Batman/Superman: World's Finest

Nitcentral's Bulletin Brash Reflections: Batman: The TV Show: Batman/Superman: World's Finest
This was the third animated movie, made to promote the third season of "Batman," as well as the first season of "Superman: The Animated Series." This was later shown as a three-part episode in the third season of "Batman," then was sold on home video.

The Joker travels to Metropolis and joins Lex Luthor in a plot to finish both Batman and Superman at the same time. When Bruce arrives, he and Lois begin to fall in love with each other. Clark Kent (Superman) disapproves not only of this, but also of Batman's methods. Eventually, Superman and Batman find out each other's secret identities and decide to put their differences aside to team up to fight the Joker and Luthor.

NOTE:
This movie has one of my favorite sequences of the entire animated series:
Superman visits the hosiptal and finds the mob boss who now has a permanent laugh. He surmises the Joker is in town. Later on, Batman roughs up a huge group of mob guys and later threatens the leader for information on the Joker. Superman arrives and tries to stop Batman from being so ruthless, and Batman throws (THROWS!!!) Superman across the room. Superman headbutts Batman and knocks him down, and the mob guy escapes. Superman uses his x-ray vision and finds out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. When he approaches Batman, Batman pulls out a package with Kryptonite in it and tells Superman the Joker has a lot more of it than Batman does. After Superman regains his composure, he looks back and Batman is GONE. Later that night, Superman returns home and eventually finds a homing device in his cape. He gets a phone call from Lois about how great Bruce is, etc. Then he looks out the window, and far away, there is a dark figure in the night. Now Batman knows who Superman really is. He gives Clark Kent a little salute, then disappears into the night.

AWESOME!
By BrianB on Tuesday, August 08, 2000 - 9:22 pm:

The end credits list this epifilm as copyright 1997. IMDb lists the copyright as 1998. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was made in 1999. What's the connection? The one I made is where Harley Quinn ungagged Lois Lane, Lois began insulting the Joker, Harley regagged her after her pigtails perked up and said, "How rude!" Like Jar Jar. Coincidence?
Even though Batman's name is first in the title. This is evidently a Superman episode if the end titles music is any indication (an all Superman theme). Plus it was mostly staged in Metropolis.
The demonstration of the Wayne-Lex T-7 was clocked acquiring its target was clocked at 14.8 seconds. The second hand of the conventional stopwatch used was stopped at the bottom of the face. In the closeup, there weren't any numbers on the watch but if this were a 60-second stopwatch it would appear it was stopped a fraction before 30 seconds. Evidently this is a 30-second watch in which the reading is dead-on accurate if you ignore the increment lines encircling the face. I have no idea what they indicate.
RE Harley Quinn and her super pogo stick. She makes her grand entrance descending some 30-feet (hard to tell from the wide, ground shot) to land on one of Carlini's men smack between the eyes, landing him flat on his back. Such a stunt would either pierce or squash his skull. But, of course, he survived because he's later seen taking pot shots at Batman in the LexCorp lab. Harley continues bouncing some 18 feet into the air (about the height of three average grown men, if you will). The purpose of Harley acting like an Animanac ("Boingy...") is comic relief for the kiddies, but it's kinda lame IMO.
The Joker is much stronger than he looks. He bags Carlini like garbage and tosses him up high to land him several feet away on top of, what else, a trash can. Later, Joker kicks the incapacitated Superman quite a few feet. Amazing such a small foot can even flip a musclebound frame of Supey.
Getting back to Carlini, he winds up in the hospital, in a laughing coma. According to Turpin, he says Carlini was found in the City Dump. Did the Joker take the time to do this when we weren't looking? I hate to think the Metropolis Dept. of Sanitation collected Carlini and transported him themselves.
Bruce Wayne must have starship shield technology on him. The Joker and company opens fire on him, making him dance himself over penthouse roof to make him fall to his death. After a lucky land on the window washer's platform, the goons actively try to kill him. Bullets whiz and ricochet, but no dice. Finally, Joker fires on Wayne clinging from the fifth(?) floor and misses.
The buildings Joker was destroying are obviously abandoned. The only lives in peril were on the street.
The Joker does a Batman maneuver with his teeth-painted Lex Wing. He flies the Lex Wing across the face of the full moon for the effect of the moon smiling for a couple of frames.
RE the marble grenades. The first time the Joker threw them, they only seem to detonate when they collide with each other. In the Joker's death scene, all the marbles are rolling towards him. No doubt, touching off as they reach him, yet he's laughing all the way as the rest of the Lex Wing bursts into flames.
Janitor, "Evening, Miss Lane. Where's Mr. Kent?"
Lois, "Probably out husking some corn!"
When Lois and the Janitor are the only souls in the Daily Planet, asking where Mr. Kent is seems strange. As for Lois' response, did I detect a hint of innuendo?


By Anonymous on Thursday, September 07, 2000 - 4:59 pm:

Great line from Lois when she learns that Bruce is Batman
"So when were you going to tell me, the honeymoon."
and
"I'm going to get some iodine, burning, stinging iodine."


By Anonymous on Wednesday, September 13, 2000 - 10:13 am:

To BrianB.
"How rude." was something that C3PO would say. I think he said it in The Epire Strikes Back after another robot like said something to him. It was immediately before he discovered the Stormtroupers at Cloud City.


By BrianB on Wednesday, February 21, 2001 - 9:14 am:

Wearing only a hat, wig, shades and a trench coat over her costume, Harley’s face is also normal skin tone. In a rear shot of Harley, when Joker removes the hat, wig, and shades, the normal skin immediately became the white clown face paint before she turned head to face the Joker and us. I didn’t see any evidence that Joker removed a face make from her. The skin magically transformed from normal to white.
Luthor’s newspaper consisted of a main photograph, a headline and a lot of blank space on the front page. On the back page, a lot of blank boxes.
Quinn locks Luthor’s limo door so he can’t get out. Duh, isn’t Luthor’s limo just another expensive but common car? Shouldn’t Luthor be able to manually override the power locks? I trust Harley unlocked the side where Joker would enter because he just let himself in.
A traffic shot panning over a highway before zooming in on Carlini’s neighborhood showed eight rows of vehicles even though the highway was divided into four lanes. Each lane had two rows of traffic all traveling at the same exact speed.
The table where Carlini and his men where having dinner had a tablecloth over it, but I suspect the table was made of wood. Harley with her super pogo stick split it in two. Such force is further evidence that she should’ve either pierced or squashed the first goon she landed on smack between the eyes. Of course the man was okay come time to send Wayne over the penthouse roof.
As Superman was getting ready to use his X-ray vision to identify Batman, you can already see Wayne’s eyes through the mask’s eyeholes. The effect almost obscured the eyes, but not totally. The animators weren’t able to mix the face and mask successfully without the eyes being seen through the mask.
Kent hands Bilbo a wad of cash and tells him to keeps his ears open and to let Kent know if he hears any buzz about the Joker. Bilbo says, “Sure thing, Mr. Kent. Uh, but, uh, which one? There’s lots of jokers around here.” Even though their shared scene lasts about sixteen seconds, they must have spent more time socializing than that. The two nearly empty drinks in front of them should be evidence of that. I can’t believe Kent wasn't able to clarify his request of Bilbo prior to that line. By the way, “There’s lots of jokers around here”, is bad grammar. It should be, “There are a lot of jokers around here”. Of course, we have no way of knowing what the level of Bilbo's education is if he even went to school and I'm not perfect either.
After Joker and company disposed of Wayne over the penthouse roof, they boarded their blimp and Joker fired more rounds at Wayne. The action happened off screen, but it occurred a little too fast.
As the catfight between Harley Quinn and Mercy Graves begun, how was Graves able to propel herself horizontally through the air like a speeding bullet? The cat screech sound effect was corny. It’s the same old canned effect.
The marble grenades need more scrutiny. If they only detonate when they’re in motion and collide with each other, how can Joker even keep them bagged in a bunch? Do the marbles become armed once they’re thrown and scattered? That’s where the willing suspension of disbelief is required more than ever.


By BrianB on Wednesday, February 28, 2001 - 8:14 am:

Batman is an expert at spotting and thwarting threats approaching him. Yet, the instant he took his gaze off of Superman to resume his interrogation of the fleeing Binko, Superman rushed him and knocked the wind out of him. I guess the cliché “faster than a speeding bullet” is best applied here.
However Batman was able to plant a tracking bug on Superman must have been done off screen and in-between the scenes at the nightclub and Kent’s apartment. There’s no believable way Batman could’ve planted it during his altercation at the nightclub. Of course, any incredible sleights-of-hand Batman accomplishes can always be dismissed by magic skills he acquired while he was training in his youth (see “Zatanna”).
I know the Joker likes finesse, but if it was his intention to kill Wayne, why don’t the goons just directly drill him instead of making him dance off the roof? And the Joker doesn’t do his marksman skills any justice by firing at Wayne clinging from the fifth floor and missing. I thought he wanted to make “street pizza” out of Wayne.
As Superman, in Kryptonite armor, confronted Joker at a LexCorp Lab, the room where he landed already had a hole in the ceiling where Superman will crash through. First, you see the hole, then Superman's crash with debris through the preexisting hole, then a dust cloud wake shrouding the hole. It's as if he's already crashed through that location previously. Maybe it's one of Bizarro's holes.
Joker whips out his ace-in-the-hole, the dragon-sculpted Kryptonite. The writers and animators tried to hide his right hand to give us the impression he was holding the Kryptonite from behind his back. Except he wasn’t holding the Kryptonite the whole time he was waxing one-liners and both of his hands were visible. It wasn’t concealed on him otherwise we would see a noticeable bulge somewhere on his profile. He just commits the quintessential cartoon cliché by pulling it from behind his back where an infinite number of sizeable objects can be concealed.
Batman bursts in on a sleeping Luthor. Graves, always on duty, is at the ready to defend Luthor. Doesn’t she ever sleep? She’s still in uniform.


By BrianB on Monday, June 04, 2001 - 11:33 pm:

After Harley Quinn and Joker successfully abducted Luthor to begin their collaboration, Quinn is driving recklessly through Metropolis. Fortunately she is not causing any serious accidents. But once Joker and Luthor start talking, only then does she drive more sanely. I know, I know. They couldn’t carry a conversation if she didn’t.
After Quinn has bounced down all the bad guys on her super pogo stick, the Joker nominates himself as the replacement leader of the gang now that he has eliminated Carlini. In the wide shot, you see Joker standing over four downed men. In the close-up of Joker, the camera pans to his left and Quinn pops into view from the bottom of the screen in a most cartoony fashion brandishing her oversized pop gun. To assume that position in the short time allotted, she would’ve had to join the men on the floor and slither to Joker’s side in order to pop up from below-screen like a jack-in-the-box.
Women still get treated like objects, even in animated series. At Rocker’s Lounge, Batman tossed a girl in a cage at three thugs.
When Joker shot acid on Superman’s Kryptonite armor, how did the helmet get destroyed? We see the acid strike his chest and shoulder region and then he was shrouded by acidic vapor. Next we see the armor destroyed precisely where he took the acid and in addition, his helmet has disappeared.
Superman lay immobilized beside the Kryptonite. Since his hands are still shielded, he had an opportunity to save himself or buy him a few precious seconds by grabbing the Kryptonite and hurling it out the door that was not yet sealed.
Joker’s cellular or cordless telephone has sixteen buttons. Four rows of four keys. Since the buttons were blank, who knows exactly what the four extra buttons are for?
From the moment Joker tosses out the marble grenades, almost all of the ones that first burst out of the bag were pink. After they spread throughout the lab, they became a more wide variety of colors.
When aboard the LexWing, as the Joker literally loses his marbles, the shot of the grenades bursting out of the bag and the subsequent shot of the marble colliding with each other were reused from earlier at the LexCorp Lab.
When Joker sics a Wayne/Lex T-7 on Batman, the larger one that Luthor wanted to make military use of, Batman goes through another supply of Bat grapples. He hung from one building by a grapple, whips out another and launches himself toward another building where he discarded his first grapple. There he swung onto a city bus where he discarded the other grapple. From there he would run to the Daily Planet building in search of Kent/Superman but instead finds only Lois. Next Batman carries Lois while the T-7 is still hot on his tail. At the stairway, Batman whips out a third grapple and he and Lane swing down to the printing presses. There may have been a fourth grapple involved. How else was Batman able to ascend the Daily Planet building as the T-7 was laser-strafing the windows? Batman will have another grapple in time for the final showdown with the remaining T-7-bots.
Before the T-7 chased Batman through Metropolis, Batman was wearing gadget gauntlets as accessories to his rocket-propelled Bat glider. They remained on him throughout the chase until after Batman boarded the roof of the city bus.
Batman’s cape gets caught in the rollers of the printing press. If this cape were of the same property as in earlier episodes, the cape should’ve separated from the cowl. Since it didn’t, it strongly suggests the cape and cowl are one piece. Since the cape and cowl are one piece, the cowl that covers the Adam’s apple must’ve torn in order to expose Wayne’s identity to Lane and also prevent him from being pulled into the rollers himself. When he puts the cape and cowl back on, it’s as good as new. The only way Wayne could’ve believable separated his head from his cowl is if he looked up. But since he was looking down as he struggled with the T-7, he should’ve been undergoing strangulation. Ergo, it must have torn off, but it wasn’t.
Luthor boasts at the top of the show that T-7 never loses sight of its target. So what does the oversized T-7 do when Lois conks the back of its mechanical head with a fire extinguisher? It looks away from Batman and in her direction.
Not to be vulgar or anything but why does shirtless Luthor have nipples on his pecks while shirtless Kent and shirtless Wayne do not? Luthor’s nipples look more like band-aid patches.
Quinn’s costume is divided into four quadrants of alternating black and red fields with a three-diamonds-pattern contrasting the alternate color of each field. They’re always red and black. In the scene where Luthor and Graves are about to off the Joker and Harley, the three-diamond-pattern on the left fanny-side pant-leg is white instead of red.
After Mercy Graves was unbound from a T-7, she said Joker would make Luthor lose everything he has ever built. Joker only told Luthor this aboard the LexWing. I wonder if Graves has super hearing or if Joker or Quinn told Graves their plan when we weren’t looking.
Once again, size doesn’t matter. Batman abandoned his Batwing with Bat claws extended and he dives on top of the LexWing. He whips out a sizeable detonator to blow the hatch to get into the LexWing. Where did he conceal this gadget? It wasn’t on-hand when he dove. The bomb can’t fit in any of the compartments of his utility belt. Yadda yadda yadda.
Does anyone else find it strange when Batman said, “You get Luthor. I’ll get Quinn”? What about Joker? Did Batman have a hunch Joker would survive the destruction of the LexWing and therefore, no one had to waste energy on him?
Mercy Graves is seen at the end of the show wearing a neck brace, a Curad on her right cheek, her left hand is bandaged and her left arm is in a sling. How and where did she attain those injuries? Was it all whiplashes from being attached to the T-7 that rotated like a turret in order to foil Superman’s super punches? She wasn’t wearing any bandages at that time.


By BrianB on Saturday, December 15, 2001 - 2:00 am:

The cityscape in the background of Superman and Lois Lane at the airport looked like a façade of a cityscape you would find on a soundstage! The buildings lacked any definition.
You can recognize the voice of Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (“Alfred”) in the scientist with the stopwatch with Wayne and Luthor demonstrating the Wayne/Lex T-7.
You can recognize the voice of George Dzundza (“Arnold Wesker, The Ventriloquist/Scarface”) in Perry White.


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