Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s the wrong superhero reference! As well as another edition of Direct to DVD Dissection! Coming up is the recent release from DC Animation, featuring the bastard son of the Caped Crusader. Emphasis on the bastard part.
The Story
Hidden atop a secret mountain stronghold lies the League of Shadows and its fearless leader, Ra’s al Ghul. Together with his equally dangerous daughter Talia, he oversees a trained army of assassins with plans for global domination. But an uprising from within the league now threatens to shift the balance of power and sends Talia and her young son, Damian, fleeing to Gotham City. With assassins on their trail, Talia seeks the protection of Batman, who, unbeknownst to him, is the boy’s father. With his son in tow, Batman wages war against the villain Deathstroke and the League of Shadows, all while teaching his headstrong boy that one can’t fight crime by becoming a criminal.
The Cast
Jason O’Mara as Bruce Wayne aka The Dark Knight aka The Caped Crusader aka Not-Kevin-Conroy aka the John Cena of DC Comics aka the douchiest douche who ever douched, and who deserves a punch to the dick over cockblocking the Flash trying to mingle with Wonder Woman aka Batman.
Stuart Allan as Damion Wayne. Trained as a member of the League of Shadows, he’s sent by Talia to live with his father in the hopes to avoid him getting killed at the hands of Deathstroke. Considering Batman’s track record with sidekicks, not her smartest decision.
Thomas Gibson as Deathstroke. A mercenary who extracts revenge on Ra’s Al Ghul for not giving him control of the League of Shadows, mostly by creating his own league full of ninjas and man bats.Who manage to take out the League themselves easy enough at the start. Raising the question of why he even needed to be the League leader anymore.
Morena Baccarin as Talia al Ghul, one of the leaders of the League of Shadows, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, mother of Damion, and former flame of Bruce Wayne. Also involved with Catwoman and Black Widow in a class action lawsuit against Catsuit Inc over their malfunctioning zippers.
The Dissection
This movie is an adaptation of a four part story from the Batman comic books, titled BATMAN AND SON. That introduced the son of Batman and Talia Al Ghul, named Damion, who was raised by her, Ra’s, and the League of Assassins. He became a main fixture and soon took over the mantle of Robin. But he’s dead now.
Batman (O’Mara) & Damien(Allen), surveying the area, and posing. As all heroes are want to do.
Anyway, this movie is a very loose adaptation of that story. A lot of the details were changed around, characters and motivations shifted over.
To start off with, the movie has an issue even before the first 10 minutes of the film, in a 70 minute feature. That problem is that the film is all about Deathstroke doing battle with Ra’s Al Ghul over him choosing Batman over him to lead the League. Except, in the opening scene and in every scene thereafter, the League of Shadows are the most incompetent warriors to ever exist. The fact that they are seen either standing around as their leaders and fellow assassins are attacked and killed, and that they have defense mechanisms in place that would come ion handy in the attack, but had no one there to man them. Out of the entire League, only Talia and Damion show any kind of intelligence. Even Ra’s is just left looking dumb by the end of the first 10 minutes. And now he’s dead.
And it’s not just making the League of Shadows look like an army of incompetent red shirts. A lot of the film makes questionable decisions that end up making the characters come off as hypocrites We have a scene where Batman admonishes Damion from going too far in tracking down Deathstroke’s right hand man, and how he’s too violent. Forgetting that, a few moments before, we witness a scene that involves Batman RIPPING OFF KILLER CROC’S TAIL just to get some information out of him. So, excessive brutality is too far, but involuntary amputation is just fine….
The story is also odd as well. The movie seems to try to combine a story of this gangland war between Deathstroke and the League and this being a bloody and brutal events, and this slight comedy with Batman, bachelor extraordinaire, suddenly having a son thrust upon him by his ex, and how he and his friends deal with it. This movie has scenes with blood and gore and visceral and is paired with scenes with slapstick comedy bits and Alfred cracking wise about Damion to Bruce like he was Hobson from ARTHUR. While Alfred has always been a sarcastic guy, he did still have moments of being Bruce’s mentor and father figure. Here, he’s just someone to throw a quip or two out and that’s all.
“My Grandson, after we take out The Batman, we then go after The Avatar!”
The sad thing is that this movie is not badly made. The music is very good and atmospheric, and the animation style is very good, although there is some issues with faces at a large distance. Even moments in the plot are good, like Batman going over a crime scene and discovering the plot Deathstroke has gotten involved in. However, a lot of the plot missteps are just too much to overcome, especially with a cast that really comes off as overall mediocre. It’s a mess of a story that drags this movie down because it’s the main focus.
On to the extras, it just features a sneak peak of the next DVD release in August, ASSAULT ON ARKHAM, which is a prequel of the Arkham series of games. Best described as “a heist film in the style of Guy Ritchie movie” by one of the producers…even though Guy Ritchie’s films are more about the random situations they find themselves in, with the actual heist as window dressing, ala SNATCH or LOCK STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS. Moving on, there’s also several trailers for other Warner Bros properties, like a new, WWE-less SCOOBY DOO film and BEWARE THE BATMAN. There are a bunch of language settings with audio tracks and subtitle options.
The Verdict
A movie that can’t get over the failing of it’s own story, SON OF BATMAN is only recommended to people who are big fans of Batman, and even that might be a stretch as they could still be turned off by the many liberties from the original source. Overall, it’s better to wait for the next release in August than to give this a watch.
NOTE: This review was done using the single disc version. The double disc release includes a feature on the League, titled “The Fan and the Demon Head: The League of Assassins”, along with 2 cartoons from previous Batman series. The Blu Ray has a few more extra videos about the film, and 2 extra episodes.