Author: KA Byrnes

BATMAN (2022), FOUR

Well, his Batman headpiece fits well and doesn’t give that horrible neck-pinch impression when he turns his head. Good costume, check. And when he takes off the cowl we still see his eye black, which feels realistic.

Now I have nothing.

He’s not a Holmesian detective, he’s not an intimidating fighter, he’s not a rich guy with toys, and he’s not a companion with Alfred. He’s a blank, mostly, with Batman-esque tropes laid lightly over his character.

Again, as I said with Catwoman, I don’t blame the actor for this portrayal. Pattinson was given a lank of hair over his face as an acting tool.

So, what do we have besides “not” qualities on the left-hand scale? He and Gordon spend a lot of time together and work as a team. To extrapolate, this Batman could be a Heart Type, someone who seeks social engagement and a sharing of duties. But then his aloofness with Alfred could negate that reading. However, considering how underused the marvelous Andy Serkis as Alfred is, the script might just have had a hole around them. 

Wow, the more I think about this movie’s lack of focus, the angrier I get. Tropes and lazy archetypes are tossed around rather than character development. One of the worst was the accusation that Bruce Wayne, because he’s rich, can’t feel the sorrow and pain of being an orphan. Does Bruce let this slide because he agrees, because he’s divorced from his own feelings around the tragedy of his parents’ deaths, or because the script gave him nothing to play? I can’t tell. This movie has a lot of medium shots with no emphasis to help point the film.

Are we talking Null? His emo mood suggests a Four, as does his companionability with Gordon. If the script had pumped Alfred and his relationship with Batman more, this could’ve been a great reading of his character. I’d say that this is the only number that even suggested itself during my watch.

I’ll count it. I think this is what Pattinson was playing, even though the directing and writing didn’t back him up. It just makes me sad for the depth of a Four Batman that we’ve missed. A lot more juice went unsqueezed in this orange.

Joker’s Rescue

Integrating the IFF with the Normandy is tricky. Until the job is complete, the team (which means all companions) must travel by shuttle. This is a storytelling way of removing certain people so that the unnamed crew, and some of the background characters, can be captured without changing the gameplay.

While Shepard and the other fighters are away, a Collecter ship attacks.

Our Normandy is dwarfed by the insect-themed Collector ship.

In the IFF is a virus that even the AI EDI couldn’t detect. She can’t defend the Normandy. It’s up to Joker, the pilot with brittle bone disease, to help. 

It’s a clever sequence, where the player drives Joker with his limp from the bridge to engineering. Around him are Collecters harvesting the rest of the people on board. He’s able to patch EDI back into control. She tells Joker she will seal off his section of engineering and open the rest of the ship to vacuum in order to clear out the Collectors. Joker asks, “What about the other people?” “The crew is gone, Jeff.” The entire ship’s crew — the cook, the yeoman, the cute engineers — has been captured. 

Don’t linger, or they’ll get you, too.

After this, Shepard and our teammates return. We now have a choice: Immediately go through the Omega 4 Relay to rescue our people, or wait in order to strengthen the team. In gameplay terms, this means that two teammates haven’t completed loyalty missions yet and will be vulnerable to dying during endgame. The Normandy attack is automatically triggered when Shepard reaches this point, so it can’t be avoided. If she helps two teammates, the captured crew will not be saved. If she helps one teammate, half the crew will not be saved. It’s a vicious trade-off.

CATWOMAN (2022), SEVEN

My comments for this Catwoman and Batman will be very similar: there’s not much to work with, and it’s not the actors’ fault.

Alright. She’s athletic. We don’t see a lot of Catwoman acrobatics, but she can fight. Her undercover detective role is much more emphasized, though, than her physicality. Let’s say she’s not a Body Type.

Although she owns cats, they don’t dominate her persona. And her costume is sufficient, but nothing particularly noticeable. Her headpiece does have low, small feline ears, and her mouth is covered with a strip of cloth. Her outfit looks vaguely homemade, but mostly it’s just a black smudge with nothing to distinguish it. Her wigs and makeup for her undercover work show the most detail. Detecting carries much more interest for her than battle.

She’s a get-the-job-done Catwoman. When the mystery of how her friend died is solved, and revenge meted out, she moves on. She does ask Batman to come with her, but her heart isn’t in it. This is a very practical, no-drama Catwoman.

If I have to choose, I’ll say Seven.

Legion’s Rescue

We know the Collectors come from beyond the Omega 4 Relay, a place that leads to the galactic core, all black holes and decaying suns. Anyone transporting in would immediately become sucked into the maelstrom and die. However, the Collectors use an IFF, an Identify Friend/Foe, that creates a safe space for them through the Relay. We need one to continue our mission.

And the Illusive Man knows of one. A derelict Reaper was discovered and a small Cerberus team sent to investigate. Contact with them was lost, and now we’re sent to investigate and pick up the device, a certainty on a Reaper ship. (We don’t ever learn why a Reaper floats dead. Not part of this story, I guess.)

Of course, the ship swarms with husks. On the one hand, this is a straightforward battle to the prize. On the other, though, someone mysterious saves us by sniping husks at a moment when we’re overwhelmed. The someone is a Geth wearing N7 armor. 

It even calls out, “Shepard-Commander.” At the end of the quest, when we’re destroying the ship’s mass effect core to detonate it, the Geth lies unconscious/deactivated at the computer terminal. We take it with us.

Back on the Normandy, we have the decision to reactivate the Geth and learn why it knows us. (Or we could just turn it over to Cerberus for experimentation.) The Geth, whose name becomes “Legion”, explains much. The Geth that attacked us in ME1 are called “Heretics”. They are a sub-branch of Geth who chose subservience to Sovereign — the “Old Machines”. The other Geth, the Legion Geth, disdain them and fight against them. Because Shepard also fights, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Legion joins our team.

Veiled

Which do you prefer, white veil or blue veil? It’s my first time working three-dimensionally with cheesecloth. Lol, I might hate it. Also, if I must choose, I think the white is better. Of course, it’s too late for that and the veil is forever blue now. Hahaha!

MARIAN BROOK, FOUR

With the energy of the young, Marian will engage with New Money or Old. She’ll call on a social outcast, befriend a Black woman, and concern herself with the Cook’s problem. She’ll also become romantically entangled with a man her Aunt Agnes has labeled an adventurer.

Marian, always willing to discard convention, is not always right to do so. Her enthusiasm leads her to overstep, such as when she brings cast-off shoes to Peggy’s mother’s home — a wealthy and stylish household — as an act of charity.

The problem with Marian is not just her youth and naivete. Her rebelliousness can feel fresh at times, and then foolish. The story has made her the bridge between Aunt Agnes’ Old Money prejudices and the Gilded Age’s ambition. It’s a difficult straddle for a character, and Marian isn’t always up to the task. Also, I can’t help wondering if the actress, Meryl Streep’s daughter, wasn’t cast for her pedigree — how Old Money! — rather than for the innovation of a New Money unknown.

Marian has a lot of energy — she’s always walking Ada’s little dog, lol — and a taste for conflict. She likes to stir the pot in social situations. Her father, Agnes’ and Ada’s brother, was, by the sisters’ accounts, a selfish terror. He burned through the family money, used up the sisters’ inheritance with no remorse, and left Marian destitute at his death.

She’s a Four. Although her past has hardship, she is undeterred and willing, if necessary, to fail. It takes a certain bravery to step forward in so many social situations. Not every number would persist against such risk.

Ghost Ship

The Turians send out a distress call. When we go to help, we find no Turians. It’s a Collector ship, seemingly abandoned. Turns out this is the ship that shot up the Normandy two years ago. The Collectors have a particular interest in Shepard.

We wander through the deserted vessel. A pile of dead human bodies, pods for carrying immobilized people, and evidence of science experiments are gruesome and creepy. At a certain point, though, we see a dead Collector on the lab table. Our Normandy computer is able to access the data. This Collector shares an exact and specific DNA match with the Protheans. 

It’s quite the gobsmack. Apparently the Protheans didn’t go extinct. They were subsumed by the Reapers and modified over time.

Of course when we get to the command center after our trip through the ship we learn it’s all been a trap. The Collectors faked the Turian distress signal. Here comes Harbinger to battle us the entire way back to our shuttle.

Every pod awaits a human host for juicing

And, of course, the Illusive Man knew all along that this was a trap. He’s tired of waiting for random Collector attacks. He’s using us as bait to move the quest along. It’s despicable and untrustworthy, but what are we going to say? Please let another colony be ravaged first? He’s got us over a barrel and he knows it. The mission was a resounding success, and we’d look mighty petulant if we carried on with a grudge.