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The
Batman
Traction
Original airdate 9/25/04
How
do you update a sixty year old icon of comics for a modern
audience? Have his butler serve him nachos.
This
week, Gotham's crime bosses are tired of Batman disrupting
their business and have hired a mercenary named Bane to
take out "The Bat". It isn't long before Bane sets his first
trap and Batman walks right into the fight of his life.
Traction
is a slim on plot but heavy on fighting. After Bane leaves
Batman broken following their first fight, Batman comes
back for another. The action is good, but the plot may leave
you wanting.
There
is only one moment during the half hour show that it stops
to let the audience breathe. Alfred has a flashback to the
night he picked Bruce up from the police station after his
parents had been shot. It's an interesting scene and one
I don't think I've seen before in modern comics. Maybe Alfred
needs his own comic book that explores what it's like to
live with Bruce Wayne/Batman. It can't be any worse than
Aquaman.
Bane
remains mostly true to his comic book origins. He's a mercenary
from South America with a super suit that injects "venom"
into his blood stream, turning him into a rampaging hulk
(no crossover pun intended). Traction follows a standard
comic plotline; boy meets masked man, masked man almost
cripples boy, boy invents bat-themed robot suit and beats
masked man unconscious.
Come
to think of it, that's a standard gay porno plot too.
The
Bat-suit does come out of left field and is a quick solution
to the Bane problem, but you gotta jump start that toy line
somehow. I would like to see Bruce Wayne show more emotion
to develop his character. He suffers a humiliating defeat
in his first fight with Bane but isn't really that shaken
up about it. Determination is about the closest thing we
get to an emotion, but it would have been nice to see Bruce
show a little humility or reach out to Alfred for help.
It
also seems funny that Batman would defeat Bane so definitively
so early in the life of the show. What will they do for
Bane's second appearance?
Anyway,
third episode in The Batman, the show continues to
improve.
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