Penguin is standing on a table, on a catwalk, on a pile of ice, on a heap of explosives, on the floor of the lounge, which is above an underground arena that contains Solomon Grundy.<\/div><\/p>\n
Penguin had a lot of layers of defense between himself and Batman. He had barbed wire fences, waves of goons, guys with guns, a flooded room with a shark (yes really) and high-security electronic gates. Batman defeated them all, because of course he did. This is all fine. I like all of these contingency plans. They’re fun to overcome and they make Penguin seem resourceful. <\/p>\n
But once you get into the final room, you get to the part of the game where they threw the writer out of the room and handed control over to the guy in charge of designing boss fights. To explain, let’s imagine the conversation that took place about an hour before Batman arrived…<\/p>\n
\nINT: ICEBERG LOUNGE. NIGHT<\/p>\n
This room was once a posh place where rich people could drink and listen to music. Now it’s dilapidated. Penguin is on an elevated platform protruding from the balcony level. He’s caressing Dr. Freeze’s freeze gun and laughing maniacally to himself. A hapless Mook is standing beside him. <\/i><\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nAre the defenses ready?<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nYes sir, Mr. Cobblepot. The electronic gates, the signal jammers, the fifty or so goons, the electrified fencing, the shark, the guys with machine guns, and the ambush with the one-armed Russian. It’s all ready.<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nPerfect! It’s impossible for Batman to get in here.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nYes sir!<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nNow, when he gets in here, I’ll blast him with this ‘ere ice gun. It’s impossible for him to get to me.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nUh…<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nI’ve got one last job for you. I need you to wire up this platform with explosives.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nYou mean the platform we’re standing on right now? The one you’ll be standing on when Batman attacks?<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nThat’s right, my boy.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nBut… why do you want to be standing on a platform that’s wired to explode?<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nBecause when Batman gets to me…<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nBut you said…<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\n…he’s gonna punch me off the platform.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nAre you sure? What if he doesn’t? Like, sometimes he pounces on you. Or he puts you in this brutal arm lock and shoves you to the ground. Or he kicks your legs out from under you. Or maybe he’ll pelt you unconscious with those Bat-boomerang things. Those little devils really hurt, lemme tell ya. Or maybe he’ll…<\/p>\n
(Penguin glares at him angrily.)<\/em><\/p>\nMook:
\n(Clears throat nervously.) I’m speaking for experience here, sir. The point is, there’s no guarantee he’ll knock you off the platform.<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\n(Takes in a slow, angry breath.)
\nANYWAY, like I was sayin’. He’s gonna punch me clean off the platform. <\/p>\n
Mook:
\nIf you say so. But still, what good will the explosives do?<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nWell, Batman’s gonna stay up here.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nBut he could…<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nBatman’s gonna punch me right off this platform and into the lounge below, and then he’s gonna continue standing up here and make no further efforts to incapacitate me. Then I’ll use this ‘ere detonator. (Penguin pulls a detonator out of hammerspace, clicks the button a few times, and then puts it back.)<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nIf he knocks you down below, then won’t you be near the explosives? Won’t the whole thing fall on your head?<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nNah. He’s gonna punch me clear of the blast radius. Trust me, bastard’s got a mean swing. <\/p>\n
Mook:
\nYou’re telling ME? But what good will it do collapsing the platform? Then he’ll just be down there with you.<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nNo. The platform will fall into the lounge, then go right through the floor and into the basement.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nThis place has a basement?<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nI dunno what it is, honestly. It’s like a big sealed arena-like chamber with no purpose, and nothing in it. <\/p>\n
Mook:
\nUh…<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nWell, nothin’ except that Soloman Grundy guy. <\/p>\n
Mook:
\nIf the chamber is sealed then how did…<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nDon’t talk back! So anyway, when Batman falls into the basement…<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nCan’t he glide? And doesn’t he have that grapnel hook thingy? I don’t think he’ll go in the hole if he doesn’t want to.<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nDamn it boy, are you questioning me? He’ll go in the hole for sure. After that, the Grundy fellow will make short work of him.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nIf you say so.<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nSo then after Batman beats Grundy, I’m gonna pull a rocket launcher out of me arsehole and jump down there to finish him off.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\nBoss, maybe it’s your ridiculous fake cockney accent, but I’m not sure I heard you right. Did you say you were going to jump down into the hole WITH Batman so you could shoot rockets at him? You know you could keep your elevated position, right? That would be a huge advan-<\/p>\n
(Penguin bashes the Mook in the head with the freeze gun.)<\/em><\/p>\nMook:
\nOof!<\/p>\n
Penguin:
\nI’ll not have you besmirchin’ me accent. Now go out into the hall and wait for Batman to come along and beat you up again.<\/p>\n
Mook:
\n(Rubbing the side of his head.) Yes sir.<\/p>\n
(Fade out.)<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/div>
Penguin: Ah yes! All my plans are working perfectly!<\/div><\/p>\n
People credit Batman with being relentlessly prescient, but I think credit for inexplicable foresight should go to Penguin in this case. He spent the whole evening standing on top of explosives. He knew how hard Batman would punch him, where he would land, and what Batman would do afterwards. Penguin’s plan would have failed if Batman did literally anything else.<\/p>\n
Of course, all of this is just the setup for a very videogame-y boss fight. It turns out Solomon Grundy<\/a> is lurking in the basement. You can tell not a lot of thought was put into this section aside from, “We need a big set-piece battle to finish off the Penguin storyline.” The (non-interactive) door to Solomon Grundy’s arena isn’t even large enough for him to pass through it, so it’s not even clear how he got in there in the first place. <\/p>\nEven more absurd: When you return to the lounge later, the gaping hole into the basement has mysteriously vanished<\/b>. <\/p>\nTechnoblather<\/h3>\n
<\/div>
Freeze: You took a long time punching Grundy in the face, so in the meantime I made this little hologram of the cure. What do you think?<\/div><\/p>\n
Once Penguin has been thoroughly punched in the face, Batman returns to Mr. Freeze to get the cure for the Titan Toxin.<\/p>\n
I realize that comics have their share of ridiculous techno-babble, but the conversation with Dr. Freeze is so silly it’s painful. He says (roughly) that he has a cure for the toxin, but it breaks down in the host's bloodstream too fast. It needs a restorative element, but the enzyme needs time to bond to human DNA. This will take decades. <\/p>\n
Gah. Just typing that out scorched a few neurons. I know I'm sort of railing against problems that are endemic to comic books, but I can't help it. <\/p>\n
This would have been a lot better if they'd said less. Freeze had a holographic image of the molecule he needs. He just needed to say, “This is what I need, but I don't know how to synthesize it.” Then Batman could say he's seen it before, and off we go. The techno-babble here sounds like, “Your car's exhaust manifold has ruptured. I'll need special gasoline to repair it, but that gas evaporates instantly at room temperature so we need to use a clock radio to synthesize a new kind of windshield wiper fluid.” Sometimes leaving it unexplained is better, particularly when the answer ends up being, “use an unexplained magical healing fluid” anyway. I’m not asking for hard science. I’m saying if it’s going to be gibberish then don’t bother wasting time over-explaining it. <\/p>\n
Ra’s Al Ghul<\/h3>\n
<\/div>
Ninja: How DARE you mention my master, who I am going to run to right now! Also, please don't follow the blood trail I'm about to leave.<\/div><\/p>\n
The thing Batman needs is a sample of blood from longtime nemesis Ra’s Al Ghul. Ra’sIt’s pronounced “Raysh” for reasons that escape me.<\/span> runs the league of assassinsIn the Christopher Nolan Batman, he was the guy who trained Batman, and was played by Liam Neeson.<\/span> and is often at odds with Batman because he wants to fight crime via murder. He has this thing called a Lazarus Pit. It’s filled with magical glowing green goop that makes him strong and keeps him young. Basically, the cure that Mr. Freeze invented just happens to need a blood sample from someone who’s been using a Lazarus Pit for centuries. <\/p>\nRa’s Al Ghul is actually here in Arkham City. He’s living in the ruins of Old Gotham beneath the prison. Unlike the others, he’s not an inmate. He was living down here already when Hugo Strange came along and built a prison on top of him. At this point in the story it seems like a massive contrivance that he just happens to be in town, but later we’ll learn that Strange and Al Ghul are in league. Ra’s is here to keep an eye on Protocol 10.<\/p>\n
However, what is<\/b> a contrivance is the bit where one of the League’s Assassins overhears BatmanShe was being held prisoner by Penguin, and was imprisoned in the same room where all this exposition took place.<\/span> mention Ra’s Al Ghul, escapes the prison where Penguin had been holding her, and runs off back to her master. This allows Batman to follow her to the place where Ra’s is hiding out. The key to finding the guy popped up one dialog line<\/em> after he became relevant to the story. <\/p>\nI’m sorry, but that’s just too contrivance-y, even for a comic book. Foreshadow harder next time.<\/p>\n
Extra bonus contrivance: Batman phones up Alfred and requests a new gadget. It just so happens that we’re going to need this gadget to get into Ra’sHow do you make this name possessive? It already LOOKS possessive because of that stupid apostrophe. This is a dumb name for a comic book character, since the printed version will be confusing and the proper pronunciation is totally unintuitive.<\/span> lair. The problem is that Batman has no idea where he’s going yet, which means he has no reason to expect he’s going to need this gizmo. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So it’s finally time for Batman to confront Penguin at the end of the Museum. Technically he doesn’t need to do this. He’s rescued Freeze and the clock is still ticking on both his poisoning and Protocol 10. But Penguin has been an enormous pain in the ass and Batman is having trouble staying on-task […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-batman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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