle is Aleksei Sytsevich/The Rhino as he’s in the middle of a bit of thievery; the Rhino is too powerful to take on head-first so you need to rapidly tap Circle to avoid his swings or dodge his charge, both of which will leave him dizzy and vulnerable to a good pummelling. Instead of fighting Black Cat, you’ll chase her across the city (so many times that it got legitimately annoying for me) to encounters with the Shocker, who you’ll battle twice alongside Black Cat. The first fight takes place inside a warehouse and sees the Shocker blasting himself about the place, constantly staying on the move and making himself a difficult and annoying target. When you do get close to him, you only have time to rattle off a quick combo before you need to get the hell away from him to avoid his huge concussive blast, which sends you flying. The Shocker’s blasts are also used to keep you at bay, he shrugs off your webbing, and is joined by some goons in this fight, which quickly becomes laborious because of the hit and run tactics. Sadly, you’re forced to repeat these in the second encounter, which takes place in an even smaller, enclosed arena where the Shocker is protected by a shield. You need to head up top, dodging his blasts when your spider sense goes off, and activate whatever console is opposite from the one Black Cat is at to lower his shield. These weird blasts of water (or energy, I couldn’t tell) form platforms in the middle of the arena, giving the Shocker the high ground, but the same strategy as before is needed to whittle his health down. Eventually, Black Cat will shut his shield down for good, meaning you’re on the home stretch, but she doesn’t really seem to actively do damage to him when she’s attacking him.
Mysterio’s “tests” prove to be frustrating test of your patience.
Easily the game’s more persistent enemy is Mysterio; when you first face him as plain old Quentin Beck, he challenges you to a series of “games” in an effort to prove Spidey’s a fraud, which involves you grabbing and tossing goons into green highlighted pits faster than him in a game of human basketball and then clambering about on elevated, moving, and twisting platforms trying not to get hit by his laser cannon. The second time, he swarms New York with his UFO-like drones and takes hostages at a theatre; this was an annoying section as you have to fend off his drones, watch out for a flaming floor, and battle a brief time limit to rescue everyone there but it’s nothing compared to when he encases the Statue of Liberty in an elaborate mechanical construction to resemble an alien attack. I was tearing my hair out at the finnicky controls as I webbed my way over the Lady Liberty and fell countless times into the water to be washed ashore and have to start all over, and near enough lost my rag when tasked with destroying the eight orbs surrounding Mysterio’s machine to expose the “brain”. Eventually, I was somehow able to gain enough height to get up there and take them all out and then get up to where the brain is before the orbs could respawn and dispel the illusion, but it was a pain in my ass, for sure. Afterwards, you track Mysterio to his apartment and hidden funhouse lair, where you have to fend off a swarm of twisted Spider-Man clones to find a hidden exit in his hall of mirrors and shut down his hologram. Finally, Mysterio shows up in the flesh later in the game to rob a deli; this was actually really amusing as the game loads in this ridiculously long and layered health bar and makes it seem like it’s going to be this long and epic showdown but all you have to do is punch him once and Mysterio folds like a paper plane.
Thanks to his thrashing limbs and raging machine, Doc Ock proves an aggravating and formidable foe.
Finally, there’s the main man himself, Dr. Octopus, who you encounter four times throughout the game. The first encounter is during the mishap with his fusion experiment and is one of the most frustrating parts of this or any other game; the reactor is going crazy, sending out intermittent energy bolts that you must dodge the second your spider sense goes off as these pulsating waves of energy that not only do massive damage (three hits is usually enough to kill you) but send you flying across the screen! Through a combination of luck, timing, and the patience of a saint, you need to dodge past all this shit and hit four consoles to power the machine down, but this almost had me rage-quitting right then and there. Next, you’ll fight Dr. Octopus and his grenade launching goons at the bank, which establishes the strategy you’ll need to best him in all encounters; you need to dodge his tentacles and then quickly fire a web to pin each one down and leave him vulnerable to attack, but this is very hard to do and he’s easily able to grab you, slam you about, toss you around, and beat you to death in just a few hits. After chasing his helicopter and rescuing Aunt May from the train tracks, you’ll battle Doc Ock on the roof of a train just like in the film…eventually, because first you need to battle the game’s controls and camera to actually get on the damn train! Here, it’s more of the same and actually a little easier than the last encounter except for the fact that Doc Ock can toss you off the train if he grabs you. Finally, it’s the worst of both worlds at his pier lair as Doc Ock relentlessly chases you, protected by a shield generated from his rampaging machine and able to spam-beat you to death in the blink of an eye if you don’t constantly keep moving, dodging, and webbing him up. You need to deactivate nine consoles scattered about the lair, with one high above and one down below near the instant-death water, all while avoiding the electrical bolts, the thankfully less damaging but no less annoying energy waves, and Doc Ock himself. Once you finally take care of that, you’ll go one-on-one with him again where you’ll need to be super fast on the dodge and webs to stop his relentless thrashing tentacles and avoid being tossed into the aforementioned water, but once you land a good few combos he finally goes down for good.
Power-Ups and Bonuses: In the spirit of the movie upon which it is based, Spider-Man has an infinite supply of webbing in Spider-Man 2 so you never need to worry about collecting extra web cartridges, though the game does lack some of the fancier web-based moves potentially as a result of this. Every time you defeat a wave of enemies in side missions, they’ll drop some health to fully restore your health bar, but these won’t be present in boss encounters, which can make them all the more frustrating. Additionally, while there are “secrets” to be found around the city, they simply grant a few more Hero Points so there’s no pick-ups to boost Spidey’s abilities. Instead, you’ll gain new buffs, tricks, combos, and such by spending Hero Points in the many shops scattered around the city; these increase the speed of your swing, add fancy moves to your jumps, and add a little more flourish to your combos but I found little use for most of them and got along pretty well just mashing Square and peppering in the odd Circle and Triangle here and there.
Additional Features: As mentioned, there are many secrets dotted around the city; these are pretty hard to find, and I only stumbled upon three or four by chance but they do allow access to a couple of new moves. There are also some races and timed challenges you can take on for more points, and which probably count towards you achieving the list of “Awards” offered by the game (though most of these are story-based). Although there are some options available to you to change the game’s display, sound, and control scheme, there are no difficulty settings here, no costumes to unlock (though you do get to play as Peter and unmasked Spidey in the story), and no additional characters or modes to unlock or play as even using cheats. The best on offer here is a code to award you a bunch of Hero Points and upgrades, making this a significant step down not just from the last game but Neversoft’s previous efforts with their many additional costumes and modes. However, after you clear the game, you’re dropped back into a free roaming mode and are free to stop crimes until the end of time across the city; you can also purchase access to the Battle Arena where you can not only battle the game’s bosses in endurance fights but also face off with a secret additional boss, Calypso Ezili/Calypso, though I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this is actually worth your time.
The Summary: All I’ve heard since 2004 is how great Spider-Man 2 is; it either tops or is included in so many “best of” lists for videogame tie-ins and superhero videogames that I knew I had to get it once I started building my PlayStation 2 library, even though I am primarily against videogame tie-ins unless I’m trying to increase my Gamer Score. The difference between this and the last game, and other Spider-Man games before it, is immediate and reinforced throughout; the sheer size of New York City and the number of crimes to stop is very impressive for the time and never before has a videogame so perfectly captured the rush of being Marvel’s famous web-slinger. The drama and crime even interrupts the story on numerous occasions, really throwing you into Spidey’s troubled shoes, and the web-swinging mechanics definitely live up to all the hype. The versatility and accessibility of swinging through the city was unparalleled at the time and perfectly recreates the speed and exhilaration of the web-slinging seen in Sam Raimi’s films. Sadly, the combat doesn’t really live up to this, being clunky and oddly unbalanced at times even when you manage to land a dodge and a counter. Naturally, character models and cutscenes haven’t aged too well, but I can forgive that; what I can’t forgive is how empty, repetitive, and frustrating parts of the game can feel. It’s great having all of New York to explore, but there’s not a lot to see and you’ll be stopping the same crimes over and over, which can get very old very quickly. I would’ve liked to see comic book covers and other collectibles scattered about to unlock costumes and concept art, but there’s none of that here, meaning there’s little incentive to explore. The few bosses there are can also be annoying; I got so sick of chasing after Black Cat, being tossed about like a ragdoll by the Shocker and Dr. Octopus’s bloody machine, and being mullered by bullets, to say nothing of that God-awful encounter with Mysterio at the Statue of Liberty. The game was also a lot shorter than I was expecting, with the gameplay padded out by the story forcing you to acquire Hero Points to load in the next chase, battle, or cutscene, and I found myself just feeling relieved when the game was over. Overall, I can certainly see why the game was so beloved at the time and is so highly regarded; it still holds up pretty well, despite some obvious flaws, and was the most immersive Spider-Man game at the time, but it’s obviously been overshadowed by better, more polished Spidey title sin the years since.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Pretty Good
Have you ever played this beloved tie-in game? What did you think to the open-world gameplay and web-slinging mechanics back in the day? Do you think Spider-Man 2 still holds up today or were you also frustrated by some of its more tedious features? What did you think to the battles against Mysterio, the chases against Black Cat, and the encounters with the Shocker? Were you disappointed by the lack of unlockables and additional gameplay options? Which Spider-Man videogame or movie adaptation is your favourite? Head down below to share your thoughts and memories of Spider-Man2.
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