All right, so a bit of background first. I'm not a hardcore Batman fan or anything, meaning that I haven't read the comics and so I don't know everything about the universe and how well this movie adheres to its source material. I've seen Under the Red Hood, Mask of Phantasm, Year One, Dark Knight Returns and obviously Nolan's new trilogy and I enjoyed The Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games immensely. I thought all of those movies were great - Dark, gritty, intense and serious. Not so with this film.
First of all, the voice acting is terrible overall and the cringe worthy dialogue didn't help either. It tries to be humorous while failing at it badly. From the voice actors I'd highlight Thomas Gibson as Deathstroke, he didn't portray any emotion or intensity at all. None of the other voice actors didn't even rise to average. That's really a show stopper when it comes to animated films because so much of the emotion is conveyed through voice. I'm not sure how they recorded the lines but it felt like there was little to no interaction between the actors, it just sounded like they were delivering their lines independently.
I'm not really sold on the animation and graphical style either, Bruce Wayne especially looked really wrong to my eyes at least. Talia al Ghul had her boobs on display quite...prominently. A big problem with this movie was with the physics and how they tried to bring completely different elements together here. The kid Damian is supposedly fighting almost equally with Nightwing and he's also kicking a 200 kg muscle monster through windows and parries his attacks with ease. Then he just goes ahead and casually goes for a 50 mile swim, just like that. I mean, come on. That's completely over the top ridiculous. There's always some suspension of disbelief you have to give these movies but this was just too far. There could be a way to have Damian fight these different larger and stronger guys with speed and stealth while making it at least plausible but they didn't go for that approach.
Then there's an arrow minigun and some catapults dropping helicopters like they're flies and Ra's al Ghul using a katana like a lightsaber to deflect assault rifle bullets from soldiers who are surrounding him. It all seemed so preposterous and set this nonsensical tone for the entire movie. You don't feel any tension or suspense when they try to bring up anything serious. The tone is all over the place. Damian hacking into NORAD at age six? Daffy Duck on TV? People being impaled to a wall from their hands? My brain can't handle this, this movie just differed so radically from all of the Batman related stuff I'd seen before. No surprise that this is the director's first crack at the Batman franchise. I just didn't find anything interesting or evocative in this film.
First of all, the voice acting is terrible overall and the cringe worthy dialogue didn't help either. It tries to be humorous while failing at it badly. From the voice actors I'd highlight Thomas Gibson as Deathstroke, he didn't portray any emotion or intensity at all. None of the other voice actors didn't even rise to average. That's really a show stopper when it comes to animated films because so much of the emotion is conveyed through voice. I'm not sure how they recorded the lines but it felt like there was little to no interaction between the actors, it just sounded like they were delivering their lines independently.
I'm not really sold on the animation and graphical style either, Bruce Wayne especially looked really wrong to my eyes at least. Talia al Ghul had her boobs on display quite...prominently. A big problem with this movie was with the physics and how they tried to bring completely different elements together here. The kid Damian is supposedly fighting almost equally with Nightwing and he's also kicking a 200 kg muscle monster through windows and parries his attacks with ease. Then he just goes ahead and casually goes for a 50 mile swim, just like that. I mean, come on. That's completely over the top ridiculous. There's always some suspension of disbelief you have to give these movies but this was just too far. There could be a way to have Damian fight these different larger and stronger guys with speed and stealth while making it at least plausible but they didn't go for that approach.
Then there's an arrow minigun and some catapults dropping helicopters like they're flies and Ra's al Ghul using a katana like a lightsaber to deflect assault rifle bullets from soldiers who are surrounding him. It all seemed so preposterous and set this nonsensical tone for the entire movie. You don't feel any tension or suspense when they try to bring up anything serious. The tone is all over the place. Damian hacking into NORAD at age six? Daffy Duck on TV? People being impaled to a wall from their hands? My brain can't handle this, this movie just differed so radically from all of the Batman related stuff I'd seen before. No surprise that this is the director's first crack at the Batman franchise. I just didn't find anything interesting or evocative in this film.