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neonponders · 2 years

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I am once again thinking thoughts that have nothing to do with Harringrove but ever since I saw the new Batman, I’ve been eager to see a new rendition of Poison Ivy, and here we are:

It would start with Batman investigating new criminal activity and very quickly uncovering that the petty criminals are paid by a MUCH bigger crime syndicate. Bruce is able to figure out that this organization is very good about loose ends - except one.

There’s one person alive who used to work for them, and she’s in Arkham Asylum.

Bruce visits Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley (if you’ve read my Harringrove stuff, you know I LOVE naming Billy’s mom Lillian, but that’s a tangent) and is immediately...confused. Intrigued. Also acutely sympathetic because it’s very clear that she’s being treated extremely unethically.

He feigns that he’s there to visit Joker, but he makes a point to walk by her cell, and she’s right there by the door, leaning against it like she has trouble standing. “You...sm-smell like...berg-gamot an-nd...vanilla-la-la amber...”

As she addresses him, he can tell she also has trouble speaking. Almost as if her jaw is wired shut. Her words are too stiff, but she does her best to speak to him, accurately identifying Bruce Wayne’s cologne.

Bruce takes a chance. Does something no one should ever do. He reaches into her cell to grip her face - she lets him - and he realigns her jaw with the same chiropractic touch Alfred has used on him throughout his life. The crack is audible and alarming. Even more so, is her tired and relieved, “Thank you...”

Bruce assumes that she’s in Arkham to slowly die away. Put there by the syndicate, and brutally disabled to stay quiet. He does something that will really bite him later on because by sneaking her out of Arkham, he is telling criminals that there’s a way to escape Arkham.

He does a blood test on her in the bat cave and sees all the chemicals she’s sedated under. It’s a wonder she was coherent enough to stand, let alone talk to him, so he takes Dr. Isley up to Alfred. Logically, the man is extremely dubious of Bruce’s reasoning.

“First Selena and now Dr. Pamela? I suppose your preferences are upgrading.”

“Just fix her. Someone went through a lot of trouble to make her a broken mannequin.”

So in the Gothic cave of the Wayne study, the heart of Bruce and Alfred alike, he connects Dr. Isley to fluids as well as a catheter. When she opens her eyes, not quite conscious but still able to listen, Alfred talks to her.

“Dr. Pamela? My name is Alfred. I am not a doctor, but I have unofficial training in various methods. You need a full bodied realignment of your bones and soft tissue work. Do I have your permission to work on you?”

It’s a huge thing to ask, after she’s spent years at the hands of malicious practitioners. It does not escape Alfred’s notice that she only responds after Bruce walks behind her, sending a breeze of scent around her. She inhales, blinks groggily and exhales, “Please.”

So begins a long process of healing. Alfred’s initial adjustments are few and painful. Neither he nor Bruce are willing to give her more chemicals, so she has to undergo everything in full effect. This would be a montage of Alfred and Pamela in the stark lighting of the massive window in that room, giving the gothic study a cave-like presence. Pamela goes from lying on the table, and then an elevated chaise lounge, and then standing at a ballet bar Alfred had moved in for physical therapy.

If it weren’t for the audience’s anticipation for how this character becomes a villain, this is otherwise a very heartwarming evolution and growth of her character. It places her in a sisterly position next to Bruce, who remains distant once she’s fully awake.

His absence is not without productivity. Bruce has been busy this whole time figuring out who is in the mysterious crime organization and Dr. Isley’s files that he stole from Arkham are as much helpful as they are shrouding. They’ve obviously been tampered with. He presumes they’re full of lies to justify her being there, but one thing they did not think to lie about: her address.

He goes to her suburban home just outside of the city. It’s not irregular for people with families to live outside of the city center, but Bruce had the impression that Pamela didn’t have a family.

The house proves differently. It’s been abandoned. For some reason, it never went back up on the market. Instead, it’s been left as a time capsule from the day she was taken from her home -

Bruce is attacked by a woman in the house. A woman that Bruce’s scanners immediately identify as Dr. Eden Mahmud. Her hair is clearly reddish from henna dye, and after he placates her with reassurances that he’s not there to hurt her. He thought this was the home of Dr. Isley -

“It is. She was my wife.”

- and this is where the audience is meant to wonder.....who is Poison Ivy here? This woman with reddish hair fits the bill more, but the literal namesake is currently recovering in the Wayne penthouse...

The house is full of thriving plants even if the yard has been left to dry up or overgrow. Bruce admits that he should have expected someone to be here when he first smelled fresh air instead of stale dust.

Dr. Eden Mahmud is shrewd, high energy compared to MCR loving Bruce, and is supposed to be dead. He says as much. “I thought your lab burnt down in a fire.”

“Now why would a botanist’s lab burn down? Plants need water, not fire.”

“Because you’re not a botanist. Dr. Isley is. You’re a biochemist.”

His use of present tense changes Eden’s demeanor. “Where is she? She’s dead.”

“She’s as dead as you are,” Bruce reassures, but not without leverage. “You can see her if you tell me why you’re in hiding, and why she was in Arkham.”

Naturally, she doesn’t trust him. Bruce offers her Pamela’s files in Arkham. “Take it as a token of trust. I can reset her career. Both of your careers and erase the lies about you both. But I need the truth first.”

Eden doesn’t talk. Instead, she gives him a USB. “If you’re so smart, then you’ll be able to figure it out. But I wonder how strict you draw the lines between legal and criminal, Mr. Vigilante.”

She has a point, because he takes the file to the bat cave, where he and Alfred watch security footage of the lab that the wives shared.

The film would cut to a flashback where Pamela comes home looking like a beautiful bisexual arriving to the chaos of her lesbian wife in the middle of trying to home-dye her hair. Henna is all over the kitchen, leaving a trail to the bathroom, where Pamela arrives to soothe, “Want some help?”

Their lives as happy wives segue to functional (sometimes arguing) colleagues, and then evolve into the footage that Bruce and Alfred are watching.

The camera is pointed to shelves of plants illuminated by solar lights, while counters and fridges of biochemistry take up the rest of the lab. Alfred and Bruce watch in horror as Eden’s research becomes too powerful, but it’s Pamela who was in the lab when men came to collect the bioweapon she had accidentally made.

Alfred walks away, unable to watch the sounds of Pamela getting beaten up and worse. A beautiful woman surrounded by malicious men? The direction that the footage is going is meant to be obvious and deeply uncomfortable...

But Alfred comes back to the screen when the sounds of her fear change to sounds of fury and male agony. Pamela found an opening and clearly knows how to fight, because she’s taking them out one by one. It’s clear that the men were just there to do a job, but she goes absolutely feral with defensive rage. Pamela kills them all, and reveals a weapon of her own: a compost machine for her plants. She turns the bodies into plant food, and the footage montages into the plants growing, bursting out of their pots and overtaking the lab.

At this point, Bruce and Alfred can’t tell who is more dangerous: Eden, or Pamela. However the crime organization wants Eden, and Pamela was kept alive in the hopes that slow torture would make her spill. Alfred congratulates Bruce on capturing the greatest and most dangerous bargaining chip since he has the means to control both Eden and hell, so to speak. (Or maybe the crime organization is also a play one words so it’s Eden vs. Hell, etc.)

Naturally, things don’t go according to plan. The rest fo the film would be about Bruce, Eden, and Pamela working together and it would be great, seeing Bruce with something a lot like friends, and the audience’s anticipation would still be going because something has to pit these poison ivies against him, right?

The film’s denouement is the crime organization getting dismantled and this huge mob organization in Gotham is uncovered for further movies to deal with. It’s like conquering Goliath only to realize that Goliath has a whole family that must be dealt with now.

But Batman thanks Eden and the newly invigorated Pamela by reuniting them and getting their promises to work their geniuses on helping people or a new career entirely. They both have a nest egg to sit back on and it’s a humorous/hopeful scene where Eden’s like, “You won’t see us for a long time, if at all. Our favorite band is going on tour. We’ve been wanting to try following a musical tour and now’s a good time.”

Batman wishes them well in his awkward way. The closest thing to a concert that this angsty boy has ever been to is a choir or orchestral performance. It’s heart wrenching in a way because Pamela spares a moment to invite him, but he refuses. She doesn’t pressure him in any way, even though it goes unsaid that he’d have to go as a civilian, not as Batman. Therefore revealing his face to her and Eden.

The first concert date is in Gotham’s arena venue. It’s a huge affair and everyone’s hyped. Eden’s red, henna hair glows in the stage lights. She and Pamela are dancing and thriving with the rest of the audience. They kiss, it’s wonderful. Honestly a queer dream come true to love and let love in a cathedral of music and mayhem...

Confetti rains over the crowd...but Pamela lifts her face to smell...petals. It’s not confetti, but flower petals. She frowns because...spraying organic plant material over an audience is dangerous for various allergy reasons, but that is the most mundane reason she has the time to think of.

As she catches some of the petals in her hand, there’s a flash of a blossom in her old lab. Her carnivorous, high-iron consuming plants only blossomed once. She only got to see those flowers one time, and the audience only sees them this one time. A flash of warning. Of origin.

The stage explodes.

The musicians are dead. Members of the audience die. Many more get trampled in the panic to leave the arena. Pamela is lucky to get knocked to the ground and kicked behind a large piece of stage shrapnel. She isn’t able to stand until more of the arena clears out. Things are on fire and sparks are flying. A police helicopter flies overhead, casting a stark spotlight over the scene as Pamela finds where they were standing. She finds Eden’s dark red hair and excavates her body from the wreckage and other bodies.

The irony is that Eden’s hair may be red, but Pamela has head wounds, dripping red over her face as she presses her fingertips into Eden’s throat. Feels the dead silence of her pulse. She holds her wife’s body in a sea of petals, and when she finally lets Eden go, Pamela pushes her hair back with Eden’s blood on her hands. Whatever color hair she had, brunette, blond, black, whatever, it gets slicked back with glistening blood.

It’s now clear how Dr. Isley becomes Poison Ivy. The audience finishes the movie with the knowledge that Pamela was just a botanist who likes plants (albeit with some dark experimentation) and Eden, her literal and figurative garden paradise, is murdered.

* * *

The next movie starts right after the concert with a discussion between Pamela and Batman on how the crime syndicate may be dismantled, but they’re still strong. They’re showing off that they successfully stole Eden’s bioweapon, because everyone at the concert is ill and dying from a fungal infection. However Pamela is distinctly fine. This does not go unnoticed by Bruce or the observers of the criminal organization.

Both want to know how Pamela is immune, but Pamela begs Bruce to be a bit more nefarious because, “If you’re going to war, you have to meet War where he stands. You can’t pussy foot around it! You either meet it head on or you hide till the storm’s gone. Are you hiding or fighting?”

This is of course an allusion to Selena, and Bruce doesn’t take it well. He lashes back and Pamela finishes the discussion with, “Okay, Bruce,” but it’s so quiet that he and the audience are not even sure they heard correctly. This might not get answered until the very end, where we get a flashback of this scene and Bruce more clearly hears, “Okay, Bruce,” and then Alfred walks in.

Alfred provides some outright elaboration, “Maybe bringing a genius spouse of a bioweapon designer to your home was not the best idea.”

So Pamela knows who Batman is. Eden is dead and the only one who knows how the weapon works AND how to be immune to it is no longer an ally to Batman.

[ I can elaborate on my Poison Ivy’s story, but I’ll stop here haha]

#indulgent post #poison ivy #batman #neonponders #dr. pamela isley

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