An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective, Part 13

 

The first half of season six of the Epic Rap Battles of History may have been inconsistent and uneven, but the second half had a much stronger line-up.  There was just one battle I did not enjoy, although I also skipped another of them for reasons I’ll get into shortly.  The second half of the season also features one of history’s biggest villains, along with Thanos and The Joker, so it’s clear that they knew they needed to bring out the big guns after such a weak start.

It occurs to me that there are actually a lot of villains in the second half of the season, so I should probably explain the joke.  Donald Trump.  I’m talking about Donald Trump.

It feels like, after I finish this article, I’m coming down the home stretch.  Just six more battles to go and I’ll be caught up to present day.

 

Mother Teresa vs. Sigmund Freud

Best Line: “An exception to my theory, I can’t believe this!  Here we have a Mother that no one wants to sleep with!”

This one’s such a bop, surprisingly.  You wouldn’t expect a rap battle featuring these two personalities to flow so well, but sometimes you get pleasantly surprised.  It’s funny how Freud accuses Mother Teresa of talking about herself too much when he fully admits that his favourite subject is himself.  But then again, I think it’s pretty much known how full of shit the guy was.  Only Freud could get insulted as much as he did in this battle and still think that Teresa is too self-centered.

It’s also funny to me that my favourite line in the rap battle came from Freud, but I still lean towards Teresa winning the battle.  There’s a lot of personal bias behind that one, but admittedly it’s more like “anyone but Freud” rather than being on Team Teresa, although she did do a pretty good job of roasting him.

 

Vlad the Impaler vs. Count Dracula

This one sucks.  I feel like it’s Dracula’s delivery that ruins this one, but I can’t even bring myself to choose a Best Line, that requires me to listen to this one more than I absolutely have to.  At the very least, I have to commend them for throwing in references to other fictional vampires like Count von Count and Bunnicula, but Dracula admitting that he has to be invited into a house first before he can rock it feels like a bigger self own than Freddy Krueger not knowing what a wolverine is.  If Krueger’s weak enough that he can be defeated by a cup of tea (according to Wolverine), then Dracula’s even weaker because he can be defeated by someone simply withholding consent.

This is the last of the weak battles of the season, though.  The last four episodes are incredibly strong.  That said, it’s also known that season six was ended earlier than was intended, so it makes me wonder what the actual season finale would’ve been, if they had been able to film it.

 

The Joker vs. Pennywise

Best Line: “Tell your author, for his next gangbang scene, how about a little more PG and a lot less 13.”

I think the part I like the most about this particular battle is how, as soon as Pennywise makes a reference to killing Batman, The Joker is suddenly fiercely protective of his Gotham City adversary.  Apparently, no one kills Batman except The Joker.

I’m also glad that they went with a more classic look for the villain because I know Heath Ledger’s version is incredibly popular but it’s still just one version of the character, and most people who grew up with either the comics or Batman: The Animated Series are used to seeing a clown that’s still somewhat presentable in polite company.  I know that some versions of the character have a somewhat tragic backstory, but in The Dark Knight, he doesn’t look like the kind of clown that’s trying to make anyone laugh.

Personally, I look forward to the day when Hollywood lets themselves have fun making Batman movies again rather than making them grim and dark and depressing because they think that’s what everyone wants.

 

Thanos vs. J. Robert Oppenheimer

Best Line: “Listening to you took everything I have left.  After your raps, I am become deaf.”

I only recently caught up to the end of Avengers: Endgame in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and this is a battle that I’d been avoiding for years, in case it would deliver spoilers for the film.  I finally watched it shortly after the end of Endgame, and I liked it well enough, but I don’t think their Thanos was the best.  Still, I’m glad this wasn’t season one because I imagine they would’ve done even worse with the character just from a make-up perspective.  They’ve come a long way and over the years, they’ve sometimes demonstrated an uncanny ability to perfectly mimic a historical figure, and sometimes they do the best they can with what they have but drop the ball a little bit.  I think the strangest thing about this battle is that Epic Lloyd is usually the better character actor between himself and Nice Peter, but here, Peter’s performance is far superior.  I can’t get over the fact that I don’t think Thanos’s body is quite the right size.  It almost feels like I’m watching a Sontaran rap.

I also appreciated that they included a lot of comic book trivia about Thanos including that he got beat at one point by Squirrel Girl.

Which reminds me, I guess we’re not going to see Squirrel Girl in the MCU, ever.  She was going to be in a comedy series but no one wanted to pick up the show and I guess it’s dead now.  It doesn’t help that she’s obsessed with getting Tony Stark as a mentor and the MCU gave that trait to their version of Peter Parker instead.  There’s also no such thing as recurring villains in the MCU, they tend to stay defeated.  Thanos is pretty much not coming back so we’re not going to see him lose to squirrels.  Although… with the whole multiverse thing the MCU currently has going, there is potential to see some familiar faces show up, even if they’re not the original versions.

Also, it’s funny that when I finally watched Endgame and no longer had to avoid this battle due to MCU spoilers, I briefly wondered if I should continue to avoid it because now I have Oppenheimer spoilers to worry about, but then I realized that I’m probably not going to seek out that movie so I don’t really care about spoilers.  Plus, the battle was made before the movie.

 

Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden

Best Line: “Sometimes I can’t tell for which side you’re rootin’.  When we go high, you go down on Putin.”
Runner-up: “No matter what you try to say, global warming ain’t cancelled.  You pulled out of Paris, should have pulled out of Stormy Daniels.”
For the love of democracy: Will you shut up, man?

By the way, I’m fairly certain I’m not related to Stormy.  I think it’s high time I make that known.  I’m sure it’s a question that’s been on everyone’s minds.

I don’t think anyone thought that, four years after this battle, there might be a rematch between these two.  Conventional wisdom has always been that if someone loses the Presidential race, they don’t try again, but there also hasn’t been a one term President since George H. W. Bush.  Donald Trump, being a former President of the United States, has already won a Presidential race so in theory, he should be able to do it again.  But I’m not sure it’s wise to send in the same clown who already lost once to Joe Biden.

Oh, hey, this means there were four clowns in season six.  This is definitely the season of clowns.

It’s actually pretty refreshing to see the Presidential election rap battle not be interrupted by Abraham Lincoln for once.  This is the only battle in that particular mini-series (so far) which plays out like a regular rap battle, and that makes it all the more enjoyable to rewatch.  I think part of that was, they just wanted Joe Biden to use the infamous “will you shut up, man?” line at the very end.

That said, I also can’t help but wonder if they’re getting tired of Donald Trump in these rap battles.  His presence in the A Christmas Carol video was made before he decided to run for President and he’s basically been impossible to get rid of ever since.  If he somehow secures the Republican nomination again this year, Peter and Lloyd are going to have to decide if they want to do a second Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden video.  They stopped doing Hitler vs. Vader videos and they were pretty much running out of material for them, so I don’t know what they could possibly be able to do with yet another Donald Trump rap battle.

 

Harry Potter vs. Luke Skywalker

Best Line: “I bet you’re just distracted, you got a lot on your plate.  On one hand, the rebellion, on the other hand- oh, wait…”

I think in some ways, it’s fitting that the season that started out with a weak battle doesn’t end with an over the top spectacle either.  It’s clear that a lot of work was put into the Lego visuals, but this was not the first battle to use Lego animation.  The other Lego-themed battle was not a season finale either.  Indeed, this feels like just another normal rap battle, and is probably the first time that a season ended without some kind of event.  The first season ended with Peter and Lloyd battling one another, the second season ended with the first five-way battle, the third season ended with eight rappers (the four renaissance artists who lent their names to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), the fourth season ended with a nightmare Walt Disney scenario and the fifth season ended with Peter and Lloyd at each other’s throats.  Comparatively, this feels like a rather normal and almost pedestrian way to end a season, which in some odd way, lends the sixth season an interesting kind of charm.  Between this and Lincoln’s absence from the election rap battle, it’s almost like season six’s big thing was subverting expectations, even if it was completely by accident in some cases.

Last week, I mentioned how it sometimes feels like recent videos are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but at least in season six, it was clear that the creative spark was still there.  Even the Vlad vs. Dracula battle showed that they were still trying.  The strangest match-up, to me, was Thanos vs. Oppenheimer and at the time, I wondered if most people would even care about Oppenheimer but in hindsight, no one knew that a movie about him would become as popular as it did.

Next week, I’m going to write about the most recent six episodes of the Epic Rap Battles of History and then I’ll be fully caught up.  Hopefully the battles will start to come faster once again, but I guess I’m not holding my breath at this point.