Details from IMDB:
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham
An ancient evil awakens and only Bruce Wayne can save 1920s Gotham City.
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- Stars
Initial Thoughts:
Batman is my favorite comic book character, always has been for me. He’s the reason I started to read more serious/adult comics (compared to Archie I mean, I was reading other comics besides Batman) and saw comics as a more of an art form and collecting them as a hobby, rather than entertainment that I discarded afterwards (no digital comics in the 80s!). And while I take long breaks, I always come back to Batman and I think DC has made a lot of good animated movies (and continues to do so!). I think for me two of the reasons Batman is so appealing is you could always imagine being him easily, he’s human and as a hero without powers he can be thrown in almost any story or situation and it can work, like Cthulhu!
Main Points:
A little backstory, I run a Call of Cthulhu campaign and get a lot of enjoyment from it. I’ve also been playing the Call of Cthulhu RPG (in various editions) for like 30 years, so it’s a franchise near and dear to my heart. And yes of course I know this isn’t technically Cthulhu (as I imagine DC didn’t want to pay for the rights to use it) but everyone knows that its who it is in the plot. So I had Batman and Cthulhu, it made for an easy choice especially and it gets a good score on Rotten Tomatoes (good site I look at as well), plus I had a promo code to use, which Cineplex is stopping! Not happy about that, I always thought getting a free download code with a popcorn combo was a good idea, it’s a huge ripoff anyway and it was nice to get a little something for free but I digress.
This is based on a Elseworld comic (which I often enjoy) that I hadn’t read and I had forgotten this had come out last year. The film has great animation and I enjoyed all the voice work. It’s a good story with Batman up against some of his motley gang of villains’ (with lots of changes for the setting, which I loved!) and using gadgets that at least he had in the late 1920s. I will also say the fact that Cthulhu is meant to be in the 20s was a great touch and made it better for me, I also quite liked it was PG-13, you could go a hard R easily but this was certainly better than PG in terms of some adult content (which is what most good Batman stories need for me). I also appreciate how they did a much different take on Batman’s dark origin, which made the story a lot better for me too as it fit in the story way better. Good action and the story had some twists and turns an even a surprise I didn’t see coming.
Final Thoughts:
I’m not sure what the hate is on this movie, Batman is often better animated than live action, especially when it comes to more unusual stories like this one, would be super expensive to do live-action. I give it a 7.5 out of 10, the story could have used some fine tuning and I would have liked more recognizable voice actors (and I grant I don’t watch a lot of animated movies, so my judgement may be a little off). Overall though I thought it was a good combination of fun, creepy and entertaining story. Not for kids, ages 13+ but certainly for Batman fans. As a final side note I am getting a Batman tattoo in a few days, it’s my third tattoo and going to be my biggest one yet, Batman deserves it!