Batman : Assaut sur Arkham

I just finishing watching Son of Batman, and I was thinking to myself, this movie is pretty edgy and leans more toward adults than I would ever expected. Than I saw Assault on Arkham, and can see were the DCAU is going. This is far more Edgy.

The movie takes elements from the recent run of Suicide Squad of the new 52s revamp at DC comics and mixes it with elements of the Batman Akrham game series. Batman wears the costume from the game, but has the voice of the greatest man ever to play (voice) Batman, Kevin Conroy.

Batman takes a slight step back in this movie as Amanda Waller assembles the suicide Squad to get a thumb drive the Riddler has on all the members of the Suicide Squad before he makes it public. They have to infiltrate Arkham in order to do it.

The animated film is Dark, it reminds me of the late 80's early 90's anime like Gogolo 13 and fist of the North Star that got me into anime in the first place. I'm happy to see Warner Bros. animation go in this direction.

Two thumbs up!

Assault on Arkham is meant as a prequel to the events that occurred during the Arkham video game trilogy. Waller has collected some villains to help her take back top secret information from the Riddler. The Squad most infiltrate Arkham Asylum, find the Riddler and get the device before reveals the secrets to even worse villains.

This film really does a good job at capturing how expendable each character is to the mission. At any moment someone could die and the team just has to move to the next objective. This is even tougher because the writers of the movie actually created relationships between characters so the loss hits them and the audience more. Even with all the serious moments there is also funny dialogue exchanged, mainly from Captain Boomerang and King Shark.

There are no characters that are left in the background either. Mostly everyone gets a fair amount of screen time in order to fully bring their personality to the audience. I thought this would be heavy movie on Deadshot and Harley, but that was not the case. The biggest enjoyment I got was Harley as that was probably my favorite depiction of her that I have seen. She had the right amount of sweet with a side of insane.

Action scenes were fun for the most part, as there was a scene or two where they maybe went a little to over the top even for an animation movie.

This was a fun watch and if you are a fan of the Suicide Squad, you most definitely have to see this.

This is damn near perfect in every way, all the things that WB got wrong with Suicide Squad (and they have got everything wrong), DC animations got just right. The villains! Oh my God! The villains! The Joker! All hail the voice acting of Troy Baker as the Joker, rivaling only the performance of Mark Hamill in other DC animations. If you are a DC fan, you have to watch this movie, it's everything you wanted Suicide Squad to be, but came out of the theater saying "WTF was that?", this is everything that's right about the concept of Suicide Squad, and nothing of the cringe worthy stuff that we've gotten in the theatrical live action release. This movie is dark, gritty, bloody and mature, a true animated masterpiece!

Assault on Arkham can stand alone as a title without the Batman branding getting in before the colon. Bats is hardly in this movie, reduced to a bit-part player in a grander scheme which doesn't really need to involve him. The Suicide Squad never really interested me and I will probably pass on the forthcoming movie (purely because charisma-vacuum Jai Courtney is in it) but damn to they make for a great team here. I almost wished Batman was stay out of it and let their plans unfold as intended.

Shady US Govt. lady Waller (CCH Pounder) recruits Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, Harley Quinn, Black Spider, King Shark, and Killer Frost to break into Arkham Asylum undetected and steal something belonging to the Riddler before finding and defusing a dirty bomb hidden by the Joker. I'm sure Batman (here, properly voiced by Kevin Conroy once more) would have done a much more efficient job without the high body count, but then we wouldn't have a movie. He and Waller don't see eye-to-eye anyways. It's fun watching them execute their plan and infiltrate the deep recesses of the island. It could have been more atmospheric though. A lot of the backgrounds look to clean and polished. It lacks the Gothic pathos of Arkham City games that inspired it. Batman soon shows up anyways and spoils everything, but does it smartly.

Assault on Arkham is a major step away (and in the right direction) from the family orientated animated Batman series and movies from the 90s. With sex, nudity, and graphic death on show for our enjoyment it's not exactly something you can distract your 7-year-old (if you're really prudish, that is). But I believe Batman should be geared more towards adults anyway.

Joker is voiced by Troy Baker but he does a great job of emulating Mark Hamill's style, and the higher rating allows him to be more violent and evil. The writing could be tighter and it could have had more of an atmosphere, but this one still comes highly recommended, even if Batman's presence sort of spoilt it a bit.

Batman is a real badass, the Joker is a total wacko, Harley Quinn is hot. What else do you need? No but seriously, Aussault on Arkham did many things right, the characters are fun (especially Boomerang who is the major comic relief in this movie, the Joker and of course Quinn), the action is pretty awesome and there were some very fine One-Liners also.

What I liked the most was the very mature style of the movie, there is blood spilled, heads are blown of and teeth get punched in but nothing is never totally over the top (as many already said it's very surprising Assault on Arkham was rated PG-13 and not R).

Altogether I liked:

-gritty style

-mature humor

-well animated action/fight scenes

-actuall plot surprises

-real fight consequences (villains DIE, and don't flee with a black eye)

-GREAT voice acting

Now for the things I did not like:

-not enough Joker (yes his role was pretty major but it was not quite enough screen time for my taste)

-overall to short (71 mins? really?)