"Perchance to Dream" Vs "For The Man Who Has Everything" (Spoilers)

[The Avenger]

Which episode did you like more?

[NeoSerenity]

I like both of the episodes equally. They are both very good.:)

[Phantasm]

I haven't seen perchance to a dream.:(

[BeastBoyWonder]

I loved the JLU episode, but Perchance to Dream, hands down. It felt far more personal.

[Darkseid]

Perchance to Dream focused on Bruce's fantasy situation the entire time. FTMWHE focused on Clark's fantasy for about half of the first 20 minutes, while the other half was a beatdown fight. Then his fantasy ended and he pummeled on a guy for a while.

I think Perchance to Dream was the more emotional piece. It focuses more on character and drama, which is what should matter, over blind action, which should always be driven BY character and drama in my opinion, not used as a distractionary device separate from it.

PtD by far.

[Phantasm]

You're not missing much.

Actually, you're missing one of the best episodes of B:TAS and the entire DCAU ever. Try to get your hands on a copy if you can. You won't be disappointed, unless average animation ruins your enjoyment of an episode.
Yeah go ahead.Rub it in why don't ya?!:p
I have heard it's great though...senn screen grabs and all...but as if they can actually make up for the actualy episode...
It is the the BTAS DVD Box set is not?
If not so than ah well..."Hope is on the way!"
:D

[Frank Castle]

I think Perchance to Dream is better but not by much.

[Knight]

I liked For "The Man Who Has Everything" more although "Perchance to Dream" was good this one had the best of both worlds with drama and action. Plus it generally kept me more entertained and I love a good entertaining episode.

[Captain Clown]

Heh, this thread should have giant spoiler tags on it.

[Jade_GL]

I can't decide. I really can't.

I like FOr the Man Who Has Everything because I think it did something I haven't seen before, which was do a pretty good adaptation of an Alan Moore story. Not only that, but it was good in almost everyway, tight plot, good voice acting, emotional, etc.

Then again, Perchance to Dream was more focused on the created world, and was much more a detective/mystery story. In that way, it edges out FTMWHE because it really was a mystery and had emotions and drama.

I like them both. I would have to rewatch Perchance to Dream to really be sure. I mean, I really want to rewatch both just to formulate my final opinion better. They're just so different and deal with a similar theme that I want to compare some more. :)

But, if I had to choose, I would say Perchance to Dream. Then again, I love Superman stories.... AGH!

Ok, enough from me already.

[Fone Bone]

Tough choice. Perchance to Dream had a WAAAY more psychological bent and seeing Bruce and Batman fight on the clocktower was chilling... Particularly Batman's "You're not well Mr. Wayne." Brrr! On a Kevin Conroy creep factor between one and ten that's a twelve just edged out narrowly by Batman laughing in Mad Love as the creepiest Batman moment ever.

But For the Man Who Has Everything was by far the most rewarding and emotional of the two. George Newburn was FABULOUS and the goodbye scene with Van-El is definately worth a lump in the throat. It also screwed with Superman more that Perchance to Dream did to Batman and left a huge hole in him after the fantasy ended. I love tragic endings and Batman shrugged off his fantasy enough to make a quip to Gordon while Superman just flew into a rage. Best Superman vocal performance EVER! Heck, best Superman performance period. Tim Daly would be proud of Newburn.

So, For the Man Who Has Everything by a nose.

[Batman49]

I like For the Man Who Has Everything slightly better than Perchance to Dream. Seeing Loana, Van-el, and Krypto might have something to do with it. I love the mystery on Perchance to Dream though. It's very close but I'll stick with For the Man Who Has Everything, for now :p

[Daredevil_2003]

Perchance to Dream by a long shot. :D :cool:

[Hatter]

Well, "For The Man Who Has Everything" was written by Alan Moore...
But "Perchance to Dream" features the Mad Hatter...

Don't make me choose!

[b.t.]

weird thing is, it wasn't until i re-read the comic -- (i think i hadn't re-read it since it originally came out) -- while prepping for our adaptation, that i realized we must have sub-consciously swiped the basic idea for "perchance to dream"....mongul's motivation is even the same as the hatter's: to keep the hero out of his way....

at least i HOPE it was a sub-conscious swipe :sweat:....

one thing no one's mentioned is that we also apparently swiped alan moore's original ending for the BATMAN BEYOND episode "eyewitness"....the fact that we had already done that ending once was one of the reasons why we didn't do it this time, but just hinted at it with sound effects...also, we knew there's a limit to how much horrific carnage the censors would allow us to show, anyway...

back on topic: which do i prefer? haven't seen "perchance..." in many years, but i remember thinking the animation was fairly weak....also, we weren't crazy about the storyboard for the last act, so boyd kirkland and i re-boarded the majority of it under a very tight deadline....i remember thinking kevin was awesome (especially as the "evil" batman) and dear ol' roddy was wonderful, of course....

hmmm, i guess i'd better dig it up and re-watch it, before casting my vote....

[Alex Weitzman]

weird thing is, it wasn't until i re-read the comic -- (i think i hadn't re-read it since it originally came out) -- while prepping for our adaptation, that i realized we must have sub-consciously swiped the basic idea for "perchance to dream"....mongul's motivation is even the same as the hatter's: to keep the hero out of his way....To be fair, I think there's a really nice separation between the nature of Mongul's motivation and Tetch's. Tetch wanted Batman to stay in that dream world forever, the means justifying the end of keeping Batman out of Tetch's way for good. It was almost a warped sort of honestly-meant gift; Tetch would rather enclose Batman in a joyous fantasy than have to off him permanently. On the other hand, Mongul seemed to be rather satisfied by Superman's removal of the Black Mercy, since it made his cruelty complete. Superman couldn't possibly be as hurt by remaining in the Mercy's grip than he was when he lost what the Mercy gave him, and it almost seems like that was what Mongul was going for the whole time.

EDIT: Oh, my choice on the thread's topic. It's a very, very close call, but I give the edge to Perchance to Dream, since it had just as psychologically perfect a structure, but hid it a tad better.

[Avilos]

The Black Mercy killing the person if they are captured long enough is not part of the original comic.

[Maxie Zeus]

Ack. I don't have time to write the full spiel I'd like to on this. Let's see what comes out when I turn on the auto-blabber.

I really like "For the Man Who Has Everything," but I'm on record (http://anbat.toonzone.net/btas/ind/perdream.html) (shameless self-promotion) as praising "Perchance to Dream" to the skies, and I still think it's the superior story. Darkseid is right that "For the Man" is pretty strongly separated into "Superman" and "Mongul" stories, while PtD is completely integrated, so that's one point in PtD's favor.

I think the "fake life" conceit (whether it was swiped or not) works better with Batman, too. That's because there is a much stronger element of choice (and hence of dramatic interest and intensity) when it's applied to Batman. Superman did not choose to leave Krypton; he was cast adrift. He didn't choose to become Superman, either: he didn't choose to have superpowers, and his history and life in Smallville make it very natural that he should turn into such a nice guy. But Bruce Wayne chose to become Batman, and he chooses over and over again (http://anbat.toonzone.net/essays/end.html) ('nother shameless plug) to continue as Batman. Even the cataclysm that set in motion their respective lives has an element of choice in it. The destruction of Krypton was a natural disaster, but young Bruce lost his parents because someone chose to kill them. So Batman's "fake life" shows what would (in all likelihood) have happened if lots of contingent, moral choices had gone the other way, because those events were within the power of moral agents to change. But Superman's only shows what might have happened, because his life was affected by matters beyond the control of anyone. It's more interesting to see what happens when someone paddles onto the wrong shore than to see what happens when someone is swept by a current onto that shore. And so it is more interesting to reflect on what would have happened if the protagonist had paddled in the other direction.

There's also a stronger element of choice inside the delusions. When Bruce Wayne awakens in his bed in PtD, he finds himself in a world he doesn't understand and he has to choose how to react to it. Superman doesn't consciously recognize his Krypton life as delusive; he seems to have a full set of false memories to go with it, so he just takes it all as being normal. Bruce Wayne explicitly has to choose whether to continue as "happy" Bruce Wayne or try to get back to what he recognizes as reality. And in jumping off the tower he deliberately acts in a way calculated to take him out of the dream. Superman doesn't seem to have a similar "Euraka!" moment; he merely acquiesces in his sense of growing unease and lets Batman's outside interfereence pull him out. It's less that he chooses reality, but that he chooses not to fight reality's intrusions.

In PtD, then, we get a drama about a character (Batman) trying to get out of a bad scene; in FtMWHE, we get a (very nice) character study about what Superman is really like—though what we learn about him really isn't all that surprising. There is much to be said for character studies, but I find dramas more involving.

I also didn't have a very emotional reaction to Superman's "good-bye" to his son. I suppose that Superman has all kinds of false memories and emotions that he has to shake loose from when he tells his "son" that he (the son) isn't "real." But since we haven't had a real chance to see the son—we haven't really had the experiences that Superman has to fight—I find it much harder to empathize with him. I didn't feel what Superman was supposed to be feeling. (In all fairness, and I don't mean the preceding as a criticism, just an observation, I don't think there was a way that this story could have imparted that kind of emotion to me.) With Batman, we are able to feel his anger and his despair because his entire history has set us up to recognized just what a terrible experience this is for him.

Again, FtMWHE is a really good episode. But PtD is able to take a very similar idea and go much farther and much deeper with it. (And yeah, the animation in FtMWHE is way better than PtD, which is no small point in its favor.)

Slightly OT, but relevant: The plant in FtMWHE and the dream machine in PtD actually seem to do slightly different things. Mongul says of the plant that it creates a "simulation" "of the heart's desire" of the victim. The Hatter explains in PtD that the machine's "purpose is to create an ideal world for you!" This is not a semantic quibble. The machine is designed to create fully structured realities based upon some set of desires. The plant simulates a stated desire, which itself might not be a fully worked out reality. For example, if my deepest desire is to win a race, the plant will, presumably, create only the experience of winning the race, but the machine will create the reality—including a past and future—in which that desire is realized. And we see this difference in the parallel dreams of Batman and Superman in FtMWHE and Batman's dream in PtD. Superman's desire is to have a happy life on Krypton, though with elements of his Earth life woven in. So that's what he gets. Batman's desire is to see his parents survive their encounter with the gunman. So the plant gives him the experience in the alleyway (but gone right instead of wrong), but the machine gives him the world that results from seeing that desire realized.

I think this says something very interesting about Batman. His desire is to see his parents survive, not in any of the consequences that follow from that fact. So, that is what the plant gives him in FtMWHE, and that is why he is not terribly satisfied with the reality created in PtD: it just doesn't interest him that much. It also seems to be why he can break free of the plant so easily: once he's seen his dad rough up the mugger, there's no place else for the scenario to go. But it casts an interesting light on Batman, that he apparently does not want anything except for an ancient wrong to be righted, which would fit in with one psychological theory about him: In fighting bad guys, he is in some "displaced" way, acting out the night his parents died, trying to prevent what happened.

Well, this was longer than I intended. Now I don't have time to get any real work done.

[Tommunist]

Well, I liked FTMWHE so much that I had to register back on the forum after a long lurking period. That said, it has been a while for Perchance.
I think that they can compliment each other, in that in the years since Perchance, Bruce has become darker. I beleive someone here commented on how it seemed Bruces fantasy in FTMWHE just dwelled on his father beeting the crap out of Chill, I think one could read between the lines on Bruce's current state. Given his darker turn, his (more or less) abandoning the Bruce Wayne persona from TAS to being Batman in his mind 24/7, fallout with Nightwing, it seems he's more screwed up then ever. He's already had his fantasy life in Perchance, and in that he was able to imagine growing up outside of the shadow of the Bat. Even in that case, he sensed something was wrong. So now, that fantasy life would hold no meaning for him. He can't imagine a life growing up "normally' anymore, so his FTMWHE fantasy dwells on his last moment as a happy child, and the big "what if". His father becomes the hero, protecting all that he loves. Bruce is smiling because he is being protected, and not having to be the protector himself. A symbolic return to the womb. But Bruce no longer can imagine anything else besides being Batman (his scars run too deep) so his fantasy never progresses past that point. Young Bruce is safe and all crime is being punished via the Joe Chill figment. But Bruce was easier to snap out of his fantasy than Supes, because his real trauma consumes him so much, and he experiences the ordeal again. He tortures himself. But this all happens so quickly, so the viewer has to bring a lot of that to the table already to appreciate it fully.

And of course, this is a Superman episode, and his problem is one of responsibility. He "founds" the League on the premise that even he alone cannot always save the world, but in his mind, he feels that he alone must bear this burden still. He (like another hero) also subscribes to that axiom "With great power comes great responsibility" and as such, we can see in his fantasy all that he wants, a quiet simple life, surrounded by loved ones and just being normal. Though he's much more emotionally stable than Bats, he's pained by the fact that his is a never ending battle as well, not based on vengence, but the fact that he has been given all this power. Even when presented with the "perfect life" he feels guilty about enjoying it, nagged by the subconscious feeling that he has to be out protecting the world, because no one else can. Though there is a lot of smash 'em up action in the ep, it's still great characterization because Supes rarely cuts loose like that, and given his great powers, the only way to really hurt him is emotionally, which Mongul did.

So both were great eps, but I feel FTMWHE did more with less.

[MAXIMUS]

I'm surprised no ones brought up the episode of Angel (live action of course) that followed the story FTMWHE very closely in that the lead has a parasitic like plant creature attach to his chest that makes him comatose, and is saved by his 'friend/enemy'. Wasn't his fantasy world, just hallucinations.


Anyways, I would have to vote for FTMWHE just because it actually showed some emotional consequences of what Mongul had done, while in Perchance it kind of just left you hanging and thinking Bruce was just mildly upset, while Supes was royaly PO'ed. Also, the fights in FTMWHE were really really well done and made you cringe. I actually think FTMWHE eas better then the original Moore story, mainly because the Moore story dragged in a few places, and this was just spot on.

Don't get me wrong, Perchance is one of my favourite episodes of television ever, but FTMWHE jumped ahead after I watched it 4 times in one day. ;)

[The Jazzman]

He can't imagine a life growing up "normally' anymore, so his FTMWHE fantasy dwells on his last moment as a happy child, and the big "what if". His father becomes the hero, protecting all that he loves. Bruce is smiling because he is being protected, and not having to be the protector himself. A symbolic return to the womb. But Bruce no longer can imagine anything else besides being Batman (his scars run too deep) so his fantasy never progresses past that point.
Wow Tommunist, that is one solid analysis of Batman's Black Mercy-induced fantasy. From those few glimpses into the fantasy, it's clear the creative team was making some tremendously dark and bold comments on the state of Batman's character. Maybe this will bring the thread too far into the psycho-babble realm, although fantasies of any kind are great fodder for interpretation, but it seems as though Batman's internal demons have grown so strong at present that not even a fantasy can escape the weight of his parents' murder. The gravity of that event is so corrosive and consuming that no element of Batman is left unaffected.

[Supremus]

It's gotta be FTMWHE for me.

As good as Perchance was, I am not sure it even makes my Top 10 Best Batman episodes. I always thought it seemed like it tried a little bit too hard, and that it was overly dramatic at times. Bruce also seemed slightly out of character to me. It ended up feeling less like Batman and more like an episode of The Twilight Zone. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it never really had me buzzing with excitement. All in all, I think Perchance was a very good episode, but a little bit too ambitious for its own good, and the animation was pretty poor too.

FTMWHE on the other hand found a really nice balance between action and plot. Add to that the beautiful art and animation, and you've got yourself a great example of modern superhero TV animation.

Maybe Superman's dream sequences were a tad short, but I still think they got the job done, and although I haven't been a big fan of Newbern in the past, I think he absolutely nailed the scene with Van-El, and his performance was as good, if not better than Conroy's in Perchance. There, I said it :) The subtly of the music, as well as the relatively understated sound effects, also made the destruction of Dream-Krypton seem even more dramatic. Maybe it was pure luck, as the JL music can sometimes seem a little underwhelming, but I prefer to think it was a moment of inspiration.

Like someone else mentioned, something that that really made a difference between the two episodes was that FTMWHE gave us the impression that this was an experience that would stay with Superman for some time, while Batman in Perchance seemed to treat it like just another day at the office.

Although Perchance isn't actually that old, it's interesting to compare two such similar episodes from what are essentially very different eras, and although I am a huge BTAS fan, in the end, I think FTMWHE beats Perchance in almost all areas, it certainly gets a better overall score.

Imagine opening your presents on Christmas morning. Perchance is like a pair of cool rocketship underpants, but FTMWHE is that shiny new bike you have wanted for ages, which will make you the envy of the neighbourhood. Look Mom, no hands! :)

[sKorpia]

But Bruce no longer can imagine anything else besides being Batman (his scars run too deep) so his fantasy never progresses past that point.
It's a great analysis and I've been thinking along these lines for a couple months now but I'd venture to push it a little further. Both the playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne and Batman are personas for the scared little boy in the alley, feeling guilty as his parents bled beside him. Bruce never progressed past that point mentally. Sure, he can operate in the real world, knows the laws and the science. But his entire being doesn't revolve around the Bat. It revolves around his inability to progress through the grieving cycle to healing. Underneath the training and the mind and the desire to instill fear is a young boy trying to absolve himself of the guilt he feels for not being able to save his parents that night . . . or not dying with them. He can't imagine life outside of that moment because, quite simply, he never left that moment to begin with.

When the second box comes out and I've had a chance to watch "Perchance to Dream" again, my vote will be final. As it stands with my fuzzy memory, I don't recall feeling emotionally involved with PtD. The mystery aspect kept me distanced from it. With FTMWHE, it was heart-wrenching to watch Kal-El say goodbye to his son (yes, there were the beginnings of tears). I probably brought more to the table since my own relationship with my family is close so the idea of being ripped from family, even a pseudo-family . . . well, I can imagine the pain. Especially for a man like Clark who came from such a loving home environment and would be the type of father that Jonathan Kent was. It seemed the equivalent of Abraham and Isaac without the happy ending and without God commanding stuff, etc. (Interesting that it would be that particular analogy that popped into my head, considering Superman's creators.) So, on a purely emotional level, the destruction of Superman's fantasy world edges out Batman's relief at returning to his perception of normality. I can't comment further than that yet.

[OmegaPaladin]

While I love the psychology of PtD, and the clocktower fight, the drama of Superman actually destroying Krypton was pretty impressive.

I also thought the black mercy showed the contrast between Batman and Superman. Superman is full of regret for his lost life, and the fact that he will never have any romantic intimacy or children. Then you have Batman, who is driven by a burning rage, a hatred of criminals as opposed to sadness for his parents's death. Witness that the thug is getting continually beaten down - a very clear expression of anger. I'd imagine that thug would have been continuously trashed for hours on end.

[Mynd Hed]

What Maxie said.

[Fone Bone]

I'm surprised no ones brought up the episode of Angel (live action of course) that followed the story FTMWHE very closely in that the lead has a parasitic like plant creature attach to his chest that makes him comatose, and is saved by his 'friend/enemy'. Wasn't his fantasy world, just hallucinations.


Anyways, I would have to vote for FTMWHE just because it actually showed some emotional consequences of what Mongul had done, while in Perchance it kind of just left you hanging and thinking Bruce was just mildly upset, while Supes was royaly PO'ed. Also, the fights in FTMWHE were really really well done and made you cringe. I actually think FTMWHE eas better then the original Moore story, mainly because the Moore story dragged in a few places, and this was just spot on.

Don't get me wrong, Perchance is one of my favourite episodes of television ever, but FTMWHE jumped ahead after I watched it 4 times in one day. ;)
The Angel episode was so different, it never even popped into my mind. I think the thing that set it apart was that it featured Angel's worst fears rather than his heart's desires.

I agree with you on FTMWHE being superior to PTD though.

[Tommunist]

All the while I'm struggling to type up a few random thoughts, Mr Zeus was preparing his take. A lot of good points about Perchance that I hadn't considered (probably due to the time I had last seen it). I think there is still some wiggle room with some of my perceptions too.
But thanks for the feedback, Jazzman and scorpia. The Joker summed it up best in ROTJ's flashback about Bats; that for all his toughness and deep resolve, there's still a little boy inside "crying for Mommy and Daddy". And what I like best about the DCAU is that even in these short cartoons, with network standards in place for "children's" TV, that if you look at the cumulative picture, there's a lot of horrific stuff in there, but it can pass right over the kid's heads. At least at first! Which is why I always sigh when people complain about lack of characterization in any given ep; you have to think more subtle, and sometimes long term to pick up all the pieces.

[b.t.]

I'm surprised no ones brought up the episode of Angel (live action of course) that followed the story FTMWHE very closely in that the lead has a parasitic like plant creature attach to his chest that makes him comatose, and is saved by his 'friend/enemy'. Wasn't his fantasy world, just hallucinations.

interesting...another whedonian variation on the "ftmwhe" scenario was the BUFFY ep where her "dream world" was an isane asylum....everything in her whole series up to that point, the whole slayer thing, even all her friends, etc, was presented as a delusion...her "real life" at the time was becoming unendurable, and the asylum, as frightening as it was, was actually presented as a convincingly seductive escape....the ending was absolutely BRILLIANT: after she reluctantly chooses to go back to "reality", we cut back INSIDE her dream world, she's basically in a vegetative fugue state, her parents are sobbing, with the psychiatrist gravely saying "we lost her"...

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,


[FTMWHE] seemed the equivalent of Abraham and Isaac without the happy ending and without God commanding stuff, etc. (Interesting that it would be that particular analogy that popped into my head, considering Superman's creators.) Hmmm...in addition to the tremors on Krypton (which I thought was Superman's own subconscious trying to tell him "Something's Wrong" rather than any outside interference), the other bit that gets Clark to tell his son, "I don't think you're real" (the symbolic placing of Isaac on the altar) is the occasional disembodied voice that tells him to snap out of it.

Therefore, BATMAN IS GOD!!!! :p :D

In all seriousness, I think the Abraham/Isaac connection to FTMWHE is wildly cool. Now I'm wondering if that was something Moore and/or DeMatteis had in mind from the start, or if it's just one of those "mythic tuning fork" kind of reactions you get to a truly classic story, where a seemingly small story element resonates far more and far deeper than it has any rational reason to.

I'm still not sure which episode I like more. I think I'm leaning more towards FTMWHE, but only by a little. PtD is a fun and enjoyable intellectual exercise, but FTMWHE is built for emotional impact. I think that distinction means PtD will have less impact on repeated viewings, while FTMWHE will probably get more. Emotional catharsis hits harder when you know what's coming.

As a completely stupid nitpick, it bugged me that the turnaround in PtD was based on, "You can't read in a dream" when I've done it a few times. There's nothing worse than working your way through a good puzzle only to find that there's a mistake at the bottom of it.

-- Ed/Ace

[Alex Weitzman]

interesting...another whedonian variation on the "ftmwhe" scenario was the BUFFY ep where her "dream world" was an isane asylum....everything in her whole series up to that point, the whole slayer thing, even all her friends, etc, was presented as a delusion...her "real life" at the time was becoming unendurable, and the asylum, as frightening as it was, was actually presented as a convincingly seductive escape....the ending was absolutely BRILLIANT: after she reluctantly chooses to go back to "reality", we cut back INSIDE her dream world, she's basically in a vegetative fugue state, her parents are sobbing, with the psychiatrist gravely saying "we lost her"...
Ah, yes. One of the most unnerving endings that they did on Buffy. A little judicious Googling turned up its title and season: Season 6, "Normal Again". Which means that after they did this episode, they probably went full barrel into evil-Willow mode.

[Darkseid]

Oh yes, how I loved "Normal Again." So totally brilliant. You know, for the most part I don't care for season six of Buffy. "Normal Again" works better than just about anything in the entire second half of the year for my money. The shocker is that it was both written AND directed by outsiders who were merely freelancing for the series. I wonder if that scripter had any other cool ideas that he never bothered to sell to Mutant Enemy.

[Fone Bone]

interesting...another whedonian variation on the "ftmwhe" scenario was the BUFFY ep where her "dream world" was an isane asylum....everything in her whole series up to that point, the whole slayer thing, even all her friends, etc, was presented as a delusion...her "real life" at the time was becoming unendurable, and the asylum, as frightening as it was, was actually presented as a convincingly seductive escape....the ending was absolutely BRILLIANT: after she reluctantly chooses to go back to "reality", we cut back INSIDE her dream world, she's basically in a vegetative fugue state, her parents are sobbing, with the psychiatrist gravely saying "we lost her"...
Wow, I hated the St. Elsewhere ending. Might have to give the episode another shot, now that you've put on the record that it was brilliant. Thanks!

[Replikon Xum]

interesting...another whedonian variation on the "ftmwhe" scenario was the BUFFY ep where her "dream world" was an isane asylum....everything in her whole series up to that point, the whole slayer thing, even all her friends, etc, was presented as a delusion...the ending was absolutely BRILLIANT...
Interesting... though it sounds more like a Whedonian variation of The Flash #300 (1981) to me...



Anyone remember? Barry Allen wakes up paralyzed and bandaged head-to-toe in a hospital, to be told by a doctor that the accident that gave Allen his powers actually burned him severely, and his entire career as the Flash was nothing more than a delusion to help him cope with his injuries. Of course, Barry’s not convinced, and what follows is a clever recollection of the Flash’s origin and career, as well as the origins of all the villains in his rogues gallery as he tries to determine which one is responsible for his predicament.



Whedon did have a better ending...



Xum

[JusticeLeagueLegion]

"Over The Edge" could be considered an imaginary story too. Although not in the sense that everything's peachy. The exact opposite in fact.

[Maxie Zeus]

Batman shrugged off his fantasy enough to make a quip to Gordon while Superman just flew into a rage.


in Perchance it kind of just left you hanging and thinking Bruce was just mildly upset, while Supes was royaly PO'ed.

Sorry, but you guys really aren't remembering the end of "Perchance to Dream" very well.

Batman comes out of the dream and advances on Tetch. His voice quivering with rage and his jaw locked so that he can barely articulate his words, growls out a furious "Why?! Why did you do it?!" It looks like Bats can barely contain himself is on the verge of beating the crap out of him. That's not "shrugging it off" or being "mildly upset." The tag scene with Gordon is quite a bit later, after he's had a chance to calm down. And Tetch isn't anywhere around to irritate him. So your claim that Superman showed more emotion is way off base.

PtD also, IMO, is much more interesting because it humanizes Tetch by giving him some say. (Mongul is just a bastard. Ho hum.) Tetch replies to Batman's "Why?" by flying into a rage of his own. [b]"You of all people have the gall to ask me that?? You ruined my life! I was willing to give you any life you wanted ... just to keep you out of mine!" It's a great twist, rammed home by McDowell's performance, to have the Hatter claim to be the real victim.

[b.t.]

Wow, I hated the St. Elsewhere ending. Might have to give the episode another shot, now that you've put on the record that it was brilliant. Thanks!

i don't remember much about the ST. ELSEWHERE series finale (other than i didn't like it much)...it was one of those "bobby ewing in the shower" kinda deals, was it?

maybe you disliked "normal again" because it was a particularly bleak episode in an already-pretty-damn-depressing season....(?)

anyhow, i liked the ambiguity of the ending, actually leaving it up to the viewer to decide, which is the real "reality"? even if joss and co. weren't conscious of the "ftmwhe" parallels (though he IS an avid comics reader, so who knows), it DOES work as an inspired inversion of moore's ending...

[Revelator]

FTMWHE has a slight edge over the overrated PtD, since Mrs. Superman and Supey Jr come across as more interesting characters than Mr. and Mrs. Wayne, who are almost entirely colorless and stiff. When Bruce realizes that his life with them is a lie, it doesn't hit you as hard as seeing Superman realize that he'll have to give up his bright, sassy wife and earnest son.

But then again, have Thomas and Martha Wayne ever been portrayed as real characters, with unique personalities? Has any writer in 60 plus years considered that they could be interesting characters rather than good dead people?

[Fone Bone]

i don't remember much about the ST. ELSEWHERE series finale (other than i didn't like it much)...it was one of those "bobby ewing in the shower" kinda deals, was it?

maybe you disliked "normal again" because it was a particularly bleak episode in an already-pretty-damn-depressing season....(?)

anyhow, i liked the ambiguity of the ending, actually leaving it up to the viewer to decide, which is the real "reality"? even if joss and co. weren't conscious of the "ftmwhe" parallels (though he IS an avid comics reader, so who knows), it DOES work as an inspired inversion of moore's ending...
Basically the last episode of St. Elsewhere revealed that the entire series was a figment of an autistic kid's imagination. I didn't like the idea that Joss could potentially pull a similiar stunt in the last episode of Buffy.

And yeah, it was too depressing. We got hit with the 1-2-3 punch of Hell's Bells, Normal Again, and Entropy. Usually Joss gives us a breather between heavy shows but watching those three one after another seemed to be punishment on the audience. (Did Xander and Anya REALLY need to break up? Did Anya and Spike REALLY need to have an affair?) I mean there's a difference in not liking happy endings and just putting your characters through senseless crap for no reason.

That being said the season REALLY turned around in the final four episodes. I finally got what Joss and Marti were going for and the season finale was awesome as usual. At the end of Two to Go where Dark Willow says "Now there's nobody powerful enough to stop me," and she gets thrown across the room by a magic blast and Giles is revealed: "I'd like to test that theory." It is the greatest cliffhanger in Buffy history. Or it WOULD be had the stupid UPN not aired the finale as a two-hour episode. Grrr!

Ironically while Buffy and Angel worked best as hour long episodic chapters I felt that whenever CN split up JL it didn't work so well. I LIKED the hour long airings because they flowed more evenly into each other, as opposed to earlier DCAU episodes which had clear-cut cliffhangers such as Two-Face, Legacy (Best DCAU cliffhanger ever BTW), and The Call. It was the "movie" airings that ironically were best left together. (Last Son of Krypton, World's Finest, and Rebirth.) Was that deliberate?

[Fone Bone]

Sorry, but you guys really aren't remembering the end of "Perchance to Dream" very well.

Batman comes out of the dream and advances on Tetch. His voice quivering with rage and his jaw locked so that he can barely articulate his words, growls out a furious "Why?! Why did you do it?!" It looks like Bats can barely contain himself is on the verge of beating the crap out of him. That's not "shrugging it off" or being "mildly upset." The tag scene with Gordon is quite a bit later, after he's had a chance to calm down. And Tetch isn't anywhere around to irritate him. So your claim that Superman showed more emotion is way off base.

PtD also, IMO, is much more interesting because it humanizes Tetch by giving him some say. (Mongul is just a bastard. Ho hum.) Tetch replies to Batman's "Why?" by flying into a rage of his own. [b]"You of all people have the gall to ask me that?? You ruined my life! I was willing to give you any life you wanted ... just to keep you out of mine!" It's a great twist, rammed home by McDowell's performance, to have the Hatter claim to be the real victim.
It's true he was mad at Tetch. But it didn't quite enrage him in the same way the Black Mercy did Superman. For one thing, Batman knew right at the start there was something wrong with his dream world. He had ALL of his memories of being Batman and he needed some convincing that he fit into the dream. True he eventually embraced it but it was a tenuous embrace at best. He quickly realized he'd rather live in his cold reality than be coddled by a fictiional dream world.

Superman on the other hand had no memory of being a hero. His dream life though cultivated from portions of his reality was all he ever knew in the dream. He had no basis on which to believe this was all a dream, until Batman pulled him out of it (the earthquakes). He LIVED that life and it was real to him so when he lost it he was truly broken. Batman never really believed in his fantasy, at least not enough to stop questioning it.

So I believe it was MUCH rougher on Clark and that made it a richer episode in my estimation. I LOVE tragedy (see above Buffy post) and this episode had it in spades. Truly phenomenal.

[GohanWinner]

Late replies to both messages I'm gonna quote, but what'dya want? I just got my account activated. lol


The plant simulates a stated desire, which itself might not be a fully worked out reality. For example, if my deepest desire is to win a race, the plant will, presumably, create only the experience of winning the race, but the machine will create the reality—including a past and future—in which that desire is realized.I don’t think that’s true… The way the Black Mercy seemed to me was that it creates a whole new life for you in a short amount of time. Or something to that effect. It seemed Kal-el had lived that entire life, and grown attached to his life there.

And Bruce’s thoughts lingered on his dad beating the snot out of the guy who killed his parents because he always wanted to see the guy get what he deserved. And, it’s likely that the beating wasn’t as long as it appeared.


interesting...another whedonian variation on the "ftmwhe" scenario was the BUFFY ep where her "dream world" was an isane asylum....everything in her whole series up to that point, the whole slayer thing, even all her friends, etc, was presented as a delusion...her "real life" at the time was becoming unendurable, and the asylum, as frightening as it was, was actually presented as a convincingly seductive escape....the ending was absolutely BRILLIANT: after she reluctantly chooses to go back to "reality", we cut back INSIDE her dream world, she's basically in a vegetative fugue state, her parents are sobbing, with the psychiatrist gravely saying "we lost her"...Oh, I remember that episode. I loved that one. The way they did it really did make you wonder whether or not Buffy was in a dream world, even though it’s fairly obvious she wasn’t. Nonetheless a great episode, with the ending confusing me more. @_o


That said, I can't fairly say which I like better, as I haven't seen B:TAS since before I was 13, where sadly, my memory gets hazy. It is USELESS. >:O

I have vague memories of random parts, like I remember Bruce meeting Batman, him finding the jumbled letters....and not much more...

Anyway, that said, I'm going to go with For the Man Who Has EVerything.

[b.t.]

at the risk of completely derailing this thread (heh, like THAT'S gonna stop me), i went back and re-watched "normal again" last night....whoah, i'd forgotten, it's REALLY dark!....buffy actually trying to murder the scoobies, one of the creepiest bits in the entire buffyverse canon....

anyhow, what struck me this time was another "ftmwhe" parallel: the villain's motivation for disabling the hero with an immersive dream world is, once again, the same in both stories (and "perchance..." too, for that matter)... basically, just to keep the hero out of said villain's way...

...which is actually pretty dumb, when you really think about it! in all three stories, there is a moment when the hero is completely incapacitated, lost in la-la land...c'mon, bad guys, take a moment to KILL the sucker!

you could argue that mongul might be worried that he's just not physically powerful enough to kill superman, i suppose...and tetch, while seriously pissed off at batman, might be just humane enough to stop short of actual murder....


hey, and maxie: as usual, you make valid points, but i'd have to say it all sounds kinda dry and academic....you exhaustively state why "ptd" should THEORETICALLY be the more successful story, but i always follow my gut (sometimes to my peril, admittedly)....again, i haven't seen "ptd" in years, so i'm not really trying to argue against it, but , viscerally, i think "ftmwhe" might just have the edge overall....i grant you, tetch has the more complex personality, and kevin conroy, of course, RULES...but on a purely "craft" execution level -- direction, storyboards, animation, color design, etc -- "ftmwhe" clearly blazes brighter....also, i agree with those who say clark's fantasy family FEELS more "real" than the somewhat stock waynes, so, points for that....

(by the way, we made a conscious effort to make clark's family life not TOO perfect...someone here made a valid criticism of "a knight of shadows", to the effect that j'onn's family was just too idyllic to be at all believeable, and we took that to heart....once again, the internet is your friend!...thus, van's a little bit contemptuous of farmer dad, even talks back a bit ("i know, i KNOW") and dad gets ticked off at him over the krypto-poop incident...jor-el and clark even have a testy little exchange ("oh, so you're a scientist now"), hinting at some argument in their past....we wanted clark's home life to have as much verisimillitude as possible...it really took some fine tuning at the script stage...for instance, in the first draft, van entered the story by jumping into bed with his parents, merrily blurting "happy birthday!"...it's a subtle thing, i know, but it just didn't feel "honest"...being a husband and dad myself, i KNOW it's not all sunshine and bliss 24/7...also, notice that there's no background score throughout the entire first segment of clark's dream....we were REALLY tempted to play warm, copeland-esque "americana" under it,to establish how happy he was there, but decided to play it "straight", with just ambient bg noise, etc, to immediately immerse the viewer in clark's world....)

and, finally, KICK-ASS fight scenes! ya gotta admit, no contest there....

(and no wicked invisible jet in "ptd", neither :D...)

[Doomsday]

FTMWHE I think has an edge one PTD because of whats going outside of the dream. In PTD Batman has no real reason to leave his perect word but in FTMWHE Superman has to come out of his dream or Batman and Wonderwomen would die. Now I don't believe Mongul will take over the planet but will kill Bats and WW. This was big to me because not of WW getting toss around but because of Conroy voice work for Batman. This is the first episode that Batman felt useless and scared for his and WW's life. He was starting to get pissed that he couldn't help WW and she die if he can't get Sups out of his dream. Also the dream worked so well how theres some effects from Batman trying to get him out of it and his voice work at the end was the best I ever heard from Newbern. Really moving. The fight scenes were really great and the scars from battle were really painful looking. I'm only hoping now that there will be more JLU episodes with the voice work is this good with some awesome action as well. As for what episode is better, I can't really say how I haven't seen PTD in years but I'll try to find it by the end of the day so I can say more later.

[Fone Bone]

at the risk of completely derailing this thread (heh, like THAT'S gonna stop me), i went back and re-watched "normal again" last night....whoah, i'd forgotten, it's REALLY dark!....buffy actually trying to murder the scoobies, one of the creepiest bits in the entire buffyverse canon....
So dark, it was hard for me to watch at times.



anyhow, what struck me this time was another "ftmwhe" parallel: the villain's motivation for disabling the hero with an immersive dream world is, once again, the same in both stories (and "perchance..." too, for that matter)... basically, just to keep the hero out of said villain's way...

...which is actually pretty dumb, when you really think about it! in all three stories, there is a moment when the hero is completely incapacitated, lost in la-la land...c'mon, bad guys, take a moment to KILL the sucker!
Not the first times a villian should have dispatched the hero when they had the chance. I remember from the Mickey Mouse comics the Phantom Blot's "soft heart" which made him leave the room every time he set a death trap for the mouse.:D


you could argue that mongul might be worried that he's just not physically powerful enough to kill superman, i suppose...and tetch, while seriously pissed off at batman, might be just humane enough to stop short of actual murder....


hey, and maxie: as usual, you make valid points, but i'd have to say it all sounds kinda dry and academic....you exhaustively state why "ptd" should THEORETICALLY be the more successful story, but i always follow my gut (sometimes to my peril, admittedly)....again, i haven't seen "ptd" in years, so i'm not really trying to argue against it, but , viscerally, i think "ftmwhe" might just have the edge overall....i grant you, tetch has the more complex personality, and kevin conroy, of course, RULES...but on a purely "craft" execution level -- direction, storyboards, animation, color design, etc -- "ftmwhe" clearly blazes brighter....also, i agree with those who say clark's fantasy family FEELS more "real" than the somewhat stock waynes, so, points for that....

(by the way, we made a conscious effort to make clark's family life not TOO perfect...someone here made a valid criticism of "a knight of shadows", to the effect that j'onn's family was just too idyllic to be at all believeable, and we took that to heart....once again, the internet is your friend!...thus, van's a little bit contemptuous of farmer dad, even talks back a bit ("i know, i KNOW") and dad gets ticked off at him over the krypto-poop incident...jor-el and clark even have a testy little exchange ("oh, so you're a scientist now"), hinting at some argument in their past....we wanted clark's home life to have as much verisimillitude as possible...it really took some fine tuning at the script stage...for instance, in the first draft, van entered the story by jumping into bed with his parents, merrily blurting "happy birthday!"...it's a subtle thing, i know, but it just didn't feel "honest"...being a husband and dad myself, i KNOW it's not all sunshine and bliss 24/7...also, notice that there's no background score throughout the entire first segment of clark's dream....we were REALLY tempted to play warm, copeland-esque "americana" under it,to establish how happy he was there, but decided to play it "straight", with just ambient bg noise, etc, to immediately immerse the viewer in clark's world....)

and, finally, KICK-ASS fight scenes! ya gotta admit, no contest there....

(and no wicked invisible jet in "ptd", neither :D...)
Interesting. FTMWBHE DID seem more real than Perchance to Dream and I appreciated all the little touches you guys put in there. The thing that REALLY bothered me (which someone already mentioned in the episode thread) was that when Superman cleaned off the dog doo he forgot to wash his hands before going back to the pancakes.:eek: As someone with OCD, that's a no-no.:D

[StClair]

Sorry, but you guys really aren't remembering the end of "Perchance to Dream" very well.

Batman comes out of the dream and advances on Tetch. His voice quivering with rage and his jaw locked so that he can barely articulate his words, growls out a furious "Why?! Why did you do it?!" It looks like Bats can barely contain himself is on the verge of beating the crap out of him. That's not "shrugging it off" or being "mildly upset." The tag scene with Gordon is quite a bit later, after he's had a chance to calm down. And Tetch isn't anywhere around to irritate him. So your claim that Superman showed more emotion is way off base.
All true. And I'll also note that to my ear, Batman didn't sound flippant when he described the helmet as "the stuff that dreams are made of" - more like subdued and mournful of what he gave up, even if it wasn't real.


It's a great twist, rammed home by McDowell's performance, to have the Hatter claim to be the real victim.
McDowell was very good at playing quiet, well-mannered, thoughtful characters who finally explode when pushed too far by "unreasonable" frustrations.

[b.t.]

ok, just got done watching "ptd"....and, well, i'm sorry, but anyone who thinks that it's remotely in "ftmwhe"'s class must not have seen it in awhile, must be reacting to their memory of it...i found it to be clumsy and heavy-handed every step of the way....the dialogue is painfully "on the nose", the animation's REALLY pretty bad, even the score seemed to be oddly inappropriate throughout....kevin's performance IS good, but i honestly think he's done better....i will say that roddy's performance is SPECTACULAR, even better than i'd remembered....but everything else, i dunno.... :shrug:

maxie, i know your copies of BTAS aren't in the best shape, but seriously, watch it again...i'd be amazed if your opinion of it stays the same...

[guinaevere]

Sorry to the Mods that Be. I'm not comparing the two episodes. They're two different classes, in my mind.


In all seriousness, I think the Abraham/Isaac connection to FTMWHE is wildly cool.ehhh... Ace, I credit much of what you have to say. But I just don't see this. At all. It would be cool if I could buy it, if that means anything. :D


And Bruce’s thoughts lingered on his dad beating the snot out of the guy who killed his parents because he always wanted to see the guy get what he deserved.I've been thinking of this scene, as at first, it creeped me out. (I have trouble with kids relishing violence. It's a bit too unnatural and too much of a red flag, not to be addressed, when observed in children.) But as I contemplated the issue of young Bruce seeing his Dad spring to action, it began to feel, not worrisome, but completely justifiable.

First, the young Bruce witnessing his Father beat the villian, is not a young, innocent child, but rather, an old, jaded, and very tired man. One who lost his parents, and consequently has taken on the burdon of defending the innocent, without them ever able to even thank him for the covert selfless acts he abuses himself to commit. So we have this worn man seeing not through childlike eyes, but through the eyes and body of a child, his father taking on the role that he ought to have been able to; of protecting his family competently and judiciously.

For one who was robbed of this very necessary paternal component, the smile and zeal with which he watches, is understandable. Consider the circumstances of the Black Mercy induced dream state, it would have been abnormal for this scene not to play out for a prolonged duration.

[Maxie Zeus]

It's true he was mad at Tetch. But it didn't quite enrage him in the same way the Black Mercy did Superman.

It sounds to me you're basing this solely on the fact that Batman didn't beat the crap out of Tetch. This isn't your standard, is it, that the degree of rage can only be measured by whether you're throwing punches? Anywy, in PtD, Batman is moving toward physical violence as he advances on Tetch: his hands are raised and his fingers clenched as though he is just about to strangle him.


He [Superman] LIVED that life and it was real to him so when he lost it he was truly broken.

So I believe it was MUCH rougher on Clark and that made it a richer episode in my estimation. I LOVE tragedy (see above Buffy post) and this episode had it in spades. Truly phenomenal.

The more I mull over the Black Mercy device in FtMWHE, the less happy I am with it.

1. In what sense did Superman "live" the life on fake-Krypton? Well, he had a memory of having the life; he "remembered" all sorts of things in that dream. But I "remember" lots of things when I dream: I've dreamed that a tunnel connected my kitchen and my work office, and while walking through the tunnel "remembered" that built it with my own hands to make a short cut. But that doesn't mean that I "lived" the life in which I built that tunnel. He certainly didn't "live" thirty-odd years in real time in his dream, otherwise he'd have aged thirty-odd years in the real world. (And don't say that he dreamed that whole back life really fast, because we see his dream life moving at the same approximate speed as the real world is moving.)

2. In what sense has Superman suffered a "tragedy"? Fake-Krypton (and his son) haven't been destroyed, because they were never real. (If they were "destroyed" when he woke up, how many worlds have you destroyed by waking out of a dream? Is the tragedy that he was put into this dream, or is the tragedy that he woke up? If the tragedy is that he was put into a dream, why are you so sympathetic with the dream characters who (through no fault of their own--if they could have a fault, which they can't, because they're not real) are victimizing Superman? If the tragedy is that he woke up, why isn't the villain Batman for taking Superman out of it? Is the tragedy that he suffered a terrible, disorienting and traumatic mental earthquake? But that's not a tragedy, that's a crime perpetrated by Mongul.

3. What is the difference between what Mongul does to Superman and what Dr. Destiny did to him? In both cases, Superman was made to suffer the delusion that something that was false is actually true. The only difference I can see is that Mongul's illusion was pleasant and Dr. Destiny's was unpleasant, with a consequent reversal of emotion when the illusion was punctured. Why is it more interesting, more tragic or "richer" to wake from a pleasant dream than to wake from a nightmarish one?

4. Given that there was no reality to the dream, and hence no basis for sympathetic involvement with the dream characters; given that there is no "tragedy" involved with waking from a dream; given that we, as viewers, aren't (and can't be) fully exposed to the charms of life on fake-Krypton, but only have to take Superman's word for it that it's wonderful: All of this explains why, even as I was watching the episode, I kept muttering, "This is all very lovely and well-written and cunningly thought out. So why I don't I care?" I felt no--zero, zilch, nada, the big goose egg--emotional involvement with Superman's fake-Krypton life. And it's taken me this long to figure out why.

It's because it's the story of a really sweet dream that Superman has, one he's not happy about waking out of. Well, boo hoo. I've had lots of really sweet dreams that I've hated to wake up from, too; and I'll be damned if I'll claim that I've suffered the equivalent of Superman's "tragedy" at least once a month since I was seven.

[Alex Weitzman]

ok, just got done watching "ptd"....and, well, i'm sorry, but anyone who thinks that it's remotely in "ftmwhe"'s class must not have seen it in awhile, must be reacting to their memory of it...i found it to be clumsy and heavy-handed every step of the way....the dialogue is painfully "on the nose", the animation's REALLY pretty bad, even the score seemed to be oddly inappropriate throughout....kevin's performance IS good, but i honestly think he's done better....i will say that roddy's performance is SPECTACULAR, even better than i'd remembered....but everything else, i dunno.... :shrug:

maxie, i know your copies of BTAS aren't in the best shape, but seriously, watch it again...i'd be amazed if your opinion of it stays the same...
As one of the folks who considers them in generally the same class, I may as well justify my position by pointing out that, despite the similar plot situation, the two episodes really do have very different functions for their respective characters, all thanks to specific and crucial structure differences. The more I think about them, in fact, the less they even seem like the same plot.

You're right that Perchance to Dream does not hit as hard on an emotional level as For The Man Who Has Everything, which is far more raw and bristly thanks to Superman actually having something (albeit fabricated) sundered from him - his son. Batman does not lose anything in Perchance to Dream that he has not already lost, and his fury against Tetch is more of a matter of righteousness than Superman's seething hatred at Mongul's audacity. And yes, even though I haven't rewatched it in a while, Perchance's animation is only servicable, as opposed to For The Man's really beautiful renderings. (I'll have to stick with your call on the music, as like I said, I haven't watched it in a while.)

But what I like about Perchance to Dream is what I like about folks like Tom Stoppard; they share a playful yet serious-minded approach to a significant intellectual and moral quandry, without ever revealing all the answers. I like to think of it as the Mad Hatter forcing the tables to turn on Batman, putting Wayne in a situation where he is the delusional one and seeing if he'll buy into the fantasy. (Compare this with For The Man's Black Mercy, where buying into the fantasy is more of a sure thing, and therefore making it more difficult to let go on your own.) The key thing is that Bruce finds a single piece of proof of the fact that the world he sees around him is a lie, and he chooses to acknowledge the evidence than ignore it - which is exactly what all the members of his Rogues' Gallery refuse to do. Any evidence that their path is not the best one is brushed aside so they can live the fantasy. The scene with the Mad Hatter in the lighthouse is so brilliant because it's Jervis Tetch trying to sell Bruce Wayne on insanity.

Anyway, that's how I look at it, and why I think both episodes are tip-top examples of great storytelling. Of course, b.t., you're a documented perfectionist (I think we all remember you picking out the details of things you'd want to change during the two commentaries of On Leather Wings and Heart of Ice :D), so I'm not surprised that the return visit to Perchance to Dream was less than satisfactory. Maybe 12 more years will put a different spin on For The Man Who Has Everything. :)

[guinaevere]

2. In what sense has Superman suffered a "tragedy"? Fake-Krypton (and his son) haven't been destroyed, because they were never real.I don't know that he suffered a tragedy. But I can see the frustration and anger.

Can you imagine if you're given a perfect Maxie Zeus-centric Nirvana? It doesn't have to be real. You only have to believe it is. And then to wrench yourself from it. (Remember, he did not just walk away, but explained to a delusion he cared so deeply about, that it broke his heart.) I'd be a trifle miffed, myself.

And it wasn't just that he's upset that Mom came and woke him from a good dream to go to school. Mongul had every intention of destroying Earth. That was his reason for putting Supes out of the picture. I see that as something that warrants a reaction.

[GohanWinner]

I've been thinking of this scene, as at first, it creeped me out. (I have trouble with kids relishing violence. It's a bit too unnatural and too much of a red flag, not to be addressed, when observed in children.) But as I contemplated the issue of young Bruce seeing his Dad spring to action, it began to feel, not worrisome, but completely justifiable.

First, the young Bruce witnessing his Father beat the villian, is not a young, innocent child, but rather, an old, jaded, and very tired man. One who lost his parents, and consequently has taken on the burdon of defending the innocent, without them ever able to even thank him for the covert selfless acts he abuses himself to commit. So we have this worn man seeing not through childlike eyes, but through the eyes and body of a child, his father taking on the role that he ought to have been able to; of protecting his family competently and judiciously.

For one who was robbed of this very necessary paternal component, the smile and zeal with which he watches, is understandable. Consider the circumstances of the Black Mercy induced dream state, it would have been abnormal for this scene not to play out for a prolonged duration.
I never actually thought of it that way, but, yeah, that sounds completely right.

And I apologise for the quote being four times the size of my actual post.

[Supremus]

… The way the Black Mercy seemed to me was that it creates a whole new life for you in a short amount of time. Or something to that effect. It seemed Kal-el had lived that entire life, and grown attached to his life there."It's a dream, Jim., but not as we know it" :) Our dreams tend to be very non-linear and highly illogical, and no matter how bizarre they are, they make perfect sense to us in the dream state. Superman's experience is something entirely different.

Like you said, Superman could have felt like he had lived his entire life on Krypton. Although there isn't really anything concrete in the episode to suggest that, it's pretty clear that Superman's dream is not the kind of experience we humans have when we sleep, or even the kind Superman would normally have.

Mongul actually says the plant reads a persons inner most desires and creates a totally convincing simulation, and goes on to say it's far deeper than any dream, so it's not really up to the viewer to compare Superman's experience to a good dream and make a judgement on how he felt about his loss. Superman has undoubtedly had dreams about living the good life on Krypton before, but this was something else, and his reaction, when he wakes up, tells the viewer how profoundly it affected him.

[Maxie Zeus]

hey, and maxie: as usual, you make valid points, but i'd have to say it all sounds kinda dry and academic....you exhaustively state why "ptd" should THEORETICALLY be the more successful story, but i always follow my gut (sometimes to my peril, admittedly)....

i'm sorry, but anyone who thinks that it's remotely in "ftmwhe"'s class must not have seen it in awhile, must be reacting to their memory of it...i found it to be clumsy and heavy-handed every step of the way....the dialogue is painfully "on the nose", the animation's REALLY pretty bad, even the score seemed to be oddly inappropriate throughout....kevin's performance IS good, but i honestly think he's done better....i will say that roddy's performance is SPECTACULAR, even better than i'd remembered....but everything else, i dunno....

on a purely "craft" execution level -- direction, storyboards, animation, color design, etc -- "ftmwhe" clearly blazes brighter....also, i agree with those who say clark's fantasy family FEELS more "real" than the somewhat stock waynes, so, points for that....

and, finally, KICK-ASS fight scenes! ya gotta admit, no contest there....

(and no wicked invisible jet in "ptd", neither :D...)

After the above post, I do owe you a post in the Talkback explaining why FtMWHE is such a terrific story. For the moment, I'll just say: You can tell that JLU is impressing the hell out of me, because I'm unsheathing my critical claws. :evil:

I still think PtD is much better FtMWHE, and I'm not going to dial down my enthusiasm for it--even though I just got through rewatching it and there's not much you say about it that I disagree with. The animation is really pretty blech (unless it's those old tapes getting in the way again) and the look is pretty wretched. (Except: I love the church tower and the scudding sky over the graveyard, and I love one shot of Wayne walking across a room with enormous windows in the bg.) But the debate about the "look" PtD vs. the "look" of FtMWHE would go back to the debate about BTAS vs. post-STAS style; PtD may be a worse example of the former and FtMWHE a superior example of the latter, but a lot of people still love the BTAS look. I like it enough that I'll forgive it quite a bit, even though I still prefer the later look.

But I won't let the visual flaws detract from my enjoyment of the ep; otherwise I'd have to knock "Mad as a Hatter" off its pedestal.

Music: I'd like to know GMahler's opinion. I think you're right about it, though, now that I've given it another listen. It's very dependent on three themes, if I hear it correctly: Batman's theme, a kind of a hurrying "stress" theme, and the Hatter's theme. Overall, it is pretty flat.

Dialogue: No mistake, there are some very bad patches and they outnumber the places where the dialogue is good. IIRC, the script had a very troubled history (it's got three names on it), and it really could have used a good buffing. On the other hand, the situations might be impossible to write for. What do you say to a parent you thought has been dead for twenty years? I'm inclined to be charitable.

Yeah, the Waynes are flat and the -El's (if that's the right way to refer to them) are a lot better. But as Revelator pointed out, the Waynes have probably always been flat. They are "idealized," and no one seems inclined to crack the plaster on their shrines.

Am I taking back all the good things I've said about PtD? No not even a comma.

This is hard to describe, but there are some stories that work on the surface but don't have anything underneath, and there are other stories that work underneath but don't work on the surface. I don't mean that some stories are shallow and others are deep; and I don't mean that some stories work "in theory" while others work "in reality." I mean that some stories are terrific at an immediate level of gratification even though they don't really stand up to repeated inspection, while others can sink in after awhile really alter your perceptions.

I think Citizen Kane is an instance of the former. It's a great movie, fully deserving of all the praise it receives. It belongs somewhere near the top of the all-time great lists. But it also doesn't bear close scrutinization. It pounds home the theme of Kane's needing "love on his own terms" relentlessly and without variation; it is maudlin and sentimental about "mother love"; and Kane himself hasn't many dimensions, a fact disguised by Welles' amazing performance. The more you concentrate on what is "there" beneath the bravura filmmaking technique, the more you realize that it is a pretty trite story. I don't mean this as a criticism, mind you. I only mean that Citizen Kane is the brilliant product of a brilliant toymaker and is at its best advantage when you take it from that angle.

Vertigo is not a deep film, and it also hasn't got much "there" there. It's also starkly fantastical film--the premise is nutty and it can only be borne if you can get past your own sense of incredulity. And it has patches of bad and banal dialogue and places where exposition lies heavy on the screen. But Vertigo, it's been observed, is a film about obsession that also causes obsession. Once you let it get its grip on you, you can get lost in it--not in any complex themes or amazing cinematic trickery, but simply in the dreamlike situation. Vertigo, if you let it, can get inside you, in a way that is very hard to describe.

I don't call either of these films "better" than the other; they work in different ways, but they play on you differently. FtMWHE is more like the former: It brilliant and facile and shiny and ingenious and tremendously well put together; but the more I think about it, the more it tends to fall apart. It's very fragile. PtD, for all its flaws, has gotten inside of me. And that's because its virtues aren't surface values. The episode works (IMO) because it has so many fascinating implications.

I suppose I could admit (or, better, should recognize) that these virtues might not be those of PtD, but virtues of the character of Batman. It's an odd thing: the more you poke around his character, the more corners and twists and unexpected passages you find. It's as though everything that you throw at him--every adventure or plot contrivance or throwaway bit of dialogue--adds some new dimension to him. So maybe it says less about PtD than it does about Batman himself when I say it is endlessly fascinating for the way it opens up Batman's character. At the end of PtD, I feel that I know Batman far better, and know far more disquieting things about him. At the end of FtMWHE, I've learned that Superman is a nice guy. Which I already knew.

[Maxie Zeus]

"It's a dream, Jim., but not as we know it" :)

"It's worse than that--he's dreaming, Jim!" :D


I don't know that he suffered a tragedy. But I can see the frustration and anger.

Can you imagine if you're given a perfect Maxie Zeus-centric Nirvana? It doesn't have to be real. You only have to believe it is. And then to wrench yourself from it. (Remember, he did not just walk away, but explained to a delusion he cared so deeply about, that it broke his heart.) I'd be a trifle miffed, myself.

Oh, I understand him being angry. I'd be miffed, too, for just the reasons you describe. I only bridle at the word "tragedy" being thrown in and at the implication that something profound was going on. I don't think it was profound, and I didn't find it profoundly moving. Why is he crying at the end? He's weeping because he's losing an illusion. Maybe I'm just unsentimtental about the attractions of wishful thinking or self-deception, but I'm not sad to see such things go. When I discover I've been deeply wrong about something, my reaction isn't sadness at the loss of my innocence but anger at having been deluded. That is why Superman's anger is something I've no quarrel with; that's what I'd feel.

[Tommunist]

Well, at least we learn that Clark dreams in color while Bruce in black and white! When first watching this, I paid it no mind, as it was a 'flashback". But then I thought, was the decision to use black and white to help the viewer recognize this was a past event for Bruce, or that Bruce only sees things in terms of black and white, (right and wrong)? Perhaps reading too much into it, but it's fun nonetheless.
And as for the portrayal of Bruce's parents as flat: well, yes. My memories of the DCAU don't give me any indication of what his parents were like. Though there seems to be genuine affection there, for all we know they could be jerks! Perhaps in young Bruce's life there was some trauma before the big trauma, if you will, which may fill in the blanks as to why he chose the path he did over other people who have had similiar horrors in there childhood, but someone they managed to get over it, unlike Bruce

[Phantasm]

Yeah...why was Bruce's dream sequence black and white?:confused:

[Alex Weitzman]

Oh, I understand him being angry. I'd be miffed, too, for just the reasons you describe. I only bridle at the word "tragedy" being thrown in and at the implication that something profound was going on. I don't think it was profound, and I didn't find it profoundly moving. Why is he crying at the end? He's weeping because he's losing an illusion. Maybe I'm just unsentimtental about the attractions of wishful thinking or self-deception, but I'm not sad to see such things go. When I discover I've been deeply wrong about something, my reaction isn't sadness at the loss of my innocence but anger at having been deluded. That is why Superman's anger is something I've no quarrel with; that's what I'd feel.
It's all about the boy. Clark Kent is a man who values love and family above all else, and so while he's not especially sad about the loss of everything else in his dream world (since they're things he either has in reality or lost well before he was old enough for loss to be palpable to him), it's his son, a son that by all accounts of his "dream memory" he raised for years, that is being forcibly removed from him. Van-El may not be real, but Clark's feelings for him were ironclad. By putting Superman in a position where his eventual escape (I really think Mongul expected Superman to remove himself from the Mercy, because it makes the cruelty complete) would end up destroying his own child, or at least, something that fully occupies the position of a loved son in his mind, it is like Mongul gave Superman a beloved son and then killed him. That's where I see Superman's fury coming from.

[guinaevere]

And I apologise for the quote being four times the size of my actual post.So long as you're quoting me, I think it's a brilliant move, Mr Winner, sir. :D


Why is he crying at the end? He's weeping because he's losing an illusion. Maybe I'm just unsentimtental about the attractions of wishful thinking or self-deception, but I'm not sad to see such things go.Oh, fine. Go all mature on us.

No, I see where you're coming from. I agree to an extent. But I also see where he was coming from. He loved the illusion.

As you yourself have pointed out, dreams have no sensibility in their flow, there is no rationale for what occurs. In the time the Black Mercy and he enmeshed to create this world, Kal-El loved his son completely.

(Haven't you had dreams where it was vitally important that you get somewhere on time, or do some thing or other? When one wakes from such a dream, it's a relief. Whew! Thank goodness! And then, upon reflection, you realize the panic and dread you fully experienced in the dream made NO sense at all?)


and the -El'sAnd the -El's. :D Hangin' with the -El's. I have this sudden desire to write a rap song.


Yeah...why was Bruce's dream sequence black and white?:confused:I think the sepia tone of Bruce's dream was an artistic device to portray the contrast between Supermans dream, which was colorful, joyful, full of love and life, and Bat's, which was, quite clearly and understandably, devoid of these elements.

Remember, these are two very different people. Clark is a man raised in a loving family. His dreams reflect this. Owing to circumstances, Bruce does not see the world like this.

[MAXIMUS]

wow just popped in and realized I almost through this thread outta whack...but the Whedonverse has that affect on people.


Just thought of another reason why I loved this ep. When Kal finally says goodbye to Van, its a pretty gut wrenching moment, then we get a bigger gut wrencher when Bruce goes back to the memories of his parents death. I can;t remember it ever really being shown except in obscure dream sequence/delusion, but I just felt so sad for that little boy who just lost his world and his trust in it. :sweat:

[Revelator]

[QUOTED: Maxie Zeus]

IIRC, the script had a very troubled history (it's got three names on it), and it really could have used a good buffing.

I'm not basing this off of any evidence, but I'd guess that what's good in the script is based on the contributions of Joe R. Lansdale, an interesting writer who IIRC also contributed to "Avatar" and the shamefully underrated "Critters."

Yeah, the Waynes are flat and the -El's (if that's the right way to refer to them) are a lot better. But as Revelator pointed out, the Waynes have probably always been flat. They are "idealized," and no one seems inclined to crack the plaster on their shrines.

Yes, and had the plaster been cracked in PtD the episode might have been truly great rather than an acceptable dramatization of a terrific premise. I've never understood how writers expect readers to feel for Bruce's loss if all he's losing are two bits of cardboard.

Citizen Kane is the brilliant product of a brilliant toymaker and is at its best advantage when you take it from that angle.

Or as Pauline Kael said, it's a great masterpiece but a shallow masterpiece. How the tale is told makes the tale seem deeper than it really is.

Vertigo is not a deep film, and it also hasn't got much "there" there.

You obviously haven't taken many film theory classes:p. Vertigo is daffy on the surface but practically a stew of neuroses and lovesick imagery at heart, and what it has to say about gender has already filled volumes. It's one of the most bottomless films ever made.

FtMWHE is more like the former: It brilliant and facile and shiny and ingenious and tremendously well put together

Yes, and also more succesfull dramatically, which puts it more alongside Vertigo than the flamboyant Kane. Ptd is a gimmic episode and so is FtMWHE, but the latter wrings more emotional blood from the gimmic. PtD is really more related to Kane in its conceptual audacity that doesn't allow for a genuine emotional connection.

[b.t.]

Like you said, Superman could have felt like he had lived his entire life on Krypton. Although there isn't really anything concrete in the episode to suggest that

actually, there are a few things: as i mentioned in another thread, kal and jor-el's testy little exchange ("oh, so you're a scientist now"...."DA-ad...") hints at some discord in their mutual past, so the viewer instantly knows they DO have a shared history....subtle, i know, but....

the other example i can think of is in kal's farewell scene with his son....in moore's original story and marc's drafts, kal says, "i was there when you were born" and then goes right into "...but i don't think you're real"....which, at the last minute, didn't sound right to me, it was merely a statement of fact, it didn't sound like he really HAD been there...so i elaborated on it a bit, having him describe his own experience of it, how it FELT to be there.....kal's descriptions of van's "beautiful little face" and "tiny fingers", etc is perhaps overly sentimental and somewhat trite, but it IS a common reaction from new fathers -- trust me on this one -- and i think it DOES convey that he's DEEPLY immersed in the fantasy, as opposed to it being just a pleasant little fantasy....

[Paul_Cousins]

I loved both episodes. Both were great. But I am going with "Perchance to Dream" because of the way Batman forced himself to wake up.

[Supremus]

actually, there are a few things: as i mentioned in another thread, kal and jor-el's testy little exchange ("oh, so you're a scientist now"...."DA-ad...") hints at some discord in their mutual past, so the viewer instantly knows they DO have a shared history....subtle, i know, but....

the other example i can think of is in kal's farewell scene with his son....in moore's original story and marc's drafts, kal says, "i was there when you were born" and then goes right into "...but i don't think you're real"....which, at the last minute, didn't sound right to me, it was merely a statement of fact, it didn't sound like he really HAD been there...so i elaborated on it a bit, having him describe his own experience of it, how it FELT to be there.....kal's descriptions of van's "beautiful little face" and "tiny fingers", etc is perhaps overly sentimental and somewhat trite, but it IS a common reaction from new fathers -- trust me on this one -- and i think it DOES convey that he's DEEPLY immersed in the fantasy, as opposed to it being just a pleasant little fantasy....The exchange between Jor-El and Kal is perhaps a little bit too vague to hold up in court, but I just watched the scene with Kal and Van again, and you're absolutely right, it really does the trick.

I just dug out my old copy of Alan Moore's version, and the sequence with Kal and Van didn't really do much for me. The dialog doesn't really hit the spot for me, and it's a much stronger idea to have Kal's whole world literally falling apart as he realises it's an illusion.

One thing I have been curious about; was it a difficult decision to leave Robin out of the episode? Apart from the practical reason of having one less character to animate, I think it was the right decision from a story perspective, but I could imagine some people being against the idea. I remember when I first read the comic many years ago, and one of the things that first struck me was that it seemed a little bit strange for Batman to bring him along, particularly since it was Jason Todd, who was still a bit of a newbie.

Has Alan Moore had a chance to comment on the animated version yet? It would be very interesting to hear what he thought about it.

[b.t.]

One thing I have been curious about; was it a difficult decision to leave Robin out of the episode? Apart from the practical reason of having one less character to animate, I think it was the right decision from a story perspective, but I could imagine some people being against the idea.

Has Alan Moore had a chance to comment on the animated version yet? It would be very interesting to hear what he thought about it.

we didn't hesitate for a moment to cut robin from the adaptation, for a wide variety of reasons...though it DID necessitate losing one of everybody's favorite lines from the original, "think clean thoughts, chum"... :(

and to answer you and, belatedly, g mahler: dave gibbons sent me a nice email, he found it very enjoyable overall, thought it was a successful adaptation, understood why we changed the things we did....i've not heard from mr. moore yet, so i don't know if that's good or bad :sweat:...hopefully he liked it....we may never know....

[Eddie G.]

and to answer you and, belatedly, g mahler: dave gibbons sent me a nice email, he found it very enjoyable overall, thought it was a successful adaptation, understood why we changed the things we did....i've not heard from mr. moore yet, so i don't know if that's good or bad :sweat:...hopefully he liked it....we may never know....If I recall his opinion towards the LOXG film I don't think he'll really compare your work to his. He sees adaptations as a new creature that is different from the original, (I kind of agree on this with him)so I don't think he'll mind any changes you made at all. But then again Moore has always seemed like a strange distant freaky kind of guy to me, so who knows what he was thinking if he watched the episode or what his response will be.

[Batman's Biggest Fan]

Hey b.t. can you please tell me where the idea for "Perchance to Dream" came from?

[Pksoze]

I think that both episodes are very good, but I'm sort of colored by the original stories. Perchance to Dream was based on a story called 'Identity Crisis' from Detective 633. The story was written by Peter Milligan in which Bruce and Bats are seperate entities. While Perchance to Dream the comic was even better with a very different type of trick ending. Still they were both mystery stories and Hatter's revelation was pretty cool. Still if they used the Twist in the comic. That would have made the episode even better.

FTMWHE was a very servicible adaption and I'm saying write now it could have been even better, Alan Moore's story is that good. Plus being a comics fan , the series stayed truer to its origins. And as cool as Milligan's story was Moore blew it away.

One note FTMWHE was written before Milligan's "Identity Crisis"(not to be confused with the current series) and so is not a ripoff.

[Maxie Zeus]

[QUOTED: Maxie Zeus]

IIRC, the script had a very troubled history (it's got three names on it), and it really could have used a good buffing.

I'm not basing this off of any evidence, but I'd guess that what's good in the script is based on the contributions of Joe R. Lansdale, an interesting writer who IIRC also contributed to "Avatar" and the shamefully underrated "Critters."

There was an article in Cinefantasmablahblahblah from about eight or ten years back, in which the creative crew discussed the series ep by ep; it's buried somewhere in a cardboard box in a closet of mine. I wish I could find it, because there was some interesting stuff about lots of problems the script had ...


Yeah, the Waynes are flat and the -El's (if that's the right way to refer to them) are a lot better. But as Revelator pointed out, the Waynes have probably always been flat. They are "idealized," and no one seems inclined to crack the plaster on their shrines.

Yes, and had the plaster been cracked in PtD the episode might have been truly great rather than an acceptable dramatization of a terrific premise. I've never understood how writers expect readers to feel for Bruce's loss if all he's losing are two bits of cardboard.

Agreed. I'm totally with you on that.


Vertigo is not a deep film, and it also hasn't got much "there" there.

You obviously haven't taken many film theory classes:p. Vertigo is daffy on the surface but practically a stew of neuroses and lovesick imagery at heart, and what it has to say about gender has already filled volumes. It's one of the most bottomless films ever made.

Serves me right for writing in a hurry. What I meant to say/should have said is that there isn't much to the story itself--what we're given on screen doesn't amount to much. It's a trick story with a trick twist and no plausible motive is ever given for the way Scotty and Judy/Madeline fall in love with each other. It's a movie that forces you to supply the motivations and psychologies and metaphoric interpretations of what is happening. That's one reason the film has never had any kind of mass popularity.


Yes, and also more succesfull dramatically, which puts it more alongside Vertigo than the flamboyant Kane. Ptd is a gimmic episode and so is FtMWHE, but the latter wrings more emotional blood from the gimmic. PtD is really more related to Kane in its conceptual audacity that doesn't allow for a genuine emotional connection.

FtMWHE may be more "emotional" for some (not for me, sorry), but that's a surface reaction--just like Kane. I don't say that to denigrate it, I'm just locating where it works. PtD, like Vertigo, forces you to think about its implications and its meanings. That's why my interpretation strikes b.t. (and others, I'm sure) as dry and theoretical. But I think it's a rich and powerful story that can yield such riches--things that last a lot longer than the "Cool!" reaction to FtMWHE.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,


(re: Abraham and Isaac)
ehhh... Ace, I credit much of what you have to say. But I just don't see this. At all. It would be cool if I could buy it, if that means anything. :D

Well, it was sKorpia's idea. Blame her :).

No, seriously, it's a bit of a stretch, but not a whole lot. (For those who skipped out on Sunday school, Genesis 22:1-14 (http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=GEN+22&language=english&version=KJV)). Abraham and Isaac is about demonstrating your submission of your own wants and desires out of servititude to God. Abraham didn't want to sacrifice his son, but he's fully prepared to do it anyway. Once commanded, Abraham has a responsibility to obey, even if it breaks his heart to do it.

The parallel is that Clark has responsibilities also, except his are to humanity in general and his submission is to the needs of the people of the world. His dream is one of domestic tranquility -- a simple life where he is nobody important, living out a quiet existence with a wife, a son, and the family dog. His deepest desire, apparently, does NOT involve having powers, though it's interesting to note that his ideal life still involves acting in service to others as a farmer.

The problem is that Clark knows that he has more in him than that, and that his deepest desires must be subsumed for the greater good. It's not God who is calling him to sacrifice his own son, but his own sense of responsibility. The poster who connected him to Spider-Man got it exactly right -- as much as he would like to, Superman can't abandon his powers for selfish reasons any more than Peter Parker can. He has to take the son he clearly loves and show that he's ready to sacrifice him to prove his faithfulness to his own sense of responsibility.

The bible story gets out of an atrocity with God giving Abraham a reprieve at the last minute. FTMWHE dodges it by making the kid an illusion. Abraham doesn't deliver the mother of all butt-kickings afterwards, but the germ of the idea is the same in both.

Anyway, that's what I got out of it, and it's stuff like that which is why I give the edge to FTMWHE. If anything, thinking about it has really clarified what I think is really core to Superman -- his sense of service to others above all else. Scratch a bit below the surface, and this is a story that goes a long way in defining Superman.

-- Ed/Ace

[b.t.]

I still think PtD is much better FtMWHE, and I'm not going to dial down my enthusiasm for it--even though I just got through rewatching it and there's not much you say about it that I disagree with. The animation is really pretty blech (unless it's those old tapes getting in the way again) and the look is pretty wretched. (Except: I love the church tower and the scudding sky over the graveyard, and I love one shot of Wayne walking across a room with enormous windows in the bg.) But the debate about the "look" PtD vs. the "look" of FtMWHE would go back to the debate about BTAS vs. post-STAS style; PtD may be a worse example of the former and FtMWHE a superior example of the latter, but a lot of people still love the BTAS look. I like it enough that I'll forgive it quite a bit, even though I still prefer the later look.

But I won't let the visual flaws detract from my enjoyment of the ep; otherwise I'd have to knock "Mad as a Hatter" off its pedestal.

Music: I'd like to know GMahler's opinion. I think you're right about it, though, now that I've given it another listen. It's very dependent on three themes, if I hear it correctly: Batman's theme, a kind of a hurrying "stress" theme, and the Hatter's theme. Overall, it is pretty flat.

Dialogue: No mistake, there are some very bad patches and they outnumber the places where the dialogue is good. IIRC, the script had a very troubled history (it's got three names on it), and it really could have used a good buffing. On the other hand, the situations might be impossible to write for. What do you say to a parent you thought has been dead for twenty years? I'm inclined to be charitable.

Yeah, the Waynes are flat and the -El's (if that's the right way to refer to them) are a lot better. But as Revelator pointed out, the Waynes have probably always been flat. They are "idealized," and no one seems inclined to crack the plaster on their shrines.

Am I taking back all the good things I've said about PtD? No not even a comma.

This is hard to describe, but there are some stories that work on the surface but don't have anything underneath, and there are other stories that work underneath but don't work on the surface. I don't mean that some stories are shallow and others are deep; and I don't mean that some stories work "in theory" while others work "in reality." I mean that some stories are terrific at an immediate level of gratification even though they don't really stand up to repeated inspection, while others can sink in after awhile really alter your perceptions.

I think Citizen Kane is an instance of the former. It's a great movie, fully deserving of all the praise it receives. It belongs somewhere near the top of the all-time great lists. But it also doesn't bear close scrutinization. It pounds home the theme of Kane's needing "love on his own terms" relentlessly and without variation; it is maudlin and sentimental about "mother love"; and Kane himself hasn't many dimensions, a fact disguised by Welles' amazing performance. The more you concentrate on what is "there" beneath the bravura filmmaking technique, the more you realize that it is a pretty trite story. I don't mean this as a criticism, mind you. I only mean that Citizen Kane is the brilliant product of a brilliant toymaker and is at its best advantage when you take it from that angle.



in the FTMWHE talkback, there was some debate about how the black mercy actually worked, why batman was able to escape from it more easily than superman, etc...

our rationalization was that superman had been under its spell for a far lengthier time -- several days at least, maybe as much as a week -- whereas batman was only its victim for several minutes at most....longer exposure to the plant creating a deeper, harder-to-break spell....

i think i see the same thing happening here, maxie..."ftmwhe" has only been around for a week, but "ptd" has been your "all-time best BTAS" episode for ten-plus years...even in the face of compelling evidence, it won't let you out of its wormy grip...!

fight it, maxie...FIGHT IT!(cue earthquake rumble)


funny you should mention "mad as a hatter"...while searching for "ptd" on my (foolishly un-labeled) BTAS tapes, james tucker and i stumbled upon "maah", and ended up watching most of it...we both found the animation was actually MUCH better than we'd remembered, easily as good as "ptd", for example, and probably probably actually BETTER overall....a pleasant surprise (i never know how i'm gonna react to the old eps)...

[Karkull]

i've not heard from mr. moore yet, so i don't know if that's good or bad :sweat:...hopefully he liked it....we may never know....
I have a feeling that you won't. From what I've heard he never watches any adaptations of his material.

[Revelator]

I have a feeling that you won't. From what I've heard he never watches any adaptations of his material.
His loss. He'll miss the first truly good adaptation of his work.

[Supremus]

In many ways, I think this debate is similar to the Over The Edge vs Heart of Ice debate. Obviously, there is no direct comparison between OTE and HOI in terms of the stories, but it still appears to be the same basic argument about how an old(er) episode, like HOI with its somewhat poor animation and lack of action, can compete with the modern, streamlined marvel of TV animation that is OTE.

Personally, I think the gap between OTE and HOI is much smaller than the one between PTD and FTMWHE, but many of the old BTAS episodes have a certain sensibility that a lot of people prefer, and to them those episodes become more than the sum of their parts. That's not a criticism. btw. I absolutely love the old BTAS episodes myself, but when an episode like FTMWHE comes along, it must be hailed as the superior piece of entertainment it is.

[b.t.]

I have a feeling that you won't. From what I've heard he never watches any adaptations of his material.


well, when we asked for his ok to do the adaptation, his only request was that we send him a copy of the finished product...so, that shows SOME interest on his part....

[buzzbohm]

I have a feeling that you won't. From what I've heard he never watches any adaptations of his material.
well, when we asked for his ok to do the adaptation, his only request was that we send him a copy of the finished product...so, that shows SOME interest on his part....That's interesting to hear - in Comic Book Artist #25 he does discuss not being interested in seeing how adaptations of his work turn out - he separates the two mediums and lets his work stand on its own, no matter if the adaptation is good or bad (think they were discussing From Hell, and maybe LoEG).

[Karkull]

well, when we asked for his ok to do the adaptation, his only request was that we send him a copy of the finished product...so, that shows SOME interest on his part....
Wow...there's a first time for everything. He must like you, :p.

[Revelator]

It's most likely that Moore professed indifference to From Hell and League because he knew they were big-budget Hollywood adaptations and likely to be dogs, whereas he had interest in getting a video of FtMWHE because he's probably heard about how good Timm and company's previous work has been, and that in TV animation you sometimes get less cooks sticking their body parts in the broth.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

I vaguely remember reading an interview with Moore where he said he liked From Hell. He was familiar with the Hughes brothers before they got From Hell, and said nice things about the movie, while still saying it was a fundamentally different animal than the comic book.

-- Ed/Ace

[Silly McGooses]

I liked Perchance to Dream because it had more mystery and mood; it was, therefore, a lot creepier, and I thought it was much more psychological overall.

[KuwabaraTheMan]

Thanks for the response, Mr. Timm. I'm glad Mr. Gibbons enjoyed it. I really hope Mr. Moore did as well, because you guys nailed this one. I never thought another JL/JLU episode could top "Starcrossed" or "A Better World," but "FTMWHE" blew me away. I found myself watching it over and over and over again.

Now if we only get a Watchmen and/or V For Vendetta adaptation, I'll be set for life.
Well, a Watchmen movie is in the works, keep your fingers crossed it turns out good.

[Exatron]

FTMWHE has a slight edge over the overrated PtD, since Mrs. Superman and Supey Jr come across as more interesting characters than Mr. and Mrs. Wayne, who are almost entirely colorless and stiff. When Bruce realizes that his life with them is a lie, it doesn't hit you as hard as seeing Superman realize that he'll have to give up his bright, sassy wife and earnest son.
In PtD Mr. and Mrs. Wayne can't be much more than what Bruce already knows and thinks of them because they're products of Bruce's mind. He doesn't have many memories of what his parents were really like and certainly didn't have a normal childhood like Clark.

But then again, have Thomas and Martha Wayne ever been portrayed as real characters, with unique personalities? Has any writer in 60 plus years considered that they could be interesting characters rather than good dead people?
I doubt it. Most of what we know about them is filtered through Bruce's mind.

I think I'll always prefer PtD because I liked that I was trying to figure out what was really going on just like Bruce was. On the first viewing, we didn't exactly know what, how, or why Bruce was in this fantasy world. FtMWHE was good, but I didn't really feel all that much when Superman's fantasy ended. In both episodes you know that the ending will make everything normal again, but that little mystery in PtD made all the difference to me. Perhaps, it's just because I'm a sucker for similar stories (My favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episode is "Frame of Mind").

[Revelator]

In PtD Mr. and Mrs. Wayne can't be much more than what Bruce already knows and thinks of them because they're products of Bruce's mind. He doesn't have many memories of what his parents were really like and certainly didn't have a normal childhood like Clark.

Oh come on, unless he had brain damage he'd have a pretty good idea of what his parents' personalities were like. I know I did at the age of 8, and I bet Bruce is much smarter than me. The idea of Bruce simply mourning a pair of abstractions is rather unfulfilling dramatically. Let's not try and excuse bad writing. I'm willing to say that any story that involves the Waynes as actual characters will trump any story without that addition.

After the mystery in PtD is figured out, the episode doesn't have much more left to it. In FtMWHE you genuinely feel that Superman practically did have to rip his own limb off to say goodbye to his ideal world--one felt much less of this in Bruce's case. Superman may continue to have mental scars ffrom his imaginary soujourn for the rest of his life. But the character's in Bruce's fantasy were so thin that it's hard to imagine anything similar. PtD is conceptually more interesting than FtMWHE, but otherwise inferior in every way.

[Maxie Zeus]

in the FTMWHE talkback, there was some debate about how the black mercy actually worked, why batman was able to escape from it more easily than superman, etc...

our rationalization was that superman had been under its spell for a far lengthier time -- several days at least, maybe as much as a week -- whereas batman was only its victim for several minutes at most....longer exposure to the plant creating a deeper, harder-to-break spell....

i think i see the same thing happening here, maxie..."ftmwhe" has only been around for a week, but "ptd" has been your "all-time best BTAS" episode for ten-plus years...even in the face of compelling evidence, it won't let you out of its wormy grip...!

fight it, maxie...FIGHT IT!(cue earthquake rumble)

Heh, sorry. No way I'm going let you chuck me into Arkham and convince me I'm insane. I didn't like "Dreams in Darkness" the first time it aired! What makes you think I'd enjoy a starring role in a remake? :p


I've got to say that I think many people (myself included) are picking "Perchance To Dream" mainly because it's B:TAS and nostalgia can play a huge role when deciding on favorites. There's no reason I should even remotely enjoy an episode like "Prophecy Of Doom," but I still find myself watching it. As fans, we tend to look at the older shows as always being better than the newer episodes. I've noticed that creators usually look at their earlier work and can only see the flaws, and I have some personal experience with this. When I take a look at one of my older compositions I cringe and think "What was I thinking when I wrote this?" I don't know if that's the way Mr. Timm (or any of his colleagues) thinks, but I'd be willing to bet that they're not as crazy about B:TAS as most people on this board are. Also, people who start off on JL (or BB and S:TAS) and then progressively work their way backwards tend to see the flaws more willingly than the B:TAS "veterans," so to speak.

I think you're right, though notice it's a point that tells as much against b.t. as it does against us PtD defenders Biases cut both ways.

There is no doubt at all that FtMWHE is a handsome piece of work, and I like it a lot. (As soon as Knux Five gets done tossing TZ News reviews at me to edit, I'll say nice things about it in the Talkback, I promise.) But there are other values that weigh in the balance. If slick and kinetic visuals were all that counted, Michael Bay would be thought superior to Michael Curtiz.


After the mystery in PtD is figured out, the episode doesn't have much more left to it.

:sprays morning coffee all over the monitor: Dude, don't go standing under any tall trees, okay? I'll have a lightning bolt with your name on it after work. :D

[Revelator]

:sprays morning coffee all over the monitor: Dude, don't go standing under any tall trees, okay? I'll have a lightning bolt with your name on it after work. :D
Hey man, if you really are Maxie Zeus, you've already been chucked away inside Arkham...so you'd better hope you can aim well in a straitjacket.

[Style]

If I had the money, I'd buy the rights to the BTAS episodes so I could pay to have some of them re-animated so that the entire catalouge looked like BTAS at it's best. Perchance to Dream would be on that list, (As well as Joker's Wild, an episode I always loved but it seemed to have the worst animation in the entire series.)


Well, I took b.t. to the challenge and dug up my copy of PtD (Which I stupidly taped in slow speed of Cartoon Network three or four years back.) I've got to say, I still prefer PtD. My inititial response to FTMWHE was that we didn't spend enough time with Superman's fantasy for it to really affect me, and Superman's decision that his reality wasn't real didn't seem justified enough to me. How did he get to that point? it had to be more than just Batman halfway through yanking the plant off. but I don't know.

PtD spent almost the entire episode in Bruce's fantasy, and it still affected me more. What got to me was Bruce's struggle between what he thought he wanted and what he really wanted. The core of his fantasy was that his parents were alive and well. I don't care if they didn't seem that well developed, they were his parents and he loved them and they were alive and that's all that mattered. They were the sole reason why he tried to make the fantasy work. Ofcourse the implication was that he was a rich layabout. He couldn't live a useless life. And Selina was his fiancee, and while I'm sure Bruce wanted her on some level, he surely wouldn't want the de-clawed version the dream provided him with. Really, he had to leave because he was a better person in the real world. But the consequence of that is he had to leave a reality where his parents were still alive, in effect they died again, but this time it was almost as if he pulled the trigger. Maybe that's why Bruce felt the incredible loss at the end of the episode that he did.

Ofcourse, if your wondering why Bruce was entertaining the idea of the fantasy being real, if only for a while, if he did have all his memories, it's because the longer he was in the machine, the more his memories of his real life faded, the way memories of a dream would. It's not made clear, but Bruce's line to his dad about "Partying to hard last night" seems to be an indication that he did have some "dream memories" that were emerging and competing with his "real memories."

FTMWHE made me wish that it had been done in the old Justice League format, where there would have been a lot more time to get invested with Clark's fantasy and see how he came to distrust it. Ofcourse, the outside story, with Bruce, Dianna and Mongul probably would have had to have been padded, which would have been a definate downside.

b.t., I understand what your saying about being subtle in FTMWHE and being Heavy handed, like in PtD. but I think there is such a thing as being too subtle, so much so that the audience doesn't get what your trying to say. After all, this is a half hour Superhero format, which does lend itself to melodrama. I mean, if the framing story is about two demigods fighting for the fate of mankind, then why does the inner story have to be so low key and subtle? I mean, if you've got to make a point, then pull out the stops and make it!

Then again, you've been doing the DCAU thing for 12 years now, and I'm nowhere near the animation industry, so what do I know? ;)

[Toddman]

Originally Posted by b.t.
i've not heard from mr. moore yet, so i don't know if that's good or bad :sweat:...hopefully he liked it....we may never know....



I have a feeling that you won't. From what I've heard he never watches any adaptations of his material.
Well, from what I've heard, Alan Moore's image can't be captured on film, so maybe his voice can't be recorded on answering machines.

Toddman

[Maxie Zeus]

Hey man, if you really are Maxie Zeus, you've already been chucked away inside Arkham...so you'd better hope you can aim well in a straitjacket.

Heh.

Anyway, I don't see how you square these two statements: After the mystery in PtD is figured out, the episode doesn't have much more left to it and PtD is conceptually more interesting than FtMWHE. Are you saying that what is conceptually interesting in PtD is not interesting? :p

"Perchance to Dream" is interesting in the same way that Vertigo is interesting. Vertigo is also just a "trick mystery"--a fact emphasized when you remember that Hitchcock originally planned to end it with a scene of Scotty and Midge listening to a radio report about the arrest of Elster in Europe for the murder of Madeline. The truckloads of commentary about Vertigo all deal with the implications of what we've seen: what it tells us about Scotty's psychology and about the nature of obsession and domination and voyeurism. If PtD is not "interesting" for its implications, then neither is Vertigo.

I've said all of this on my website, but let me go over it again step by step.

"Perchance to Dream" reveals very surprising things about Bruce Wayne. Start with the fact that Tetch's dream machine does not manufacture a ready-made simulation for Batman. Instead, it can only take what is already inside him--his hopes and dreams and desires and fears--and turn them into a fantasy life that is meant to appeal to him at his deepest and most personal level. Hence, what it shows us in that fantasy life must be what is deeply true about him. That is why it is not merely a "trick," but an exploration of his psychology. ("For the Man Who Has Everything" does the same thing to Superman, but I don't think it reveals anything nearly as surprising about him.)

First, it splits Wayne in two: there is Bruce Wayne, playboy heir, and there is Batman, crimefighter. This is already a surprise, because most people interpret Wayne as having only a single "true" personality: he is Batman, and "Bruce Wayne" is just a mask. But if Wayne's fantasy materializes both personalities, then we ought to conclude that there really is a duality within him. There really are two "personalities" or psychologies. Otherwise, his fantasy life would either be one in which Bruce Wayne exists in a world without Batman, or in which Batman exists in a world without Bruce Wayne.

Second, there is the point of view that the dream subject adopts. Why is he "Bruce Wayne" instead of "Batman"? Why isn't he Batman, crime fighter, puzzled to discover that he does not have a separate existence as Bruce Wayne? Why isn't his fantasy life one in which he can devote all of his time and energy to fighting crime without having to worry about being "Bruce Wayne"? If this is what he really wanted, wouldn't the dream machine manufacture a fantasy in which he didn't have to be Bruce Wayne? That is the second surprise: apparently, our hero thinks that "Bruce Wayne" is the real personality, the root psychology, and so that is the perspective it adopts even though it doesn't get rid of the Batman figure altogether. (Why it doesn't get rid of the Batman figure is a topic I'll tackle below.)

My conclusion: The episode argues that Bruce Wayne is the man, and Batman is the mask.

(Side note: Notice the scene where Wayne questions Alfred about his life; it takes place with Wayne reflected in mirrors, which symbolicallly represents his doubling. I don't know if b.t. remembers enough about the making the ep to confirm that this was intentional; if Boyd Kirkland is reading this thread, maybe he could comment.)

Now, what do we learn about "Bruce Wayne"? That this part of the personality is very much a dilettante. He parties; he doesn't take his business responsibilties that seriously; he is bored with his WE duties; others have to run the company for him. That the fantasy does not develop anything interesting about him suggests that there isn't anything very interesting about him. You can say the same thing about his parents. Maybe he doesn't remember enough about them to give the machine enough material to develop them interestingly; or maybe it's that Wayne himself doesn't imagine that they would be very interesting people. (I know that this observation is offered as a criticism of the episode, but if the episode is canon I think we have to take its implications as canonical, too; and though it's doubtful that Thomas and Martha Wayne were that boring in real life, it's still an interesting discovery to find that Bruce apparently has this kind of picture of them.)

That the dream machine can't give Bruce Wayne an interesting life might suggest that the machine isn't very good at its job. Or it might be (what I sense) that Bruce Wayne does not have a very high opinion of himself; if he thinks of himself as a shallow playboy, is it any surprise that the dream machine would give him the "ideal life" of a shallow playboy? In essence, he sees himself, at bottom, as being the kind of person who would not enjoy the kind of life that the person he sees himself as would enjoy. Bruce Wayne, the person he thinks he is, would lead a life that he himself would long to escape.

This ties in with the very interesting discussion he has with "Leslie." She diagnoses his problem as a lack of self-esteem. (Further evidence for my diagnosis above.) Bruce Wayne, she says, feels that everything has been handed to him, and he resents it, so he has identified himself with an "ideal" life in which he has earned self-respect. Because "Leslie" is only a figure in the dream, basically she is another part of his mind diagnosing itself; his session with Leslie is a moment when he analyzes himself. And he endorses her conclusion: He is, he happily concludes, a spoiled layabout who daydreams of doing great things. And instead of being repulsed by this, his immediate reaction is one of relief and an almost giddy acceptance of his situation. This confirms that "Bruce Wayne" really is a dilettante, a dreamer.

And then he has his bad encounter with a newspaper. There are two ways to follow and interpret that bit. The first is to interpret it literally: The dream machine has a flaw, and our hero has caught it. The second is that the newspaper bit is just a part of his dream. I'll follow the first interpretation for the moment and come back to the alternative in a bit.

Wayne's immediate reaction is one of bewilderment and anger. What's interesting is that he doesn't immediately announce that he is "really" Batman and that everything is an illusion. He says that it is all unreal, but he he lashes out at Batman as an independent figure (when he screams at the TV), which suggests that he has not fully come back around to accepting his memories of being Batman but is still struggling to find himself and the truth about himself. He know that "Batman" is somehow mixed up in it and sets off to confront this figure.

That he sees "Batman" as being somehow outside of himself--again, as a personality that is "outside" his "Bruce Wayne" persona--is further supported by the fact that he confronts, accuses and physically attacks Batman, even though he "knows" Batman's routines as his own. Why does he do this? There are several possibilities, none of which contradict the others. It could be that Bruce Wayne is jealous of this superior side of the personality--as established earlier, he certainly has grounds for jealousy. But there is also the suggestive "You did this to me!" accusation he hurls at the cowled figure. Bruce Wayne knows that he is in a mess; apparently, he thinks that Batman got him into it. Well, he did, didn't he? Wayne not be in this predicament if he weren't chasing Tetch and out fighting crime in general. This is basically the cry of a man who, in some sense, doesn't want to be out there fighting crime. That's another interesting surprise. And why does he find the Hatter underneath the cowl when he rips it off? The revelation could have occurred by having him push Batman off the tower and then have the Hatter step out of the shadows. The implication must be that Wayne sees Batman as some kind of adversary: the enemy of the life of ease and privelege that Bruce Wayne would, in some sense, like to live.

I pause here to pick up the second thread mentioned above: perhaps the dream machine is not flawed. Maybe the mixed up words are just another part of the dream. Our hero has two dueling personalities: and at the moment that one seems to triumph in its deepest desires, its world crumbles in a way that can't be rectified. I would interpret it as the Batman persona fighting through and destroying the fool's paradise that Bruce Wayne would prefer to live in. That, then, would be the meaning of Wayne's "You did this to me!" in the church tower: his life would be a perfect dream except that his Batman personality keeps interfering. The Batman figure, after all, insists that "You're not well, Mr. Wayne," which implies a rejection in the strongest possible terms of Wayne's desires: they are diseased. And when Batman turns into the Hatter, it is the Batman personality's way of showing Bruce Wayne who is true enemies are: Gotham's gallery of rogues.

At this point I need to make a serious detour into some deep and very perplexing philosophical territory; since The Matrix films came out, I suppose most people are familiar with the problem of global skepticism: What if everything I see and believe is false, and reality is radically different from what I take it to be? The question sounds plausible, but it actually leads to a serious conundrum: If everything is a lie, then so too is the evidence that everything is a lie, because that evidence is, by hypothesis, part of the lie which is being presented to you. Hence, there can never be good evidence that everything is a lie. Worse, if you accept the hypothesis, then you can never trust any evidence that would say that you had escaped into the "real" reality. Because that evidence itself might be a lie.

In "Perchance to Dream" this conundrum is illustrated by "Leslie" and by "the Hatter"; if what the Hatter says is true, then both he and Leslie are figments of Wayne's imagination. But if that is true, then Wayne has no better reason to believe the Hatter than he has to believe Leslie. That is, his reasons for believing that the world is an illusion is no better than his reasons for believe that he is mad. (Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason, in part, to argue this very point. And, if nothing else, I've now saved you the trouble of deciphering the "B" Deduction of the Critique :p) Wayne can only accept the Hatter's claim because he prefers to believe that his present "life" is an illusion. Put that insight together with the disappearance of Batman, and it suggests that Wayne has now re-integrated the two sides of his personality: He has chosen to be Batman. And he seals that choice by deliberately leaping off the tower. There is an unremarked ambiguity in this act: It is either the act of our hero trying to escape from the dream machine by using the "wake before you hit the ground" device, or it is an act of suicide: In either case, it is our hero demonstrating that he wants to depart any world in which he is not Batman, whether that means waking or dying. And there is nothing wrong with saying that it is both. It is Bruce Wayne committing suicide so that Batman can live; it is the inferior "Bruce Wayne" part of the personality finally getting out of the way of the Batman part.

(There is also an deeply disguised reference to Alice in Wonderland in the act: at one point in the book, Alice, reflecting on the tremendous physical changes she goes through, remarks that after she gets back home she would probably "think nothing of falling off the roof," an observation that the narrator admits is "probably true." That's a bleak pun on Carroll's part: if Alice fell off the roof, she would probably not be alive to think at all!)

Put it all together, and "Perchance to Dream" should probably be taken as one of the fundamental turning points in the inner life of the animated Batman: it's the moment in his history when the "Batman" of the later BTAS, TNBA, BB and JL/JLU episodes is fully born, because it's the moment that "Batman" becomes the man and "Bruce Wayne" really does become the mask.

That is, unless we accept the bleak logic of the non-malfunctioning "dream machine" hypothesis. In that case, there is no good evidence to suppose that Batman really has woken up. Instead, his "waking" would simply be the machine recalibrating the illusion so that Batman gets the life he has chosen--to be Batman--and given him a plausible way to "escape" into that life. (As the Hatter mischievously remarks, "There's no way out of this!" and he's right: once you become convinced that the world is a sham, you can never convince yourself that it is not. You can only forget that you ever thought it was a sham.) Even that ambiguity is captured in that final (often-maligned) line that Batman delivers at the end. If the machine is "the stuff that dreams are made of," then it is composed of "dream substance." But the substance that makes up the machine Gordon is handling is the same substance as everything else is made up of, which implies that everything else is "dream substance" too. Which implies that everything is still a dream. Batman's quiet delivery of the line could be taken as his rueful admitting that maybe he really hasn't escaped at all.

----------------

It's easy enough to reply to all of this that none of the writers/producers/directors had any notion of this in the episode they fashioned. But it's also pretty clear that Hitchcock wasn't the least aware of all the implications of Vertigo. Whether creative intentions should be taken as decisively refuting this interpretation is an entirely different subject. But at this point I can only wait for you to announce that none of this is "interesting." ;)

[Terminatah]

funny you should mention "mad as a hatter"...while searching for "ptd" on my (foolishly un-labeled) BTAS tapes, james tucker and i stumbled upon "maah", and ended up watching most of it...we both found the animation was actually MUCH better than we'd remembered, easily as good as "ptd", for example, and probably probably actually BETTER overall....a pleasant surprise (i never know how i'm gonna react to the old eps)...I think they have those on DVD now. ;)

-Terminatah

[Revelator]

I'll try to keep my response somewhat short, unlike some other folks:p.
(Shouldn't you be saving this for a monograph Maxie?)

Drama is always more interesting than plot concepts.
You claim this episode reveals very surprising things about Batman--I claim that this episode is dramatically undercooked.
I wasn't surprised that Wayne was split in two because I've always assumed that Bruce Wayne and Batman were both co-existing personas--and conflicting personas.

My conclusion: The episode argues that Bruce Wayne is the man, and Batman is the mask.

I think Mask of the Phantasm, by portraying Batman as simply a recourse in times of disappointment as Bruce Wayne, made a similar point, but far more memorably.
I'd probably liked PtD a little more if Bruce Wayne's fantasy life had been enriching and worth sacrificing reality for. Bruce Wayne didn't gain intelligence when he became Batman--he had it all along, and why wouldn't he have been able to create a fulfilling life for himself if had never become Batman? PtD reinforces the old belief that leading a life of wealth and privilege ultimately becomes boring and soul-sapping. But what if Bruce Wayne, by embracing politics or philanthropy, did as much good in the world as Batman, but on a more general level? And what if he was surrounded by interesting, loving people? That might have actually made the central dilemma of PtD more intense. The episode would have still worked better if the Waynes were actual characters, instead of pieces of bad writing that Maxie Zeus has to make elaborate excuses for. If Bruce never really remembered his parents that well, or pictured them as uninteresting people, it's ironic that he'd devote his life to avenging a couple of bores. I suppose he'd be acting out of principle (which seems much more drab than acting in memory of two indviduals who were loved for who they were just as much as for the roles they played), but then a good writer ought to examine that aforesaid irony.

This is basically the cry of a man who, in some sense, doesn't want to be out there fighting crime.

I'm once again reminded of how MotP made this essential point much better in the graveside scene.

"Perchance to Dream" should probably be taken as one of the fundamental turning points in the inner life of the animated Batman

Hardly--had the episode never existed I doubt much would have changed. Real turning points are usually those ordained by producers and in writer's bibles, and it's in the original bible, and in the directives for TNBA's conception of the character, that Batman's character was shaped.

But at this point I can only wait for you to announce that none of this is "interesting." ;)

Philosophy majors might get a kick out of it.
Had Bruce's non-Batman life in PtD been fulfilling in itself, and had that life been graced by his parents, rather than cardboard outlines, then his rejection of that life in favor of reality might have actually been wrenching and near tragic. As it is, FtMWHE gets dramatically right what PtD balls up, though the latter episode seems to have more people willing to do its work for it.

[Style]

As it is, FtMWHE gets dramatically right what PtD balls up, though the latter episode seems to have more people willing to do its work for it.
And I think FtMWHE is getting more credit than it deserves simply because it's adapted from a story by the al-mighty Alan Moore. Now, I'm not slamming his original story, because I've never read it and can't comment on it, but the episode, I'm sorry, we just don't spend enough time in Clark's fantasy to really care for it the way he does. Not to mention that his process of reasoning that it was just a fantasy was stilted and ambiguous. I mean, he sees there are some quakes and he here's Batman say "Fight it." I mean, in context, Clark was still deep in his fantasy, so why would he even recognize Batman's voice or know what he meant? I mean, if you heard a mysterious voice in your head say "Fight it," would you assume that the world as you know it was false and that the voice you heard was from some friend on the outside of whom you have no memory?

Well, maybe I'm coming down too hard on FtMWHE, but if your only way of saying that it's superior PtD is to put down PtD, then I feel compelled to point out some of the flaws in FtMWHE myself.

[Terminatah]

Unfortunately, we have to wait until December (?) to see "Perchance To Dream" on DVD.That's why there was a winky face, joke ruiner. ;)

-Terminatah

[shany94a]

I liked both episodes but prefer PtD, I’ve just always liked it since it first aired 12 years ago. I really love that one line by Bruce Wayne towards the end where he says there has to be a way out of his dream, and the Mad Hatter asks, what if he's wrong ...

"Then I'll see you in your nightmares!"

One of my all-time favorite BTAS lines, and it sums up Batman perfectly. He has a frightening rogues gallery of grotesques, with some really twisted individuals - but in some way, they are all afraid of HIM, and the fear he generates is his greatest weapon of all.

[Style]

I liked both episodes but prefer PtD, I’ve just always liked it since it first aired 12 years ago. I really love that one line by Bruce Wayne towards the end where he says there has to be a way out of his dream, and the Mad Hatter asks, what if he's wrong ...

"Then I'll see you in your nightmares!"

One of my all-time favorite BTAS lines, and it sums up Batman perfectly. He has a frightening rogues gallery of grotesques, with some really twisted individuals - but in some way, they are all afraid of HIM, and the fear he generates is his greatest weapon of all.
If I recall Batman: Animated correctly, the line was originally written as...
"Then I'll see you in HELL!"
just a historical note.

[shany94a]

The censors must have gotten a hold of that one quick - imagine if THAT line had aired!

[Revelator]

And I think FtMWHE is getting more credit than it deserves simply because it's adapted from a story by the al-mighty Alan Moore.

Guess what? That story was better than PtD's--that's why it gets more credit, though the adaptation, in my opinion, doesn't quite have the impact of Moore's original.

I'm sorry, we just don't spend enough time in Clark's fantasy to really care for it the way he does.

Considering that we spend almost 20 minutes in batman's fantasy and don't really give a damn about it, and don't feel much when he has to give it up, I think the fact that Clark's framily comes alive in a way the people in PtD never do invalidates much of your statement in my eyes.

Well, maybe I'm coming down too hard on FtMWHE, but if your only way of saying that it's superior PtD is to put down PtD, then I feel compelled to point out some of the flaws in FtMWHE myself.

Have fun, but it won't convince me. How else can i say FtMWHE is superior to PtD besides saying that PtD is inferior in comparison? What I'm really interested in is how both episodes will be viewed 12 years from now...I suspect Ptd will slip further in people's estimations.

[Toddman]

Not to mention that his process of reasoning that it was just a fantasy was stilted and ambiguous. I mean, he sees there are some quakes and he here's Batman say "Fight it." I mean, in context, Clark was still deep in his fantasy, so why would he even recognize Batman's voice or know what he meant? I mean, if you heard a mysterious voice in your head say "Fight it," would you assume that the world as you know it was false and that the voice you heard was from some friend on the outside of whom you have no memory?
The point about Superman's reaction to Batman's voice might be true, if it weren't for the fact that Superman was already starting to doubt the validity of his dream-world, and wasn't as deep in in his fantasy as you suggest.

The quakes only started when outside forces from the real world were attempting to intervene. The fact that hardly anybody else seems to notice the quakes besides Supes adds a sense of "un-reality" to everything he perceives. There is a certain dream-like quality to the environment on Krypton that the viewer experiences after that, and Supes seems to notice it, too. That fact is further high-lighted when Jor-El's voice momentarily changes, and Supes is again the only one to notice it. It's after that incident that he first says to himself "It's all wrong." (Not when he hears Batman's voice.)

His realization that his current surroundings are only a fantasy does come about pretty quickly after that, but don't forget that there were actual physical forces at work in the real world that were fighting the dream also. Had Batman and WW not shown up, Supes would have probably never questioned the world he was experiencing.

Toddman

[Silly McGooses]

I think FTMWHE would have worked much, much better as a two-part episode.

[Style]

And I think FtMWHE is getting more credit than it deserves simply because it's adapted from a story by the al-mighty Alan Moore.

Guess what? That story was better than PtD's--that's why it gets more credit, though the adaptation, in my opinion, doesn't quite have the impact of Moore's original.


Again, I'm NOT dissing the Alan Moore original. That wouldn't be fair, because as I said before, I haven't read it. It's just that here's what I think might be going on: People who have read the original watch the adaptaion, and even though the adaptation is not quite up in the same caliber as the original, it DOES make you think about the Superior original, which from what I hear was better executed, and people will rate the episode highly, not because it's as good as the original, but because you are remembering how good the original was. So to me, PtD is still better than FtMWHE the episode. But, the original comic may still be better than both, and I bet that it is. But, I can't speak to that.

Okay, I'll agree to disagree at this point, but I still think that the point that Bruce's parents are too boring for Bruce to care about is still borderline offensive. I mean they're his PARENTS goodness's sake.

[Style]

Immediatly following the events of "For the Man Who Has Everything," Batman, Superman and Wonderwoman throw the incapacitated Mongul in the trunk of Wonderwoman's invisible jet and they all fly out to the new Watchtower where J'onn J'onze can dispense with their prisoner. On the way, all three share an awkward silence until...

Wonderwoman: So, Clark, are you okay? What exactly did you see in that fantasy any way?

Superman: Well, Diana, it was everything I ever wanted, and it hurt so bad to give it up. It started as I woke up one day...

And so Superman begins telling of his experiences in the fantasy world. When finished, Batman feels compassion for his friend, and tries his best console.

Batman: Awe Superman, I'm sorry, I know that it really must have hurt. But I know what your going through, because something similar once happened to me. Once, a long while ago, I was chasing a criminal by the name of Jervis Tetch, AKA the Mad Hatter, when I fell under a particular trap of his...

Batman continues tell Clark all about his experiences in the Dream Machine. Clark listens intently to every moment of it.

Batman: ...So I gave the helmet to commisioner Gordon and said, "It's the stuff that dreams are made of." That took a long time to get over.

Superman: So what, that's it?

Batman: What do you mean that's it? That's the whole story!

Superman: So your telling me you woke up one day, and you weren't Batman, and your parents were alive except all they ever did was play golf and you were bored at the office so you saw a shrink and tried to make it work but freaked out when you experienced mild dislexia and jumped off a tower and that's IT!?!

Batman: Hey, it was traumatic! I had too chose between a reality where my parents were alive and well, but my life was meaningless, and a reality where I had earned stature through my deeds but my parents, whom I love dearly, were dead and gone! There was no way I could come out ahead, because which ever choice I made ripped a huge hole in my heart!

Superman: Awe, but your parents were just stock examples of purity. They weren't like, you know, real people. They were total bores! If they were really like that, I find it ironic that you've dedicated your life's mission to the memory of the two most uninteresting people on the planet!

Batman: They were my PARENTS, you a-----e! You don't know them! How dare you speak of them that way! at least they were more real than your "son," who never existed in any way, shape, or form! I mean, your life sounds like one of those feel good seventies family sitcoms, where the kid might cause a minor irratation but learns a lesson in the end! You call THAT realistic? all you did was give up a stepford life!

Superman: Hey, YOU never had a son, who you watched grow and held his hand every step of the way, only to have to sacrifice to live up to your responsibilities!

Batman: No, but I had an adopted son walk out on me after I spent years investing in him and his future and trying to make sure he had a good, honorable upbringing! Top That!

Superman: This isn't a contest!

Batman: Stop turning it into one!

Superman: Wonderwoman, which of us do you think suffered most!

Wonderwoman: Well, I don't know. I mean, Clark, I certainly hear you when you say you lost everything, but, well, you only just told me this story, and you only told me it once. Batman told me his story several years ago and I've heard it several times, so I'm inclined to think he suffered more...

Batman: Score!

Wonderwoman: ...And maybe, Clark, if you had told me a little more about your fantasy life and what happened there I might have cared a little more.

Superman: I had to SACRIFICE my SON! What about that are you not getting!?

Wonderwoman: Although, I will say that you beat the crap out of Mongul, whereas Batman only yelled at Mad Hatter, so yeah, Maybe it did hurt you more.

Batman: WHAT!?!

Superman: SCORE!!!

Wonderwoman: Now that I think about it, Clark, the way you told your story was real slick, with very clear and well-animated visual imagery. Bruce, I'm sorry, but the way you tell it is kind of heavy handed and fuzzy.

Batman: Oh come on!

Superman: Okay, let's agree to disagree about who suffered more. We both suffered, and that's the important thing.

Batman: okay.

Superman: But I DID suffer more.

Batman: DAMMIT!!!

;)

[Phantasm]

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
LOL!!!!!!!!LOL!!!!!!!!!
THAT IS HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!WOW!!!!!:p :)

[Toddman]

That was freakin' awesome!



Wonderwoman: Now that I think about it, Clark, the way you told your story was real slick, with very clear and well-animated visual imagery. Bruce, I'm sorry, but the way you tell it is kind of heavy handed and fuzzy.
;)
Toddman

[Doomsday]

Just saw PtD and it wasn't as good as I remember. I did like when Bruce said the nightmare is finally over. The line at the end would be so much better if they went with what they were going to do in the first place, ``I'll see you in hell''. It would had a lot more impact than ``I'll see you in your dreams''....... And the very last line was nice, ``What dreams are made of.'' It really showed Batman wished his dreams were real. But I didn't feel that Batman went through the amount of pain that Superman went through when he had to leave the life he always wanted. And then unlike Batman, he really took it out on Mongul. Batman didn't do anything to the Mad Hatter. I loved it when Superman was saying good bye to his fake son and showing us how much he means to him. Then he almost kills Mongul but then remember the promised he made to his fake son. Its brilliant. So my vote goes to FTMWHE.

[Mynd Hed]

Now that we've all had a coupla days to pick up B:TAS Vol. 2 and check out Perchance to Dream again, I thought it might be interesting to see if our picks in this thread still hold true.

I've got to say, seeing PtD again only confirms my preference for it. Not that it didn't have its problems-- the Mad Hatter has very little in the way of motivation, and as has been mentioned, the whole "you can't read in dreams" thing is exaggerated for the sake of the plot. But it's got FtMWHE beat in focus and pacing. Instead of awkwardly alternating between alien-on-Amazon wrestling ("Sunday Sunday Sunday!!!") and attempts at drama, it lets you really get inside Bruce's head and follow him as he progresses from confusion to acceptance to, ultimately, rejection of the fictional reality he's presented with. The animation might've occasionally gotten a little wonky (although not much worse than a lot of early B:TAS episodes), but the writing makes up for it.

[Alex Weitzman]

Now that we've all had a coupla days to pick up B:TAS Vol. 2 and check out Perchance to Dream again, I thought it might be interesting to see if our picks in this thread still hold true.
I'm sticking with my story, which is that they're practically at the same level for me, as they both accomplish very different things for their respective heroes. I give the edge to PtD mainly on my general preference for the inherent questions posed by the Batman mythos over the Superman mythos.

In rewatching it, I was most surprised at the first scenes, where Batman is chasing goons (presumably Tetch's, to lead him into a trap). The section is wordless, quick, and did I mention quick? No wonder you start the episode not quite sure what is and what is not a dream. The first part of the episode is literally storyboarded to mimic one.

[Fone Bone]

I will say one thing about both of the episodes--both Kevin Conroy and George Newburn deliver astounding performances in each of their respective showcases. The range of Conroy is brilliant with perhaps the creepiest sounding Batman voice EVER as he confronts Bruce in the clock tower. His Thomas Wayne is a little stiff, but really the entire character is.

Newburn really sold me that he was saying goodbye to his son--and that it was killing him. His rage at Mongul was a great performance as well, but it didn't show his remarkable talent as much as his goodbye scene with Van did.

In conclusion I still give the edge to For the Man Who Has Everything but Perchance to Dream was MUCH better than I remembered.

[Mynd Hed]

Newburn really sold me that he was saying goodbye to his son--and that it was killing him. His rage at Mongul was a great performance as well, but it didn't show his remarkable talent as much as his goodbye scene with Van did.

I'm with you on that-- unfortunately I thought that his great performance was wasted on a script that didn't give the viewer the context to really believe what his character was saying.

[TheScarecrow]

After watching PTD on the BTAS Vol. 2 set last night, I feel it is a good episode that becomes great towards the climax. The Bruce Wayne/"Batman" fight still gives me Goosebumps and the acting from Kevin Conroy is still as spectacular as ever (I love the extra touch of venom he gave "Batman", I loved the way he handled his exchange with the Mad Hatter in terms of delivery).

I feel it wasn’t nearly as great as it was in the “old days”, but I still don’t know if I can say FTMWHE is better than it. I mean yeah, technically it has “better” animation, but the technology used in animation today is different and more advanced than what was done in the early 90’s when BTAS was on the air so its not really a fair contest in that regard now is it? FTMWHE has better fight scenes, but JL/JLU is more reliant on fight scenes and action than BTAS was. Apples and oranges, as the old saying goes.

I would rate both about the same. FTMWHE has more “fanboy things” like the death of Batman’s parents dream sequence and all the in-jokes and the fact that it was an adaptation of Alan Moore’s comic story, but I don’t know if all that makes it a better episode.

With all due respect to b.t., I enjoyed both equally.

[Donomark]

Wow, I had a ball reading through this topic. I can certainly see many people's points, even b.t.'s but I gotta agree with Maxie Zeus on this one.

Mainly because Batman: the animated series suceeded more in subtlety, inferring and showing wothout telling more than any other show in the DCAU did. FTMWHE suceeds greater in action, animation and immediate urgency to be sure. But PtD just resonates more with me as a psychological epic in the way that MZ explained it. The fact that the episode is all about Bruce Wayne, how he sees himself and his parents w/o even realizing it is infinetely more powerful to me than seeing Superman get upset and beat up an alien conqueror.

That's not to say I don't like the JLU episode, I like it a lot. But at the end of the day it means much, much less than what PtD would mean for Batman and who we percieve his character. Psychology always trumps emotion for me, so I gotta go w/the B:TAS episode.

Plus the Hatter's emotional outburst at Batman at the end ALWAYS gets to me. It's such an effing amazing performance.