#replies tag

The United Underworld as a set has been on my mind a bit more so than usual as of late, so I wound up doing the full set + Harvey. Characters listed below the cut.

"Optimistic about the idea, unsure of what's been shown thus far, overall still not very impressed but definitely giving it a chance" is about how I'd describe my feelings towards it. Like I said in a group chat recently: being a fan of the Batman villains first and foremost means that DC panders to me so much harder than to anyone else, that I can just make like John Carpenter and close my eyes and reach out my hand, and a new Batman or Batvillain-led project I didn't even ask for gets greenlit and slapped in it.

Unless it's so bad that it gets nuked by word of mouth from premiere, it's basically guaranteed to turn a profit, and it may have picked a very good time to come out with all the newfound discussion around horror films dominating not just box office but positive criticism / larger discussions around movies, and the movies that this exists in clear and perhaps too blatant a reference to like The Substance.

If Batvillain-led projects are a thing, within and without the Epic Crime Saga around them, then Clayface is weirdly a sensible choice as well as an odd one. The combined acting/drama/movie + goo monster gimmick makes it he can be whatever kind of character you want so long as those two things are vaguely there, but that also makes it he has very little draw as a personality, because every Clayface is functionally just kind of a new character - even the versions with the same names aren't really the same guys. He's only called Hagen because that's what the TAS guy was called, and it could have been Karlo just as easily.

I think the main thing I don't want it is for it to be another Joker - in the sense that the trailer and the pre-film anticipation and speculation around it turned out to be the only really interesting things about it. Anytime this feels like Joker, I zone out - anytime it feels like The Fly, I get pulled back in.

This mask made me think a little of False-Face from the 66 show, and I do wonder which bits of Preston Payne might be in there also, since Tom Rhys shared Batman Annual #11 in the list of references he was given for the role.

Main lead's got a decent sad wretch vibe, someone who looks like his face is melting from sadness even before it starts literally melting from horrible chemicals (and also sadness).

Ordinary I would not say this, but the part I'm most excited for is when it's time for this Clayface to start doing Arkham boss attacks on people.

What's the pivot gonna be from the face-changing murderer/tortured soul to the big melty monster with wrecking ball hands going ham on people without Batman means to fight back, and how is that gonna be worked into the premise. If this whole thing only exists because of Feat of Clay, they have to know that the final act sickhouse transformations are the part everyone's looking out for.

Peter Safran why are you telling people this is the same guy that's on Creature Commandos, that's silly, why would you do that, that's such a cruel thing to do to the Clayface crew. There's at least five of the fuckers just in mainline continuity, even the director had to be like "yeah idk about that we thought of him as his own guy", people already forgot that show even existed, nobody was making you do that.

I kinda don't want to see DCU Gotham unless it's through more Batvillain horror movies and increasingly absurd anecdotes told in other projects? With these movies being real and playing in the background of other DCU projects, I don't even want them to be consistent or in the same "universe". We all know DCU Batman is just keeping the bench warm for Pattinson, and it will never beat Reeves Gotham in, among most things, consistency and thematic richness, but it could be afforded infinite fuck-you freedom that comes from not caring about that.

I don't want anyone to visit DCU Gotham in their projects, but to mention Gotham in theirs and none of the stories match, in a city where the first thing we learned about it was that it's criminal underworld taken over by a dickhead cancer skeleton man. Have the Schumacher race tracks, let Margot Robbie come in and raid the costume department any time she likes, fucking canonize Joaquin Phoenix for all I care, let him get beat up by the upcoming puppet boy Robins from Dynamic Duo. You turn left at Tricorner and it's snowing and smelly circus clowns are strapping rockets to infants, and then you back one block and Cillian Murphy is skipping down the block with a briefcase in hand full of poison. You wanna do Morrison so badly, then crack putting all that shit in the same blender.

I'd like this to be great, don't get me wrong, I'd really like to be pleasantly surprised and wowed - I'd like for this to be one of the Great Clayface Stories - but he's just not a character I have enough feelings for that it'll be a heartbreaker if it's bad. He's more of a canvas than a character, and that seems to work fine for him.

i cant claim any responsibility except having eyes

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