Clayface's Final Scene Proves My Corkboard Wrong, and I Loved It

Before I saw Clayface, I pinned a sentence to my corkboard with my name under it: if the last two minutes of Clayface point at the famous thing, I read this whole movie wrong. The last two minutes of Clayface point at the famous thing, and I loved it. So the corkboard was wrong, and this piece shows exactly where.

This is a full spoiler discussion, covering the whole movie, the ending and the last scene. Before I had seen any of it, I put Clayface on a corkboard: five pins on what the picture says, a column of things to look for, and a column of things that would break it. Now the movie is the evidence. Every pin gets a grade, along with what's on screen that earns it, including the one I got wrong.

Batman never appears in Clayface, and I never missed him

I promised one answer up front, and it's whether Batman is in it. He isn't. At no point do they hint at Batman. There's no brush of him, nothing. At no point are you wrestling with the image of Batman.

In a movie that chooses to be this, I would have expected it. But I didn't need him. I never once felt the need to have him there.

The last two minutes turn Matt Hagen into Clayface, so I read the movie wrong

Pin two said a story set before the famous thing has one temptation: pay off the famous thing. The card that went with it sat in the column of things that would break the movie. The last two minutes point at the famous thing, so here they are.

The doctor turns everything over to the police and tells them what happened. She's walking through the street, and everyone who looks at her, she's thinking she can't trust anyone. You're sitting there thinking that's it, she's in trouble now and will never trust another soul. Then there's a homeless man, and the movie tracks him down into the sewer, where it looks like she's down there talking to him.

It isn't her. She's made of clay, or at the very least is a clay version of her, and he made it out of himself. The two of them come together and merge into one thing, and he becomes what we think of. Not all the way: you can still see parts of the Hagen face. But that's Clayface. He's got all the things.

I said if that happened, I read this movie wrong. So I read this movie wrong, and pin two is confirmed. It paid off with the famous thing, and the card that said it would break the movie came true. And it didn't break anything. I owe you a why, and the answer is the rest of this board.

Clayface hits all four Feat of Clay markers

The column of things to look for held four cards that were supposed to tell us whether this was Feat of Clay at feature length. Feat of Clay is from Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. Matt Hagen is an actor whose face is ruined, and a businessman named Roland Daggett keeps him hooked on a cream that lets him reshape it.

Card one was a Daggett, by that name or any other. Hit. Hagen sees a news story about a doctor who invented the treatment: nanites that take your DNA, figure out what's broken and regrow the skin, AI and all. Her work got stolen from her, and the people who stole it turned it into a beauty company. That's Daggett, and that's the cream. They didn't use the names. They didn't need to.

Card two was the doctor believing in it before it works. Hit, and this is the one the trailers got backwards. She doesn't want to help him at first. Then she looks him up and sees his old work and the speeches he used to give at colleges about everything you put into your work, the emotions and all those parts. She feels bad for him. She believes in him before there's anything to believe in. She's not a bad guy. If anybody's taking advantage of anybody in this movie, it's him. Naomi plays the only person in this movie who's honest with him.

Card three was a clock on the treatment. Hit. It's little injections over weeks, and he gets close to normal. He wants to go to a premiere in Gotham of a play he got fired from. She tells him, "We have to do more experiments. We have to make sure you're stable." He goes anyway, makes a good showing, and his face starts to fall. Back at the lab, while she's in the other room, he grabs the injector and puts every nanite she has into himself. It heals him and also starts to change him. He has far more in his system than she ever modeled for. That's the clock, and he smashes it.

Card four was Hagen wearing a face we've already seen. That's a hit, and it's where the movie gets good and creepy. He goes to his old manager to get his money back and accidentally kills him, and while he's killing him, he changes shape into him. That's his way out. The first face he steals, he steals by accident. Later there's a scene where he's in the mirror, changing faces into the late night host who interviewed him and having a conversation with himself. It's very reminiscent of Gollum looking into the pool in Lord of the Rings, one personality to the other. Four for four. The movie I pinned is the movie they made.

Clayface never earns a hero cheer, and the cure is never free

Next comes the column that could have killed it. Batman showing up is already answered: no. Clayface getting a hero beat, the moment you're supposed to cheer the monster, is probably the closest call on the board.

He gets revenge on everybody. There's his best friend Corr, who betrayed him and has booked a part shooting in Gotham, and there's the mob boss who's moving into film production. There's a moment with the mob boss I have to talk about. Hagen cuts his own face the same way they cut it, so his blood pours all over the mob boss's face, and he says, "You see that pressure you're feeling just behind your eyes? That's my blood trying to get back to me."

With my producer hat on, that effect looks very spiky, like somebody turned on turbulent displacement in After Effects and it all spikes up. Then it bursts through, and it holds up from there.

So I get it. He kills all the monsters and he protects the doctor, and you still never cheer him, because he's not a hero by any stretch. He's getting revenge, which comes across as antiheroic, but the truth is he's psychologically broken. He's hitting on the doctor who saved him, she has a fiance who's a GCPD detective, played by Max Minghella, and Hagen is convinced, because he's crazy, that she's in love with him. So the hero beat didn't happen. The treatment being a one time cure with no cost didn't happen either. It ultimately costs him everything, and it's about to cost him one more thing, which is where three of my pins live.

The rain melt puts Feat of Clay on screen without ending the story

Pin three: they're adapting the cartoon, and the cartoon ends with a man in a vat, so does the movie have the nerve to leave him there? Pin four: everything they bought says one movie that ends. Pin five: the 40 million dollars says let it end, and the connected side says don't.

In the last reel, the doctor figures out it's him. She's going to tell her fiance, and she flips the kill switch on the nanites. He tells her to do it, and he melts in the rain. That's Feat of Clay. They put the cartoon on the screen, and it felt like a set, not in a bad way. It felt intimate.

They had the nerve to melt him, and then the police can't find a body, and you already know where he went. Pin three is refuted: they didn't leave him there. Pin four is refuted: it doesn't end. Pin five is confirmed: the last reel made its pick. That leaves pin one, and it's where the why lives.

Tom Rhys Harries makes Matt Hagen worth the investment

Pin one said The Penguin earned Clayface the right to exist without Batman, but it did not earn Matt Hagen your investment. The first half is already settled. The second half asks whether the movie earned Matt Hagen on its own.

It opens with him on top of the world. He's just been nominated for an Oscar and he's in the middle of a shoot. With my producer hat on for a second: the studio work was done at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden on their own stages, and they marry that to the real world in a way I liked. The Oscar nomination piece looks exactly like what you'd expect an Oscar announcement to look like. They're consistent about what the real world looks like and bolt the strange onto it. That's why the fall hurts. You believed the top, and the fall is fast.

He's out with Corr when they run into a mobster's girlfriend, and she slips him something. Corr tries to warn him. He doesn't listen, and the mob boss shows up with his guys. Then the movie takes everything else: surgery, social media blitzes attacking him and his character, his manager stealing his money, the whole nine yards. It's tragic, and it's awful. That's dark. It works because Tom Rhys Harries makes you sit in that apartment with him. The theater was with him. I was with him. Pin one is confirmed, both halves.

The sewer scene finishes the tragedy instead of teasing a sequel

That's the why. A movie that makes you invest in the man gets to end on the man. Look at what's in that sewer. It's not a Batman tease. It's not a rooftop or a file or a name dropped for the next movie. It's the woman he decided to love, made out of his own body so she can't ever leave.

I thought that card meant the studio pointing past this movie to the next one. Instead, the movie used the famous thing to finish its own tragedy. I thought it was earned. So the card gets stamped wrong, on the record next to my name, where I said it would go.

The number doesn't move: Clayface is an 8 out of 10. I think knowing the ending only makes me surer of it. I said the famous thing would break it. The famous thing was him.