Catwoman: Hunted

I was looking forward to this, and ultimately I was very disappointed.

There are some individual elements I liked, but on the whole, I was getting tired of the proceedings as they progressed. The movie is 20 minutes too long. Once Catwoman takes down Leviathan that should be it, but that's just the first false ending of two. I also had real problems with the story. I'm going to itemize what I liked and disliked, and what was ultimately a push.

What I liked:

I liked the opening title sequence. It having major resonance for the arc of the film and the ending is rewarding in hindsight.

I liked the jazzy score. But to be honest, it got a little too distracting at points. I like playful jazz scores. But that specific music is not good for every scene you can think of. The movie definitely overplayed that theme.

I liked Cheetah's design a lot. It reminded strongly of the Borg Queen from Star Trek in being equal parts sexy and repellent. She looks both gorgeous as hell and creepy as hell at the same time.

What I didn't like:

I understand this is a major part of Catwoman's character. But it's majorly annoying in a project geared towards older viewers. Her playfully lecturing her male enemies on the right way to treat a lady is beyond cringe, especially in this day and age. The "pinch" / "pince" moment was so stupid I couldn't believe Greg Weisman wrote it. For the record, most of the villains here were dumber than most of the other villains he comes up with in his other projects. It's hard to reconcile his other smart and relatable villains with the goons seen here.

I loathed the scene of Catwoman sexually humiliating Batwoman in the tub. And Weisman has a ready made defense for it: Catwoman does that to ALL her enemies. Her entire bit is that she's a tease. I'm positive that will be his defense. That defense doesn't actually wash here though. Because Kate is a woman, specifically a lesbian, the power dynamics are very different in Catwoman doing that. When she does it to a straight male enemy you half think the jerk has it coming. Her doing it to Kate feels weirdly cruel instead, and almost as if she's outright mocking her lesbianism. Weisman can argue Catwoman's characterization there is consistent with her other portrayals, and this always being who Catwoman is all he wants. That doesn't make it okay.

The fight scene at the end felt very disjointed. It felt like when Selina was fighting Whale, the monsters were standing around doing nothing, and once Whale has Selina in his grip, they remember to attack Batwoman. I imagine these scenes were supposed to be occurring at the same time, but it was so clumsily handled it sure didn't feel that way as it was happening.

What was ultimately a push:

The ending. I strongly criticize Greg Weisman's endings, or rather lack of them, in all his projects. I was all set to dump on this if they gave an open ending for a flipping one-off movie. And as the movie was going one thing I was planning on complimenting it on was the fact that stuff just happened that went unexplained. Weisman's biggest fault as a writer is that he feels the need to explain everything. Show the viewer how the magic trick works and basically spoil the fun of it. Weisman has earned a LOT of fans for this storytelling techinique, and no lie, it worked like gangbusters in Gargoyles' "The Gathering". But not only has he never been able to top Owen as Puck in his entire career. But none of the other similar twists he's delivered occur in scenes where the exposition was as believable. Those big reveals felt uncomfortably talky and unrealistic. Weisman values realism above all else in his projects. I would argue because of the amount of exposition and plot related stupidity he has to engage in to make it work, none of his characters talk or act remotely realistically. I prefer outlandish scenarios and believable characters. Weisman values outlandish characters and believable scenarios. We greatly differ on what parts of a fictional project should be realistic. And I think we always will.

So I was all set to compliment the project for sort of just letting random crap happen, until it's revealed at the very end that this was Catwoman's plan all the time, which makes very little sense to me considering all of the random variables Selina couldn't control as the movie was happening. It wasn't a Xanatos Gambit, it was Xanatos Roulette. Learning what Sochi was, and how Catwoman was connected to it would ordinarily annoy me when Weisman did something like that on one of his TV shows. Why didn't it annoy me this time?

I'll admit, the Talia reveal at the end was pretty bad, but I think it's a little different for me to watch an 80 minute movie where the beginning goes full circle with the ending, and there's a major twist and reveal involved there that explains things in hindsight. I feel less jerked around seeing that in the exact same project than I do having the rug supposedly pulled out from under me after watching an entire season structured in a misleading way. Even better, the twist wasn't exactly hidden, or a trick ending. It was one of those things that made perfect sense. So I will not be singing the movie's ending's praises to the Heavens, but I will say as far as explaining an intricate plot goes, it was done right. Best of all, Catwoman simply letting us know that she was involved in Sochi and what Minerva was doing is all we needed and all we got. Weisman didn't give us flashbacks to her revealing that to show the magic trick in all its intricacies. Because as far as unexpected endings go, it's an not an actual trick. And I'll talk smack about Talia, but I appreciate that Weisman resisted the urge to act like he's animation's M. Night Shyamalan for once. He allowed the reveal and Catwoman's motivations to speak for themselves.

Ultimately, I was disappointed though. It's too bad. It had some good things in it. **1/2.