My dad recently decided to add HBO Max to our limited paid streaming mostly due to the shows he used to watch on the various Discovery channel networks but also some of the older movies they got with TCM. I like some of those as well, but for me it’s the DC shows (since in his lack of wisdom, David Zaslav has opted to take out most of the kids shows, even from his own Discovery offerings, and license a handful to MeTV Toons despite having a poorly scheduled Cartoon Network and the Cartoon Rewind binge streaming channels at his disposal) I’m more excited for. I’ve been watching the Kids WB The Batman at lunch and it’s really underrated.
They also have the direct-to-video movies, some of which is also available on YouTube for me to make Saturday Night Showcase fodder out of. Oddly, while Batman Ninja Vs The Yakuza League is there, the original Batman Ninja is only up on YouTube and not HBO Max. As I prepare to watch the sequel I thought rewatching the original movie would be fun.
Batman Ninja finds a science experiment transporting the Batman Family and their villains to a feudal Japan world…or actual feudal Japan? I wasn’t quite clear, but these are people from the future of a comic book world. Now our heroes have to collect the villains and find a way back to modern day Gotham City. The odd thing is Batman takes on more of a samurai flavor than a ninja. Perhaps they’re following that one episode of Batman: The Animated Series that tried to say all ninja are dishonorable and the samurai were totally honorable, so Batman is more samurai than ninja. Truth is there were good ninja and evil samurai as well as the opposite. It depends on the clan. That’s really the only hiccup if you’re okay with the animation style.
Apparently the video is currently age-restricted, so by YouTube rules for some reason I can’t embed it here directly. The video as of this writing is more like a link than an actual video. Sorry about that. I don’t get it. It’s not porn, not graphically violent, and I’ve posted videos with more swearing than this movie has. Oh well. Enjoy anyway.
BW Media Spotlight 
A YouTube Clip Does Not A Movie Make
“Hey, I found a clip of Ironheart fighting a giant fire-breathing gorilla.”
“I saw it. Don’t know the context though.”
“Who cares? Giant fire-breathing gorilla!”
“Yeah, I’m rooting for him, too, but how was he muted from Rocket Raccoon?”
“Does it really matter?”
Yes. Yes it does. Before I go off on the latest stupidity from Marvel Studios I wanted to put this rant together not just for added context but because I might want to refer to it in the future. I’ve mentioned this as a problem with comic writers, but it seems to be worse in movies. I can’t even call it new. Jon Peters wanted to have a giant spider because he saw a documentary about how deadly a predator a spider is. When he couldn’t get Superman to fight it, he got race-swapped Jim West to find it. (The worse crime isn’t Will Smith playing Robert Conrad’s character, it’s replacing Dr. Loveless, a little person recurring villain in the show, with an exaggerated Southern racist jackass stereotype in a steampunk wheelchair. Michael Dunn should be insulted.) Michael Bay probably only took on Transformers to live his dream of cutting a bus in half. (Yes, he actually said he always wanted to film that scene.)
I’m not even going to do my own exaggeration and say something stupid like “the majority of movies out there seem to just be movie clips with a framing device”. The Epic Movie franchise is only that in parody form, because someone decided to make a parody movie franchise out of movie trailers and it’s as dumb as it sounds. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, or that other media is doing the same thing. It’s like they’re forming a whole movie around one particular scene they want to make. This is a stupid way to make a movie.
Continue reading →
Tell others about the Spotlight:
Posted by ShadowWing Tronix on September 4, 2025 in Movie Spotlight and tagged commentary, movie writing, Short story, writing tips.
2 Comments