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actualbird · 4 years

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nobody asked but here is every unraveled episode (as of may 2020) as how they’d be as a lover | a 2.5k word long post written in the style of an unraveled about unraveled and also love

Ah. Unraveled. Polygon’s golden boy of a video series where Brian David Gilbert is beckoned into a suit, lured into a blackbox studio, and is only granted escape after he has explained to three cameras whatever batshit video game adjacent thesis he has been cursed with this time. Unraveled is a wonderful video series, and we all love it.

But what if it could love us?

If you’ve ever asked this question to yourself, boy, do I have some content for you, because for the past 2 days, I’ve been working on this post where, for entirely too long, I explain to you how each Unraveled episode would be as a lover. And more importantly, which ones would be the best lovers.

Before I fall deep into this unhinged hole and take you down with me, I need to explain some things.

First: I want to make it clear that I am not categorizing BDG as he portrays himself in each Unraveled. I am instead taking each Unraveled episode as a fully formed being, the story, performance, etc, and letting that shape a character of its own. This character is where I extrapolate details from to create an Unraveled episode’s qualities as a lover. What I’m basically doing is anthropomorphizing Polygon dot com video content. And then making you date them. If this doesn’t make sense, don’t worry, it will as you read along. And if it helps you to visualize the Unraveled Episode As A Lover, I invite you to just imagine whomever it is you are most attracted to---or for those who don’t experience attraction, whomever it is you find most aesthetically pleasing---and then just add in the wild personality traits I describe through the course of this post.

Second: I know what you’re thinking. “Avian, the characteristics of what makes a good lover is subjective!” And I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve been through college, and I’ve witnessed my friends whom I love so dearly enter relationships with some of the most wack ass motherfuckers I’ve ever met. I know that people are into different things. But do I judge them for it? Well, kinda, yeah! Yes, what we want in a lover is subjective, but I’ve consumed a metric fuckton of romance media over the course of my life and am also in a wonderful relationship with my own girlfriend, and thus have my own personal idealized ranking for what makes a good lover. Feel free to disagree with my rankings of Unraveled Lovers, but also, I’m writing this post. I say this with as much love as I possibly can, but if you disagree with me, make your own post. If you don’t wanna make your own post, you’re just going to have to trust me for 2.1k more words.

With that out of the way, let me take you on a journey through the 23 Unraveled Lovers, from worst to best.

BAD TIER: I would probably advise you to break up with these Unraveled Lovers as soon as you are emotionally capable of doing so.

Hoo boy, we’re starting at the bottom. The perfectionists, the nitpickers, the emotionally unavailables. These Unraveled Lovers would have good intentions, but just have aspects within their personality that will wear you and your relationship together down until both of you can no longer take it.

“Ranking all 200+ Megaman robots” is a lover obsessed with the concept of “is this worth it?” They would unknowingly but inevitably rank parts of your own personality on a scale of ‘worth the trouble in this relationship’ and ‘not worth the trouble’. Any lover who deals with you with this kind of dichotomy is somebody you should not be with. You should be accepted and loved for all your parts, the beautiful and the ugly.

“How to make the perfect E3 press conference” is a lover who spent years consuming romance media and has a list of what makes the perfect relationship. So not only do they have unrealistic expectations for what a relationship is, but they will be obsessed with reaching that unreachable perfection. That will definitely put a strain on your relationship until the veneer of desired perfection crumbles away, leaving you both tired and sad.

On a less deep note, “How to tell apart all 596 Fire Emblem characters” just won’t remember any of the names of your friends or family. Sure, they’ll try, but they’ll give up in like 15 minutes and you’ll never be able to take this Unraveled Lover to a family reunion or a party with your friends. Probably not a dealbreaker, but as the Spice Girls said “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” This Unraveled Lover will not. Next.

“No one asked but I found Mortal Kombat’s best cuddler” and “I wasted 3 weeks of my life finding Castlevania’s hottest monster” are two Unraveled Lovers with a similar problem: they both won’t shut the fuck up about their exes. Mortal Kuddler constantly brings up all the other cuddles they’ve experienced and Castlevanias Hottest Monster will tell you you’re beautiful, but also bring up like 69 other monsters they think are also beautiful. This might not be a red flag, but personally, this would tire me out, always being thought of in comparison or contrast to others.

That ends the BAD TIER and brings us to the OKAY TIER where a large chunk of the Unraveled Lovers fall into, so much so that I had to create more specific sub tiers under the OKAY TIER.

So let’s get into the OKAY TIER: These Unraveleds Lovers are alright, you’ll just have a sublimely weird relationship.

These Unraveled Lovers will treat you right but they’re also just very peculiar. Nothing wrong with that at all, but I’m here to explain to you just in what ways these okayest lovers are bizarre. Let’s start with the first sub tier.

OKAY SUB TIER: College Students who are way too into their major

There are a lot of Unraveled Lovers under this subtier, and this shouldn’t surprise you, because Unraveleds are inherently nerdy. These are lovers that will be good to you but also just never fucking shut up about what it is they’re studying.

“I read all 337 books of Skyrim so that you don’t have to” and "Understanding Kingdom Hearts (and every other story" are Creative Writing majors obsessed with analyzing every single thing they read. As a Creative Writing major myself, I would advise you to never date a Creative Writing major unless you are a Creative Writing major yourself. I think that’s the only way the relationship can be ethical. Being sent essays from the New Yorker every day would be torture if you didn’t actively enjoy it.

“We made all 78 Breath of Wild recipes in one day” is a Culinary Arts major and, score, they’re gonna wanna cook for you! A lot! Beware though, because it’ll be a hit or miss on whether or not the food will be good, but you must admit, that there is nothing quite as attractive as your lover making you food (let’s just hope the food doesn’t harm you).

“Smash Bros. owes millions of dollars in OSHA violations” is going to law school and that should be a dealbreaker in itself, but I’ll be a bit lenient because they’re always working towards the safety of everybody. This Unraveled Lover will always remind you to put your seatbelt on and also tell you exactly what laws you are violating.

“Bowser’s military hierarchy” is a Political Science major, and Political Science majors scare me. So I’ll just say they’re okay, and leave it at that.

“Which Dark Souls Boss is the best manager?” is a rare non-evil Management major because they actually truly care for the welfare of employees. They just will always talk about it, even when you guys are on a date. I know worker’s rights are important, but it’s not exactly what I want to talk about in between kisses, yknow?

“I fixed Fallout’s music by creating a totally new genre” is a Music major who keeps accidentally making Ska love songs to you. You didn’t know Ska love songs could be a thing. This Unraveled Lover makes it a thing.

“Scientifically Calculating the Game of the Year” is a Math major so you will never have to worry about calculating bills because they can do it for you.

“Calculate your pet’s HP with my 100% legitimate formula” is a Veterinary Medicine major so if you’re an animal lover, this Unraveled is the one for you! Just beware, because this Unraveled Lover will also spend a lot of time observing you from afar to quantify your health points, but both of you will inexplicably find this activity strengthens your relationship.

And last but not least for this sub tier, “When can Mario retire?” is a disillusioned Accounting and Finance major who chose this line of study to get a job and, through the years, realized what a hellscape capitalism is. You may have to deal with a lot of zoning out and staring off into the distance, with this Unraveled Lover, but a lover who hates capitalism sure is a good egg.

That brings us to our next sub tier!

OKAY SUB TIER: Cultists or Conspiracy Theorists (AKA...College Students who are way too into their extracurriculars)

These Unraveled Lovers are alright! They’re just a little bit off the shits.

“Every Sonic game is blasphemous” will get really really worked up about things and probably try to start a cult. For most, that’s a definite dealbreaker, but what makes Sonic Bible an okay lover is that they eventually calm down from the cult outburst and apologize. So this Unraveled Lover will treat you well, you just have to be ready to ground them when they get a little bit bonkers.

“Solving the Zelda Timeline in 15 minutes” is very similar to Sonic Bible, except instead of starting a cult, every once in a while they’ll just sit you down on a chair and explain to you their latest obsession while slowly and intensely stripping. Which, hey, that could make for a fun night, if you’re into that kinda stuff! Definitely okay in my book.

That brings us to our last okay sub tier.

OKAY SUB TIER: Your Unraveled Lover might need to schedule some sessions with a therapist, and that’s Okay

Listen, we all have baggage. We all have problems. These are Unraveled Lovers who want to be the best for you, but at the same time have issues of their own, and you’re going to have to support them when they pop into their local psych clinic to make themselves better people.

“Waluigi” is an Unraveled Lover who is going through some identity issues. They want to be good for you, but they don’t even know who exactly they are. They may feel as if they are tricking you into being in this relationship, that they aren’t who you think they are, and while these fears are irrational, they wholeheartedly believe it and will never feel fully secure in this relationship until they have made peace with themselves. If you love this Unraveled Lover, you’re going to have to stick with them as they learn more about who they are.

“Kirby” is an Unraveled Lover who, for some reason, is obsessed with the constant quest to make things make sense. This need of theirs bleeds into every aspect of their life and can definitely affect your relationship. This Unraveled Lover may sometimes perhaps cite that they don’t deserve you because they can’t seem to figure out a logical and objective answer for why you are with them. This issue of treating everything like a puzzle to solve is an issue they will have to work out and recover from, and they will be receptive to this process of recovery because they cherish the relationship they have with you and understand that not everything has to be solved; some things can just be felt. If you choose to stay with this Unraveled Lover, you must be prepared to support them when they take a mysterious but needed soul searching journey in the woods. You must be prepared to sit with them along the shores of the beach and reassure them that life is about living, not about answers.

And that, dear readers, ends the OKAY TIERs. Now it’s time for the tier you have all been waiting for.

Drumroll, please!

GOOD TIER: Pop open the champagne, bring out the strawberries dipped in chocolate, and let Spotify play Careless Whisper, baby, because we’re in the Ideal Lover zone.

Welcome to the Ideal Lover Zone. Here, we have three Unraveled Lovers who are just extremely good fellas.

“I used the Sims to perfect my apartment” is an Unraveled Lover who will work their hardest to be the best for you, but unlike the BAD TIER perfectionists, it will naturally dawn to them that perfection is unattainable. After this realization, they will find comfort and happiness in your romantic relationship and the other healthy relationships they have with other people. This Unraveled Lover will be sincere with you when the time calls for it, but will also not be afraid to be goofy for it. Above all, this Unraveled Lover will ask for help when they need it. They may often be shy, at first, but they understand their limits and will openly communicate to you when situations call for it. Communication is the bedrock of any good relationship, and this Unraveled Lover will never keep you guessing.

“The Perfect Pokerap” is similar to the Sims, in the sense that they will at first strive for perfection in the honeymoon phase of your relationship but then understand that that isn’t possible and then set more reasonable and realistic goals. What sets this Unraveled Lover out from the crowd though is just how much they cherish you. How devoted they are to you. The love you will feel in this relationship will be transcendental, and, even if you do break up, this Unraveled Lover will never forget you.

And finally. Who---according to me, a mildly delirious 21 year old rando on the internet---is the most ideal Unraveled Lover?

It’s “Find your Kojima name with my simple 11 page form.” Why? Because this Unraveled Lover wants to know you. They want to know everything about you, the parts you like and the parts you don’t like. This is a lover who will not shy away from any aspect of yourself, but instead, embrace you for who you are as a full fledged person.

They’ll also give you a whack ass pet name, and boy, isn’t that romantic?

Well, there you have it. All (as of May, 2020) of the Unraveled Episodes as 23 Unraveled Lovers. What did I learn from this endeavor? That romantic love is complicated, but if you’re into it, it is definitely worth the trials and tribulations.

...As long as I’m not dating the Castlevania Unraveled. Seriously, when we’re making out, I don’t wanna hear about how sexy the Hyena With Gun is. Learn how to read the room, dude.

(Thanks for reading.)

#reposting because damn it i worked too hard on this that it BETTER FUCKIN SHOW UP IN THE TAG #polygon #bdg #unraveled #brian david gilbert #nobody asked but

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artpocalypse · 4 years

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Zeldraveled au Chapter 2!! Today Zelda and Sidon attempt to recreate all of Link’s recipe while none of them actually knows how to cook!!

For once, Zelda/sheik leave the filming to their knight to give cooking a try, with the company of Prince Sidon!! It’s not working out very well.

Link is behind the camera and is laughing the entire time.

I absolutely love Polygon’s bgd and especially the unraveled videos so I made a whole au out of it

(also its my first time trying out this style so pls be gentle)

Link to the 1st chapter

Pt 2 here

#Zeldraveled #bdg unraveled #the legend of zelda #legend of zelda #zelda #sidon #Fanart #artwork #bdg #loz au #breath of the wild #loz botw #my artwork

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siriuslyarrogant · 5 years

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So I've been watching a lot of Polygon's videos recently and got the idea of the check please gang having a gaming (playing & information) YouTube.

Okay so I had a hard deciding if Jack would still be in the NHL or not and finally I decided that no he wouldn't . So instead of him being a guest star , it would Tater an Kent. The falcs are the local team and Tater became of the channel after he found during a late night YouTube session. Kent still knows Jack from Juniors and thought 'hey we're friends again , I like board games , we're both competitive as all hell , let me play with you on your channel'.

Anyway .. Ransom and Holster have a live stream that kinda similar to that of the Gil and Gilbert ones - which just means that they do random challenges while playing video games . However Rans and Holster will only play really shorty games with horrible graphics- at first they found it ironic and now they actually enjoy playing them while shoving food in their mouths. Their live streams are regarded as one of the funniest thing on the channel as they keep up the terrible jokes for over an hour.

The funniest video + most viewed however is titled MY SHEEP EMPIRE IS NOT CRUEL , originally that wasn't the name but when Bitty was like 'don't we have to be semi professional' Johnston was just like 'yeah, but this is better and will get more views' and so Holster was allowed to keep his video title

The longest video(s) is a three different six hour long videos of the gang playing monopoly . There wouldn't be more videos if Jack hadn't gotten really annoyed that no one had won in the 18 hours they had played and he half decide we need to get back to work/ oh fuck if we keep playing I'M going to lose first and flipped the board . Holster - well on he way to dominating the entire board - didn't talk to him for a solid week and a half.

They have a similar series like Unraveled where Shitty will spend like twenty minutes talking really in depth about very unknown video game stuff but instead of finding out stuff like the zelda timeline , Shits will either point out gamesscluld 1) be more diverse or 2) he will spend like days researching how many video characters go against the laws of physics - despite being human.

Lardo will bluff her way through every and any board game but will usually lose heavily in the end. She is better at talking about how video game should sell better/ what makes them better.

Jack most of the time just does research/ films the video instead of being in them . The only time he makes an exception is when guests(Tater/Kent) come on, the monopoly videos and also when him and Lardo decided it was a good idea to play together on a team against bits and shits on some game.

Bitty makes a video ( like polygons zelda recipes) where he recreates all the cooking mama recipes - with help form Dex.

The frogs all have a series together and it really well liked because of all of their different personalities blending well together. Dex and Nursey fight over small things and Chowder rolls his eyes. And when Chowder gets really into beating the game , Dex and Nursey look terrified. Nursey whoever they play a car game when always end up crashing straight away.

This got too long, too fast.

#check please #omgcp #eric bittle #jack zimmermann #shitty knight #lardo duan #derek nurse #chris chow #will poindexter #kent parson #alexei tater mashkov #dex #nursey #chowder #video game au #youtube au

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stardewpapaalec · 4 years

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BDG is an excellent choice!!!!! Perfect chaotic and fun energy! My personal favorite unraveleds are Smash BrOSHA, Zelda Cooking, and Bowser's Military just from the top of my head. I wanna watch more of him but I know so little about polygon that I watche a stardew video about them and then suddenly The Adventure Zone DM was talking about stardew valley and I couldn't function for an hour

Yeah!! I think my favorite one is either the Skyrim book report or perfect pokerap (or maybe the mega man one?)

He’s the main reason I watch polygon, but I also like overboard! Especially the...what was it, murder in Manhattan? The one where pat couldn’t say anything while everyone screamed at each other about being murderers

What’s adventure zone? I know it’s dnd but idk anything else about it

#remy!!!

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upsidedownshark · 6 years

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The Best Games of 2017

By Tom Baker

So the dust has settled on another year of video games and the Games Awards has crowned The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as 2017’s game of the year. Now in this writer’s humble opinion, there could be no other winner; the sheer scale, variety and resplendent beauty of the game makes it one of the all time greats, and one that should be held in the same regard as Super Mario Bros., Grand Theft Auto 3 and The Sims as a game that redefined what the medium is capable of.

However, that isn’t to say Link and co. didn’t have some stiff competition; 2017 saw a stellar line up of video game releases to help us escape from our increasingly depressing journey to post-mortal oblivion. With that being said, here’s Upside Down Shark’s best video games of 2017.

Mario Odyssey

One of the later launch titles for the Nintendo Switch, Mario Odyssey is a belter, I tell you what! Just like in the world of cinema, for far too long it felt like Nintendo and other major studios were rehashing their existing franchises in a lazy attempt to make a cash cow – Mario Odyssey bucks this trend and then some. Rather, it takes the mustachioed mascot and thrusts him in a fresh, original direction; new worlds, new mechanics and new challenges make playing it an absolute delight and a testament to Nintendo’s expertise in game design.

If you have a Switch, it’s an absolute must buy.

That’s an order.

Sonic Mania

Sonic the Hedgehog has been dragged through the mud for the better part of a decade, with titles ranging from mediocre to traumatically awful (we’re looking at you, Sonic Unleashed), so you’d be forgiven for acknowledging a new game featuring the titular blue Erinaceidae (look at us, using the big words) with little more than a tut and derisive shake of the head.

Sonic Mania proved us all wrong.

Designed by freelance SEGA superfan Christian Whitehead, Sonic Mania is the quintessential labour of love. Repurposing the visual assets from the first generations of the series, it strips away the awful gimmicks to give us something that not only evokes the warmth of nostalgia, but does so with a polished, almost modern presentation. In an era where pop-culture seems to be obsessed with reliving the ‘good ol’ days’, it’s refreshing to see something that manages to balance celebrating the past while also looking to the future.

Playing while eating a chili dog isn’t mandatory but is strongly encouraged.

South Park: The Fractured But Whole

South Park: The Fractured But Whole is good, m’kay.

The sequel to 2014’s The Stick of Truth, The Fractured But Whole manages to capture the puerile, offensive yet oddly charming humour of the TV show and incorporate it into some pretty solid game mechanics. Classic turn-based RPG battles are tense and challenging, the character progression system is satisfying and just like its predecessor, the art direction makes it feel like you’re playing through a genuine episode of South Park.

I won’t spoil any of the gags or plot here but needless to say, if you’re a fan of the show and enjoy a healthy dose of cringe, The Fractured But Whole is definitely not to be missed.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Shifting swiftly from the groin-grabbingly funny to a harrowing portrayal of the future, next up on our list of the best games of 2017 we have Horizon Zero Dawn.

Set in a primitive post-apocalyptic society infested with deadly robots (most of which look like something that could be cooked up by Boston Dynamics), you play as Aloy, an outcast hunter gatherer on a quest to make sense of the world around her. And exploring this world is a rip-roaring good time; a combination of addictive RPG elements, a compelling story and a vibrant map make this a title that could easily become a multi-game franchise.

What’s more, the inclusion of a strong female protagonist should not go unnoticed nor uncelebrated. During a time in which the established (and quite frankly ridiculous) gender roles within society are being challenged more so than ever, it’s important for the next generation to have a variety of different role models to look up to, regardless of gender, orientation or race. If Horizon Zero Dawn helps to achieve this in some small way, then it must be considered an important piece of cultural art.

Assassin’s Creed Origins

It’s an amazing how much good a year off can do.

With several less than stellar titles being released in recent years (not to mention an even less than stellar film adaptation), it’s fair to say that Assassin��s Creed was going through the doldrums. Skip forward to October 2017 and Assassin’s Creed Origins has flip reversed that trend in the best possible way.

As the name implies, the game is set during the beginnings of the centuries old conflict between the Assassins and what would become the Templar Order at the height of Ancient Egyptian culture. The idea of Origins being a new start isn’t limited to the narrative of the game, as the mechanics, graphics and gameplay all feel revitalised and fresh for the first time since Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag.

A special mention must also be made about the nigh on ludicrous size of the game. When Upside Down Shark started playing, it took a solid 4-5 hours of wandering and general pottering about before we even got to the title screen – in that time you could complete The Order: 1886 four times and walk up the shop to trade it in! At the time of writing we still haven’t completed the game, so if you’re looking for maximum bang for your buck when considering your next gaming purchase, look no further.

And that’s a wrap on the best video games of 2017. Here’s hoping 2018 see’s even more excuses for me to shirk all real world responsibilities and run away to the realm of pixels and polygons.

What were your favourite games of the year?

Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter & Instagram and subscribe to our Youtube channel. While you’re at it, listen to Upside Down Shark Radio on iTunes, Stitcher and anywhere that all fine podcasts are found for more pop-culture chat, music, memes and tomfoolery.

#video games #legend of zelda #best of the year #mario #nintendo #sega #sonic #assassin's creed #horizon zero dawn #playstation #lists #upside down shark #udsradio #blog

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actualbird · 4 years

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nobody asked but here i analysed polygon’s “unraveled” and bon appetit test kitchen’s “gourmet makes” and i think they are similar and use three key story elements to their success | a 1.9k word long analysis by an unhinged creative writing fresh grad trying desperately to use their degree to connect two dots

If you asked me who my favorite internet celebrities are, I would not hesitate for a second to answer. Brian David Gilbert from Polygon and Claire Saffitz from Bon Appetit Test Kitchen. They’re awesome! They both host popular YouTube webshows about video games and cooking respectively, two things I am terrible at and don’t do very often. And yet I am enraptured by every episode of their shows. Why? How?

My thesis is this: Polygon’s “Unraveled” and Bon Appetit Test Kitchen’s “Gourmet Makes”, while wildly different shows on many levels, are extremely similar in how they use three key story elements very, very, well.

These three story elements are 1) Plot, 2) Character, and 3) FAWWIEOT (it’s an acronym, I’ll explain it later, I promise)

Let me start with the first and most basic story element these two shows wield amazingly: Plot.

Plot is, in simplest terms, what “happens” in a thing. This is what you’ll find on a movie’s Wikipedia page summary, the details of what went down, the events that took place, the things that occurred. There are many different types of plots because there are many different types of stories, but one of the most basic kinds of plots is very clearly illustrated by something called Freytag’s Pyramid.

Freytag’s Pyramid is a very simple plot that is moved forward by a non-negotiable in many, many stories: conflict. All is well, the line is straight, then a challenge arises and things start to escalate. At the climax, a decision or a group of decisions are made that leads to a de-escalation of the conflict, bringing things down until we are back at a flat line and the conflict has been resolved.

Every single episode of Gourmet Makes can be plotted onto Freytag’s Pyramid

Nearly every single episode of Unraveled can be plotted onto Freytag’s Pyramid too (with the exception of some, like a number of the categorization episodes, the Kojima name generator)

I know what you’re thinking. “So what if Gourmet Makes and Unraveled fit on some funky pyramid? What does that mean?” Well, dear reader, it reveals to us just one of three reasons why these shows are so enjoyable.

Freytag’s Pyramid is basic as shit, and yet it is one of the first plot structures taught to fictionists because people, up to this day, like it. Why? Because Freytag’s Pyramid fulfills two very important desires that we, as humans, love. 1) The desire for there to be a problem and 2) the desire for that problem to be resolved. It scratches our eternal itch to want to watch shit go down but doesn’t leave us up on a cliffhanger, it gives us our catharsis.

Gourmet Makes gives you the entertainment of watching Claire struggle with her task. Then Gourmet Makes shows you Claire slowly and surely rising above the challenge (notable in literally every episode of Gourmet Makes). Unraveled makes you watch BDG work himself up into a frenzy trying to do something stupid, but then Unraveled shows the payoff of...of watching BDG do something stupid, but this time towards some kind of resolution (very notable in the latest Unraveled “How to increase your stamina with terrible video game tactics”).

It is clear to me that Gourmet Makes and Unraveled both use plot in a way that gives viewers satisfaction. But what keeps them coming back for more?

Well that leads us to the second story element: Character.

People love Claire Saffitz and BDG.

Don’t believe me? Look through the tags of literally any gifset of either of them. Here, I did it for you. Here’s some tags for Claire:

And here’s some tags for BDG:

It’s pretty obvious to see that these two are well loved, but why? It’s not just because they’re both good looking, it’s because Claire Saffitz and BDG, with how they are presented in their shows, are good characters.

Claire Saffitz in Gourmet Makes isn’t scripted. She brings her own human frustration, determined hard work, and joyous glee to the show and it makes watching the show all the more enjoyable. BDG in Unraveled, however, is scripted, but he brings to the table his chaotic performance and ‘off the shits’ lecturer energy that brings the viewers in. Regardless of their differences, Gourmet Makes and Unraveled are similar when it comes to character because of one thing: they actually have characters.

What am I talking about? Well, for a period of time on the internet, people in the cooking media sphere and the video game media sphere settled for video content that was divorced from who was presenting the information. Videos like the ones from Tasty where everything was filmed top down and you only saw two hands perfectly putting ingredients into a bowl. Videos like the myriad of video game walkthroughs or video essays that are presented only by a disembodied voice who also seems allergic to actually having fun. This is content that hinges on the fact that people like seeing cooking or video games and that the presenter will mostly just be a background thing.

Bon Appetit Test Kitchen and Polygon both did not want to succumb to this style of presenting information. They both made the decision to bring their presenters into their video content, highlighting their respective presenters’ personalities, quirks, and styles. This is evident in all of Bon Appetit Test Kitchen and Polygon’s video content, not just Gourmet Makes and Unraveled. Do I watch Bon Appetit's show It's Alive because I want to actually make foccacia? No, it's because I love how Brad Leone mispronounces words and makes me laugh. Did I watch "Fixing Anthem’s boring mech’s with ballsy design" because I actually give a shit about video games? No it's because I love how Pat Gill jokes about fake testicles and also I think he's hot.

The fact that there are actually characters for us on screen to see, makes Gourmet Makes and Unraveled good shit. We’ve got a plot with clear conflict, but that means nothing if there are no personas for us to root for. Gourmet Makes and Unraveled gives us these personas. They give us Claire Saffitz whom we want so desperately to see smile and succeed. They give us Brian David Gilbert whom we want so desperately to see go a little bit crazy. They give us people to connect to, and that often bridges the gap to viewers who honestly don’t give a shit about cooking or video games. Viewers like me who just keep coming back to Gourmet Makes and Unraveled because of the fact that these are characters I care about, these are characters who I want to see smile after finally nailing the recipe or slowly take off their suit as they tell me shit about Zelda I don’t understand.

Gourmet Makes and Unraveled utilize plot in a way that makes these webshows satisfying, and they use character in a way that makes these webshows accessible and keeps people invested.

But they go further.

This brings us to our last story element, not exactly a common or rudimentary one, but an important one nonetheless: Fucking Around With What Is Expected Of Them.

(I know there’s probably a legitimate literary term for this, but sue me, quarantine has kept me stuck in my house since March, so I may have forgotten the exact words I learned in class. FAWWIEOT will have to suffice.)

The gist of FAWWIEOT is that stories have been around for fuckin ever, and because of that, there are clear patterns and tropes that stories follow. FAWWIEOT is the recognition of those patterns and tropes, using them, but finding a different outcome or flair to make themselves special, to make themselves stick out. Kinda like when you’ve got a fic on AO3 tagged with ‘friends to lovers’ but also tagged with like, I dunno, something completely random like ‘character is also a dragon’. Use the tropes, but do something different. Give the audience something they already know, then throw in something new to make them remember your content specifically.

Gourmet Makes and Unraveled FAWWIEOT (I’m using the acronym like a verb now, this is my post, I’m allowed to) very purposefully using an important technique: Flaws.

The standard trope of a cooking show is the chef easily talking to the camera as they perfectly put the ingredients together. All the food comes out perfect on the first try and everything is heavenly and wonderful. Classic cooking shows like Barefoot Contessa (hosted by Ina Garten) and Everyday Italian (hosted by Giada de Laurentiis) followed this pattern, and it made for good television.

But who fucking watches television these days? Everything is online now, and the internet is vicious. If you aren’t interesting, the internet will throw you out to the gutter. So how did Gourmet Makes set themselves apart?

By showing you that things aren’t perfect after all. Gourmet Makes shows you every trial that Claire tries, they show you her successes, but also her failures. They show you when she gets tired and hopeless, they show you when she bounces back and tries again. Gourmet Makes made a cooking show that was flawed, and people loved it.

And what about Unraveled? The design of Unraveled, from BDG’s suit and mug to his presenting style, key us in to the fact that we are watching some sort of lecture. Some kind of educational performance. Personally, this makes me think that Unraveled is FAWWIEOT-ing academia and basically any other media where an “expert” talks at you.

The standard pattern of experts talking to you are basically like TedTalks. You have somebody very well versed in the topic trying to explain to you something, showing you their hypothesis, their process, and their findings.

Unraveled FAWWIEOTs expertise by making BDG research the most crazy shit like OSHA regulations or the Geneva Convention, make the wildest hypotheses like ‘Monster Energy in the morning will be a good idea’ or ‘Sonic is blasphemous’, and then, ultimately, completely unravel himself. The expert in Unraveled isn’t an all knowing being who is always right, he is flawed (and loses his marbles, more often than not.) And we love it.

FAWWIEOT-ing is key because of how it gives us a pattern we know, and then does something new. Novelty is important on the internet, and Gourmet Makes and Unraveled have made a name for themselves on the unique way they Fucked Around With What Was Expected Of Them.

Gourmet Makes and Unraveled are two of my favorite webshows on the internet as of now, and there are many reasons why, many reasons I didn’t include in this post. What I wanted to do here is to highlight how these shows use story elements to be good content because at the core of these videos, even if they aren’t literary fiction, they are good stories. Good stories with a plot that satisfies us, with characters we can see and love, with new twists that keep us on the edge of our seats.

Good stories make for good content, and Bon Appetit Test Kitchen and Polygon have me as a subscriber for as long as they continue on this road.

Thanks for reading!

(Read my other Polygon-adjacent analysis essays at actualbird.tumblr.com/tagged/nobody-asked-but

If you have any suggestions or ideas for more Polygon-adjacent analysis essays I can write, send me an ask!)

#polygon #batk #bdg #unraveled #nobody asked but

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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A Guide to DC Animated Movies

http://bit.ly/2PXWTbq

It's going to be awhile before we get another Justice League movie, but the DC animated movie universe is worth checking out.

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The Lists

Books

Jim Dandy

DC Entertainment

May 11, 2019

Animation

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Superman

Batman

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DC Universe

In 2007, DC’s animation department announced that they were creating a line of direct-to-video, feature-length movies free from many of the constraints of regular television. It was a controversial move, mostly because the most recent forays into animation from DC had been really well received by fans - Justice League Unlimited and Teen Titans had just ended, and fans were eager for more series set in the DC Animated Universe, not stand alone adaptations of comic stories.

Despite the initial trepidation, most of them have been a success. They do follow some general rules, though: for early entries, the Star Trek movie rule applies, where every other one is good. This pattern stops holding true around Gods & Monsters - after that, they're mostly at least adequate, but the bad ones are giant turds.

Also, the quality of the movie is almost always in proportion to the quality of the comic it was based off of. And the more original the story, the better the movie. Let’s take a look at what are now officially known as DC Universe Original Movies...

Superman: Doomsday (2007)

The first feature in this new initiative was based on 1992’s hottest college fund investment, The Death of Superman. The story is perhaps looked back on too harshly as emblematic of ‘90s comic excess, and maybe because of that, this movie wasn’t well received.

Superman: Doomsday made significant changes to the storyline, compressing two years of stories into one 75-minute feature. It also combined all four replacement Supermen into one clone, and tweaks the relationship between Lois and Superman to add a bit of drama.

read more: The Best Batman Beyond Episodes

Superman: Doomsday set the tone for a lot of what was to come, structurally. The action sequences were well done, something that will remain a constant throughout these movies. It suffered because of some iffy voice acting (Adam Baldwin wasn’t great as Superman, and Anne Heche was similarly middling as Lois) and also because it was like, 50 issues of comics boiled down into an hour’s worth of movie. It certainly wasn’t bad, but it was very middle of the road. Fortunately they got it right later on.

Watch Superman: Doomsday on Amazon.

Justice League: The New Frontier (2008)

Darwyn Cooke’s retro-Justice League origin story is one of the most highly regarded DC books of the last 20 years, and that strong foundation served the movie adaptation well. That the story works in either medium is a minor miracle. Justice League: The New Frontier mixes a noir story (Slam Bradley, J’onn J’onzz, Batman, King Faraday, and the GCPD investigating a cult) with the bright, shiny superheroics of the Flash, Green Lantern, Superman and Wonder Woman, and all comes together well at the end.

read more - The Essential Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series

It’s all wrapped up in an art style designed to mimic Cooke’s Bruce Timm-meets-50s-art-deco-print-ads style, and the animators do a great job of matching it (something they won’t do nearly as well with later movies). The voice cast is superb, too, with Kyle MacLachlan as Superman, Lucy Lawless as Wonder Woman, Jeremy Sisto as Batman, and Neil Patrick Harris as Flash all being inspired choices, and David Boreanaz’ Hal Jordan is the best Hal ever, for at least another couple of these movies.

DC has started packaging the comics with their movie counterparts recently, and if there is ever the opportunity to grab both versions of The New Frontier, you should jump on that.

Watch Justice League: The New Frontier on Amazon.

Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)

Remember The Animatrix? And remember how people used to try and talk themselves into digging it? And then remember how it was actually just not very good, but we were so starved for Matrix stories that we’d take anything? I do, and I guess this is a little bit confessional.

read more: The Essential Episodes of Justice League Unlimited

Gotham Knight was just like that: an anime-style anthology of stories written by some big names, and it was closely tied not to the comics, but to the Batman movies of the time. These six stories were supposedly set between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. They were a disaster.

Kevin Conroy is the greatest Batman of my lifetime, and I don’t think you’ll find anyone who will argue that point too strenuously. But the decision to keep him voicing Batman in these stories contributed to the tonal disaster that they were: his voice in anime characters fighting Deadshot and Killer Croc in a universe that was supposed to be “more realistic” just made me confused and a little nosebleedy and possibly a touch stupider from trying to reconcile it all. Skip it.

Watch Batman: Gotham Knight on Amazon

Wonder Woman (2009)

Written by Gail Simone (who had a solid run writing Diana just prior to this) and based loosely on George Perez’s “Gods and Monsters” story from just after the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths, this movie is widely considered one of the best Wonder Woman stories in any medium of the last 15 years. This movie is great.

It takes Perez’s story - Ares has a grudge against Hippolyta and her people, and uses his son Deimos and a convoluted international nuclear strike to try and destroy them, only to have Diana and Steve Trevor stop him - and streamlines it. Keri Russell is a great Diana, and even though subsequent casting decisions add a little dissonance with Rosario Dawson as Artemis and Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor, the movie works just as well if you pretend that Artemis later takes over as Wonder Woman for a little while and Fillion is still playing Hal Jordan, only in disguise.

read more: The Strange History of The Legend of Zelda Animated Series

And if you’ve never read Perez’s original story before, it really is one of the best Wonder Woman comics ever, and it is regularly packaged with this DVD. This is a good excuse to pick it up.

Watch Wonder Woman on Amazon

Green Lantern: First Flight (2009)

First Flight, despite the name, is less Hal Jordan’s origin story and more yellow lantern Sinestro’s. Green Lantern is maybe the one character who has fared the best in these films, because his powers look the best in animated form. First Flight is a fun, longer exposure to that world.

read more - The Essential Episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series

There is a...lot...of killing in it, but that bothers me less when it’s Green Lantern than it does when it’s Batman doing the murdering. I think part of what smoothed it over for me is some more great voice casting: Victor Garber (half of television’s Firestorm) is great as Sinestro; Michael Madsen’s Kilowog is only second to Dennis Haysbert’s; and Chris Meloni was great as Hal.

Watch Green Lantern: First Flight on Amazon.

Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009)

I’ve come around on this since I first saw it. It’s still ridiculous: this is a story about Superman and Batman teaming up to fight off a President Lex Luthor-led team of heroes and bounty-thirsty villains while they get into a composite Superman/Batman robot to punch a kryptonite meteor back into space, and that hasn’t changed or become any less silly since 2009.

read more: The Weirdest Classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Episodes Ever

But I didn’t realize at the time how great the animators did of capturing Ed McGuinness’ art style, or how much McGuinness’ art looked like old cartoons to begin with. Everybody looks like if Rob Liefeld was trained to draw in a Hanna Barbera studio in the ‘40s: absurdly overmuscled, but kinetic and bubbly and fun instead of scratchy and angular.

Narratively, this movie is still unnecessarily complex and pretty stupid, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch, one of the few clear improvements on the comic source material in this series.

Watch Superman/Batman: Public Enemies on Amazon.

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010)

I’m a bit of a Grant Morrison fanboy, so I was excited for this movie, which purports to be an adaptation of JLA: Earth 2. It is not. I mean, it has some of the trappings of Morrison and Frank Quitely’s original story, but the plot is pretty dramatically different, at least in how it works out.

Earth 2 is the world of the Crime Syndicate of America, where Ultraman and Johnny Quick and Power Ring and Superwoman are the evil rulers of the world, and Lex Luthor and the Jester are fighting to save the world. Earth 2 Luthor escapes to Earth Prime to get the Justice League’s help.

read more - The Quirky Brilliance of Transformers: The Movie

In the comics, he’s being manipulated into accidentally causing the destruction of both Earths by Earth 2’s Brainiac, who wants to capture the energy given off by the explosion for comic book science of some sort. In the movie, Owlman has allowed the discovery of alternate worlds to turn him into some sort of Nihilist John Calvin, and plans to destroy the multiverse because why not.

So there’s a big superhero fight, and here’s where my problem comes in: the League uses Johnny Quick’s speed and vibrational frequency to open a portal to an uninhabited Earth, so they can deposit Owlman and his ennui bomb there and let Owlman defuse it and live alone and unable to hurt anyone again. Batman specifically uses Quick and not Flash to open this portal because doing so kills Quick. So Batman pulls the “I won’t kill you but I don’t have to save you” stuff that lets him skate on a technicality in Batman Begins only here he does it to Owlman, and in doing so, he straight up causes the death of Earth 2 Flash. That’s a dealbreaker for me.

Watch Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths on Amazon.

Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010)

Bruce Greenwood is a great Batman. Under The Red Hood is another story that was better as a movie than it was as a comic, in part because of the voice casting (Greenwood as Bats, Neil Patrick Harris as Nightwing), and in part because the action sequences were fantastic. The comic was the story of Jason Todd, post resurrection, rejoining Gotham’s crimefighting community as DC’s Punisher, rounding up a bunch of mob types and eventually the Joker to get his revenge.

read more: How the Avengers Cartoon Influenced the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Thirteen Days is an amazing movie, so Greenwood could have spent his next 10 movies drooling and laughing at the audience and I still would love him, but here (and in Young Justice), he’s a great, understated Batman. The fights are really top notch, though, and they're the absolute biggest draw to this movie: acrobatic, with great flow and excellent choreography.

Watch Batman: Under the Red Hood on Amazon.

Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (2010)

I first watched this right after I saw Crisis on Two Earths, so I was a little harder on it initially than I needed to be. Then again, even without my initial reservation, this is not very good.

Superman/Batman: Apocalypse is an adaptation of Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner’s second arc of the Superman/Batman comic, this one gave us Supergirl’s emergence on Earth, Darkseid’s attempt at making her into a Female Fury, and cheekbones so high every guy looked like a starving, effeminate Punisher symbol.

read more - The Enduring Appeal of Batman: The Animated Series

My problem with it stems from Batman commiting murder again - he frees Kara from Darkseid’s clutches by (ugh I hate that I’m going to type this) turning on Apokalips’ self destruct sequence with some spores or something. He tells Darkseid he’ll shut the destruct sequence off if Darkseid lets Kara go. This is the rough equivalent of Batman holding a gun on someone’s spouse and saying “I won’t shoot if you stop doing crime.” It’s patently ridiculous, and grossly out of character for Batman, and you know what? I’m still mad about it.

Watch Superman/Batman: Apocalypse on Amazon.

Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam (2010)

This wasn’t so much a movie as it was a lost Justice League Unlimited episode that works Black Adam into the world, and then a collection of a few other shorts that had been released on DVDs. The Superman/Shazam/Black Adam story is fun and entertaining, and the other stories on here are pretty good.

read more: The Amazing Music of the 1960s Spider-Man Animated Series

One is a fluffy, insubstantial Jonah Hex story; one has Neal McDonough playing Green Arrow, which is probably going to be difficult to reconcile for Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow fans, another has Gary Cole as ‘70s detective Jimmy Corrigan, who becomes The Spectre. These are all fun enough to watch if you find them in a bargain bin somewhere, but I don’t think I’d spend full price on one.

Watch Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam on Amazon.

All-Star Superman (2011)

All-Star Superman is tough. The original comic, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, is probably my favorite comic of all time, so on the one hand I was excited to see it adapted, but on the other I was furious to see it adapted.

read more: Everything You Need to Know About the Harley Quinn Animated Series

My rule for moving stories between mediums is that there has to be a compelling point to make the switch - that it would look amazing in action, or that it would bring the story to more people, or something. There wasn’t really any point to doing All-Star Superman, though. It was so peculiarly comics that I think it lost something when it became animation. It was competently done, and had I not had any knowledge of the comic, I probably would have been happy with it, even if it was a little forgettable. But I really think the comic is a vastly better use of your time and money.

Watch All Star Superman on Amazon.

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (2011)

Like Gotham Knight, this is an anthology. But unlike Gotham Knight, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights is actually good. The movie has a unified framing sequence involving Krona destroying Oa, but most of its time is spent on a collection of stories that are either fundamental to the Lantern mythology or all-time classics.

Alan Moore might not do great in the movies, but in animated form (well, here, at least...there's another attempt down below that we'll get to), his work is treated very well. Emerald Knights has two of his stories – “Mogo Doesn’t Socialize,” about the planet that’s also a Lantern, and “Abin Sur,” the story of Hal Jordan’s predecessor’s last mission (which led to the formation of the Red Lanterns). Both of them retain the spirit of his work, and fill out a casual viewer’s understanding of the GL mythos.

read more: The Essential Episodes of Tales From the Cryptkeeper

Kilowog gets a spotlight, and it’s as fun as you’d expect (note: Kilowog is awesome). Laira gets into a fistfight with her Dad and sets up her eventual trip to Ysmault, and there is a story of how the Lanterns eventually came to use creative constructs in their regular duties.

This is good for long time GL fans, and it’s good for people who are just getting to know the character and want more about his world.

Watch Green Lantern: Emerald Knights on Amazon.

Batman: Year One (2011)

Only once has a casting decision completely overwhelmed everything else about one of these projects, and it was here. This is a compressed adaptation of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s classic story. As a result, they miss some parts and pay too little attention to others because the run time is barely over an hour.

But that’s not important.

Casting Bryan Cranston as Jim Gordon is so unbelievably perfect that I can’t believe there isn’t some kind of internet petition demanding that this happen in perpetuity. It’s like JK Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson: it doesn’t matter how many times the story gets rebooted or how many different studios are in charge of the movies or how many different eras the story covers, there is now and will always be only one correct casting for Gordon, and that’s Cranston.

read more: 10 Hilarious Ways the Original Voltron Censored Death A brief note about the combo packs: I believe they used the latest printing of Batman: Year One in the combo release with the DVD, and because of that, you should buy the two separately here. There were real problems with the coloring in the new edition, so make sure you get an older version of the comic.

Watch Batman: Year One on Amazon.

Justice League: Doom (2012)

I’m sure it wouldn't be so well regarded were it not for this, but Justice League: Doom reunites most of the old DCAU voice cast (Kevin Conroy, Tim Daly, Susan Eisenberg, Michael Rosenbaum, and Carl Lumbly as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Martian Manhunter), so I will always love it.

It helps that it’s based (very loosely) on “Tower of Babel,” Mark Waid and Howard Porter’s story from JLA. In it, Vandal Savage uses the Xavier Protoco…I mean countermeasures designed to take out the Justice League – Batman’s parents’ bodies are stolen; Wonder Woman gets all hopped up on nanites that make her think everyone is Cheetah (and thus needs a good punching), Superman gets…uh…shot with a kryptonite bullet… You know, killing some of these dudes isn’t rocket science.

read more: The Scariest Episodes of The Real Ghostbusters

Anyway, it turns out all these countermeasures were designed by Batman, but stolen by Vandal Savage and the Secret Society of Super Villains, and everybody gets saved by Cyborg. The fights were good, while the writing was clever and changed enough from the comics that it showed Dwayne McDuffie’s wonderful grasp of the characters.

Watch Justice League: Doom on Amazon.

Superman vs. The Elite (2012)

Action Comics #775 (“What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?”) is a really good comic. It was a direct response to The Authority’s “if superheroes were real, they’d all be murderous assholes” attitude, and it had some really sweet Doug Mahnke art. As a restatement of Superman’s core principles, it was incredibly effective, but also fairly complex philosophically...at least for a Superman comic.

read more: Why is Vehicle Voltron Forgotten?

So that’s why Superman vs. The Elite is utterly puzzling.

It’s fundamentally the same story. Superman battles “The Elite,” a group of morally grey anti-heroes who reflect the dark, shitty world of today. They start killing all the villains, and Superman tries to stop them, so they fight, and Superman wins by showing them he can kill them whenever he wants, but he refuses to because he wants them to be better than that. But the whole thing is done in this ridiculous cartoony art style, like if someone wanted to hand draw a more violent Super Hero Squad Show, and it undercuts any complexity or nuance that the script might have been trying to get across.

Watch Superman vs. The Elite on Amazon.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (2013)

Warner Brothers released this adaptation of Frank Miller’s genre-changing, character-breaking work in two parts, but they’re one movie and you’re fooling yourself if you treat them differently. The first part takes the mutant story, and the second has the showdowns with the Joker and Superman.

read more: Extreme Ghostbusters is Better Than You Remember

In my head, when I envision Batman, it’s always Miller’s. I like a Batman that’s massive and hulking, who carries himself in the most intimidating way possible and terrifies people just by being in the same room as them. This movie was one of the more successful ones at adapting the art style as well as the story, and the fight in the mudpit between Batman and the mutant leader is one of my favorite moments from any film in this series.

Watch Batman: The Dark Knight Returns on Amazon.

Superman Unbound (2013)

Superman Unbound was based loosely on Geoff Johns’ and Gary Frank’s story of Superman meeting Brainiac from just before the New 52 reboot, and it's certainly better than this movie. In it, Superman is helping Supergirl adjust to life on Earth and dealing with a secret relationship with Lois when a robot drone hits just outside of Arizona. It’s a scout for Brainiac, and it means the villain is coming to destroy the planet and capture a city.

The biggest crime of the movie is that it wastes John Noble as Brainiac. Also, there's a faint whiff of anti-intellectualism. And the anti-museum-ness of it. And how Superman beats Brainiac by exposing a latent mental illness.

read more: The Craziest Episodes of the Beetlejuice Animated Series

It feels hurried, like they had a little more exposition that would have made all this feel less mean-spirited and on-the-nose, but it got cut for time. Noble doesn’t really get much to do besides gently sneer at Superman, a gross waste of the man who should have won every Emmy imaginable for his work as the various Walter Bishops on Fringe. Yes, even Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy.

Watch Superman Unbound on Amazon.

Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013)

It might be controversial, but I think I liked the movie version better than I did the comic mega-crossover that started the New 52. The Flashpoint Paradox is a what-if story where Barry Allen successfully goes back in time to stop his mother’s murder, and wakes up in a horrible world where his mother is alive, but Themyscira and Atlantis are about to destroy the world; Batman is Thomas Wayne instead of Bruce (and he murders), while Cyborg is the leader of the Justice League, trying to stop the Amazon/Atlantis war.

It really works. In the comics, it was large to the point of unwieldy, and tough for someone not already neck deep in DC lore to get passionately invested in, because we’d seen it before, and that robbed it of anything resembling real stakes.

On screen, though, it’s much more interesting and effective, and a lot of excess is cut away by the short run time. Michael B. Jordan is a good Cyborg, and Kevin McKidd as Thomas Wayne did a good job of fitting into the continuum of Batmans.

Watch Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox on Amazon.

Justice League: War (2014)

I have a confession to make: remember how I said that the quality of the movies is usually directly related to the quality of the comic they’re based on? Well, I HATED the first arc of New 52 Justice League. Anakin burbling rage crawling out of a lava pit doesn’t even begin to describe how angry the comic made me.

So...it was tough to watch Justice League: War. Everyone in it is a monosyllabic jackass except Wonder Woman, who just talks like a naive 5 year old who’s just leaving the house for the first time. Yes I know that’s the point of this Wonder Woman, but she sounds like an idiot and that’s not what she’s supposed to be.

I’m baffled, after we’ve had so many good individual Darkseids that they would choose to do that awful composite voice for him, and by the time I turned the movie off in disgust, the movie was also well on its way to turning Billy Batson into a smarmy little dipshit.

Watch Justice League: War on Amazon.

Son of Batman (2014)

I don’t get why Deathstroke had to be shoved into this. He shows up exactly once in Grant Morrison’s entire run, and that’s as much out of obligation (Deathstroke is a good Robin villain, but not a good anyone else villain, so having him show up for five minutes to fight Dick Grayson as Batman and Damian was nice), so it’s not like the source material screamed for his inclusion.

But Warner Bros. just keep pushing him into other media trying to make him seem cool. Look, he worked okay in Arrow and he was one of the best parts of Teen Titans, but there is no reason to shoehorn him into the League of Shadows.

Son of Batman movie is okay, but Deathstroke was a symptom of its bigger problem. It tries too hard.

Watch Son of Batman on Amazon.

Batman: Assault on Arkham (2014)

Assault on Arkham is an original story set in the world of the Batman: Arkham games.

Nothing about Assault on Arkham is Earth-moving. It isn't even a terribly clever look at any of the characters (Deadshot, the Riddler, King Shark, Harley, Joker, Captain Boomerang, or Batman). It’s just a brief-ish action flick that’s a lot of fun and worth your time.

Watch Batman: Assault on Arkham on Amazon.

Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015)

Thankfully, the direct sequel to Justice League: War turned off almost all of the qualities that I hated, and kept up a solid action base. It even managed to make some of the douchery fun (very likely attributable to the switch from Justin Kirk back to Nathan Fillion for Hal Jordan's voice).

This story combined a couple of arcs of Geoff Johns’ New 52 Aquaman - the first arc that introduces Arthur as a serious player in the DCU, and the “Throne of Atlantis” crossover with Justice League. Sam Witwer as Ocean Master was a lot more fun than I figured he’d be, even if I do usually enjoy him because I loved him as Starkiller in The Force Unleashed.

Arthur Curry discovers his origin as a half-Atlantean heir to the throne and with the help of the Justice League and his Civil War general-esque mutton chop sideburns, he manages to stop a war between Atlantis and the surface world. I wouldn’t put this in the top five, but it was enjoyable enough.

Watch Justice League: Throne of Atlantis on Amazon.

Batman vs. Robin (2015)

The Court of Owls has been a good addition to the Bat universe in the comics, but in their first animated appearance, they fall a little flat. Damian is being willful and sneaking out to do crimefighting, and Batman wants him to slow it down a little. They run into Talon, and the Court tries to bring Bruce into the fold, but he declines (with punches) and everybody fights. It’s a little more complex than that, but not by much.

As with the rest of the latest batch of new movies, the fights in Batman vs. Robin are great. Hell, I think Talon even moved like Mugen from Samurai Champloo in his fight with Nightwing.

But the big problem here was the writing - it was a weird combination of on the nose and clumsy that took me out of the movie. Like at the end, when Talon is leading his army into Wayne Manor to fight Batman, and he’s already found out that Bruce Wayne and Batman are the same, but he walks into a room saying “End of the line, Bruce. Or should I say...Batman!” and it’s supposed to be this big dramatic moment, but he’s dressed as Batman, so it’s not really surprising that he’s deduced that Batman stands in front of him.

Or when the Court is first mentioned, it’s in a flashback conversation between Bruce and his father, after his father recites the Gotham-specific Court of Owls nursery rhyme. Bruce asks his father “Is it real?” and the conversation goes (rough paraphrasing)

“Is there a secret cabal of billionaires controlling Gotham and sending their Talon out to kill anyone who disagrees with them?”

“Yeah.”

“Well principles of mediocre storytelling dictate that that’s exactly what’s going to happen, Bruce. We didn’t even bother shading it a little.”

Watch Batman vs. Robin on Amazon.

Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015)

As time has gone on, DC Universe Original Movies have drifted from comic adaptations to encompass projects like this one, an entirely original story that fulfills all the promise of the feature-length animated movies. Gods and Monsters feels like a classic Elseworlds story, a world where small changes mean wholesale differences in the “modern day” world. In it, Superman is the child of Not Jor-El and Lara, but Lara and General Zod, found and raised by undocumented immigrants on their way into the USA. Wonder Woman is Highfather’s granddaughter. Batman is Kirk Langstrom gone full vampire.

Like the best Elseworlds stories, there is plenty of fanservice (every DCU super-scientist except Professor Milo gets some face time), but it also wisely avoids the What If trap - there’s no mention of Diana or Bruce Wayne. Just a story about a violent, cynical Justice League coming to terms with a darker world. It’s really great.

Watch Justice League: Gods and Monsters on Amazon.

Batman: Bad Blood (2016)

Bad Blood is technically an original story, but it might as well be Batman, Inc.: The Movie. Batman seemingly dies saving Batwoman from The Heretic (!) and his gang of z-lister backup. Oh, and we find out that Talia has a plot to hypnotize the most powerful people in the world into obeying her. Dick as Batman, Damian, Batwoman, and Luke Fox in the Batwing costume all have to save the day.

Dick Grayson is my third favorite Robin, but Dick and Damian are my favorite Batman & Robin pair, and as soon as I realized that that’s what this movie would be, I got excited. It’s a direct sequel to the last two Batman movies (Son of Batman and Batman vs. Robin), but it’s vastly superior in every way. The opening fight sequence might be the best out of all these movies, and even a full day after watching it for the first time, I’m still ASTOUNDED that they put The Heretic in there and didn’t make it silly or pointless.

Watch Batman: Bad Blood on Amazon.

Justice League vs. Teen Titans (2016)

This movie came at what seemed to be a weird transition time for DC Universe Original Movies. DC was pushing hard for everything to be Justice League related, hence the shoehorned in title and adult team. The story ended up being a very loose adaptation of the classic Teen Titans storyline, "The Terror of Trigon," where Raven's father, the lord of Hell, Trigon, attempts to take over Earth by controlling members of the League.

The end product is fairly middling. It suffers a bit from the weird continuity of the animated movies - it's also a loose sequel to the previous handful of in-continuity DC animated movies. It's also hurt by something endemic to the Teen Titans features on this list: the story was already done better by the mid-aughts Teen Titans animated series. However, the fight scenes continue to improve over the prior movies, and that's enough to make this entertaining and watchable, even if the movie isn't really anything to write home about.

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Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)

Piping hot garbage.

Oh, you want more? Ok. Don't adapt Alan Moore stories.

[Editor's note: Jim...]

Okay fine. The original comic this movie was based on was roughly 60 pages long, enough content to fill probably 45 minutes without long, uncomfortable silences to pad the length. The story follows the Joker as he shoots Barbara Gordon in the spine, then kidnaps Commissioner Gordon, strips him naked, and makes him ride through a funhouse full of pictures of her naked and bleeding out. So rather than pad it, they put a half hour of prologue on the story where they turn Batgirl into a whining narcissist with a weird hot/cold sexual relationship with Batman and a Gay Best Friend (tm). This Batman/Batgirl relationship is probably the worst thing that Timm et al have foisted on Batman continuity - it came up in Batman Beyond, and it was super weird there, too.

Ultimately, the Joker is unsuccessful in his attempts to torture Commissioner Gordon into insanity. Maybe he should have just shown him this movie. The subpar animation alone probably would have worked.

Watch Batman: The Killing Joke on Amazon

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016)

Your reaction to this movie is going to depend entirely on how much you worship the 1960s Batman TV series. If you've never experienced it, whether you care to at some point in the future or not, you should skip this. If you liked it, if you enjoyed watching it in reruns when you got home from school, but you've felt almost no need to revisit it in more than a decade, you'll probably get a kick out of parts of this. If you adore it and put Adam West's version of the character higher than Kevin Conroy's, this movie is aimed squarely at you and the only question is how sensitive you are to pandering.

I'm being a little negative, because I fall squarely in the second group. This animated movie brings Adam West back as Batman; Burt Ward as Robin; and Julie Newmar as Catwoman; and its animating premise is "what would an episode of the old TV show look like if it was an hour long and unrestrained by being a live action tv show?" They crank the nostalgia up to 10, with the Pows and the Thwacks and the other violence-averting title cards, but they also sneak in a cloud-light but still entertaining story about Batman turning bad and duplicating himself over and over until he takes over all of Gotham. There are some genuinely inspired bits - the fact that evil Batman lifts whole lines from Dark Knight Returns is pretty funny - and great voice work from Ward and West (replacement Police Chief Batman deadpanning "Begorrah" was also hilarious), but this movie is mostly really uneven.

The animation tries really hard to replicate the TV show, and it gets a little jinky in parts, and Julie Newmar's Catwoman voice...it's not there anymore. If you loved the old show, there's probably enough here to be worth your while. If not, you should skip it.

Watch Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders on Amazon

Justice League Dark (2017)

Matt Ryan is a gem. TV's John Constantine has managed to successfully inhabit the role, from his own show on NBC, through guest spots on Arrow, a regular role on Legends of Tomorrow, and now in an animated story about DC's magical heroes banding together to save the world. Dr. Destiny the sneakily good and criminally underused villain, is causing regular people to hallucinate that they are surrounded by demons, making them commit horrible crimes against their fellow man. Constantine, Zatanna, Batman, and Deadman gather a team of mystical heroes, band together, and eventually defeat the bad guy.

This movie is a lot of fun. Ryan's voice and screenwriter Ernie Altbeck's script do a great job of capturing scumbag Constantine. The story ends up featuring Etrigan heavily, and that's always a good thing. Justice League Dark ended up being one of the best recent entries into the DC animated movie universe.

Buy Justice League Dark on Amazon

Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017)

Despite facing the same structural weaknesses as Justice League vs. Teen Titans, The Judas Contract overcomes almost all of them thanks to much stronger writing.

The Judas Contract was one of the first movies announced for this slate, but for a variety of reasons took the better part of a decade to come out. That's usually the kiss of death for a movie, but the strength of the source material is such that the various shifts that went into it - Damian as Robin, Jaime Reyes' Blue Beetle - ended up making the movie stronger. Terra, a geomorph, joins the Teen Titans as they adjust to life as a superhero team. Turns out she's a plant, put in place by Deathstroke the Terminator to rip the team apart from the inside.

The voice work is stellar. Christina Ricci makes Terra vulnerable, badass, and creepy all at the same time, and Miguel Ferrer does great work as Deathstroke in one of his final roles. And much like Justice League vs. Teen Titans, the fight scenes are exemplary, especially the ones involving Nightwing. The Judas Contract easily ranks in the top 5 of these animated movies.

Buy Teen Titans: The Judas Contract on Amazon

Batman and Harley Quinn (2017)

Believe it or not, this was not the first time I've ever said "Oh cool, the Floronic Man" out loud. I was kidding both times I said it, and it seems Bruce Timm and I are on the same page here.

Timm wrote this movie, and considers it a part of the DC Animated Universe proper - Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester are back in their New Batman Adventures roles of Batman and Nightwing, while Melissa Rauch from Big Bang Theory takes over as Harley. And what we ultimately get is a straight up comedy.

It was a little jarring at first - Harley doing the nasty with Nightwing, the casual vulgarity, the superheroine-themed Hooters style restaurant. But I'll be damnd if these folks aren't talented as hell. The writing is spot on, the action is as good as it always is, and the delivery, especially from Rauch, is outstanding. There's one fart sequence in the Batmobile that is maybe the funniest thing that's been in the Timmverse. It's offbeat, but Batman and Harley Quinn is worth watching if you're a DCAU fan.

Watch Batman and Harley Quinn on Amazon

Batman vs. Two-Face (2017)

The latest and presumably final Batman '66 animated movie is much like the first. It's clever and fun, like a really good episode of the television show. But the fact that this is Adam West's final appearance as Batman also makes it a little melancholy.

The movie shows us the '66 version of Two-Face's origin, then jumps ahead to what seems to be his last caper. It borrows heavily from the Two-Face story in Dark Knight Returns, only if you added in King Tut and Bookworm. William Shatner does outstanding work bouncing between Harvey Dent and Two-Face, playing Dent as timid and adding a growly gurgle to Two-Face's voice. The writers add in a few inspired jokes to keep the story moving briskly. And the memorial to West is touching. This is worth watching for that connection to history, and because it's well made and entertaining.

Watch Batman vs. Two-Face on Amazon

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight

Here’s the problem with adapting iconic stories like Gotham by Gaslight: you have to capture what made the comic iconic in the first place, and I can tell you that the premise wasn’t it. “Steampunk Batman vs. Jack the Ripper” made up enough fanfiction to occupy 1/6th of all the storage capacity of Web 1.0. So strike one against the animated adaptation is that the animation style wasn’t Mike Mignola. It actually looked more like Ed McGuiness - normally not a problem, but it didn’t work here.

read more - Batman: Gotham by Gaslight Review

Secondly, I haven’t had a reaction to a DC movie reveal like this since Man of Steel. When Clark snapped Zod’s neck, the person I saw the movie with had to shush me because I was saying “NOPE” too loudly in the theater. The person I saw this with had the same reaction when we found out who Jack was. I won’t spoil anything, but you should make an effort to skip this one if you can.

Watch Batman: Gotham by Gaslight on Amazon

Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay

What a pleasant surprise Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is. This isn’t the first time the Squad has been put into animated form - their Arkham games franchise version showed up in an earlier flick (Assault on Arkham) and they’ve been in the Justice League animated series and will turn up in Young Justice shortly - but this is the version that had the most fidelity to the classic comics that launched the team.

read more - Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay is Better Than the DCEU Movie

The John Ostrander/Kim Yale/Luke McDonnell run on Suicide Squad is one of the best runs of any superhero comic of all time. They packed the cast with obscure villains and killed them almost at will, but the ones they kept there had real tension and strongly developed characters. We get all of that in this movie. It’s twisty, fun, violent and full of bad people and good ones doing bad things. Three big names (at least for Suicide Squad fans) die in the first 15 minutes just to show how badass somebody is. Hell to Pay is a ton of fun.

Watch Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay on Amazon

Batman: Ninja

Do not touch anything that might possibly be considered a mind altering substance before viewing Batman: Ninja. You won’t come back. Here’s an example of why:

The climax of the film sees Deathstroke, Gorilla Grodd, Penguin, Poison Ivy, and Two Face’s castles merge to form one super mech castle under the control of Joker and Harley Quinn, creating ultra mecha Lord Joker. Grodd, mad at the Joker for taking over his castle, gives Batman and Robin control of his army of monkeys, who merge to form one giant gestalt samurai monkey to fight Mecha Lord Joker. When that’s not enough to win, the Bat Clan ninja call out an army of bats, who wrap the super monkey in their flapping wings and form the Bat God (who is actually just Jiro Kuwata’s Batman from Batmanga).

If you even have a strong beer before watching that, you’re not going to process it. But you should totally watch it. It’s every bit as bonkers as it sounds. And it’s gorgeous to look at. DC tried something very different with Batman: Ninja, and succeeded.

Watch Batman: Ninja on Amazon

The Death of Superman/Reign of the Supermen

Other movies in this continuity have functioned as sequels, but The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen aren’t really sequential films. They’re two halves of the same movie. That feels unfair, because both structurally function as independent movies, but it’s so hard to treat them separately because it’s impossible to imagine one without the other. Even with their close ties, they’re both very entertaining.

The success of Death/Reign isn’t in their skill at adapting the classic Superman stories to animation. It’s actually in their skill in adapting the classic Superman stories to the DCAU continuity. The comics they’re based on are underrated classics. The books are written off as ‘90s gimmicks because on their face they are - killing off a beloved character with a polybagged splash-page-only issue is only missing “clone” and “variant covers” to hit Speculator Bingo. But underneath those tropes was a genuine, moving, emotionally honest story with some timelessly great art, and a reexamination of Superman’s relevance in a world that seemed to be moving on.

You don’t necessarily get that depth out of animated Death/Reign, but you do get a sense of Superman’s value in the world that these DCAU movies have created - a Justice League full of heavy hitters fighting not to let Clark down, a Steel and Superboy fighting to live up to the legacy they’ve inherited and a Hank Henshaw with some legitimate complaints. It’s also a lot of fun to see what they’ve tweaked to fit the continuity, and what they cribbed from other sources (there’s a LOT of Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey in Reign of the Supermen) to fill out the tale. Both of these movies are worth your time.

Watch Reign of the Supermen on Amazon

Justice League vs. the Fatal Five

Justice League vs. the Fatal Five is essentially a three episode arc of the Timm/Dini Justice League series set in an indeterminate continuity. Make of that what you will, but as someone who almost constantly rewatches that show, I don't understand how you could be anything but delighted by that prospect.

One of the best things about that concept is the bait and switch the creators pulled with the movie. It's billed as the big return of George Newbern, Susan Eisenberg and Kevin Conroy to their pitoval Justice League characters, but they're fairly incidental to the story. This movie is Star Boy and Jessica Cruz's show, with supporting roles for Mister Terrific and Miss Martian. Batman gets to be intimidating for a minute and Wonder Woman gets a couple of scenes to kick a scientific mole's worth of ass (that's the number of asses in 12 grams of Carbon-12, or roughly 6.022x10^23 asses), but Thom Kallor and Jessica Cruz steal the show.

The story starts in the far future with classic Legion of Superheroes villains the Fatal Five (Mano, Tharok, the Persuader, Validus, and the Emerald Empress) beating the hell out of the Legion and eventually stealing their time bubble. Star Boy changes their trajectory and ends up in the past, where his mental health problems are exacerbated and he ends up in Arkham for a bit. Tharok, Manos and the Persuader eventually escape and target Jessica to help them break Validus and the Emerald Empress out of a special prison, and she and Star Boy are the key Leaguers leading the fight back.

The language is a little coarser, the team lineup a little odder, and the action a lot cooler (Mr. Terrific is extra badass in this movie and Wonder Woman fighting the Persuader in mid-air is my favorite fight out of this entire series of movies), but this felt just like the old show. If you liked that, or are a Legion fan and wish there was more of them in media, or if you want to see interesting representations of mental health in media, this movie will work well for you.

Extra credit for bucking the company style guide on the title and sticking with the much more sensical "vs."

Watch Justice League vs. the Fatal Five on Amazon

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