Batman: Gotham Knight

Batman: Gotham Knight is an anthology of six Batman stories with a Japanese Anime style.

It has been influenced by Batman Begins and The Dark Knight with the cartoon opting for a darker tone.

The first story are a group of skater kids recalling stories of their encounters with Batman, which all differ.

The last is Batman taking on Deadshot hoping to put his own past to rest.

Given the nature of six short stories it does zip along well before anyone gets bored.

However it comes across as a minor piece. This would had been evident if anyone watched The Dark Knight which was released in the same year.

This is a collection of 6 animated Batman stories (in Anime style) aimed to fill the gap between Nolan's Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Each story is directed by different people but unlike Animatrix (WB's first animated filler compilation, done for the Matrix series), the look and feel of every episode is too similar to actually distinguish. The mood is more dark, violent and brooding than any other screen Batman interpretations. The first episode starts of relatively lightweight and is the most humorous. The stories then get edgier and darker. The whole compilation makes for an enjoyable viewing as Batman deals with the wild imagination of kids, spiritual healing, Hinduism!, Scarecrow, Killer Croc, and a hit-man called Deadshot. But for me, the real joy of watching Gotham Knights is listening to the definitive Batman/Bruce Wayne voice that is Kevin Conroy, who has been the voice of Batman in every animated form from 1990 to 2006 (I think). Here, he is the voice of several variations of Batman and is pure joy to listen to. I have to admit though that a couple of Bruce Wayne animated interpretations don't really fit with his voice but Conroy's voice acting more than makes up for it. The animation is great but not anywhere near as radical as Animatrix or recent Anime films. The action scenes are quite thrilling. Also, very worthy of mention is the exhilarating soundtrack, particularly in the Scarecrow episode. All in all, this is a great addition to the Batman animated collections.

Batman: Gotham Knight is an anthology of shorts that are different from the original WB animated series in that it's not in the usual twenty-minute animated form (1/2 hour for commercials). It's more like a collection of comic books from Batman strung together without any real association aside from it being different interpretations from the Japanese directors. A similar mode went with the Animatrix years ago, in that it's partly a weird and intriguing exploration of the world created, and partly as a cash tie-in for the upcoming new movie (in this case, of course, Dark Knight).

All of the directors, to greater or lessor degrees, have a specific vision to share with us Batman fans, and at best it's a real visual 'trip'; things move past with lightning speed, but so we can see a lot of "things" happening, and every so often, like 'Working Through Pain', the animators don't kid us anymore and show Bruce Wayne going through kung-fu training with a spiritual twist (I chuckled at seeing Bruce as now being an Asian). For the most part, however, the shorts don't have a lot going on in terms of real substance- how can they with such short amounts of time. The first, 'Have I Got a Story for You', relies on Rashomon storytelling from a bunch of skater kids on Batman; this one has some of the most creative twists on just the design of the dark knight. Then there's maybe my favorite of the whole lot, 'In Darkness Dwells', which showcases the Scarecrow and, briefly, Killer Croc (apparently a fan favorite), and has a firm handle on its very dark atmosphere and the harsh story of Crane and the bums.

Other stories like 'Dead-Shot', 'Field-Test', and especially 'Crossfire', are enjoyable on the shallowest levels, and there is only bits and piece of a story going on (Crossfire relies also on a big mob shootout to make up for a paper-thin narrative). While it's great to hear Kevin Conroy back to voice Wayne/Batman, and to see some of the twists the animators take and the distinct styles coming through with a handle on making it fierce and graphic (it'll probably get a TV-14 when finally broadcast), it doesn't come close to the dimensions found in the original 90s animated series. It's a wonderful, absorbing garnish of sorts.

This movie uses the good and original concept of picking 6 different short stories done by different directors and animation style and put them all back to back on one DVD. It's a welcome addition to the still ever growing Batman franchise.

The variation in story and style of course ensures that every short is a special and interesting one in its own way. It doesn't really get distracting that the animation style for each short story changes. Each short can be watch as one separately from the others but it's also good to watch back to back, even though the stories get hardly connected to each other. The movie doesn't have a constant chronological order and each story is about something different and features also different characters.

The first shorts don't really focus on the Batman character himself but more on the other people in Gotham and how they see him and think about him. The others are still purely about Batman though and his fight against evil. There is a nice balance between the first shorts and the later ones.

Of course not all of the shorts are as good as the others and the quality of them variates between great and entertaining to just plain boring. But overall it just purely entertains. Some of the shorts are also really spectacular to watch with its action and violence involved. I wish some of the shorts were a bit longer, since the stories felt like they had even more potential to be developed more.

Because they are shorts, the story and character development remain very restrained. This is obviously the problem with basically every short movie that ever gets made. It's mostly the reason why this is not a classic or a Batman must-see. But nevertheless the fans should be happy with the end result, since it features the Batman character from a lot of different angles and uses different interpretations of the character, which ensures that the character still remains an interesting one, even when basically everybody all over the world already know who Batman is.

Definitely good to watch!

7/10

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This is a 6-story anthology movie directed and animated by different people.

1) "Have I Got A Story For You": I caught this part of the movie a while back on the TV and my first reaction was "wtf is up with the animation?". The lip- sync was atrocious, like terribly bad. And the story made no sense. Some random kids were telling stories about Batman and just as the last one finished talking, Batman appears out of nowhere fighting a bad guy for the sake of the plot. And then one of the kids saves Batman's life?????

2) "Crossfire": This one focuses on two policemen who end up getting in the middle of a crime battle. Sounds dumb? It is. Because it's very convenient, like the previous one. The animation looks like cheap anime, but looks WAY better than the first one. Kevin Conroy sounded way off as Batman in this one, almost as if he was replaced by someone else. The only good aspect of the story is that the story centers around officer Ramirez and we get to see Batman through her eyes. This character is later used in The Dark Knight in the same year.

3) "Field Test": We get to see Lucius Fox creating new technology for Batman. For some reason, Lucius looks really orange in some scenes. And this Batman sounds different too. And he looks really dumb... he has a huge bat-nose.

4) "In Darkness Dwells": This one features Killer Croc and Scarecrow kidnapping a priest. Now this is a good one, this is what the whole movie should've been like. Story centered around Batman and showing his detective abilities. Simple, awesome, effective.

5) "Working Through Pain": It's not clear if this is directly after the previous chapter, but it goes through flashbacks of Bruce's training. This one wasn't as good as the previous one, but it was very a interesting take on his lore.

6) "Deadshot": Finally, this last chapter focuses on the titular sniper assassin and adversary of Batman. The animation in this one is top notch and by far the best. It's very detailed and polished. The plot is solid and very entertaining.

In conclusion, this movie goes from horrible to great. Honestly they should've just cut the first half of the movie and release it as an episode on whatever Batman TV show was airing at the time... or something, I don't know.

6/10