Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #186 Batman Beyond: "Bloodsport" and "Once Burned"
Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.
Or you can be like three kind patrons and use this column to commission a series of pieces about a filmmaker or actor. I’m deep into a project on the films of the late, great, fervently mourned David Bowie and I have now watched and written about every movie Sam Peckinpah made over the course of his tumultuous, wildly melodramatic psychodrama of a life and career.
This generous patron is now paying for me to watch and write about the cult animated show Batman Beyond and I also recently began even more screamingly essential deep dives into the complete filmographies of troubled video vixen Tawny Kitaen and troubled former Noxzema pitch-woman Rebecca Gayheart. I also recently began a series chronicling the films of bad boy auteur Oliver Stone.
It is a testament to what a badass villain Stalker is that watching him hunt Terry McGinnis in the urban jungle of Gotham I found myself thinking, “He’s DEFINITELY going to kill Batman” when one of the hallmarks of Batman as a character in television and movies is that he does not get killed by the bad guys.
Then again I have not seen the Snyder Cut yet and that Zack Snyder is a pretty edgy dude so I wouldn’t be surprised if in it Batman, high off his ass on PCP, murders an entire preschool full of children and Superman punches him so hard in the dick that it kills him instantly when his testicles fly clean through the top of his skull.
Yes, that is exactly the kind of thing you would see in a Zack Snyder movie. But in Batman Beyond Terry and Bruce take their hits but live to fight another day even when their enemy is as formidable as Stalker, the villain of “Bloodsport.”
A visual and thematic cross between Street Fighter’s Dhalsim and Spider-Man's nemesis Kraven the Hunter, Stalker was once an African big game hunter notorious for poaching. Then he was attacked by a panther who destroyed his spine.
An experimental surgery allowed the ruthless predator to walk again but also gave him enhanced mobility, strength, speed and dexterity. In his eternal quest for new and bigger challenges Stalker comes to Gotham as a murder tourist out to hunt the most dangerous game of all (cue dramatic music): MAN.
More specifically Stalker wants to hunt and kill Batman, who he thinks is an eternal spirit passed down from generation to generation from one legendary warrior to the next.
That’s not far from the truth if you consider actors like Adam West and Ben Affleck legendary warriors. With his superstitious beliefs, tribal markings and single-minded obsession with stalking and killing his prey, Stalker is not entirely non-racially problematic.
Stalker is coded as an exotic other, a stranger in a strange land but there’s nothing bungling or comic about him. Like Terry, technology has heightened his already formidable reflexes, rendering him something close to superhuman. He’s a hunter for whom nothing matters beyond the hunt, the kill, the conquest, the all-important trophy but he also has a moral code and set of ethics.
“Bloodsport” gleans some quirky humor from the juxtaposition of Stalker’s tradition-bound warrior ways and the garishness of futuristic Gotham, like when the master hunter pursues Terry as he heads to a Chuck E. Cheese like family fun restaurant called Cheezy Dan’s, where he and his high school pals like to grab a slice of pizza after school.
Using a combination of newfangled technology and ancient ways Stalker is able to track Terry’s movements and takes his little brother Matt hostage.
I find Matt fascinating because his corny cuteness feels so out of place on a show like Batman Beyond. He’s pretty much the only character who would not feel at all out of place on a Batman show genuinely pitched to small children.
Thanks to Matt, “Bloodsport” ends on a note so cornball its cheesiness has to be intentional. With a corniness befitting a 1980s sitcom, the episode closes with Matt gushing obliviously to his brother, “Batman’s so cool! Not a loser like you!” to which Terry replies “We can’t all be Batman!”
The episode might as well end in a freeze frame of the main cast mid-laughter but I found the corniness of the conclusion oddly endearing. Heaven knows there’s a lot of eviscerating darkness in Batman Beyond so I have come to appreciate moments of levity and humor.
In “Once Burned” much of that humor comes from the potent chemistry and playful banter of Terry, teen Batman, and his elderly mentor Bruce Wayne. There’s a bit of a Doc Brown/Marty McFly dynamic between the two, only instead of using his mastery of technology to send a much younger man back in time, Bruce Wayne uses his mastery of technology to help a much younger man fight crime.
“Once Burned” marks the return of Terry’s old flame Melanie Walker, AKA Ten. Ten is part of the notorious Royal Flush Gang, a colorful collection of card-loving criminal who take their personas from different playing cards.
The Royal Flush Gang—King, Queen, Jack, Ten and Ace—needless to say, are very committed to their shtick. You have to admire that level of dedication. They travel via floating skateboards designed to look like cards and commit card-related crimes.
In "Once Burned” that means robbing a floating card game known as “The Derby” where some of Gotham’s most colorful and outrageous lowlifes and degenerates gather to gamble away their fortunes.
I love the world-building of Batman Beyond. It’s such a rich, lived-in world full of color, wonderful little details and characters that make a big impact with only a tiny bit of screen time.
The Royal Flush Gang is ridiculous even by superhero villain standards. Batman Beyond leans into the extravagant, exquisite silliness of a playing cards-themed family of eccentric criminal masterminds.
Like Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle once upon a time, Terry and Melanie are star-crossed lovers doomed to forever be on opposite sides of the law. And, because this is a cartoon Melanie/Ten is breathtakingly gorgeous.
The overwhelming majority of the characters here are gorgeous. Terry’s Robin-like sidekick Max, for example, is a genius with an incredible mind for science and deduction yet she also has the looks of a supermodel.
Batman Beyond does not entirely eschew the cliches and conventions of the superhero genre but it elevates them through artistry, beauty and a tough, uncompromising vision that has only grown clearer and more powerful with time.
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