The Dark Knight: A Microscopic Examination

As I've mentioned before, my fandom extends in a few directions, and one of them is Batman. I like a lot of things Batman, especially movies and TV shows, oh, and Batmobile toys. Seriously, if you guys got some of them lying around that you don't want let me know. No price is too absurd! Back on track though, one of the things that I enjoy about the Batman 'verse is the dichotomy between Batman and his infamous arch nemesis, Joker. Batman is nauseatingly wealthy, and that's pretty much the extent of his super power, except that he is also extremely disciplined in most ways. On the flip side of that, the Joker is all about rampant chaos, unpredictability, and inconsistency. He's pretty much the opposite of Batman, which is what makes him such a great character, and why we can have these wonderfully thick philosophical conversations about things.

Today, specifically, I want to take a look at Chris Nolan's comic film masterpiece, The Dark Knight. It's still regarded by many as one of the best comic genre films of all time, and at the very least, it's still considered to be one of the best DC comic films ever, but barring that, it's definitely considered the best Batman film. It breaks the mold of diminishing returns on a sequel, and paired with Batman Begins sets the tone for over a decade of film to come so let's not mess around, here's The Dark Knight.

First, let's take a look at the synopsis via Wikipedia: "A gang of criminals rob a Gotham City mob bank, murdering each other until only the mastermind remains: the Joker, who escapes with the money. Batman, District Attorney Harvey Dent and Lieutenant Jim Gordon form an alliance to rid Gotham of organized crime. Bruce Wayne is impressed with Dent's idealism and offers to support his career; he believes that, with Dent as Gotham's protector, he can give up being Batman and lead a normal life with Rachel Dawes—even though she and Dent are dating."

"Mob bosses Sal Maroni, Gambol, and the Chechen hold a video conference with their corrupt accountant, Lau, who has taken their funds for safekeeping and fled to Hong Kong. The Joker interrupts, warns them that Batman has no jurisdiction and is thus unhindered by the law, and offers to kill him in exchange for half of their money. After Gambol puts a bounty on his head, the Joker kills Gambol and takes over his gang. The mob ultimately decides to take the Joker up on his offer."

"Batman finds Lau in Hong Kong and brings him back to Gotham to testify, allowing Dent to apprehend the entire mob. The Joker threatens to keep killing people unless Batman reveals his identity, and starts by murdering Police Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb and the judge presiding over the mob trial. The Joker also tries to kill Mayor Anthony Garcia, but Gordon sacrifices himself to stop the assassination. Dent learns that Rachel is the next target."

"Bruce decides to reveal his secret identity. Before he can, however, Dent announces that he is Batman. Dent is taken into protective custody, but the Joker appears and attacks the convoy. Batman comes to Dent's rescue and Gordon, who faked his death, apprehends the Joker, securing a promotion to Commissioner. Rachel and Dent are escorted away by detectives on Maroni's payroll; Gordon later learns that they never arrived home. Batman interrogates the Joker, who reveals that they have been trapped in separate locations rigged with explosives. Batman races to save Rachel, while Gordon attempts to rescue Dent. Batman arrives at the building, but realizes that the Joker sent him to Dent's location instead. Both buildings explode, killing Rachel and disfiguring half of Dent's face. The Joker escapes with Lau, whom he later kills along with the Chechen."

"Coleman Reese, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, deduces that Bruce is Batman and tries to go public with the information. Not wanting Reese's revelation to interfere with his plans, the Joker threatens to destroy a hospital unless someone kills Reese. Gordon orders the evacuation of all the hospitals in Gotham and goes to secure Reese. The Joker gives Dent a gun and convinces him to seek revenge for Rachel's death, then destroys the hospital and escapes with a busload of hostages. Dent goes on a killing spree, deciding the fates of people he holds responsible for Rachel's death by flipping his lucky coin."

"After announcing Gotham will be subject to his rule come nightfall, the Joker rigs two evacuating ferries with explosives; one containing civilians and the other containing prisoners. He says that he will blow them both up by midnight, but will let one live if its passengers (who have been supplied the trigger to the other boat's explosives) blow up the other. Batman finds the Joker by using a sonar device that spies on the entire city, with the reluctant help of Lucius Fox. Both the civilians and the prisoners refuse to kill each other, while Batman apprehends the Joker after a brief fight. Before the police arrive to take the Joker into custody, he gloats that Gotham's citizens will lose hope once Dent's rampage becomes public knowledge."

"Gordon and Batman arrive at the building where Rachel perished. Dent shoots Batman, spares himself, and threatens to kill Gordon's son, claiming that Gordon's negligence is responsible for Rachel’s death. Before he can flip for the boy, Batman, who was wearing body armor, tackles Dent off the building to his death. Knowing the Joker would win if people found out the truth, Batman persuades Gordon to hold him responsible for the killing spree to preserve Dent's heroic image. As the police launch a manhunt for Batman, Gordon destroys the Bat-signal, Fox watches as the sonar device self-destructs, and Alfred Pennyworth burns a letter from Rachel saying she planned to marry Dent," and roll credits.

This film delivers on pretty much every level. The story is deep, it's tightly presented, and interesting to watch. The characters are well developed and interesting. There's enough ambiguity to all of them to keep them interesting along the way, too. The shot composition is extremely appealing, as one would expect from a Nolan film. The setting is a bit cleaner than the previous film to reflect all of the progress that Batman has made in cleaning up the city, but there are still areas where you wouldn't want to wander around alone at night. The action and fight sequences are thrilling, and you find yourself rooting for Bats all the way through. Of course, the music is throbbing, powerful, and visceral. All in all, it's a really entertaining experience, but lately, it has left me with a burning question: Have we been rooting for the wrong guy this whole time?

I'm sure this isn't a new theory, and perhaps it's a topic of discussion that's already been done to death, and I'm just not aware of it, but it's a compelling new perspective on a classic film and I think it warrants further examination. First, we see Batman, an unsanctioned vigilante working in cooperation with the police department. Next, we see Batman impersonators trying to literally be Batman with hockey pads and shotguns, demonstrating that Batman has basically incited a rash of vigilantism in Gotham that has officially reached dangerous proportions. Finally, in a sequence that I have seen some commentary on, Batman illegally infiltrates a sovereign nation to kidnap a citizen of that nation. Now we've moved well beyond local vigilantism and into violations of international treaty and due process.

Now take a look at who the Joker targets as he runs amok. There's a judge that made a questionable and unprecedented ruling from the bench in a high profile criminal case against a mob organization, the district attorney who led the prosecution, the assistant district attorney who aided in the case, the police commissioner who constantly turns a blind eye to the activities of a masked crusader who also technically breaks the law on a nightly basis, a police captain who pseudo-sanctions and enables the actions of said crusader, and to send a more poignant message, one of the copy cat Batman guys who represents the spread of an unjust attitude towards the system of due process and the legal system on the whole. Don't get me wrong, I love Batman, but the Joker's motivations, when looked at from such a stark point of view actually make a good bit of sense in a twisted sort of way.

There is some potential for collateral damage along the way, but paying pretty close attention, you might notice that civilians actually get hurt very little in the Joker's vendetta. They get threatened a lot, but never put in any mortal danger that Batman can't diffuse. I also think that it's interesting that Joker looks to hit the mobs where it hurts as well, taking a huge sum of their money to rid Gotham of Batman, and then simply burning it up. That's fairly irrelevant, but it speaks volumes to the Joker's real motivations. It seems he actually dislikes law breakers who skate by without punishment, and is willing to go to some heinous lengths to call them out on their BS.

When you look at things this way, certain elements of the story's symbolism start to gain more meaning and make better sense. Batman represents a pseudo-militant arm of the local constabulary, albeit unsanctioned, that works on the fringes of legality and even constitutionality. He's surrounded himself with like minded people in positions of social power that can buffer him against reprisal from the commonplace civilian, and he's got funding in the same realm of a small nation to fund his actions night after night. The movie doesn't really put much effort into hiding this bit of commentary either. We see Lucius Fox straight up threaten a guy who wants to expose a technical criminal for doing technically criminal things, an act that would have save lives by the way. All the while, Batman is out there blackmailing, assaulting, and basically arresting 'criminals' who, to be fair are usually doing criminal things, without proper authority to be doing any of that in the first place. When we see Batman interrogate the Joker, excessive force is used as Batman tries to beat answers out of Joker. Good thing that GCPD wasn't looking to actually prosecute Joker because I'm sure once Joker's lawyer learned of the treatment, the sociopath would have walked on a laundry list of technicalities. The courts probably would have awarded Joker a key to the city!

Meanwhile, the Joker probably sees himself as the hero in this story, and scary though it might be, it's actually not hard to see him as such as a viewer sometimes either. Yes, his methods are heinous and unconscionable, but he nearly brings down the backdoor arrangement that GCPD has created with Batman, and all GCPD appears to care about the entire time is saving face in front of the public to cover up their actions. The Joker's story arc is not dissimilar to Ed Snowden and his actions to expose unsanctioned, illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens at the hands of the NSA. He probably also saw himself as a hero, and some people agreed with him. It's uncanny that even though the film predates these events by five years, it accurately predicts the illegal and unconstitutional use of technology to essentially spy on legal citizens. Lucius Fox is against the idea, and the film does go out of its way to comment on how this is a terrible idea, but the fact that the idea even comes up, is pretty telling of the times that we were headed for in real life.

I give major kudos to Chris Nolan and the production team for exploring such alarming and potentially controversial themes with such grace and clarity. Whether they did so intentionally or not, it makes for a thought provoking film experience that can leave the viewer asking relevant questions about the nature of their own existence and the world in which they exist. These are questions that as the battle rages over our personal electronic information, we should be asking. There are obviously ways to try to avoid the type of prying that could potentially be happening in our lives everyday, but it's on us to take stock and decide for ourselves where we want that line drawn, and we have to restrict or permit access to our lives via the electronic frontier accordingly. This is a fantastic film to act as a segue into this critical line of thinking and it's a thoroughly entertaining film to boot so give it a watch when you've got some time, and stick around for next week to see we're going to examine next!

Infinity Chamber: A Revelatory Experience

In a world dominated by the deluge of Hollywood's attempt at social homogenization, it's always refreshing to step away from the ineptitude that the culture of the blockbuster has come to represent and find a film that's as smart as it is entertaining. That is to say, with less than a week before literally everyone you know starts asking if you've seen Infinity War like the good little sheeple that Hollywood, specifically Disney wants them to be, I feel like it's a great time to take a look at a different, and probably far superior film with the word infinity in the title. Submitted for your approval this week, this is Infinity Chamber.

The film opens with us staring at our main character, Frank, as he appears to be staring right back at us. There's some ominous music as we see two thugs approach him from behind. How do we know they're thugs? Because they're brandishing pistols. It's hard to tell the actual setting in the way that the shot is composed, but this is probably intentional as we'll see. The thugs train their weapons on Frank for a pretty long time, and then they shoot him. When he awakes, he's disoriented, confused, and in a small-ish room that is darkly lit, and starkly furnished. Seriously, there's a bed, and there's a chair, and that's all. Frank pokes around a bit before a security camera drops from the ceiling and over a PA speaker, a voice asks Frank his name. Frank begins a dialog with the camera as he tries to find out where he is and what he's done to be put there. Unfortunately, the camera is pretty useless, and only gives answers like, "I don't have access to that information."

The conversation turns a little more friendly, and a little less business as the two start to discuss their backgrounds. They talk about where they were born, where they grew up, and a few other mundane things. Through this dialog, Frank learns that camera guy is named Howard, and that Howard is a Life Support Officer, or LSO whose only mission for the time being is to keep Frank alive in his cell while he's processed, although Frank can't get a straight answer as to what type of facility he's being processed into. Howard is keen to point out that he can offer Frank soup in the flavors of chicken, beef, and vegetable, and can offer liquid drinks ranging from plain water to coffee. Howard also has a library of music that he's willing to share with Frank in order to more comfortably pass the time.

As a viewer, we know very little about Frank, and even less about the world in which he lives. We assume since it's a science fiction film that he lives in the future, but we get to be pretty much as lost as the main character. We are treated to a flashback that gives us just a little insight into Frank. We see him wake up in bed in what we assume is his place of residence. He gets some water for his dog. He does some stuff on a laptop and then takes a thumb drive. From this I guessed that we're not too far into the future because films that move to far ahead tend to employ some form of gimmicky looking future memory device. We see Frank ride the subway, and then we see him in a coffee shop. The details aren't all there, but a lovely barista named Gabby offers him several types of coffee before realizing that he was serious about plain black, and getting him that. There's a conversation about some pictures on the wall, Gabby uses some weird intuitive ability to guess Frank's name, then Frank admires the pictures again. At this point, two thugs bust in and shoot him in the back.

Frank is violently awoken from his memory, and finds himself, once again, in his cell. Now this is where it's going to seem thin. We go through this series of memories dozens of times. Every time, we either learn a little bit more about Frank, or we see details change a little bit. To the viewer, this can be a tiny bit frustrating because it feels like the story is going no where, and we're conditioned by inept film studios to believe that repetition in a film is lazy and not entertaining. I'm inclined to agree that repetition in a film without a purpose is lazy and not entertaining, but here, it's got a definite purpose behind it even if we as the viewer don't know what that purpose is yet. It's through this series of repetitive flashbacks that we learn about scanners that are in every place of business. These scanners identify customers, and that identity links to their banking information so that when the customer buys a thing, it's automatically paid for from their bank account. We also learn that the scanner in the coffee shop thought Frank was a totally different person.

Once Frank has this revelation, he attempts to get Howard to help him do something about it. Howard doesn't believe that the biometric technology could make such an egregious mistake at first, but when Howard looks at the transfer records for Frank, there are some suspicious inconsistencies that lead Howard to believe that Frank may be onto something. Unfortunately for Frank, the only way that Howard is able to get any attention from anyone who can do anything is to experience a hardware failure. Also unfortunately for Frank, if Howard is aware that Frank is going to try to do something that will damage the hardware, the cell has built in deterrent devices that will kick in. Frank gives up on that plan and starts to work on a new one with Howard just in time to hit the camera as hard as possible, thus breaking it. The camera goes dead and Frank is left alone.

He falls back into flashbacks as he waits to see the results of his meddling, but is abruptly pulled back to reality when alarms start going off, and explosion noises carry over the air. The already dark room goes even darker as emergency lighting kicks in, and Frank finds himself even more isolated. After a time, he hears banging coming from a wall. He looks through a vent to see a human face. The face belongs to a guy named Fletcher, and Fletcher claims to be the leader of a resistance group who is caught up in a revolution against the government, who they believe to be totalitarian and fascist. Fletcher and Frank carry on for a while, and during this segment, Fletcher tells Frank about a mysterious fan looking device installed on one wall of the cell. The device is designed to lead people into their memories and gently guide those people to specific memories that the government wants in a form of hypnotic interrogation. Fletcher says that the way to beat the device is to focus on an unrelated memory, and change a detail here or there to lead the device on a wild goose chase through the human mind.

The two create a pretty decent rapport with one another, but Frank hears Fletcher crying as after having dug for probably a long time, Fletcher runs into even more concrete surrounding his cell. At this point, with no power, there hasn't been any food, and not much water save for a slow drip from the ceiling. Fletcher loses composure, and we hear somewhat morbid sounds as Fletcher presumably ends his own life. Once again alone, Frank gives in to despair himself and retreats into his own mind, and the memory that he's been reliving for who knows how long. At the end, he gets shot again, and when he wakes up, everything about his cell is as it was before the explosions. Howard is back, and Frank inquires about Fletcher. Howard goes through the spiel that we heard at the beginning that this confirms Frank's suspicions from earlier in the film that Howard is an artificially intelligent computer who has been rebooted, and had its memory wiped. Frank has to start all over again building his rapport with Howard as he seeks to get more answers about his situation.

The positive in the situation, if one can be found, is that Frank starts taking much better care of himself... Sort of... He starts exercising and eating more, but the flip side is, he also starts spending more time inside his memory trying to piece together why he's been imprisoned. We see a pretty cool montage as he teaches himself to ballroom dance, do martial arts, and generally be a more well-rounded human being, all the while building a relationship with Gabby from the coffee shop. In his mind. It's a little creepy, but I suppose that if I were locked away in a cell without any real human interaction, I'd probably take some pretty drastic measures to try to hang on to my sanity as well. All of this leads up to, in his mind, Frank ambushing the thugs in the coffee shop in order to pump them for information as to why he's been interned. Of course, this is all in Frank's mind so the thugs are all but useless because Frank can't magically divine information that he never had to begin with.

In reality, Frank has also been planning an actual jail break, and he pulls the trigger on that as well. He sets off the alarm system after grabbing a pipe from his bathroom. The lights go down, the gas that the cell uses to subdue inmates goes off, but Frank has filtered his breathing holes. An automated robot comes out of a small opening in the wall below the device, and Frank shoves the pipe through the robot. He scurries through the opening, and as the robot attempts to follow, it catches the pipe on the opening to the space beyond. Frank moves quickly through squat crawlspaces before finding himself in a dark warehouse type of space. He finds a flashlight, and does some sneaking around, avoiding another  robot, before finding a ladder. He climbs the ladder, which leads to a hatch, which leads to a desert. It looks suspiciously like southern California, but that's cool. The desert is an unforgiving ecosystem, and as we're watching we figure Frank has a pretty well defined expiration date.

Frank takes to his exodus through the desert quickly as he races against time to find some way to survive. He ends up spending one night in a crawlspace of a wind power mill, and then the next day, he finally stumbles across a gas station. This is the one scene where we get out product placement because most gas stations come coupled with a convenience store. Frank skulks through this one, and finds the refrigerator where the water is kept. He grabs a bottle and begins to guzzle. He stops abruptly, a look of terror on his face as his reflection in the fridge door changes to a picturesque black and white photo of a stand of trees on the banks of a pond that looks... Suspiciously like the picture that he became infatuated with at the coffee shop. At that moment, the thugs show up, and shoot him in the back.

Frank wakes up, once again, in his cell, and supremely confused as he attempts to make sense of what happened. He spends a lot of time building his relationship with Gabby, mostly to escape the fact that Howard hasn't been able to give him anything to eat, or drink for a while. Also, Howard's voice shows signs that he's a piece of equipment on the brink of failure. Starvation, and dehydration push Frank to dejected and desperate measures as he tries to reason with Howard about letting him go. Frank finally comes clean as to why he's in the cell probably hoping that in doing so, Howard will finally release him, but it turns out that Frank is a computer programmer who wrote a virus that could cripple the government's digital infrastructure, and the government wanted to know the whereabouts of the flash drive that has the virus on it. Frank hid it behind the picture at the coffee shop, and that's why the coffee shop became such a significant portion of Frank's flashbacks. This revelation does nothing to persuade Howard to release Frank, and so Frank has to turn to breaking Howard using logical paradoxes. It does, however, come as a blow to the gut for the audience, at least it did for me. Here I had been rooting for someone whom I had thought was wrongfully accused, and it turns out that he knew why he was there the whole time! It's a fantastic twist, and it just builds more layers of mystery around the central plot.

Howard's one job is to keep Frank alive, but keeping Frank in the cell will inevitably kill him. Howard, like any robot with a program, has a difficult time understanding this. Frank persists finally using some cloth to tie a make shift noose around Howard's camera and hang himself. Howard is powerless to stop Frank and calls in the backup robot. It's at about this point when Frank's noose tears (we're led to believe that Frank engineered it this way), and Frank scurries out via the crawlspace again. He finds the flashlight, and pokes around a bit more this time. He finds an office where he finds out that Howard is an acronym to describe the type of equipment that Frank has been making friends with for forever. Frank and Howard have a poignant conversation about whether or not Frank can fix Howard, and Frank pulls the plug. He walks away and finds the ladder. He gets a bit emotional as he realizes that the ordeal is finally over, and then climbs the ladder. He finds himself in a snowy, mountainous terrain and he starts wandering. As he's wandering, he stumbles across a stand of trees on the shores of a frozen pond that look exactly like the picture! Fearing that he's still stuck in the interrogation, he falls to his knees.

Two hikers stumble across him and take him back  to safety. At this point we get some much deserved context to this whole thing. It turns out that the government had indeed become super corrupt, and that they were using 1984 level automated spying technology to keep the masses under their thumbs. They had several black site internment facilities like the one where Frank was held where they would conduct these trippy interrogations on enemies of the state. However, there was indeed a virus that wiped out the infrastructure, and over two hundred other detainees died in their cells. Frank was the only survivor as his Howard unit was the only unit to remain active in the fallout, drawing power from barely functioning wind turbines near the site. The previous government has been ousted, and the new world welcomes Frank as a hero. This is where we actually find out about the hiding place of the flash drive, and Frank keeps a promise to himself to find the barista and get to know her. It turns out though that Gabby is actually Madeline, who just wears whatever apron happens to be hanging around. Gabby had quit working at the coffee shops years before. The two have some moments together and become fast friends as they talk through the night. The camera pulls to a wider angle and we see them enjoying each other's company in the coffee shop. The camera keeps pulling and then refocuses to a shadowy image of Howard's camera hanging from the ceiling as the film cuts to credits.

And it's at that point that I got chills! Guys, this film is objectively, and hands down amazing! This movie is a perfect example of how limitations can lead to stronger art. While there's certainly nothing wrong with throwing all of the money at a project where no less that twenty five big name stars are acting like superheroes, giving people everything they want rarely results in great results. And why not? After all, they've already gotten everything that they want so why should they give anything more than what's required. I already know that I'm going to be in the infinitesimal minority here, but Infinity War is probably going to be a bloated mess weighed down by all of its big name stars and their collective egos, and the push to give each big character its moment. Even spreading that across two films won't do much to alleviate those problems. If this prediction comes true, just remember that you heard it first. That said, this is the world that we live in. Disney, and other studios make films with weak foundations, and think that the fix is to throw more money at them, which typically works out okay because China. That's why it's so refreshing to see that there are still smart movies being made. Don't get me wrong, if the MCU is your thing, you do you. I simply feel it's vindicating to see such a well done film that isn't relying on a budget that surpasses the GDP of a third world nation. I may sound a bit snobbish here, but it's films like Infinity Chamber that we as consumers should be supporting more, if anything, just to tell Hollywood that we want to see smarter, more carefully crafted movies.

I was unable to find actual numbers on Infinity War, but rumor has it that the cost of that film will be approaching 500 million dollars. By comparison, Infinity Chamber had a tiny budget so small that the director, Travis Milloy, had to build sets by himself in order to save money. What we get is a film with a spot on scope that realizes it needs to maintain scope because it can't afford to broaden it. We get a film with a tight script, good acting, and that invites the audience to play along. This is a thinking person's movie, and those are exceptionally rare in these days of tent pole blockbuster franchises that rely on popcorn films to carry them, and that tend to play things safe. This film takes a chance that audiences will stick with its fairly slow plot. It also takes a chance that audiences will forgive not knowing what's actually going on. Even by the end of the film, you as a member of the audience don't know whether Frank has found actual reality, or if he's still in the interrogation. It's a film that uses ambiguity to leave the audience confused and disoriented, but that teases enough along the way to keep them trying to figure things out. There have been a lot of complaints in other reviews that it runs too long, and I have to disagree. It's all of the flashback sequences that change slightly over time that give us insights into Frank as a character and help us to try along with him to guess why he's been locked up. Contrary to popular Hollywood belief, it's crucially important that an audience connects with a character on an emotional level in order for them to get invested in the narrative. If it doesn't happen, the whole movie is dragged down. Also, this connection and empathy for Frank sets up one of the twists at the end, and was necessary in order for the twist to carry the emotional weight that the director was going for.

This movie has not one, but three twists that would make Shyamalan blush, and it does one twist twice! That's a smartly written script. Milloy seems unconcerned with how flashy his movie is, or how much CGI he can afford, and more focused on telling a good story, and that definitely shows. I started watching this at about 11:30 pm, and I was enraptured the entire time. I never felt like it was too long, or that it dragged. Quite the opposite. I looked at how long was left wondering how the film was going to tie everything up so quickly, and expecting a let down ending. That let down never came. I was shocked by the ending, and appreciative of the sociopolitical commentary that the film was trying to offer, and as I said before, the ending literally gave me goosebumps. We live in a world where the likes of Christopher Nolan represent the high concept art of intellectual film, and I'd say if Travis Milloy represents the up and comers, Nolan had better step up his game. Infinity Chamber will not disappoint if you give it a watch. Well, if you like intellectual, thought provoking science fiction. If you prefer the popcorn blockbuster, then to each their own, but if you want a taste of what real effort can produce, take a look at this hidden gem. You can watch it on Netflix right now! And stay tuned to next week to see what we've got to examine then!

The Batman Arkham Trilogy: A Trio of Tremendously Tantalizing Games

Recently, I picked up a copy of Batman: Return to Arkham, a remastering of the highly acclaimed Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Batman: Arkham City. It may surprise you to learn that besides being a big fan of Star Trek, I also enjoy things related to Batman as well. I know! I'm so full of surprises! I discovered Arkham Asylum in 2009 so shortly after it was released. It was at that exact moment that a romance born. We'll get to that. The Arkham series was built on a pretty solid foundation, although that was not the case at the beginning. In the beginning, Arkham Asylum was a rhythm game in the vein of Dance Dance Revolution. Although that might have been a pretty fun way to play, and certainly an innovative use of the technology, my pasty 35 year old body probably wouldn't enjoy it very much now. However, that idea of getting into a rhythm to do things like combat carried through and influenced several games later on down the road. Let's delve into this franchise and see what they're all about.

Arkham Asylum

Arkham Asylum, in my opinion took the world by storm. The premise is actually really good, especially in an overall franchise where everything has already been done. The Joker has staged a fire at Black Gate prison in order to get all of his thugs temporarily transferred to the titular Arkham Asylum. In the meantime, Joker has been apprehended by Batman, again, and is being processed in as a returning inmate. This is when everything goes to pot. During the secure transfer, the place goes berserk, and the Joker is freed from his restraints. He disappears into the bowels of the asylum, and the facility is locked down, cutting off Batman and the Gotham Police from pursuing Joker. We find out that Harley Quinn has taken the warden hostage and is using his computer access to run the facility in the way that the Joker has instructed her to. It's going to be a long night for Batman as he has to figure out Joker's end game, and wrangle up inmates in order to bring order back to the asylum.

Throughout the game, you, as Batman, get to fight some of Batman's best known and most beloved villains. You'll find yourself pitted against Killer Croc, Poison Ivy, Bane, and even Scarecrow. Of course, by the end, you have to actually fight the Joker, but there's a twist. It's a mystery that unfolds carefully and deliberately as you play through the game. It turns out that one of the doctors at the asylum was being paid to develop a serum that is basically Bane's Venom serum on steroids. It's called Titan, and the Joker has engineered a production facility on Arkham island where he's experimenting with the inmates to perfect the formula. As a result, you occasionally have to fight inmates who have been dosed with the serum, and they can be pretty tough. There are also a few other features that make this game incredibly enjoyable so let's take a look at some of those.

Another battle that rages on throughout the game is a battle of wits as you're pitted against the vast intellect of the Riddler. He's hidden trophies and riddles throughout Arkham island to test your deduction skills, your patience, and your resolve. One of the more innovative ways that you deal with this is through the use of detective mode vision. This mode allows you to see what lies beyond most forms of sight as you explore the environments that Arkham Asylum. You're able to see walls that can be blown up, air duct grates that can be removed, pick up chemical trails to track individuals, and generally this vision mode is a great way to pick up on subtle things that will help you move through the story more easily. It's also been exploited by the Riddler as many of his riddles require you to use detective mode in order to see the various elements of his riddles. In this way, the game actually has really strong puzzle solving mechanic to it, and really enjoy games that put puzzle solving to good use.

You also get tools like Batman's grappling hook, Batarangs, and a hacking device that help you to reach areas of the island that might otherwise be inaccessible. These devices also lend themselves to keeping combat interesting as you can use them in creative ways to create distractions, stun enemies, knock enemies unconscious, or stalk certain targets to do stealthier attacks. While we're straying close to that subject, the combat system in this game is particularly fun. You are Batman, and so combat does boil down to beating the ever-loving snot out of thugs, ultimately, but the twist is the rhythm system that was devised when the game was going to be dance based. You can just brute force your way through the game as the upgrades that you get help you to stay ahead of your enemies for the most part, but there is an elegance available to you in the timing of actions that allows you to seamlessly beat your enemies to a pulp. This chaining of attacks also allows you to temporarily open up more powerful attacks as you do it successfully. You're also encouraged to use a wide variety of attacks in order to get higher amounts of experience that will allow you to unlock upgrades more quickly.

As you use the tools at your disposal to dig deeper and deeper in the mysteries surrounding the island, and the Joker's plot, there are a lot of opportunities to get information that, while not crucial to the main story, adds a ton of depth and richness to that story. There are little stone monuments that you can scan that give you a history behind the founding of Arkham Asylum, and the shady things that have gone on there from its inception to the present day. You can unlock therapy session tapes for various villains and learn more of their stories. It's all very fun to do, and it's integrated in such a way that you don't feel like you're being pushed into pursuing these Easter eggs, you just want to get them so you can learn more about this rich and engrossing world that's been built up around you.

This game does a great job tailoring boss battles to the characters that are acting as the boss as well. When you fight Poison Ivy, she's using her plants to thwart you and you have to avoid their attacks while also timing Batarang strikes against her in order to temporarily incapacitate her so that you can attack her directly. When fighting the Scarecrow, you're forcibly whisked away to the theater of the mind where a fear toxin is wreaking havoc. You have to navigate a labyrinth puzzle while avoiding detection by the Scarecrow in order to use Batman's formidable mental discipline to attack Scarecrow. This takes the form of using spot lights to metaphorically shed light on Scarecrow's assault and drive him out of your mind. It's well-designed, well-executed, extremely creative, terribly intense, and loads of fun! This is the bar that was set by this game. Remember this as we move to the next titles.

By the end of the game, you've captured Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Bane, Harley Quinn, and probably a few others. Killer Croc is ostensibly on the lamb, and you have a final showdown with Joker that can be as intense as it is difficult. You fight waves of goons, some of whom have been hopped up on the Titan serum, and you only get a chance to fight Joker directly intermittently during the battle. It's tough, but it's a fantastic ending to a supremely enjoyable game! I finished through the first time wanting more, and ended up playing through a second time almost immediately after the first play through. Since then, I've played through the game probably five times since. I think the only other games that I've played that many times are the Streets of Rage games, and Shinobi 3. It's that good.

Arkham City

Batman: Arkham City got released two years after Asylum, and as a sequel, it was a pretty solid release. It takes the format of Asylum, and takes it to the next logical level. With Arkham Asylum in shambles, a portion of Gotham City has been cordoned off to be used as a temporary prison for Arkham inmates. The whole thing has been orchestrated in a political power play by none other that Hugo Strange. The game begins as Bruce Wayne is holding a press conference denouncing the new facilities and the practices that needed to be overlooked in order to put it in place. Wayne is arrested and Strange informs him that he (Strange) knows Batman's secret identity. Wayne is thrown into the newly minted Arkham City with the hope that the inmates will find out all about Bruce Wayne, and get their revenge. Batman is always prepared, and he gets his suit via an aerial drop, and thus begins your quest to bring order to Arkham City, and escape the hell that's been created by the dregs of Gotham.

This game opens up the world that Asylum began building quite a bit, and honestly, it fulfilled all of the hopes that I had had going into it. I loved the first one, but wanted to explore Gotham proper. I appreciated the villains that were included in the previous game, but there were some glaring omissions. Some of the notable villains that you have to battle are Two-Face, the Penguin, Ra's Al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, and because it wouldn't be an Arkham game without him, the Riddler, who has hidden a bunch more secrets for you to track down all throughout the city. The story continues the story that was set up in the previous title. The Titan serum that Joker used is unstable and it's slowly killing him. Sensing a potential for a power vacuum due to the Joker's impeding death a couple of villains attempting to preemptively fill that void, namely Two-Face and Penguin, although the Riddler is using his cunning to try for supremacy clandestinely. Batman finds himself caught in the cross hairs, and spends the bulk of the game fighting goons from Two-Face and Penguin.

The game play is similar to what you'd expect if you have played Asylum. You solve puzzles, you find hidden collectibles, and you beat thugs to a pulp. The difference in this game is that everything is on a much grander scale. You'll find yourself grappling between buildings as you glide your way across Gotham, just like in the show! The other big difference is that there are civilians also caught in these particular cross hairs. You'll find yourself saving them in addition to you plot quests. There are a number of separate mysteries to be solved, and like the first game, there are a few big mysteries to be solved as well, particularly, what's really going on with the Joker, and second, what does Hugo Strange have planned with his Protocol 10 initiative. That last one puts you in a race against the clock as there's a set point in time that the plan will be unleashed. There's also a mysterious assailant killing people and surgically removing their faces. It's a pretty intense soup of awesomeness!

Another welcome addition to the game is the ability to play as other characters. You get missions where you play as Catwoman, and those missions factor into Batman's overall progress through the game. Then in a DLC mission, you play as Robin. It's a roller coaster of a story! You spend a lot of time tracking Joker, and trying to get to the bottom of that story, but you spend at least an equal amount of time with all of the other things, and there's a lot to do. By the end you realize that Clayface has been impersonating the Joker in order to keep up appearances within his gang, but that Joker has ultimately died. There's a point where Batman is dosed with Titan and has to fight back the effects of it. This becomes an important detail later. Suffice to say, you're Batman.

This installment offered much of the same kind of game play as the previous title, just on a larger scale. At this point, I really feel like the franchise had reached a sweet spot. There was an environment that was extensive enough that you could spend hours exploring, but it wasn't so big so as to be overwhelming to the player. The aspects of Asylum that had been entertaining had remained, and were built upon in prudent and practical ways, and this just added to the fun of the experience when playing. I think my only real gripe with this one is that there were a ton of things to be found. If you're a completionist, you're going to be spending a lot of time tracking down collectibles, and solving riddles. That's not to say that it's not a fun process, it can just be overwhelming when there are around 425 of them to be found. However, if you're looking for a game that's well-crafted and fun to play, this is a solid title.

Arkham Knight

Arkham Knight is the point where the franchise proper finally begins to suffer from its own success. I say franchise proper because in between City and Knight, Rocksteady Montreal released the critically panned Arkham Origins. I'm not going to talk about that one here because most people didn't find it very enjoyable, and quite frankly, I think their opinion is in error, but would need an isolated article to focus on that. Knight by contrast, got a lot of support from the developer in terms of advertising, it got a lot of hype from critics, and it was hotly anticipated by consumers. I remember watching some of the trailers and thinking that the game was going to be the pinnacle of the series, and a high note end to a great story. Let's briefly see if expectations were satisfied.

The game starts with Gotham being evacuated as Scarecrow has threatened to release a new and more volatile fear toxin on the entire city. Batman does some sleuthing a tracks down Poison Ivy at one of Scarecrow's secret hideouts. She directs him to ACE Chemicals, where Scarecrow plans to use the infrastructure of that facility to brew and release his toxin. When Batman arrives, he's confronted by a new villain calling himself the Arkham Knight. The Knight has an entire militia at his disposal complete with tanks, and in order to prevail, Batman has to battle these tanks with his own tank, the Batmobile. This is an excellent time to delve into some of the major changes that were made between City and Knight. Quite a bit of what made the previous two installments fun is still present. We're not in a prison facility this time around, and you do have to save random citizens who missed the evacuation call throughout the game. There are three main islands that you have to unlock as you go as AK has them heavily guarded, and has taken measures to isolate each one from the others. To get around such a immense environment quickly, you're encouraged to drive around in the Batmobile. This is a welcome addition to the game play, to an extent, and can be a really fun time sink when you find yourself with little else to accomplish in the game.

The game offers a story tracking menu that adds new side missions to a wheel display when they're obtained, and shows progress for each as you get things done. This is especially helpful as there are quite a few subplot missions to be done and this at-a-glance mechanism makes tracking things much easier than it could have been. The elements of the game that carried through from the previous titles evolve with some of the advancements that were made for this one. For example, the Riddler has hidden a bunch of trophies around the city, but now, some of his puzzles involve you doing time trial races in the Batmobile, and using its capabilities to solve these puzzles. Also, some side missions require you to use the Batmobile in order to complete the various legs of these missions. Upgrades that are available in game allow Batman to use the Batmobile as a help while he's fighting thugs in the street. You can probably see where this is going. There was a lot of emphasis placed on the introduction of the Batmobile.

This emphasis on the Batmobile tends to be the biggest gripe amongst fans of the series. Many felt that the addition was gimmicky, and that it took away from the isolated scope of the previous games. Where you had been skulking around alleys, and jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the previous games, in Knight you're flying down streets in a souped up tank. It detracts from the intimacy that the previous games offered, and that does make the experience feel a little bit hollow. This was most notable in the evolution of the Riddler challenges. Gone are the actual riddles only to be replaced almost entirely by puzzles and time trial races. They're still tough to accomplish, but not necessarily because they challenge the player intellectually. It was fun using detective vision to find hidden pictures and line them up in Asylum, or tracking a chemical trail to solve a mini-mystery. These were aspects of the games that fans had grown to love, and that were sorely missed in this title.

I felt like the story for this entry was a bit shaky as well. You gumshoe your way around Gotham and tick off a bunch of powerful evil people, and then Oracle gets kidnapped. Guess the bad guys figured that if they took Batman's search engine offline, Batman would be crippled, and unable to do things. You find yourself one step behind the Arkham Knight for most of the game, but when your paths do cross for real, it's a pretty good payoff. You find out that Arkham Knight is Jason Todd, the Robin that came after Dick Grayson, and that when Batman saw Todd killed, he really saw Todd 'killed'. Todd's resentment over Batman's abandonment, and psychological torture at the hands of the Joker turns him into an efficiently deadly killing machine. This explanation of Todd's resurfacing is much better than some, which have been known to include Ra's Al Ghul's Lazarus pools. This boils most of the motivation behind the primary plot down to revenge. That's an okay foundation upon which to build a story I suppose. The rogues gallery is not terribly shabby either. Besides finding yourself working with Poison Ivy unexpectedly, you also find yourself fighting Firefly, Two-Face, Penguin, Harley Quinn, and Scarecrow. However, some of these villains' treatment lacks the amount of care that was put into them in previous titles. Specifically, Scarecrow is mostly relegated to a voice in your ear over your communications channel that taunts you most of the game. And you don't really get a chance to go at him like you did in Asylum.

However, there are still plenty of twists and turns to be taken as you punch your way across Gotham City, and there are some great character dilemmas as well. Particularly, Batman finds himself tracking down five people whom Joker dosed with Titan via his own blood, which he send out to local hospitals before he died. One of those five people is Batman! So there's some extremely interesting internal conflict going on as Batman attempts to compartmentalize Joker from his psyche, and we're even given a glimpse into the Joker as we find out that the Joker's biggest fear is being forgotten. When Oracle gets kidnapped, Commissioner Gordon blames Batman and that sours their relationship quite a bit. Of course,there's the aforementioned connection between Batman and the Arkham Knight. The revelation of Batman's contamination with the Titan serum drives a wedge between Batman and the current Robin as well, a situation which gives you an opportunity to play as Nightwing, who comes in to try and help out. It's not as if the story is lacking by any means, it's only that some of it will start to seem a little repetitive, and hollow as you grind your way through, and unlike the other two entries, there are some areas where the plot lags a little bit. I'm not sure if they were trying to let the plot breathe or if they just didn't know how to fill things, but it's definitely noticeable. But by the end the payoff is totally worthwhile as Bruce Wayne destroys all things Batman, and holds a press conference to explain everything. The last thing we see is Bruce and Alfred walking back into Wayne Manor just in time for Wayne Manor to explode in a fiery conflagration! I'm sure this was Rocksteady's not so subtle way of announcing that they were done since they had intended to stop after City, but it was definitely an explosive way to end the franchise.

The series on the whole is an extremely well put together series. It offers mystery, action, puzzles, deep and complex plots, and well-developed characters. From a technical stand point, the voice actors all do an incredible job, hardly surprising since quite a few of them have done voice work on previous Batman projects, the controls are pretty smooth once you learn how to use them, and the rendering of environments and characters is done well. The atmosphere created is creepy, but engrossing. You'll find yourself looking in the direction of noises wanting to see what's coming only to realize that you actually need to turn the camera in a direction to where you can see. It started off tremendously strong,and although bowing to the desires of the fan base did rob the last game of some of its substance, I don't personally think you're any worse off for it. It started strong, and it ended nearly as strong. Any video game franchise could only hope for so much! It's a franchise that you can pick up for a fairly reasonable price on PC, or console, and I'd definitely recommend playing them through. I promise that you won't be disappointed! Don't believe the hype, they're all great! Stick around for next week to see what we're roasting then!

Voltron Legendary Defender: Not Quite An Old vs. New

We're in for a little more of the same. You could say that reviewing one show that focuses on awesome gestalt based martial arts action put me on a kick. This one is... similar, but so very different in so many ways. At any rate, it's kind of difficult for me to do an old versus new comparison of Voltron: Defender of the Universe, and Voltron: Legendary Defender. This is mostly because my exposure to the former is pretty limited. I've seen the episodes that Netflix added to their streaming line up in order to advertise the latter, but beyond that, I've only ever seen a few other episodes here and there. I'm not terribly ashamed of this because the two started when I was a little over a year old, and it ended about six months after I turned two. I can confidently say that I have enjoyed the episodes of Defender of the Universe that I have seen, and perhaps when my television watching docket gets a bit shorter, I'll go back and take a look. I will say that I was at least familiar enough with the original show to get excited when I heard that Netflix was reviving it. I wasn't entirely certain what to expect, but we'll get to the particulars of that. There was the initial thought that this was a kids' show, and that perhaps I was a bit old, but those fears were quickly assuaged, and once again, we'll get into that as well. Let's take a look at this reboot, and see how it stacks up against the critical eye of this blogger.

V: LD as I shall refer to it from here out, gets off to a pretty strong start. We're quickly introduced to three of our main characters, Pidge, Hunk, and Lance. They're running simulations in military training school, and failing miserably at it. They're ridiculed, and sent on their way after their inability to work as a cohesive team prevents them from performing their mission successfully. We see that each is prodigy level amazing at what they can do. Pidge is a phenomenal scientist who can assimilate and process data at incredible rates, and with great accuracy. Hunk is a fantastic mechanic who can diagnose and repair complex systems on the fly with ease, and Lance is an incredible pilot who can fly a ship by intuition alone better than most can who have practiced for years, possibly even decades. But it's these natural abilities and ease of performance in highly specialized areas that gets them in trouble. They're all great at what they do really well, but that greatness clouds their ability to look at problems from any other perspective, and it's that clashing of perspectives that ultimately becomes their undoing, at least as far as the simulation is concerned. This is a really good bit of film narrative, and it sets the show up well for operating standards. We learn a ton about these characters that we've never met before, and it's not forced upon us through clumsy exposition, or showboated in annoying and unbelievable ways. It's parsed out organically, and it feels easy to digest because it isn't forced.

That evening, a mysterious object crashes to Earth. The military scrambles to secure the area, but in the mean time, the three trainees sneak out to investigate. We're introduced to Keith, who actually washed out of the military despite being a gifted pilot, and with Keith, the blue lion is found. Shiro, the last of the five pilots to be introduced, has been captured by the military so the other four save him and Hunk builds a device to track the energy emissions of the mysterious object. The device leads them to the blue lion and when they find it, they're all given a vision of a group of lions coming together to form a giant robot. Lance approaches the lion and enters its mouth to take his seat as its pilot. There's excitement as the military homes in on their position. There's some action,and the blue lion roars off into the vast depths of space headed for a point on a map, and giving no explanation. After leaving the atmosphere, the group are confronted by a ship the likes of which they have never seen before. Lance pulls some fancy moves to damage the ship, but the ship pursues. A wormhole opens before them, and there's some argument as to whether they should enter it. They do, and they're instantly moved far across the galaxy. re instantly moved far across the galaxy. re instantly moved far across the galaxy. 

Once the trip is over, the five characters find themselves on a new and unexplored planet. They approach a magnificent castle and as they do, it lights up blue and lets the blue lion land. They explore the interior and find two cryopods. Inside are Allura, and Altean princess, and Coran, her noble and loyal adviser. It's at this point that we're introduced to the millennia long struggle between the Golra empire and the Altean coalition of worlds. It's a battle that seems as if it was long since won by the Golra as the Alteans have been wiped out. Allura explains that there are five lions that need to be located in order to form Voltron, the legendary defender of the universe, and symbol of peace. Allura assigns a lion to each of the team to go locate, and they're sent on their way. Fearing an attack, Keith stays behind to guard the black lion. Shiro and Pidge go to a peaceful jungle world to retrieve the green lion while Hunk and Lance go to a desert planet to grab the yellow lion. Meanwhile, Coran uses scanners within the castle to locate the red lion, which as it turns out, is being held in a Golra ship that's orbiting the planet that they're on. Once the others return, there's discussion about a proper course of action as the team is down a lion and terribly inexperienced in fighting an enemy of which they were unaware the day before. Allure consults an AI construct of her father's memories and personality, and she's convinced that they need to fight.

Allura names each of the characters paladins of Voltron and gives them armor and a weapon, all except Shiro. She explains that his weapon has been lost for as long as she can remember. Pidge flies Shiro and Keith to the belly of the ship, and Shiro has some flashbacks of being on the ship before. As it turns out, he was on a mission with Pidge's father and brother, and the prisoners were all brought to this particular ship. Pidge insists that they rescue all of the prisoners that they find. Shiro understands her sentiment and sends Keith to get the red lion alone. Pidge and Shiro bump into a Golra drone, and Pidge reprograms it to work for them. They free a bunch of prisoners, but Pidge's family isn't among them. They leave the ship as Keith finds the red lion. He tries to approach, but it is reluctant. Some drones show up and Keith fights them off, but is blown into space in the process. The red lion comes to life and rescues him and he pilots the lion back to the surface of the planet. Having the five lions, the group can now form Voltron, however, there's a struggle to do so the first time around. They eventually manage, albeit clumsily, and they destroy the Golra ship.

That's the first episode of a series that will have six seasons as of June of this year! In later seasons, we learn that the Golra experimented on Shiro, giving him his bionic arm, Emperor Zarcon of the Golra Empire used to be best friends with Allura's dad, and the black paladin, and in fact, he has the black paladin weapon. We learn that Hagar, the witch that serves Zarcon is Golra prince Lotor's mother, and Zarcon's son of course, and that she too was friends with Allura's dad. We learn that Pidge is a girl, which was a minor departure from the original show. And those are just some of the twists that are dropped along the way. We see so much intense drama throughout. Just when you think that the show couldn't up the stakes anymore, they do just that, and it's done so elegantly and organically that you just can't wait for more! The characters are developed incredibly well. I think that's what hooks me the most. All of the characters are given just the right amount of attention and development, and the development of one typically effects all of the others in profound ways. The interconnectivity of the characters is done and used extremely well. And again, nothing is forced. If there's a major character development milestone, it's hinted at beforehand, and then revealed in a natural way. This is a show that focuses on characters and story in parts equal enough to create an extremely entertaining viewing experience every time.

This show does everything right, and I do mean everything. The animation is amazing. The story lines are tight and engaging. The characters are deep and multifaceted, but not is a way that feels forced. Even with short seasons, the show takes its time in developing characters and that's great because it builds both the characters and the suspense within the show, and it gives the twist a your more impact. Oh, the music is incredible! You should have known that it was coming because that's the kind of guy that I am, but seriously, just listen to the theme song. It's bold, it's mysterious, and it's exciting and all that is wrapped into just 51 seconds. It really sums up the show well. The show is mysterious, bold and exciting. However, what sets this show apart from others is how well it balances drama and peril with humor and warm fuzzies. In a world where any show could get a pass for constantly being dark and full of peril, V:LD seeks that balance, and it uses it so well that it pays off time and time again in equal amounts of effectiveness.

One thing that may rub some viewers the wrong was is that the show will periodically employ different animation styles. Usually this is done in an attempt to highlight something humorous. It did take me a while to get used to this ploy, but now it just feels like an integral part of the show's identity. It's used well, and sparingly enough that it doesn't get in the way of all the other stuff that's going on. I think the one bad thing I could say about the show is I'm not too pleased by how they've taken to releasing their 'seasons'. Season one was 13 episodes. Season two was also 13 episodes. When season three debuted, I expected that it would also be 13 episode. It was only seven episodes long. I was getting into it, and just as things were getting really good, the season ended. Don't get me wrong, I know exactly why they're doing it, but it's kind of annoying. I'd gladly wait longer between season releases and get what feels like a whole season in one sitting then operate under the false pretense that they're doing anything other than just releasing half seasons and calling them full seasons. Just call them season X.0, and season X.5 or something. The current mode is insulting to our collective intelligence, and it's not fooling anyone. Okay, rant over.

Legendary Defender stands as a prime example of why you shouldn't judge a show by its genre or rating. In a Netflix where their adult directed original material is mostly rated TV-MA, V:LD is a smart and engaging show that's generally meant for kids to watch that is rated TV-Y7. It's at least as engaging as a lot of its TV-MA counterparts, more so in some cases, and you don't have to deal with some of the more morally offensive elements that those shows tend to include because they can. It's a show that delivers on every level and I give it my highest recommendation! I promise that you won't be disappointed, and I do so confidently and without caveat. It's just that enjoyable! Give it a watch on Netflix today and see what all the hype is really about, and stay tuned to next week to see what we're grilling then!