Good morning 🐣

Despite a questionable finale and tolerance-testing runtime, I appreciated the David Fincher-esque mystery/thriller atmosphere of this year’s “The Batman” (now streaming on HBO Max). Plus it stars the always underestimated Robert Pattinson, who truly feels like a weirdo walking around dressed as a bat. I mean what more could you ask for?

But I’m also getting so sick of these grim and gritty takes on the character, so let’s take a trip back to the 1960s…

Batman had already long been popular by the ’60s, starting in comics in 1939 and expanding in pop culture via 1940s theatrical serials and radio shows. But it was the 1966-1968 comedy TV show that made him universal and planted the seeds of how we view him, his countless costumed adversaries, and superheroics in general today.

To preserve and celebrate this weird little time capsule, a Web site in Spanish has cataloged the onomatopoeia (or “Batsigns”) found in each of the 120 episodes. BOFF! CLANK!! ZOWIE!!! They were created, as the author puts it, “to give more strength to the fights.” See above for some of my favorites.

Digging deeper into the character and the vigilantism he represents, Matt Webb discusses how “superheroes create cultural acceptance for popular oligarchy.” He argues that during the same decade that superheroes were created,

Birth of a Nation and KKK had established in culture a convenient visual language: apex humans, prepared to put their necks on the line for the rest of us, would forge their own identities with masks and capes. So it makes sense to draw the new supermen the same way.

[…]

It reinforces the idea of a hierarchy of human, with the ubermensch as its apex.

The superhero makes things alright without being asked. It looks after us, it protects, it cleans up the streets. It’s a parental role.

[…]

It seems like the concept of the superhero is softening us up for a popular oligarchy: an unattainable class of humanity which is super-wealthy with super abilities, and somehow championed by the rest of us?

Now I’m not saying that a popular oligarchy equals fascism. But, reading Umberto Eco’s 14 features of fascism, the two systems do rhyme.

And lastly, Don Kaye uses 2008’s “The Dark Knight” as a way to explain why plot holes sometimes don’t matter.

Now watch this 👀

This poster pretty much encapsulates the overall vibe of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (in theaters):

Maybe the closest I can get is comparing it to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” meets “The Matrix?”

The film’s cast are all doing some of their best work:

• Michelle Yeoh (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) plays Evelyn, a Chinese American laundromat owner who is just so overwhelmed with everything in a family that doesn’t know how to communicate its feelings unless they’re criticisms.

• Her innocent little husband, Waymond, who is about to put his foot down and ask for a divorce, is played by Ke Huy Quan, back making movies after a twenty year hiatus. (You might recognize him much younger as Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.”)

• Evelyn’s disapproving father, Gong Gong, is visiting from China. He’s played by the 93-year-old James Hong, who has been in just about everything: older TV shows like “Hawaii Five-O,” “Perry Mason,” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.;” classic films like “Chinatown” and “Blade Runner;” and animated gems like “Mulan,” “Kung Fu Panda,” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.” But he’ll always have a special place in my heart as the ancient sorcerer Lo Pan in “Big Trouble in Little China,” who I even have as my Instagram profile pic!

• Then there’s Joy, played by Stephanie Hsu, who crushes the task of alternating between Evelyn’s timid daughter and an absolutely fierce icon.

• And finally we have the one and only Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Deirdre, an IRS inspector who is auditing Evelyn’s business(es) and keeps giving her one more chance.

What follows is bonkers.

Evelyn is given access to the multiverse, able to tap into infinite versions of herself to battle some all-encompassing evil entity that is trying to destroy everything, everywhere.

She’s told she’s the one because she is pretty much a failure at everything. Who better to learn so many talents, such as kung fu, than a blank slate of untapped potential?

And some of these alternate realities are insane, featuring absurd, sometimes juvenile humor, not to mention all the disparate movie references throughout:

• all those ’90s comedies where an animal is thrown through the air,
• stop-motion animation,
• Pixar’s “Ratatouille,” and
• Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” to name a few.

The fun and creative fight choreography is a cut above most modern American action movies, always being used to display character traits and almost always easy to follow without disorienting quick edits. But even the use of fighting is called into question by the end, because this movie has so many things on its mind, always coming back to love and empathizing with those around us.

The movie also deals with regret and the eternal questions: “What if I had done something else with my life? What if I could have been happier and more successful?”

That it’s able to balance such dramatic substance, outrageous jokes, and a bajillion ideas is a joy to watch.

It’s overwhelming.

But so worth it.

Until next time! 👋