Oh, what a world, what a world…
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Under the supervision of James Gunn and Peter Safran, so far the all-new all-different DC Universe has been a welcome improvement over the DC Extended Universe, which collapsed after one flop too many. Maybe Gunn’s storytelling instincts provide more insightful guidance to their filmmaking recruits than meddling Warner Brothers execs ever did. As a trade-off, though, Gunn’s edgier predilections lean toward content aimed mostly at “mature readers”, as the comics warning labels used to say back in the day. Apart from Superman and a small portion of Supergirl, the DCU’s reboots — especially on its HBO Max front lines — have been catered toward a more “adult” audience. Only a fraction of DC’s total comics output used to push that boundary, even during the Vertigo imprint’s heyday, but now it’s their TV/movie standard. The contrast isn’t lost on those of us who grew up in the mainstream-media era of a thousand articles proclaiming their shocking discovery from the outside looking in: “Zap! Pow! Comics Aren’t Just for Kids Anymore!”
Aiming for the R or the TV-MA too often means shutting out some of those prospective merchandise buyers, but it’s also afforded them the latitude to take bigger chances with lesser-known, weirder characters from the dustier corners of their IP catalog, or dabble in tales that don’t lend themselves to classic good-vs.-evil superhero morality plays. Prime example: grotesque body horror! Filling that totally unnoticed gap in DC’s genre spread is Clayface, which by all rights should’ve been duller. It’s an origin story for one of the oldest Batman villains who never got to fight Adam West and Burt Ward. (Not to be confused with False Face, who was a different guy.) The mucky, shape-changing second-stringer finally gets the spotlight courtesy of director James Watkins (The Woman in Black, last year’s Speak No Evil) and the joint screenwriting talents of Hossein Amini (The Wings of the Dove, The Snowman) and the very busy horror master Mike Flanagan (though do not get me started on Carrie). It’s a wild, disturbing throwback to superhuman revenge thrillers of yesteryear — say, Cronenberg’s The Fly or Darkman or, well, Carrie — with a warning to us all: with creepy power comes really creepy temptations.
