<\/div>What I think actually happened is that Batman’s quasi-girlfriend Talia ambushed Harley and stole the cure. The game doesn’t really explain this, and there’s no way for first-time players to guess at this point because Talia hasn’t shown up yet. As far as the audience knows, she’s still sitting in Ra’s Al Ghul’s lair, pouting. <\/p>\n
The dialog has already made it sound like Joker has obtained the cure, which means the audience naturally assumes that Harley delivered the cure and was tied up afterwards. Which won’t make any sense to them. She’s in the middle of Joker’s lair, so it seems like she must be in this position on Joker’s wishes. Harley doesn’t say why she’s tied up, which makes this scene a bit of a head-scratcher the first time through. <\/p>\n
At the end of the steel mill, Batman meets up with Clayface-Joker, who looks healthy. <\/p>\n
From Joker’s point of view: Harley went out to steal the cure but never returned. But then he decided to act like he had it anyway? And then Batman comes in and demands the cure, and Clayface-Joker doesn’t think this is strange? Or maybe Harley delivered the cure, and then Talia somehow stole it back before Joker managed to take it, and so Joker… tied up Harley?<\/p>\n
Whatever. The while plot revolves around this vial of blue science juice and the story has it changing hands entirely off-screen and doesn’t tell us about it until later. Drama requires clarity, and this isn’t clear. It’s confusing one way before you know about the two Jokers gagWhy is Harley tied up in the middle of Joker’s base after bringing him the cure?<\/span> and confusing a different wayWhy is Joker pretending to be cured when (from his point of view) Batman already took it back?<\/span> after you know about the twist. You can invent some fanfiction after the fact to untangle this, but it’s still kinda muddled.<\/p>\n At any rate, Batman and Clayface-Joker have a huge brawl with goons and weapons and even a Titan monsterWho, I should note, isn’t dead of toxin poisoning.<\/span>. It’s one of my favorite fights in the game. Which is good, because I hate<\/strong> the scene that follows. In fact, this is basically the point where all the cut corners and missing pieces of the Joker plot comes back to bite the writer and the whole thing starts to unravel.<\/p>\n After Batman wins the fight, Protocol 10 begins. Hugo Strange orders his attack helicopters to do just what it says on the tin, and the first salvo of missiles brings down the ceiling where Batman and Clayface-Joker are fighting. Some rubble randomly lands on Batman and pins him. Clayface-Joker skips over to finish him off. Talia enters and offers Clayface-Joker access to the Lazarus Pit in exchange for letting Batman live. Clayface-Joker accepts. She surrenders her sword to him. As she says goodbye to Batman she slyly points to the tracking deviceIt’s actually Batman’s tracker, which he put onto one of her guards earlier in the evening.<\/span> on her jacket, indicating she expects him to follow.<\/p>\n This scene simply does not work. It’s driven by contrivance, it doesn’t make sense, and every character is out of character. Moreover, some of them seem to have read the script. Let’s look at the participants and see how the story fails each of them…<\/p>\n This story has handled Batman very poorly so far, but this scene seems to hold the very idea<\/em> of Batman in contempt. Batman – a character built around the idea of preparedness, a guy normally thinking so far ahead his behavior is almost supernaturally prescient – spends the entire night sidetracked and in the dark before having other characters solve the central mystery and explain it to him over the phone. After that he gets randomly pinned by rubble. It would be okay if Batman was outsmarted or outmaneuvered by Joker, but losing due to random bad luck diminishes both our hero and our villain. <\/p>\n Forcing a player to win in gameplay and then forcing them to lose in a cutscene is already a clumsy and unsatisfying way to resolve a conflict in any game, but having it happen to Batman by random chance is a triple foul. It negates a hard-won player victory, it drags Batman even further from his defining attributes, and it makes it look like Joker didn’t have a plan. <\/p>\n To twist the knife a little more: When Talia offers Clayface-Joker immortality, Batman blurts out, “Talia no! He’ll be unstoppable!” Because of this, Clayface-Joker “knows” she’s telling the truth and accepts the deal. Batman, who is usually portrayed as stoic, thoughtful, and a master strategist, is now a dumb blabbermouth. The writer couldn’t stop at making him impotent, they had to make him incompetent<\/em>.<\/p>\n This writer seems to be incapable of giving Joker (either of them) smart plans, so their only tool for creating setbacks is to have Batman behave foolishly. We might be able to tolerate this scene if this was just one moment in the story, but after a long night of having Batman get blindsided, distracted, and tricked, it feels like they’ve destroyed the core attributes of this character to serve their story. <\/p>\n Once Talia leaves, why does Batman continue to sit there like a lemon? Why doesn’t the scene at least depict him trying and failing to free himself using gadgets? Why doesn’t he tell Oracle about the situation he’s in? Why doesn’t he call on Robin for help?<\/b> <\/p>\n Talia just happens<\/i> to be here at this critical moment. Yes, she’s actually just got done stealing the cure from Harley Quinn, but there’s no way for the player to know that at this point. If this was the only questionable thing in the scene this wouldn’t be a problem, but in such a traffic jam of contrivances it looks like another sloppy shortcut on the part of the writer. The fact that it’s (sort of) explained later doesn’t save the scene in the moment. Also, having her drop in from the raftersThis room is clearly depicted as having a lot of dark catwalks and such overhead.<\/span> would make this less goofy. As it stands, she sort of casually walks in from nowhere in particular, which makes her appearance feel even more random. <\/p>\n She’s a trained Ninja. She’s got a sword. As far as she can tell Joker is armed only with a knife. She’s dedicated her life to the League of Assassins, who believe they can save the world by killing criminals. Joker – the worst criminal of them all – is threatening the life of her beloved, and she’s going to hand over her sword<\/em>? And also offer him immortality? Why wouldn’t she at least threaten him first? Why not simply attack? Later on she does try to kill Joker, so that’s clearly her long-term plan. So why is she offering this deal now? Sure, Clayface-Joker had a knife to Batman’s throat, but he took it away as soon as they began talking, long before she handed over her sword. <\/p>\n Even if we accept the notion that she would rather bargain than fight, it makes no sense for Talia to offer Joker the Lazarus Pit like this. It would make much more sense if she tried to bargain with Joker as if he was a common criminal. She would offer him money, weapons, technology, secrets, and he would refuse them all. Then in an act of desperation she might blurt out the Lazarus Pit at the last moment before Joker killed Batman. That would show just how much she’s misunderstanding and underestimating Joker, which would make for good character development all around. But instead she just opens negotiations with her greatest secret?<\/p>\n Why does Talia hint for Batman to follow her when he’s clearly trapped under the rubble and helpless? What’s to stop some random goons from finishing him off after she leaves? What’s to stop him dying when the gunships level this building? Did she read the script and know that Catwoman was going to jump in and save the day? <\/p>\n How is she planning to cross the water with Joker? The writer seems to have lost track of Protocol 10 here, but Arkham City is still under missile assault from attack helicopters. It’s a war zone out there. And Joker and Talia are going to sail off across the icy water together in a boat that neither of them have?<\/p>\n It doesn’t make a lot of sense that Clayface is going to just stab Batman after this fight. Wasn’t this whole “pretend to be Joker” thing leading up to something? Didn’t they have a plan? When was he going to do the big reveal? This fight was supposed to be the big showdown at the end of a long con with two Jokers. If Talia hadn’t come along and stupidly surrendered, what was going to be his punchline to all of this? Was Clayface just going to shank Batman without revealing the joke? What was the point of this whole scheme then?<\/p>\n Okay, you can argue that maybe Joker had a plan (that we are never shown) but Clayface breaks from that plan when he sees he has a chance to kill Batman. But if mindless bloodlust has distracted him from his immediate goal then why would he turn around and accept Talia’s offer<\/em>?<\/p>\n It makes no sense for Clayface to accept this deal, since he’s already immortalI mean he was a middle-aged actor back in the 60’s, which would mean he’s almost 90 now despite showing no signs of aging. Then again, the timeline of DC Comics is kinda strange. Given that he’s giving up his greatest goal to try it, you’d think he’d worry this new scheme might not pan out.<\/span> on account of being made of clay. After an entire career of losing to Batman he’s finally got his nemesis pinned and helpless, and he’s going to give it all up for immortality he doesn’t need, even if he believed it existed? <\/p>\n Technically Joker isn’t in this scene, but I anticipate that some people will want to defend Clayface’s behavior by arguing that he was just “in character”. As an actor, he was playing the Joker and this is what the Joker would do. <\/p>\n But no. Even if we try to excuse his behavior as a maniacal dedication to method acting, it still<\/em> doesn’t work because Joker wouldn’t take this deal either.<\/p>\n “I want to live forever” has never been part of Joker’s mandate. In fact, he’s always willing to risk his life to play a crazy game with Batman. Joker doesn’t want to live forever. He wants to play this game with Batman. In some versions of the character he wants Batman to kill him. So it makes no sense for him to give up his prize for personal health and security. <\/p>\n Even the rubble itself is nonsense! It’s a slab of concrete the size of a refrigerator, and it lands directly on Batman after falling at least two stories. Yet he takes no harm whatsoever. He’s pinned in such a way that he can breathe and he’s uninjured, and yet he can’t free himself using any of his tools or his free arm. To paraphrase a famous nitpicker, that is a very specific amount of heavy<\/a>.<\/p>\n What are Alfred and Oracle doing? They never call Batman to check up on him? He doesn’t contact them? <\/p>\n Did Hugo Strange get distracted? He ordered his men to begin Protocol 10 by destroying the steel mill. As far as we can tell they hit the place once and then flew away without making any effort to finish the job.<\/p>\n What’s Robin doing right now? Based on what the story has told us, I guess he’s sitting in a waiting room at Gotham General Hospital, calling to nurses as they rush by, “Hey, is there any news on those 2,000 people? How are they doing? Found a cure yet? No? Do you need anything punched? No? Can you get me a pillow? Or a magazine? Oh, you’re busy? Sorry. I’ll let you get back to making your rounds. Thanks anyway.”<\/p>\n
<\/div>Batman<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Talia Al Ghul<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Clayface-Joker<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Joker<\/h3>\n
<\/div>Everyone Else<\/h3>\n
Fix This Scene<\/h3>\n
<\/div>