Ron RoweBatman: Gotham Knight Review
July 15th 2008 17:03
I was ready to love this movie. It was touted as a bridge between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Animated shorts bridging the gap between movies worked wonderfully for The Matrix, The Chronicles of Riddick, and Star Wars, so why not Batman? Three reasons: execution, execution, execution.
B:GK is divided into six short features, each directed by an Anime master, ala The Animatrix. However, the first story, “Have I Got a Story for You”, was a rehash of an episode of the Batman animated series, in which a group of children each tell a batman tale from their perspective. A clever concept 10 years ago, completely uninspired a second time around.
“Crossfire” features Detective Crispus Allen (the current host of the Spectre in the DCU) and his partner hauling the generic villain caught by Batman in the first installment to Arkham Asylum. On the way back, they stop their car in the middle of a shoot-out between rival gangs. No, really. They just stop there & wait for the shooting to start. I don’t want to ruin the ending, but Batman saves them.
In “Field Test”, Batman employs a personal force-field devised by Luscious Fox. However, after one bad guy is injured by a ricochet, he decides to completely abandon the idea, unwilling to endanger others to protect himself. Um, Ok.
And so on & so on. The vignettes tie together to form one larger story line, but the changing writers and directors and styles muddy the waters considerably. Killer Croc bites Batman in the right shoulder in “In Darkness Dwells”, but the entirety of “Working Through Pain” is devoted to Batman dealing with the injury – to the left side of his abdomen.
The last story, “Deadshot”, written by Alan Burnett, was actually pretty cool. It also had some of the better character designs. Sadly, by that point I was just waiting for this mess to be over so I could send it back to Netflix. It isn’t that the movie is terrible, but it surely isn’t on par with previous animated bridges and I seriously doubt that anything included will come to bear on Dark Knight (there is no mention of the Joker or Harvey Dent).
It was nice to see the different takes on the Bat-suit and other family aspects of the Bat-verse. Most of them failed to capture the chin somehow. The first and last directors seem to have done the best job at this. Jim Gordon, in little more than a cameo role, looked good, like a cross between the Frank Miller version from Batman: Year One and Gary Oldman from Batman Begins. Killer Croc got very little screen time, and Deadshot was just silly in his floppy hat.
The chin just isn't right
For all its flaws, Batman: Gotham Knights is worth a rental, but probably not something that you’ll want to add to your collection. Here’s holding out hope for DC’s next animated features. Two are due out in 2009, one starring Wonder Woman and one based on Marv Wolfman’s classic Judas Contract story line from Teen Titans. (Please don’t screw that one up… please don’t screw that one up.)
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Comment by Daniel Mason
Review Mad
I didn't even realise that it was supposed to be Killer Croc's bite that wounded Batman in Working Through Pain!