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| Tuesday, December 8, 2009 11:24 AM |
| On the Viewer - Batman: Gotham Knight |
 by Fëanor |
Poppy and I watched this last night. It's an animated anthology of stories set between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Some of the stories connect, with certain themes, characters, and subplots repeating and recurring among them. Each story is directed, written, and animated by a different creative team, although they're all done in an anime style, and as usual they all feature Kevin Conroy as the voice of Bruce Wayne/Batman (I'm not sure anybody else has voiced an animated Dark Knight since Conroy started doing the job for the cartoon show back in the early '90s).
The movie leads off with what is probably its best story, "Have I Got a Story for You," which is itself a mini-anthology of stories about Batman, each told by a different member of a gang of friends who meet to hang out together at an abandoned skate park. Each of the kids has a different, wildly inaccurate conception of Batman - as a magical being who can transport himself instantly from shadow to shadow; as a gigantic bat-like monster with the ability to fly; as a bullet-proof, transforming robot. Finally the real Batman shows up, human and bleeding, and one of the kids gets to help him out. It's funny and clever and cool and beautifully animated.
I didn't expect to like the second segment, "Crossfire," because it was written by Greg Rucka, a comic author whose work I rarely enjoy. And indeed, I didn't like it! It features Crispus Allen and Anna Ramirez transporting an escaped criminal back to Arkham Asylum and then getting caught in the crossfire of a gang war. Naturally, Batman swoops in and saves their asses. The dialog between Cris and Anna is agonizingly bad. The idea of the entire island that Arkham Asylum sits on being turned over entirely to the crazies is an interesting one, but it's a concept that's introduced and then quickly dropped, as if they couldn't think what to do with it. The gang shoot-out is just ridiculous: the gangs arrive in the same place at the same time, apparently by appointment, then line up across from each other and start shooting. Shortly after, the story simply ends, with very little payoff or resolution.
"Field Test" has its moments, but is overall a bit cheesy. The opening is pretty confusing. Bruce (who here is nearly unrecognizable, as he's been drawn as your typical spiky-haired anime hero) and Lucius Fox talk about a golf tournament, then about taking pictures of boats, then about a satellite mysteriously breaking, then about EMPs, then about using EMPs to stop bullets. It's hard to follow the thread of their conversation, as almost none of the stuff they're talking about seems to be related in any way. Thankfully as the story goes on this opening scene begins to make a certain amount of sense. In the end, Batman throws out a really amazing and useful piece of technology just because it gets a criminal hurt. His decision has to do with his vow to never use guns or to kill people, and there's a certain nobility and power to the story, but also... yeah, cheesy, like I said.
David S. Goyer, writer of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, also put his pen to paper for the next part of the film, "In Darkness Dwells." This one sees Batman following Killer Croc into the unbelievably huge and odd crypt/sewer system of Gotham, a setting that only becomes more surreal when Batman becomes infected with Scarecrow's fear toxin. Luckily the toxin has almost no effect on him for some reason, apart from making things look a bit scarier. Not a great story, but not terrible.
One of my favorite segments of the film is definitely Brian Azzarello's "Working Through Pain" - which surprised me, as I don't usually like Azzarello's work. As an injured Batman climbs laboriously up out of the sewers, he flashes back to a time in his life when he traveled to another country (I think India?) to learn how to deal with his pain from a female Fakir named Cassandra. Although she is able to teach him how to work through pain, she says she can't really teach him how to deal with it, because he's holding onto it, and using it for his own purposes. Back in the sewer, Batman finds himself in a pile of garbage where a cache of guns has been hidden. He begins to pick them all out. When Alfred comes to get him, the butler says, "Take my hand." But Batman's arms are full of guns. "I can't," he says. It's an incredibly powerful and well done ending to a very insightful story.
"Deadshot" sees Batman facing off against the titular master assassin and sniper. The plot threads that were wound in among the previous stories are finally tied up in this story. Unfortunately, "Deadshot" gets pretty cheesy, with Batman brooding on his origin and getting a bit discouraged, before being reassured by the sight of the Bat signal in the sky, and Alfred's usual nuggets of wisdom. The story is also hampered by the conflicting needs of its plot: it shows us that Deadshot is an impossibly talented assassin, able to hit moving targets from ridiculous distances with just one bullet, and yet also has him uncharacteristically using an automatic weapon against Batman - and missing him with nearly every shot.
Like most anthologies, Batman: Gotham Knight is hit-and-miss. Thankfully its misses don't fall so far off the mark that they completely fail to entertain, and its hits are impressive enough to make up for the misses. |
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