WANDAVISION (2021)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

In one respect, it seems anomalous that any disciple of the ultraliberal Kevin Feige-- in this case, WANDAVISION showrunner Jac Schaeffer-- should choose to adapt one the most ultraconservative plotlines to come out of Marvel Comics, courtesy of John Byrne, who in most respects would seem to be one of the most ultraconservative plotters in Marvel history.

But now that I've streamed the nine-episode narrative of WANDAVISION, the reason seems obvious: mediocrity calls to mediocrity. For most of his career, John Byrne has been a mediocre writer, whose ability to provide pretty pictures encouraged editors to buy his mediocre melodramatic scripts. WANDAVISION, like the majority of efforts from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is just a series of meaningless melodramatic episodes, made somewhat palatable by the skilled services of actors like Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, who respectively play "Wanda" (aka the Scarlet Witch) and The Vision. 

One good thing about WANDAVISION is that because its melodramatic incidents are so bereft of meaning, I don't feel the need to cover them in detail. Instead I'll devote more space to the strange parallel between the conservatism of Byrne and the ultraliberalism of the Feige disciple.

Quick background: the Scarlet Witch became a regular Avenger in 1964, but was not romantically linked to any other Marvel character until the early 1970s, when she became entwined with the android hero The Vision. For roughly the next twenty years, their entanglement was a liberal's wet-dream of a relationship marginalized by human bigotry, much akin to the earlier paradigm of mutants vs. human in the X-MEN titles. Though writer Steve Englehart was not the sole architect of this development, he's associated with most of the high points, ranging from having the characters married, giving them mystically inspired children (since the Vision technically didn't have seed to donate), and letting them set up housekeeping in a suburban town.

In 1989, John Byrne-- who was still considered a superstar thanks to his tenures on the X-MEN and SUPERMAN titles-- took over Marvel's WEST COAST AVENGERS. In a contemporary COMICS JOURNAL interview, Byrne made it very clear that he did not validate the liberal thought-experiment of human beings, mutant or not, marrying artificial people. Indeed, he memorably compared the idea to that of "marrying your toaster." In a sequence named "Vision Quest," Byrne divested the Vision of all his human characteristics, so that he became an unfeeling robot, and he revealed that Wanda's children were demonic illusions rather than distinct entities, banishing them into narrative nothingness. I know that this state of affairs lasted a long time in the AVENGERS titles, even after Byrne no longer wrote for Marvel, but I have no idea what the current state of affairs may be for the two heroes.

Over thirty years later, Kevin Feige worked his versions of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch into his AVENGERS films. Given that these grandiose productions did not lend themselves to the slow soap-operatic development seen in serial comic books, I have often wondered why he bothered. Most of the burgeoning romance between the mutant sorceress and the android develops off screen, and the culmination of their relationship is that the Vision is destroyed and Wanda mourns him. 

I suppose WANDAVISION was conceived as some sort of answer to that question, inadequate though it is. Rather than simply reviving the Vision as most comic books would, Schaeffer rather ham-handedly treats the hero's demise as being as permanent as is a human's death in the real world. Wanda, whose powers are much greater than in the comics (though still erratic in nature), doesn't just magick up two fantasy-kids. This time, she transforms an entire town of people into the perfect suburban community, thus combining Englehart's idea of the suburban sojourn with Byrne's notion of a berserk heroine's fantasy-psychodrama. Moreover, Wanda's transformed town goes through phases patterned after famous American sitcoms that the heroine encountered in her youth. 

I don't know if Schaeffer deemed his sitcom-spoofs as piercing satire or as affectionate parodies. All I know is that whether he was sending up BEWITCHED, THE BRADY BUNCH or GROWING PAINS, all of the lampoons were excruciating to sit through. I mean, you know you're doing badly when even THE BRADY BUNCH seems wittier than its purported mockery. Of course, I suppose Schaeffer could always excuse the witlessness of the sitcom-imitations by the fact that they're being generated by the mind of a young woman from the fictional Middle European land of Sokovia, who grew up watching bootleg copies of American sitcoms but who was not actually a script-writer herself. Suffice to say, Schaeffer COULD say that, but I still wouldn't excuse him from perpetrating such garbage entertainment.

Though Wanda has generated her fake suburban dream-town to palliate her grief and to imagine herself enjoying a happy life with a re-created version of Vision, she's also broadcasting signals of her "TV shows" in such a way that the signals can be received by official entities. One entity is the real-life FBI, represented by Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), playing the MCU's version of an Asian lawman who first debuted in the 1956 title THE YELLOW CLAW.  The other organization of the fictional Marvel SWORD, which deals with extraterrestrial threats. This group is dominantly represented by Monica Rambeau, which character Schaeffer wrote for the 2019 CAPTAIN MARVEL film. 

Because of circumstances beyond her control, Rambeau was separated from SWORD for a time, allowing an Evil White Guy to take charge of the group. (How does one know that his evil and his whiteness are connected? It's hard to prove, but I felt that in the first scene that EWG has with Monica, it's strongly implied that his white privilege got him the job once the more qualified Superior Black Woman Monica was out of the way.) Sure enough, toward the end of the series it's revealed that EWG is the real villain: that he attempted to confiscate the shattered body of the original Vision in order to create a new defensive technology. Wanda witnessed her former lover being disassembled like, well, a toaster, and that, among other factors, caused the heroine to flip out and magick up her ideal suburban life. 

Most of the middle range of episodes focus on Jimmy and Monica trying to figure out what's going on with the fantasy-town while also seeking to prevent EWG from provoking a major conflict with the godlike powers of Wanda. Both are fairly dull secondary heroes, but they get some assistance from Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), a quip-happy scientist from the first two THOR movies. Finally, toward the end of the series it's belatedly revealed that a mystery villain seeks to manipulate Wanda's powers to her own ends. Malefic magician Agatha Harkness, extremely loosely based on a long-time Marvel support-character, suffers from fuzzy motivations and is played more for humor than for menace-- probably there's already talk that she might spun off into her own series. (As I've observed elsewhere, no matter what bad things either a female or person of color may do, in the MCU, all is forgiven thanks to identity politics, since only White Men can be truly evil.)

To wrap up, somehow I enjoyed the performances of Olsen and Bettany even though I hated their dialogue, much as I would enjoy the pretty drawings of Byrne despite his ghastly attempts at characterization. This mingling of strange bedfellows therefore shows that, to paraphrase Tolstoy, good conservative stories and good liberal stories are all good in different ways, while mediocre stories from both camps are all pretty much alike.

WOLF (1994)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

The first time I watched WOLF, I was underwhelmed. The script-- written by two scripters, one of whom worked on BATMAN RETURNS-- had almost zero interest in playing with the rich mythopoeic tradition of lycanthropy. However, this time around, I found I appreciated the film as a decent romantic drama, patterned more after an "erotic thriller" than a typical horror narrative.

Will Randall (Jack Nicholson) is a fifty-something editor who works for a book publisher and is married (without children) to forty-something wife Charlotte (Kate Nelligan). Will suspects that he's being edged out of his position of relative authority and forced into a less desirable job. On his way to a party given by his new boss Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer), he hits an animal with his car. When he investigates, a black wolf springs up, bites him, and runs into the forest. Not being severely injured, Will attends the party anyway. He has the unexpected treat of meeting Raymond's rebellious daughter Laura (Michelle Pfeiffer), but finds it distressing when some of the millionaire's horses appear to be terrified of Will's mere presence.

Soon Will finds that the bite of a wolf is like Instant Viagra: he has more energy and all of his senses are enhanced. He becomes suspicious that a junior member of his team, Stewart (James Spader), has been acting behind his back, though Stewart (like Laura, roughly in his thirties) acts the part of an unctuous lackey. When Will smells the odor of his wife on Stewart, he nurtures suspicions that Stewart wants more than his job, and he soon finds this hunch confirmed when he catches the two together. Because of the lupine influence, Will doesn't deck Stewart, but bites him on the hand instead.

Will doesn't seem to miss his wife's company that much, as his new energy makes it possible for him to court the lovely Laura. But then Charlotte is murdered, apparently by some savage beast. Is Will the guilty party, or is there another wolf in the hen-house-- one who got the same werewolf-curse transferred to him?

WOLF is fairly predictable in ticking off its plot-points, and one of the writers, Jim Harrison, protested that director Mike Nichols had gutted the intentions of the original script. Still, compared to some of the terrible romantic dramas made on this older man-younger man competition theme, WOLF is at least watchable.

THE CRIMSON GHOST (1946)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

The most interesting sociological aspects of CRIMSON GHOST occurs in the first chapter. The Ghost-- whose macabre choice of attire is never given any connotation-- explains to his henchmen that he plans to hijack the Cyclotrode, a device able to disrupt any electrical mechanisms. Its inventor Professor Chambers wanted to strengthen America's defenses to ward off a possible atomic bomb attack (which presumably would be dropped by plane like the ones over Japan). One of the Ghost's henchmen comments that the most profitable avenue would be to steal the Cyclotrode and sell it to a foreign power. But the Ghost makes clear that he has no interest in selling ordnance to other countries. He's a super-criminal through and through: he wants to use the Cyclotrode to blackmail multiple cities into making him rich. I interpret this as the scriptwriters' assurance to viewers that GHOST wasn't going to be a political serial like many that came out during the war years, but a pure "good guy vs. supercriminal" yarn.

The Crimson Ghost, in addition to being a snappy dresser, shows his own scientific genius in devising "control collars" that can execute any henchman who disobeys the villain's will. The henchmen (the main one played by Clayton "Lone Ranger" Moore) kidnap Chambers from his private home, which gets the serial's two good guys on the trail. 

One hero is Chambers' secretary Diana (Linda Stirling). She falls into the role of crimefighter pretty easily, even though Chambers dies early in the story, and is seen wielding a pistol with an aplomb not typical of the typing pool. (Maybe there was some idea of her being a government agent in disguise?) The other protagonist is Duncan Richards (Charles Quigley), who is both a criminologist and a physician-colleague to Chambers. I assume that the scriptwriters wanted Richards to be able to discuss the physics of their opponents' diabolical devices before he went around bashing in heads and driving real fast along country roads in pursuit of other cars. 

Quigley, BTW, doesn't always look nearly as formidable during the fight-scenes as the typical Republic he-man, which may or may not say something about how heavily he was doubled. Yet the fights are still staged well enough that the Richards character still seems badass, but a little more human than the average serial hero. Quigley and Stirling have nice chemistry despite the usual lack of romantic interaction, but Stirling is once again relegated to the role of the girl hero who keeps getting hit on the head to get her out of the way of the slugfests. 

The more we see of the Crimson Ghost's fairly picayune efforts to perpetrate his super-crimes, the more repetitive they become, with the only variable being the scripters' trying to find new ways to stall out this or that machine. The villain is one of the more active types, often seen getting attacked along with his henchmen and being drawn into brawls with Richards-- and that may be one reason that his costume has become a lot more iconic than many of the robed fiends who never bother to leave their sanctums.

THE MASKED MARVEL (1943)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

What was the deal with all the two-fisted "insurance investigators" one finds in serials of the Classic Period? Maybe there aren't really all that many, since I've not actually sat down and counted them up. But even one seems like a deviation from what I understand as the standard duties of an insurance investigator. Maybe a fair number of hardboiled detectives get into trouble while taking cases for insurance companies, but I don't think real investigators get involved in tracking down foreign saboteurs. In fact, MASKED MARVEL is so intent on playing up the role of insurance operatives that the script tosses out the detail that the head saboteur, Japanese spy Sakima (Johnny Arthur), had also for a time posed as-- guess what-- "the Tokyo representative of the Worldwide Insurance Company." Did Republic Pictures, who filmed MARVEL, have some idea of flattering the insurance guys on the sets, so that they'd turn in favorable reports? 

At any rate, maybe on the theory that it takes four insurance guys to track down one of their own kind, four such operatives are sent to quell the sabotage. (Ask the U.S. government to intervene? Don't be silly.) In addition, from the get-go the mysterious masked "undercover agent" known as The Masked Marvel is also on the case, and only Alice (Louise Currie) knows that the costumed crusader is one of the four men. This "whos' the hero" trope was probably borrowed from Republic's 1938 LONE RANGER serial, but it didn't work that well there, and it works even less well here, given that the script doesn't develop the four insurance guys as characters in their own right. Moreover, the performer who's actually in the Marvel's mask for almost the whole serial is stuntman Tom Steele, who looks bigger and rangier than any of the four supposed candidates for his "true identity." Steele is largely responsible for the success of MARVEL's main asset-- the high-octane hand-to-hand fight scenes-- but for whatever reason, Republic gave the performer no billing, not even as stunt coordinator.

Instead of the more familiar trope of having the villain and hero chase one another as they pursue some weapon, here the plot consists of the investigators trying to block one of Sakima's sabotage-plots, at which point the Masked Marvel takes over, either fistfighting against or shooting it out with Sakima's hoods (including head henchman Anthony Warde in his standout "tough guy" role). Once or twice Sakima tries to find out who the Marvel really is, and I suppose it's because he feels that if he nullifies the costumed hero, none of the other mooks will be capable of thwarting him. Sakima, BTW, is one of the more memorable serial-villains, in that in his every scene he oozes total devotion to America's destruction, without quite edging into the territory of chauvinistic anti-Asian sentiment.

For the most the only metaphenomenal element in the serial is the Marvel's uncanny attire. However, in one chapter Sakima is out to sabotage a new submarine device, based on "the principle of television," that would allow a sub to fire on targets without having to send a periscope above the waves to scope things out.

SANTO IN THE TREASURE OF DRACULA (1968)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

It's hard to hate a film whose title gives one the image of the masked wrestler-hero swimming around some vampire's treasure-vault as if he (the wrestler) were a south-of-the-border version of Scrooge McDuck. Still, at least this effort is lively in its absurdities, in comparison with the thoroughly dull Santo films of the period, such as the 1974 encounter of the Silver Mask and his blue buddy with a Frankenstein wannabe. Adding to the craziness of the official release version of this film is the knowledge that its director shot a slightly softcore version of the film for release in liberal Europe. I've not seen the alternate film, usually titled THE VAMPIRE AND SEX, but it goes a way toward explaining why there's so little interaction between Santo and Dracula in the regular release version.

The wackiest idea in the whole movie is not that Santo and his friends want to travel back in time to what I think was meant to be Mexico in the 1800s-- but that Santo himself is responsible for inventing the time machine. Because the masked man's goals are noble-- he wants to find the lost treasure of Dracula in order to endow a children's hospital-- one of Santo's elderly male colleagues volunteers to be the machine's first test subject. But no, demurs the Silver Mask, he needs to send back a woman, apparently because he has handy a silver bodysuit the volunteer can wear in the time machine, and the professor just wouldn't have looked good in that. The professor's daughter Luisa-- who may or may not be Santo's girlfriend, it's hard to tell-- volunteers, puts on the silver bodysuit, and steps into the past. Also, while this goes on, a mysterious man in a black hood, later given the name of "the Black Hood," skulks around, clearly planning to heist the treasure. 

However, though Luisa's present-day body disappears, she apparently merges with the Luisa of the 1800s, who is the daughter of a Professor Soler. Apparently past-Luisa is already being vampirized by Soler's neighbor, the revealingly named Count Alucard. Alucard has already decided that he wants to marry Lisa even though he has a whole entourage of scantily-clad vampire vixens-- in other words, it's "the Mina Syndrome," which might be expressed as, "the Seductive Vampire Likes ME Best of All." Professor Soler engages a vampire hunter to rescue Luisa, but she's already been turned, so the hunter has to stake first the Count, and then Luisa-- though Santo yanks present-day Luisa back to the present.

I confess I don't remember the details of how this time-jaunt helped Santo find Dracula's treasure, but one online review claims that Present-Day Luisa came back bearing a ring with a map to the current location of the riches. The Black Hood sics some of his goons on Santo, and of course Santo beats them. Then the evildoer challenges the hero to fight his strongest thug Atlas in the ring, just so none of Santo's fans miss him having a ring-fight. 

Despite Santo winning his battle, the  Black Hood tries to claim the treasure first, leading to a confrontation (but not a fight) between the Silver Mask and the Bloody Count. Dracula is destroyed and the children's hospital gets its funding.

One note: though a lot of these films include a tedious comedy relief, often some guy who has the temerity to be scared of monsters, I liked the goofy comedian here better than most of them. Not that I'd go out of my way to see his other films, but that's another minor plus-mark for this thoroughly wacky romp.

ZORRO THE AVENGER, SHADOW OF ZORRO (both 1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

I have to assume that Disney's TV-iteration of the Zorro character must have hit Europe like a storm, given that Spain and Italy began churning out bushels of black-masked foxes. These two Spanish flicks were almost certainly shot back to back by director Joaquin Marchent, possibly with scripting by Jesus Franco on both. The two stories, both starring American actor Frank Latimore as well as most of the principal support-players, even shade into one another story-wise, which was not typical with most Zorro-opuses.

ZORRO THE AVENGER more or less follows the template of the original novel, even though the hero's secret ID is now "Don Jose de la Torre"-- possibly to avert Disney's lawyers? This time the local tyrant in an unnamed town in Spanish California is one Colonel Clarence (Howard Vernon, later a familiar face in Franco's films), who naturally reigns over his terrain with an iron fist. Don Jose emigrates from Spain, but there's not nearly as much interplay between Jose, his family, and his new girlfriend Maria as in the standard Zorro-tale. Much later, Jesus Franco would become notorious for his largely plotless films, where heroes just ran around having things happen to them, and so it may be his influence that makes both of these films rather vacuous, distinguished only by a few scattered sword-battles until the big climax.

SHADOW OF ZORRO, which Franco may not have written, is a little more engaging in that Don Jose, now married to Maria, has retired his costumed persona. This resembles a similar development at the end of the first novel-- though Jose does not reveal his identity publicly, as does Don Diego. 

But this state of affairs is doomed by the plot of two outlaw brothers with the un-prepossessing names of Billy and Dan. During Zorro's last crusade the hero slew the brothers' other brother, and now the siblings decide to seek revenge. One of them dresses up as Zorro and commits crimes, causing the authorities to start looking for the retired cavalier. In fact, to keep up connections with the first movie, one of the Zorro-hunters was trained in swordsmanship by the same teacher who taught Zorro's previous foe Colonel Clarence.

There is a little more attention to drama here, particularly whenever Maria whines about her hubby getting back into the hero game-- but that means that there's less action. Not that it really matters; both films are simple formula-fare, competently but unexcitingly rendered. As the above illustrations show, this Zorro was given a very simple costume with a bandanna-mask, again to avert Disney-suits-- but costume aside, Latimore's Zorro may be the least live-action Fox ever committed to celluloid.

BATMAN FOREVER (1995)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

What's the best thing I can possibly say about BATMAN FOREVER, a stinky sequel that makes SUPERMAN IV look highly professional by comparison?

How about "it manages to be bad simply by virtue of the producers' intrinsic dumbness about superhero films, and not because it's trying to inject crappy political content into the mix?"

That, and the fact that Kilmer's Bat-suit doesn't look as much like a tank as did Keaton's. This allows Kilmer's Batman to engage in a few fluid fight-scenes that were an improvement on most of those in the two Burton films.

FOREVER is not a bad Bat-film simply because it doesn't give viewers the "grim-and-gritty" version of the hero seen in the Burton films. Given that director Joel Schumacher was charged by his producers with making Batman more "kid-friendly," it was possible that he might have come up with some valid take on the "camp Batman" of the 1966 TV show, or even the similarly outrageous Bat-comics of the Silver Age, which I tend to refer to as "Candyland Batman." Certainly Schumacher chose to make his Gotham a bright and scintillating landscape for the most part, and at least one of his two chosen villains, The Riddler, would have fit into this milieu much better than the most current version of the Prince of Puzzles.

The trouble is, though, that even a more light-hearted Batman is not an excuse to just crank up the visual effects and let the story go to hell. Michael Bay, who in the same era was making splashy action-fare like BAD BOYS and THE ROCK, even displayed a greater sense of narrative storytelling than Schumacher does here. 

The basic pattern of the FOREVER script, to be sure, could have been copied from a lot of bad Bat-comics of the Golden and Silver Ages. Villain strikes at society. Hero stops him but villain gets away. Rinse and repeat until the villain gets caught. But a stand-alone movie needs more than a repetitious storyline and glossy FX. The so-called script was a collaboration between a married writer-team, the Batchelers, who hadn't done much before or after FOREVER, and Akiva Goldsman, who had worked with Schumacher on the successful film THE CLIENT. Given that Goldsman went on to perpetrate such awful scripts as those of BATMAN AND ROBIN and LOST IN SPACE, I choose to blame him alongside Schumacher for pissing on the Bat-mythos.

Whereas BATMAN RETURNS found a tolerably logical reason for the film's versions of Penguin and Catwoman to work together, Goldsman can't be bothered to create any real characterization for either the two villains, Riddler (Jim Carrey) and the incredibly awful choice of Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones). The latter does not really belong in the world of Candyland Batman, he's "grim and gritty" at the core, even if he occasionally appears in some more light-hearted cartoons. Riddler and Two-Face have no plausible reason to work together.  For one thing, Riddler is a complete noob in this script, with no criminal rep whatever, so Two-Face-- even granting that Jones plays the role like a manic version of Nicholson's Joker-- seems not just crazy but stupid for accepting the green-clad goofus into his confidence. Additionally, while Carrey can be forgiven for giving the audience a hyper-kinetic Riddler, given that this was what the actor was known for, but Jones clearly has some idea of stealing Carrey's scenes, and thus every scene they share is an ordeal akin to having teeth pulled without anesthetic.

And then there's Val Kilmer's Batman. I suppose he makes some attempt to give the Caped Crusader a little gravitas at times, and at times he succeeds. But the spoofy dialogue often undermines the actor, particularly in Kilmer's first appearance in Bat-garb within the film. The hero is called in to prevent Two-Face from killing innocents, but Goldsman is so desperate to get in his funny lines that during this sequence both Kilmer-Man and his new love interest Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) waste time flirting in the midst of the emergency. The movie never recovers from this portrait of the crusader and his romantic partner as complete morons.

This is also the movie that brings Robin into the movie franchise, and not surprisingly, this is no less heavy-handed. Even by the nineties there were politically correct morons who blanched at the idea of an adult superhero inducting an actual child into the business of being a superhero, and so I suppose it was inevitable that New Robin (Chris O'Donnell) was a twenty-something victim of tragedy. Since O'Donnell is only about ten years younger than Kilmer, the idea that Bruce Wayne would feel a burning need to succor this version of orphaned Dick Grayson comes out of La-La Land. Even the dry comedy of Michael Gough's Alfred can't save any of the Kilmer-O'Donnell scenes, though they're still a little less excruciating than the Kilmer-Kidman scenes.

None of the psychobabble uttered by Meridian about Batman or anything else possesses the slightest resonance with the operatic world of comic books, much less to any real-world concerns. Schumacher strains to borrow some "street cred" by adapting a sequence from Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS-- the one in which Young Bruce Wayne encounters a ferocious bat beneath Wayne Manor-- but he blows it, because he can't give the scene any personal tone; he just bulls on through it, as if he thinks it'll satisfy the comics-nerds.

Not that I really expect a lot of psychological depth in summer action movies. But at least I'd like to see the high-octane set-pieces to have some moxie, and everything Schumacher puts together is like a bad imitation of Michael Bay at his worst. I would rather watch the worst TRANSFORMERS than to ever abuse my eyeballs again with a single scene from BATMAN FOREVER-- and I mean that, like "forever."