Axis Chemicals

Um, Ocean took Tim Burton's film and turned it into five very different levels.

Uh, you start in the Axis Chemicals plant chasing Jack Napier through sixty screens of hoods, acid drops, and leaky gas.

Then he falls into the vat and becomes the Joker.

After that, it's a Batmobile chase, uh, through Gotham, a one-minute Smylex puzzle in the Batcave, a Batwing level cutting carnival balloons, and a cathedral climb to the roof.

But once you start looking into it and then go even deeper by looking at the script or something, you realize like this-- there's nothing cut and dry about this.

Is this real? Did any of this really happen? Is the unreliable narrator not just the Joker, but everybody involved? And the Axis Chemicals or the, the red hood scene you get when he puts on the red hood, and he looks at the other mob guy, and he's looking at what he will become just moments later.

It, it really does boggle the mind how w- well, one, two people can really come up with this amazing perennial and have there be so much meaning in there and also have it be very meaningless to the casual reader.

It's, it, it, you know-- 'Cause I, I can't imagine-- I don't know what it's like to read this casually.

Yeah, it's operating on multiple levels.

Say there's 50 levels of understanding to this, then, you know, some readers will walk away with one, some will walk away with 10, some will walk away with all 50.

But you talking about that scene at Axis Chemicals, I mean, you know, comic storytelling is all about narrative real estate, how much information you can get on the page, and that scene in particular is masterful.

I mean, we go from the heist on Axis Chemicals, everything going wrong, Batman showing up on the scene, the Red Hood taking a tumble into the vat of chemicals and ultimately turning into the Joker.

I never thought about that.

It's all from Axis Chemicals.

It's all right there.

Yeah.

And he was an actor.

His stage makeup came from Axis Chemicals.

And that's what gave him, you know, his powers or whatever.

And I'm curious if that's the approach they're going to take because on Lanterns, in like the first episode, there was a Easter egg of Janice Cosmetics, which is owned and created by or whatever, Gotham villain Black Mask.

thought of, yeah.

When Jack Nicholson's Joker falls in, yeah, Jack Napier falls into the, what's that, Axis Chemicals or whatever the hell it is.

Well, yeah, it

was some kind of chemical or radioactive what the fuck, then there's a nuclear.