BATMAN: THE DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM (2023)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

Most of the time, the mythicity of adaptations skews lower than that of the original narratives, usually because the adaptation omits details that contribute to the density of the symbolic discourse. But the team of writer Jim Kreig and director Sam Liu improved on a previous Mike Mignola graphic novel with their 2018 GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT project by adding more resonant details. And to some extent a new animation-team repeated the turnaround with an adaptation of yet another Mike Mignola work, albeit one where Mignola served only as one of the co-writers. DOOM THAT CAME TO GOTHAM (the name is a play on an H.P. Lovecraft short story) is only a modest improvement on the original graphic novel. The new DOOM is still at heart an awkward mashup between the Gothic frissons of the Bat-cosmos and the cosmic dread of Lovecraft. But the animators do a better job of making the characters seem more rounded, and they even gave the GN's derivative plot a little resonance with HPL's fears of his protagonists being overtaken by the banes of family heritage.

As in the novel, Gotham City has grown into a sprawling metropolis by the early 1920s. What no one knows-- not even rich magnate Bruce Wayne, who has only recently donned the Batman costume to guard Gotham from evil-- is that the city's origins drank of a poisoned well. Four wealthy industrialists-- two of whom were the fathers of both Wayne and his colleague Oliver Queen-- made a deal with a Lovecraftian "devil," and payment is coming due. Not that the deal seems entirely necessary to the plot. The coming calamity-- the advent of one of the irresistible Elder Gods into the Earth-realm-- is principally stage-managed by this universe's version of Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia, who permit the god's entrance with the help of the usual Wicked Book. Still, the sins of the fathers of Wayne and Queen has some impact on the sons, and though the outcome is no different from what the GN depicts, the movie does a better job of communicating the sense of alienation, particularly thanks to an improved depiction of Oliver Queen.

Most of the crossover guest-stars, The Demon and various Bat-foes, are just par for the course, though the video improves on the book's "blink-and-you'll-miss-her" depiction of Poison Ivy. Talia gets more to do, in that for the first time known to me, the Daughter of the Demon pits her martial arts skills against the Cowled Crusader, in one of the better animated fights from the DCEU.

The biggest change, though, bears the greatest potential for controversy.

DOOM-graphic novel gives Bruce Wayne two wards, both of whom are congeners of Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, and both of whom provide the function of cannon fodder rather than of costumed sidekicks to the hero. DOOM-video keeps Grayson but adds two new characters, though both are "in name only" iterations of standard Bat-allies. One is called Sanjay Tawde-- a play on "Jason Todd"-- and he like the Grayson character is used simply as a Redshirt, which makes for minimal character development. The other is Kai Li Cain, whose name is an Asian-ized portmanteau of "Carrie Kelley" and "Cassandra Cain," gets to survive and take up the philanthropic mission of Bruce Wayne. I won't say Kai Li has a deep character arc, but she does provide the movie with a decent viewpoint character, giving an ordinary person's reactions to the situations into which her costumed guardian propels himself.

Now, I disagree with Sam Liu's rationale for including more POC characters, as recorded in this CinemaBlend article:

Jim Krieg, who’s sort of the head writer, I remember when we first sat down and we were looking at the script and like, ‘Ok, what are we going to do? How are we going to make this work?’… [Jim Krieg] was like, ‘This cast is all white male, for the most part.’ You have two semi-controversial, racist kind of depictions of Ra’s and Talia, but everybody else is white men basically. So how do we mix this up a little bit?…

I completely disagree that there's anything racist about Ra's Al Ghul and Talia, unless one takes the absurd POV that any negative depiction of any person of color must be racist. And I don't think it's improbable that an adventure taking place in an American boom-town founded by White guys should be problematic simply because the majority of the characters are White. But, even though I think the motivations of the animators were dubious, writer Jim Ricci did not make the mistake of importing current-day sentiments into the POC representation-character. Kai Li doesn't divulge many of her thoughts or any of her philosophy, but she's not whinging about the evils of colonialism while hypocritically lining up to get her share of the spoils. Kai Li seems reasonably grounded in the world of the early 20th century, rather than deeming herself superior to everything she encounters.So DOOM is one of the few times that a writer managed to take a character grounded in virtue signaling and to give that character a certain limited integrity.