Gotham - Pilot

Apparently, Jim Gordon is going to meet everyone who will ever be anyone in Gotham City in his first week on the job. This makes finding a concise cast image challenging, and also leads me to suspect that the entire thing will turn out to be a dream he's having after being shot, or because Leonardo DiCaprio is trying to rob his brain.

James 'Jim' Gordon is a war hero turned detective, an honest and idealistic man trying to make a difference in a city that can charitably described as not honest and idealistic. The murder of noted local philanthropists Thomas and Martha Wayne brings Jim and his partner, the pragmatically corrupt Harvey Bullock, into contact with the now orphaned Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. During the investigation, they encounter junior mob boss Fish Moony, her lieutenant Oswald Cobblepot and her boss Carmine Falcone, and cross swords with major crimes detectives Montoya and Allen. They also meet a young girl named Ivy Pepper, who likes plants, and in the background is cat-loving young thief Selina Kyle.

And this is just episode 1!

So, Fox's Batman prequel is clearly going for volume on its cast. I didn't even mention above that the GCPD forensics guy is one Edward Nygma, or Gordon's society fiancee Barbara, whose independent wealth allows them to have a really swish apartment set and who it is hinted used to have a thing with Renee Montoya, because we don't have enough plots and backstory layered in. Fish Moony was also auditioning a comedian for her club; a Joker, if you will.

Some may ask - and indeed, some of my friends have asked - what can possibly be achieved in Gotham, when we know that the city will remain a cesspit of crime and corruption and that the Wayne's killer - who may or may not be Joe Chill - kind of has to wait for Batman? Surely all Gordon's efforts will be for naught, otherwise why would Batman need to happen?

My guess would be that the 'war' which Cobblepot warns of will be a big part of it. There are the rival mob factions, of course, with Falcone's growing weakness hinted at here, but modern Batman mythology is, thanks in large part to The Dark Knight and Arkham City concerned with the idea of the soul of Gotham. Whether Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows/Assassins will make an appearance or not, it seems likely that Jim Gordon's part in Gotham will be to make sure that some light survives in the heart of Gotham City; that the corruption which riddles Gotham doesn't utterly destroy it.

Won't somebody please think of the children!
Sadly, Selina is not wearing a top hat, but they are goggles. I'm not sure why
'Ivy Pepper' isn't Pamela Isley.

I suspect that a key part of this will be the origin stories of the various characters. Cobblepot and Nygma must be driven into their future roles, in the former case by hatred and injury, in the latter presumably by frustration, and I suspect that the soul of Harvey Bullock is not yet lost, but the real meat is likely to come from the three pictured above: Bruce Wayne has to live in the darkness, but not fall to it, while Ivy Pepper must become so disillusioned that she comes to see plants as better than people. Most promising, Selina has to walk the line; she has to despise the wealthy enough to become Catwoman, but retain the fundamental humanity that makes her Gotham's favourite anti-villain (if you subscribe to the theory that her enduring appeal is due to her fundamental humanity, rather than boobs and leather, and since Camren Bicondova is fifteen I sincerely hope the show will do.)

So, 'Pilot' was a strong opening which promises great things to come. It's got a lot of work to do, and it really needs to bring its A game every week given the need to fight against the negativity that the known outcomes bring with them, but it has solid potential.

Oz the Great and Powerful

Warning: Contains Spoilers

Oz the Great and Powerful is on many levels a very good film. There's a decent sparkle to the dialogue, the performers are all excellent and the visual effects and costumes are simply gorgeous. The plot is straightforward and follows the titular carnival 'wizard' from Kansas to Oz and his first clash with the Wicked witches thereof. There are a few elements drawn directly from the books of L Frank Baum (in particular the China People), but the overall aesthetic and structure echoes the film The Wizard of Oz more than the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While nothing hugely original, the story primarily charts Oz's journey from superficial coward to honoured leader of Oz, by way of the usual trials of self-discovery and love.

The latter of these brings in the film's major problem. Oz is introduced as a somewhat vain womaniser whose one true love, after years of waiting at home in Kansas for him to achieve greatness, has just decided to accept the proposal of an honest farmer, John Gale (one presumes, therefore, that she is the mother-to-be of Dorothy Gale). Fleeing from an angry rival (not John Gale, but the lover/husband of one of the women he is shown to cynically seduce on a regular basis), he is swept into a tornado and - after a scene of relentless peril reminiscent of segments from director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies, crash lands in Oz and immediately seduces the beautiful, innocent witch Theodora, essentially because he can. This seduction leads directly to Theodora becoming the Wicked Witch of the West - twice as angry and twice as deadly as her sister, the original Wicked Witch.

Meanwhile, Oz meets Glinda, the Good Witch (as in the movie, there is only one Good Witch), who is the spitting image of his lost love and ultimately his love interest for the movie, and therein is my problem. Ultimately, Oz is reformed and redeemed, and at the end of the film his reward is not merely rule of Oz but the love of the princess (which Glinda is revealed to be). While he owns to his fault in breaking Theodora's heart and recognises his need for friends and family, the fact that he is still able to move on without a pause to the blonde who happens to look like his sweetheart leaves a lesson vitally unlearned in what is essentially a story about learning to be a better man. In life, that might be what happens, but this is a movie and it felt to me like something of a cop out; that the 'right' ending would be the one in which the Wizard simply devotes his life to protecting the evil that he created, without 'reward'.

It is also an ending which fits very oddly with the ending of The Wizard of Oz, in which Oz can hardly wait to return to Kansas and Glinda is hardly bummed out to find him gone.