Batman: Gotham Knight DVD Review

Hey folks Valkor here and we’re just a couple short weeks away from opening Knight to my most anticipated movie of 2008, Batman: The Dark Knight. Am I a huge fan of the Bats? You bet your sweet ass I am! However to satiate my thirst until the big Knight, Warner, with a collaboration of quality artists, directors, writers, and voice talents, have put together an awesome DVD that is a prequel to TDK, Batman: Gotham Knight.

Gotham Knight is a six part story, done in a way, much like the Animatrix was for the Matrix trilogy, where GK bridges the gap between Batman Begins and Dark Knight. Each story is done in a different animation style, but the stories themselves piece together nicely.

The first story “Have I Got A Story For You”, was sorta done before in the original Batman: The animated series. A group of kids gather together in a skate park to discuss why they’re late. Turns out each kid witnessed a fight between Batman and an unknown adversary; they each give their version of the story where Batman has a different look based on their perspective. That is until the truth stands right before them.

The second story “Crossfire” involves Detective Alan, a Major Crimes Unit agent, hand picked by James Gordon himself. He’s anti-Batman, but his eyes are soon open when he’s caught in the crossfire of two mobs goin at it, when who should come to the rescue?

“Field Test” is our third story where Lucius Fox introduces Bruce Wayne to a new gadget that will help him deflect metal objects, specifically bullets. Batman decides to test out the new device against Maroni and his men and the Russian and his goons. However Bats learns a valuable lesson about life when one of The Russian’s men is nearly killed when he gets nailed by a deflected bullet.

Story number four is “In Darkness Dwells”, where Batman, Jim Gordon, and the MCU are on the hunt for Killer Croc, but finds even more in the form of Jonathan Crane aka “The Scarecrow”.

Story number five “Working Through Pain” finds Batman wounded. He flashes back to a time where he went to India to learn about dealing with pain, only to find his pain runs much deeper than it originally appears.

Story number six and the finale, “Deadshot” has Batman trying to protect Jim Gordon from a sniper killer known as Deadshot, only to find out he was the target all along.

The Good:

Gotham Knight is an awesome companion piece that fits smack dab in the middle of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. While it doesn’t fill in too much post BB, we get to see a bit more of what Bats has been up to, plus you’ll see that he still has a lot to learn. The animation is plus, and definitely high quality (none of that cheesy direct to video type animation), tossing in a ton of CGI to really flesh out the grittiness of Gotham City. The anime style chosen for the characters is definitely suitable to the Batman universe. And If you need further proof of this, I suggest you pick up Batman: Children of Dreams by Kia Asamiya. The action, while not too heavy, is just enough to get the adrenaline flowing, I loved the fight between Batman and Deadshot; it’s brief but a definite nail biter. The voice acting is top notch as every voice matches every character. And a definite plus goes to snagging Kevin Conroy as Batman/ Bruce Wayne. Bar none he should be the only person to ever voice the character as he’s done an awesome job since Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and the JLA series.

The Bad:

I realize we’re dealing with short pieces here, but I feel there’s one major miss here and it’s something that all the movies seem to skip over; where was the “Detective” element of the character? The whole idea of Batman is not so much that he plays in the shadows, the whole revenge for the parents, and protecting Gotham, he’s a detective as well. He walks onto a situation, assesses, examines evidence, takes fingerprints, does forensics, etc. There should have been one episode created that touches on this area of the character, or at least he learns more about being a detective. But sadly it was a miss.

The Ugly:

Killer Croc…. Gruesome… just gruesome!

Reviews of The Dark Knight are starting to flow across the Net and hopefully I’ll be able to add my two cents soon enough. But until then Gotham Knight is the perfect hold me over until the big theatrical release. It’s been done up by some of the best, bringing out the best that is Batman… in animated form. Look for Gotham Knight on DVD and Blu Ray July 8^th and out of TOV 5 stars, I’m giving it a 4.5. Gotham Knight has been Valkor tested and TOV Approved!