It's a bit disconcerting at first to hear the distinctive, immortal voice of Kevin Conroy coming out of so many different looking Batmans and Bruce Waynes, but his presence is always superior to the alternative, which is letting anyone else voice Batman. Many of the other voices are regulars from the world of Warner Brothers Animation. You can hear Rob Paulsen, better known as Raphael or Yakko or Pinky. You can also hear George Newbern and Corey Burton, the DC Animated Universe's Superman and Braniac respectively. David McCallum, Gary Dourdan and Parminder Nagra have small roles, and you can catch a vocal cameo from longtime WB vocal director Andrea Romano.
The first segment is called "Have I Got a Story For You" and involves a few skate-punks swapping stories of Batman, each offering unique versions of Batman that range from a ghostly living shadow to a demonic gargoyle to a robotic enforcer. Eventually though, Batman happens to battle his way past the punks, and settle the debate once and for all. The backgrounds in this story are really impressively detailed, suggesting a realistic Gotham City with a diverse architectural history. Unfortunately, the muddled and mushy character design almost completely ruins the story, and makes you grateful the second you realize it won't be this awful in the other five stories.
Next is "Crossfire" which centers around some of the cops in the MCU, Major Crimes Unit, that Gordon has assembled at the start of TDK. We get another look at The Narrows following the events of Batman Begins, and at the ongoing mob-war that has resolved itself with a secret meeting by the time TDK starts. Sal Maroni appears with a mustache and psychotic temper, obviously before they settled on a different approach with Eric Roberts, and The Russian, the wacky crime boss from TDK who never gets a name, also shows up completely differently that he would in the eventual film. The animation and story only seem good in comparison to the lousiness that preceded it, and once it winds down with one of the most retarded gunfights I've ever seen, you'll be ready for the abrupt and pointless ending.
Third up, "Field Test", and its the first solid story. Lucius Fox invents an EMP bullet deflector for Bruce Wayne, who will unfortunately appear with complicated Final Fantasy hair until the final story. The animation is very crisp and clean here, especially during the daytime scenes, like a charity gold event where Bruce Wayne engages in some Goldfinger inspired spyjinks with a corrupt developer. Morality is a big concern for Batman, and this tale explores a few ethical issues, like Batman attempting to confine the Mobsters to their own turf or dropping off a wounded henchman at a hospital, with an ending that reflects the complexity of the solemn code Batman chooses to live by.
The fourth segment is called "In Darkness Dwells" and this one is engrossingly strange. The city is a dreary place, doubtless inspired by Bladerunner, with pillars of fire shooting up from in between endless dark towers, and yet the character animation is the cartooniest yet, with big bulging characters whose flapping mouths don't even pretend to match any sort of voicework. Its a shame, because the story is so bizarrely interesting, with Killer Croc abducting people to the sewers on behalf of the Scarecrow, who holds court in some deep pit with an army of murderous schizophrenic derelicts. This version of Croc, in addition to suffering from "epidermolytic hyperkeratosis" according to Bats, has even been so super-poisoned by Scarecrow's fear toxin that it flows through his veins and seeps out into his victims through his ferocious bite attacks. Batman also has far more gadgets in this segment, like a wireless microphone system that uses extensive quantum cryptology, a robotic breathing apparatus, and some sort of amazingly effective rocket pistol; despite all that, the most impressive Bat-beatdown in the story happens when Bats bludgeons someone silly with a bone, Moonwatcher style.
The fifth story is called "Working Through The Pain" and continues directly from the previous story, with an inured Batman wandering the sewers and having flashbacks to his around-the-world training previous to his return to Gotham. When he cauterizes one of his own wounds with some kind of high-tech hotplate, he remembers learning medicine as a volunteer in an unnamed war torn African country, and when the pain becomes overwhelming, he remember the how-to-ignore-pain training he received shacked up with a girl named Cassandra in India after the Fakirs refused to teach their techniques to a foreigner.
The sixth story "Deadshot" concerns the world-renowned assassin Deadshot and his trip to Gotham City. Mobsters have hired him to kill Jim Gordon, who looks kinda like Gary Oldman throughout these stories but definitely never sounds like him. Deadshot is a formidable foe, first seen completing a complicated Wanted style long range kill from atop a humongous Ferris Wheel before arriving in Gotham, and brave enough to wear a green-tinted monocle during his daytime negotiations with the criminal underworld. It looks like Gotham City has an elevated train in addition to its monorail, perhaps only to provide an appropriately cinematic location for climatic showdowns.
There are a few other differences between this and the Nolan films, like Wayne Manor being rebuilt or a more old-fashioned less-Michael-Caine version of Alfred; the faithful butler's few short appearances contain welcome exchanges with Batman like "Alfred, I've lost a lot of blood" "I'll bring some sir". Any excuse to hear Kevin Conroy perform as Batman is always welcome, and the assorted stories throw him a few interesting challenges, like voicing a very young Bruce Wayne, or a robot-Batman, or delivering a wonderfully unglued monologue where Batman muses over guns as "the power of God".
No comments:
Post a Comment