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).