gogul1 Review of Batman Ninja

Batman Ninja (2018)

Stunningly beautiful but feels like it was written by the Joker

[5/10 · 24 April 2018]

The art style pays homage to traditional painters like Hokusai and kayosai. Japanese print art and caligraphy are used to get effect to make this one of the best looking Batman animated films released in the last decade. Batmans costumes alone are superb from his great blue glowing tech suit in the beginning to the ninja clothing at the end. Joker too gets a lavish makeover that'll make toy companies stress for ages trying to replicate. Unfortunately the plot goes from the implausible time travel plot (but ok I'll go with it) to out right bat crap insane in the last 20 minutes or so. It seems to want to do a bit for every kind of fan of japanese anime. One minute it's a stunning ninja scroll style martial arts romp, next it's a transformers/gundam style robot slugfest. I honestly started laughing loudly when the army of monkeys (yes you read that right) all join together to make one big giant armoured monkey (yet again you are reading this correctly) to fight a huge mecha robot made up of the top 5 batman villains houses (seriously... it's their homes!). I was laughing really hard but nothing would prepare me for what happened next! As the giant armoured monkey began to lose to the giant house monster a swarm of bats surrounded the mecha money and turned it into a colossal batman called "bat god". It was at this point I yelled "oh jesus god no!" And damn near wet my trousers laughing so hard. I don't think that was supposed to be the desired effect. I suspect it will work well for a bunch of drunk guys looking for a movie to lampoon and laugh at like Tommy Wiseau's The Room or Samurai Cop. The dialogue feels hokey in places but this could be due to having to translate directly from japanese but sometimes it's too on the nose. Again it looks fantastic but a change in art style right in the middle really jars. After a huge battle between joker and batman on a boat, red hood is strolling along a country footpath and comes across a man and his wife farming. He then accuses the man of being the joker and begins to beat him. Batman appears from nowhere and stops him saying that the farmer used to be the joker but he isn't anymore and they should leave the old farmer/former joker alone. There is no explanation as to what the time frame is from the last scene to this scene is and almost feels like it doesn't belong or they tacked it on realising there was a gaping plothole as to why joker randomly goes missing for a while and then shows up at the end just to fight batman. There is fun to be had with this film and again it looks so great but it throws almost every kind of japanese anime into the mix and really pushes the envelope of a realistic setting. This wouldn't too much of a problem but there feels like two conflicting styles of storytelling happening, one based around batman being stripped of all his tech to find out what he is without it, ala Iron Man 3 and rhe other has giant monkey monsters, submarines, huge mounted gatling guns, spiritually aware bats, hive minded monkeys and fighting houses. Altogether it leaves for a "what the hell was that feeling" and finally ends with Batman returning to Gotham, alfred using a horse drawn batmobile garnished in feudal japanese decor being driven through the streets of gotham with bruce being clearly visible just sitting there! So now anyone that sees the horse drawn batmobile going through the streets can clearly see bruce wayne and now know who Batman is WTF?! Some things you can put to artistic interpretation but that is just absolutely and fundamentally not Batman. Just buy a poster and imagine what the film it could have been.