Monday, November 14, 2011

Batman Gotham Knight

Disclaimer: This was written two days after the DVD was released in 2008, just now being cross posted here on my blog.



Okay, so i just watched, and re-watched the new Gotham Knight animated 
movie / collection and here are my thoughts on the shorts. 

1.Have I got a story for you So the premise of this short is a group of 
kids get together and tell stories of what they think "the Batman" is. 
Does this plot sound familiar? It should, it was the very same plot 
from an episode of the animated series, except without the frank miller 
shout out. Because of this, I already felt like I've seen it, which made 
it kinda boring. The animation in this short is a little oddball. The 
backgrounds are amazing and realistic while the characters themselves 
look cartoon-y and sometimes unfinished. That's a style they where going 
for I'm sure, but it just felt odd to me. Overall, this definitely was 
not one of the best shorts, but also not the worse. 

2. crossfire The story on this short focuses on two of Gorden's 
detectives, one of them very unhappy with a vigilante doing crime 
fighting in Gotham (batman). There really isn't much to the plot except 
for detective Alan complaining about batman pretty much the entire 
time. At the end of the short, Alan and his partner get in between a 
crime war and batman comes and saves their lives. That's it. It wasn't 
anything special, but worth watching for the animation. So, the 
animation in this short is pretty good, and the best part is the last 
minute when batman shows up. This is the very best animation of batman 
in the entire collection, sadly, hes only around for over a minute. 
such a waste, awesome while it lasts though. Because of the end, I felt 
this was one of the better shorts. 

3. Field test Wow, This was probably one of the worst representations 
of batman since the campy old TV show. Congratulations to the animators 
on this one, I've never wanted to gouge my eyes out so badly before in 
my life. The story revolves around a new gadget luscious fox invents to 
repel bullets away from batman. Batman tries it out, bullets repel, and 
some guy almost dies from one of the repelled bullets. The story isn't 
that bad, nothing major, but its there. Its the animation that makes 
this short so god damn terrible. You wont know that you're looking at 
bruce wayne until he speaks. Why? because Bruce Wayne looks like a 
skinny, shaggy haired, Japanese teenager I kid you not. Watching this 
generic anime character that anyone at a local high school could draw 
use bruce waynes voice disgusted me. I constantly begged for him to 
dress up as batman so I could stop watching the monstrosity. 
Unfortunately, the animation of batman was even worse. Pretty much 
envision Femto from Berserk with pointy ears and you have this shorts 
batman. Disgusting. This was easily the worst in all of the shorts and 
I wish it never made it past a storyboard. 

4. In darkness dwells This short was about batman hunting down a new 
urban myth cannibal. The cannibals nickname is "Killer Kroc". Yeah, any 
batman fan knows this guy. The story doesn't get too involved in this 
one, but I did enjoy it. The animation had great realistic backgrounds, 
but the character animation was a little inconsistent at times. 
Sometimes the characters look really good and grity, other shots show 
them at really awkward angles and they just come of as deformed. It 
definitely doesn't ruin this short, but it does catch your attention 
more than it should. Overall, i liked this one though. 

5. Working through pain This short arguably might have the best story 
of the bunch, mostly because its the only one that really shows some 
character development in Bruce Wayne. The story focuses on how Bruce 
Wayne was trained to ignore physical pain. I really like the story of 
this one, and the ending is actually kind of sad. The animation, not as 
good. As batman, he looks pretty decent. You definitely know its 
batman, unlike in "Field Test". Its the Bruce Wayne animation that's the 
weak point of this short. While not half as bad as "Field Test", his 
character is breaching on generic anime guy. He doesn't look like Bruce 
Wayne, but he doesn't look like a skinny Asian kid either. The story is 
what really sells this one, and its definitely worth watching. 

6. Deadshot If only one short makes you buy this collection, this will 
be it. This was by far the best short of them all. The story is pretty 
simple. A very talented sniper is contracted to take out Gotham s 
finest, and eventually batman himself. Its all about villain vs batman 
here, and its really good. Out of all the shorts, this was the only one 
that actually felt like it could be a storyline in the animated series 
(besides "Have I got a story for you" which WAS an actual storyline in 
TaS). This was the only short in both story and animation that really 
made me feel i was watching a batman episode. I loved this, and watched 
it several times over. This is not one to skip batfolks, this is 
batman. 

So overall, Id say there was two good ones ( Working through pain and 
Deadshot), two okay ones (Crossfire and In darkness dwells), one dud 
(have i got a story for you), and one abomination (Field test).

3 comments:

  1. The first from the DC original animated line I ever saw and the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ok so this was the first, but which is your favorite?

    ReplyDelete