Batman: Contes de Gotham

Just before the release of the masterpiece, The Dark Knight, Warner Brothers decided to follow the success of what they did with the AniMatrix, releasing a DVD of short Anime films. I was disappointed by AniMatrix, which was marketed essential viewing before seeing the second two Matrix films. They were a damp squib and only one of the shorts had anything to do with the main films. But luckily I quite enjoyed Batman Gotham Knight.

Batman Gotham Knight is six short film, around 12 minutes long, telling different stories about the Dark Knight. One includes a very interesting one about some skater teenagers saying they saw Batman, and came up with three very different versions of what Batman is. That short was good, and that was the weakest one as well. Other stories include Batman fighting against the Russian and Italian Mafia who are in the middle of a gang war, fighting the sewers against Scarecrow and Killer Croc, testing a new bit of equipment, a flashback story set in India and stopping Deadshot killing Lt. Gordon. My personal favourites out of the shorts are Working Through Pain and Deadshot, both telling good stories, and wonderfully action packed.

Batman Gotham Knight was marketed as a number of shorts set in-different the events of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. To me it felt more Christopher Nolan's films were more an influence then directly linked. Another influence must have been the great 90s animated series, with Kevin Conroy reprising his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman. The direction and the art is so wonderful to, I love anime and I like it when American and Japanese ideas are combined together. The storytelling and action is excellent. There are detailed character designs, like in Working Through Pain you got a real scene of India and young Bruce Wayne looked and fought like Bruce Lee. There are top writers and directors working on the shorts, including David S. Goyer, the writer of Batman Begins and the Dark Knight. Like the Nolan Batmans, the shorts try to shot a dark, more unpleasant Gotham, in a realistic city. There is corruption, and crime from low level thugs to organised crime leaders. Batman here is a symbol of hope and change for the city. The storytellers also try to take a more grounded view of the villains, even trying to make Killer Croc a little more believable (i.e. not a mutated crocodile).

Unlike the AniMatrix, the stories are interlinked in some way, making the shorts as a whole stronger, more like a good TV series. They are recurring themes like the gang war.

If I had to complain, I would have like to have seen more. I would have liked the shorts to have been longer, like 20 to 30 minutes. I think this level of animation and storytelling could, and should work as a excellent TV series, with a more adult audience because of the themes and violence.

Worth watching if you can get it at a good price.

I've never been a fan of anime, and this film didn't really do anything to change my mind. This is a collection of short stories much in the same vein as the Animatrix meant to somewhat bridge the gap between Batman Begins and the Dark Knight.

Each story focuses on one particular aspect of Batman and his mythos. Through the eyes of some kids we so how his presence in Gotham is to many an urban legend. We also see how he learned to deal with pain, we see a sample of the development that goes behind some of his toys, we see the police's attitude towards him and of course we get to see some good old fashion Batman ass kickery. Collectively all these stories are pretty well written and I liked how they managed with the use of subtle details and references to link one story from the next to help bring it a little higher than your typical anthology.

But as I've said I'm not a fan of anime. I find anime directors to be exceptional at conveying mood and atmosphere through the use of brilliant backgrounds and well plotted storyboards, but outside of the science fiction realm of the Batsuit and the monsters I find there character designs lacking in originality. When Batman takes off his mask Bruce Wayne has a remarkable resemblance to almost every other anime character we've ever seen. This can't be said for all anime artists, we do get some variety here and regardless of the style it's always interesting to see different artists' takes on the same character. Another issue I found across the board which I think more than anything detracted from my enjoyment of this and most others of the style is the lack of emotion that goes into the character acting. We're treated to good voice actors here, specifically the return of Kevin Conroy as Batman but the solid performances of the voices are lost behind faces completely devoid of emotion. The heads remains dead during the lion's share of all dialog while the mouth moves up and down (sometimes not even that)until the voice is done delivering the lines. This is no exaggeration either, there is no movement of the eyes or brows or even enough variation on mouth shapes to imply any emotion at all, if they're not throwing a punch the characters are relentlessly static. As an animator myself I may be more critical to such things and I'm not trying to tell of anime creators, I know it has legions of fans, but I won't be joining the ranks personally until they evolve beyond some of these problems.

In the end this is still worth seeing if you're a Batman fan, and despite my ranting against the anime style I did really enjoy seeing the different interpretations of the Batsuit and batmobile along with a couple other elements that carried across the stories.

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 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.

i knew this wouldn't be anything like the Batman Animated Series BUT all the short stories were well done by some different anime looks and each story was well written and executed. My favorite 2 would have to be the Killer Croc and Scarecrow episode and the last one with the sniper. the music was awesome and I hope the Dark Knight took notice because that score was really catchy and strong. and the animation and storytelling were spot on and the pacing of each one was great. Not too long or too short on any episode. They got Kevin Conroy to voice the batman here and I was really happy with that because I think Conroy is the Voice of Batman in the animated world, no one does it like he does. If you are a batman fan i don't think you will be disappointed if you check it out and see it for yourself. I am and I'm happy I own it now!