Arkham City Gameplay and Dark Knight Rises Rumours

[espanolbot]

Firstly, here is some of the gameplay for Batman and Catwoman in the upcoming Batman: Arkham City game. Also featuring Two-Face and a creepy gueststar.
Spoilers, though they do seem to have bleeped out plot relevant information,


Overall I think that it looks neat, the gameplay looks smooth and Gotham has the right kind of look and feel to it. It's going to be interesting to see just how much of Selina's "I'm a helpless damsel!" routine people are going to take at face value, as the clip implies that she was moments away from escaping by herself. Grey Deisle did a good job as her, I feel. I also like their version of Two-Face, they seem to have combined the burnt look of the Dark Knight version with the one from BTAS.

From over Io9 way they have a hint as to what the movie version of Selina will look like,

Anne Hathaway's Catwoman costume will reportedly be a far cry from Michelle Pfeiffer's leathery getup in Batman Returns or Halle Berry's... well, whatever the hell Halle Berry was wearing in Catwoman. According to an inside source, Hathaway's costume more closely resembles what Selina Kyle wears in the comics, which is actually a fairly practical outfit as far as things female comic book characters wear. Here's the report

"Anne's outfit is more tactical, like the comic book, than the previous Batman movies. She will definitely be wearing the goggles and it's going to be less sexy than Halle Berry and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman costumes. She's going to look more like a robber."

But enough about things that could theoretically speak to the movie's aesthetic or narrative aspects...what about far more important matters?

"But fan boys shouldn't be worried. This costume is going to be form-fitting enough to make Anne look smoking hot. Everything from the looks in her eyes, her head movements, her body–everything is so feline. The role is taking her to new places."

From here,
http://io9.com/5816093/what-will-anne-hathaways-costume-look-like-in-the-dark-knight-rises

Interesting, so they seem to have going with this version,


Over this version,


Good to know.

By the way, the above one is on ebay for around $500,000.
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/06/29/jim-balent-catwoman-mona-lisa/

For legality, Selina's first appearance in Batman 1, from all the way back in 1940,

Comments

[thehefner]

Not only are they going with the goggles version, but Holly Robinson even gets a mention in the game's continuity:



I'm glad for that. While the characterization of Catwoman here is seriously lacking and reminding me why I never liked the character for the longest time, I'm glad that those elements have been emphasized. Really, in the 90's-ification of DCnU, it's almost surprising that we aren't seeing a full-on return to purplesuit Selina.

As for EVERYTHING regarding the way Two-Face is handled here, well, I can rant (and indeed, I already have ranted) about that at length.

[thehefner]

Oh, and since you used that painting of purple suit Catwoman, are you aware that it's apparently the "Mona Lisa of Comic Art," and is currently on sale on eBay for $423,000.00?

[thehefner]

... oh, that's right, Dreamwidth doesn't like YouTube embedding:

http://youtu.be/10n-1dpXsjU

[starwolf_oakley]

From the voice, I can see why many thought Richard Moll would again be voicing Two-Face. But according to IMDB, it's Troy Baker. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1684869/

[starwolf_oakley]

I think the first time the "Two-Face puts someone on trial" bit was done was during KNIGHTFALL, specifically in DC SHOWCASE. Of course, that story was written as though Two-Face and Batman had never fought each other since "Eye of the Beholder."

I could go on at length about Crazypants Harvey. Personally, I find "Scarred Crimelord with a coin gimmick" as too "Dick Tracy." But maybe that's what Paul Dini and Co. were going for this time around.

As I've said, Two-Face would make more sense to me as "the Punisher with a coin gimmick" than anything else. Paul Dini's first Two-Face story on the animated series was like that. And close to what we got in Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT, up to "Well, time to kidnap Gordon's family for a climactic showdown."

[thehefner]

Yeah, I think that invented the trope, although Two-Face was showing being a Judge over Batman in an old Jim Aparo cover (which didn't happen in the story itself), so that may have set the prescient. Really, if you have a villain with a legal background, having a rigged kangaroo court setting seems like an inevitability. In terms of that, I don't think anybody ever has or ever will top Harvey's "trial" of Jim Gordon in No Man's Land by Greg Rucka.

[rordulum]

Glad to hear that they're going for this Catwoman costume design. It's by far my favourite of her costumes, for the practicality, and aesthetic appeal.

I can't wait to see what Anne Hathaway looks like in it, for both completely shallow reasons and to get an idea of the creative process for the character.

[lonewolf23k]

The Modern Goggled costume is definitely the best one we've had in ages. It's stylish and sexy, yet also functional.

[thehefner]

I'm glad to see the love for this Catwoman costume. I've always loved it, but lately, I've noticed how there's fanatical contingent of Cat-fans who loathe it and adhere to their own personal fanon rather than even acknowledge Goggle!Suit Selina's existence. But then, I'm a GL fan who got into Hal Jordan during the 90's, so I suppose I understand completely.

[aaron_bourque]

Ideally, he should be a crimelord with intimate knowledge of law enforcement from years as a lawyer and District Attorney gimmick (and a coin that he needs to make every moral decision he makes).

[aaron_bourque]

I don't think anybody ever has or ever will top Harvey's "trial" of Jim Gordon in No Man's Land by Greg Rucka.

Yeah, that was awesome, not because it was a trial, but because Two-Face was prosecuting and Harvey was defending. Harvey was never a judge, anyway.

[big_daddy_d]

So from what I've seen, we're not getting a real boss fight with Two-Face? That's very disappointing. The game looks awesome and of course I will buy it, but still, a good genuine boss fight wouldn't hurt.

[midnightvoyager]

The censoring reminds me of Address Unknown from Max Payne. Since I did not expect it, it kinda made me feel temporarily insane.

.mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN

[nickfury90]

The censored dialog is "protocol 13", Crazy Jane. Don't know why they censored it, doesn't really mean anything.

Anyway, weak script aside, that was fantastic, as was the last game, and surely this one will be as well. I love just how badass you feel when you're in combat, swiftly moving across the battlefield and brutally taking down thugs. Good stuff.

Also hey, Jack Ryder!

Also-also, Cooke Goggles Catwoman >>>>>>>>>>>> purple tacky-looking Catwoman

[auggie18]

Well, now I'm crying in front of my roommate. Thanks for that.

[arilou_skiff]

Ah, Grey Delisle. Excellent voice-actress.

That first thug, I recognize his voice. Think he voices Wolverine somewhere actually... But not sure.

[halloweenjack]

I assume, from the io9 description, that they're going for a more "tactical" look--somewhere between the X-Men:First Class movie outfits and Bale-Bruce's outfit before he Batmanized it.

[ravenous_raven]

Apparently Hathaway's doing at least a little bit of fighting. She apparently was filming a scene where she shoves a gun in a stuntman's face and ended up giving the poor guy a black eye. She really felt bad about it, apologized, and gave him a gag gift.

Forgot the source on that though.

[golden_orange]

That would indeed be lame -- although this is fairly early in the game, though, and IIRC there's some kind of backstory between Catwoman and Two-Face that's presumably developed and revealed over the course of the game. I get the feeling this isn't the last we see of him.

[midnightvoyager]

I really hear Jeanette Voerman in her half-flirting at Harvey.

This is not a bad thing.

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah, the 90s series as I recall. He also played the lead character in Bulletstorm recently.

[cyberghostface]

I'm a bit disappointed that Two-Face appears to be a minor antagonist. As for his look, I'd like it a bit more if it didn't look like his sleeve was melted onto him. Also the dialogue/script with Catwoman is a bit cheesy.

On a related note, I just finished the first game and I enjoyed it. I found the last boss fight though to be both frustrating and anticlimactic at the same time.

[arilou_skiff]

I hear Azula.

[espanolbot]

I did mention it, it's the comment right there in the main post. :(

[espanolbot]

As someone who got into comics around the time of No Man's Land and onwards, I've always kind of gravitated towards the more recent versions of Selina than the purple suited Balent version.

I'm sure that it was good... in it's way, though from what I've read she just as interesting there as she was in the Darwyn Cooke/Ed Brubaker etc. comics.

[espanolbot]

Yeah, the fact that they seem to have emphasising that she'll be a robber more than a kind of bland love interest like Rachel Dawes is something of a relief.

[indy2012]

I don't think he'll be a minor antagonist in the least. If you recall, Ivy in Arkham Asylum was taken down with relative ease in a few cut scenes early on in the game, with Bats gloating, "You've been in the dark for too long, Ivy". Then she ended up being one of the better boss battles in the game. I think Harv will come back with a vengeance before all is said and done. Dini has too much respect for the character.

[indy2012]

I never understood the appeal of the purple costume. It had a big purple tail for goodness sakes. Whoever thought that a big purple cat was a good idea.... I don't know.

I think a lot of animosity for the goggled-version of Selina came from Brubaker solidifying her "lady of the evening" roots, with many fans not being able to reconcile their favorite character with that particular image. I personally found the Brubaker version so much more enduring than any prior incarnation.

Never liked anything like the Cat-Tails fanfiction either.

[cyberghostface]

Yeah, that makes sense. We can only hope.

[kenwyn89]

I love Selina as a character- she's almost Irene Adler to Batman, which is why I dislike the retcon that made her a lady of the evening as it was described above. I grew up watching Anne Hathaway in the Princess diaries- so this is a slightly weird feeling. But the only thing that would make me happier is if they brought in a robin to the franchise (but they won't...gr)

[espanolbot]

Personally I think that it shows how far she's come, as well as demonstrating why Batman was needed in Gotham, how the Wayne's death lead to the overall erosion of the city's policeforce and social services, as well as reflecting on how Selina is Bruce's opposite in a lot of ways.

To expand on this, Selina being born in a poor part of Gotham, while Bruce was born into what is effectively American Royalty.

Both their parents died when they were young, but whilst Bruce's parents were murdered, Selina's parents' deaths were self-inflicted (suicide and booze respectively).

BUT, while Bruce was cushioned somewhat by his family's wealth and the care of his surrogate father figure, Alfred, Selina had no one except her sister, Maggie, and was abruptly stuffed into "the system" by Gotham's social services. This meant that, at least subconciously, while Bruce relies on people to support him either emotionally or as actual help in his crusade, Selina is MASSIVELY independant because there was no one else to back her up when she needed it most.

Bruce was able to train in his skills in order to fufill a mission, while with Selina everything she had to learn she learnt in order to survive. Bruce learned how to hunt people in France, whilst Selina learnt how to steal in order to feed herself.

Similarly, her drift into prostitution was a result of the apathy of Gotham's social structure at the time. When the Waynes were alive with all the charity work that they did the chances are if they lived then Selina and Maggie would have been helped by them, either first or second hand. And after Bruce came back to help the city as both Bruce and as Batman, he also put in place things to keep people from just falling through the cracks like Selina did.

But in the gap between those two events, there was no one avaliable, meaning that Selina and Maggie had to do what they thought that they had to to survive. With Maggie that meant falling upon religion and becoming a nun (both her parents were implictly Catholic, what them being Cuban and Irish respectively), but with Selina her independant streak meant that she wasn't able to accept the support that her sister's path provided, so she had to go her own route... which lead to the aforementioned way of having to steal and sell herself in order to live.

Selina's belief that she had to look after herself, was both her best and worst feature, and argueably in keeping with her favourite animal.

Before the advent of Batman, the idea that she could just dress in a costume and attack all those that kept her down never seemed to occur to her. She had stolen from gangsters before, but she knew that the risks outweighed the rewards for the most part. She had the skills, learnt from the Fagin-figure that ran a gang of child pickpockets that she ran with when she was young, and from the armed robber Stark when she was in her teens, but she didn't have the inspiration yet to set it into motion.

Her seeing Bruce take out the SWAT team etc. was what made her realise that, yes, one person COULD go up against the mob! One person could go up against the police! One person didn't have to put up with their crap any more!

This acted as the catalyst, no pun intended, to make her put the things she had learned into use, climbing out of the gutter (bringing her friend Holly Robinson along for the ride), and through shear hardwork, determination and grit she made herself someone who could could move in the same social circles as Bruce without looking out of place.

THAT is inspiring! But... again the independant streak rose up again, and the tole of what she had to do in order to get to become Selina Kyle, multimillionairess and international woman of mystery, caused her to get a massive chip on her shoulder and something of an entitlement complex.

She no longer had to steal to survive anymore, she did it for her amusement, or because she felt that she deserved it more that the original owners did. Selina wasn't a bad person... at least, not entirely, but just as Bruce has/had his amount of baggage, so did she. This drive to do what was best for her, in turn lead to her making a lot of bad decisions and selfish choice, such as dumping Holly like a sack of potatoes, resulting in Miss Robinson ending up back on the game and developing a heroin addiction.

Eventually, coming up to the Brubaker era, Selina had undergone something of a identity crisis, wondering just how much of the front she put up as Catwoman as her and how much was actually Selina? So she travelled back to Gotham, and found that things in her old neighbourhood still sucked, and that children were having to deal with the same garbage that she had, but without the intelligence, opportunities and determination to work their way out of there.

So she decided to use her skills to help out the people of the East End, and make the place somewhere where an orphan wouldn't be forced to steal and prostitute themselves in order to do something as simple as get food.

Selina by this point had grown emotionally, to the point where she was now mentally and emotionally an adult, loosing the idea that "society owes me!" that caused her initially villainous behaviour.

Personally I think that this journey has a lot more emotional punch to it than the "she's a rich person who steal for fun" versions that are waved around occasionally.

[kenwyn89]

Wow, I really respect your argument. I'm in complete agreement in terms of the journey, and the payout of a much more emotionally rich character- but my main query the necessity of her having been a prostitute as a device. I don't think it was 100% needed to show the desperation of her situation, as there are other ways. Although she's a success story (more or less) in comics (in that she's not in risk of being a damsel or fridged so much), being run over with more suffering and abuse feels like another dampener. I think the story was told well, though, and I understand it is all about preference really.

For a true life is weirder than fiction moment- I had a great (mighta been great great) aunt who ran away to become a Nun, who was an Irish Catholic living in india.

[espanolbot]

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. :D

I guess that her actually being a prostitute isn't completely essential to the story, but it's something that fits with the setting and is another bit of shorthand to symbolise how far she's come by the end of her journey.

I do admit that in the hands of bad writers it could be used in an exploitative manner, a la the majority of the female characters in Sin City, but it doesn't have to be.

Similarly the character of Mia Dearsden also was a prostitute when she as younger as a result of her being forced to live on the streets, and if anything had an even more miserable time than Selina (dad sexually abused her, ended up on meth, got HIV). But she doesn't get nearly as much flack as Selina does. Possibly because Mia's a teenager, blonde and snarky, I don't know.

Comicbook fans are kind of fickel.

[kenwyn89]

Yup. Selina's also Golden-Age, so she's one of those people go 'you can't do that to her she's been around forever-' but that's kind of against the spirit of creating characters in the first place and you can't please everyone.

I found it a interesting read, no worries :)

[red_menace]

That's probably the best explanation of Selina as a character I've ever read. Kudos.

[kate_fatale]

Wow. Great synopsis and analysis. Her polar opposition to Bruce (in terms of personal background) IS immensely important, and I do hope there's at least an atmospheric element of that in the film.

[eyz]

Very, very nice actually! I'd even take a whole non-Batman Catwoman game like that! :D

I just have a problem how Catwoman's not actually using her modern costume as well as in the comics.
I mean, shouldn't the zipper be, ya know, zipped? Oh and the googles aren't masking her face put that way... .:/ Oh well...