DC Animated Superhero Movie Retrospective Series - Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (2003)

Written In January 2014

This movie got a PG rating in the US, I think even then it’s a bit of stretch. Let’s get to the plot.

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

A new heroine has arrived in Gotham whose identity is a mystery— even to Batman. During patrol, the Dynamic Duo spots her trying to stop one of Penguin’s shipments on Gotham’s interstate, using a plasma rifle to send the Penguin’s truck with its driver off the bridge. Batman and Robin saves the driver from falling to his death. Batman must figure out who Batwoman is and stop familiar enemies, the Penguin and Rupert Thorne, from selling illegal weapons to the fictional nation of Kasnia. The two employ Carlton Duquesne, a gangster, to provide protection.

Batwoman’s main focus is on illegal activity by the Penguin, Thorne, and Duquesne. Despite taking the symbol of the Bat as a sign of justice, Batwoman sullies the Bat prefix by taking out criminals with ruthless and dangerous techniques. She seems uninterested in sparing the lives of her adversaries.

Batman, with Robin, sets out to stop the Batwoman from making mistakes as she tries to take out the villains, and as he encounters numerous twists, setbacks, and apparent false leads in determining her true identity. The newest gadget on display is a wind glider used by Batwoman that utilizes some of the most advanced technology ever seen in Gotham City. Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, also becomes involved with a new lady in his life: Kathy Duquesne, the crime boss’s daughter.

In addition to Kathy Duquesne, Bruce is introduced to two other women who, as his investigation into the Batwoman’s true identity continues, seem to fall well into suspicion: Dr. Roxanne “Rocky” Ballantine, a new employee of Wayne Tech whose technology development is used by the Batwoman against the Penguin; and Detective Bullock’s new partner Sonya Alcana, whose knowledge of the weapons being smuggled by the Penguin and Carlton Dunquesne is much greater than the detective should know. With Carlton Duquesne unable to stop Batwoman’s raids on the various facilities used to hold the various weapons, the Penguin calls Bane for additional support to ensure that there are no more losses as a result of the Batwoman.

Not long after Bane’s arrival in Gotham, it is revealed that there is not one but three Batwomen, all of whom were the women suspected by Batman; Kathy and Sonia met taking art classes at college and Sonia and Rocky were roommates. They had taken turns to remove suspicion on any one of the three, while using Roxanne’s technological genius and contempt for the Penguin (who had framed her long-time fiance Kevin), Kathy’s money and access to several key aspects of her father’s organization (Kathy wants to end her father’s criminal career as it led to her mother being killed), and Sonia’s physical and police skills to ensure that Thorne’s operation is thwarted (as the crime lord previously left her family in financial ruins after arsonists who worked for him burned down her parents’ shop and were not punished due to the lack of sufficient evidence). Alcana was also saved by Batman nine years prior, the event giving the detective the original inspiration for the costumed identity she now shares with her friends.

In the final confrontation, a ship taking the weapons into international waters for the exchange is destroyed by a bomb planted by Kathy. She and Batman narrowly escape the explosion despite the efforts of Bane, who falls into the Gotham River and vanishes. At the conclusion, the GCPD are left to assume that Sonia is the only Batwoman after she helps rescue Batman from the ship. Sonia resigns from the police due to the potential problems her presence could cause and decides to leave the city. Batman gives Sonia evidence he discovered which helps clear Rocky’s fiance. Carlton agrees to testify against Thorne and the Penguin after saving Kathy’s life during the ship’s destruction. After she reconciles with her father, Kathy drives off with Bruce.

Question: Has anyone ever fantasized about Kelly Ripa having a role in a Batman movie? What about Kyra Sedgwick? Well if you have, you got your wish.

Actually, Kelly feels like one of the most random things ever, but I could totally see Kyra as Commissioner Barbara if they ever do a live action version of Batman Beyond! That’d be great!

Uh… Okay, I’m gonna be honest with you guys now, I didn’t hate this movie, and I even feel sort of bad for disliking it at all, it’s just so… Meh. It feels like it was a really great story if it was a written by a high school english student, but it just feels so underwhelming as something done by a guy who writes for animation for a living.

I feel like if this movie either slimmed down it’s story it would’ve been fine, or if it lengthened it’s runtime to explore the three Batwomen more, possibly even made it darker. There’s a subplot in the movie where one of the ladies’s father is a neglectful parent because they’re so busy managing a criminal business so they rebel against him. There’s a scene where he finds out about this and is about to hit her, but he hesitates showing that he does really care about his daughter, he just doesn’t know how to show it. Maybe you could’ve darkened it by having her actually hit her? Fuck it, later in the movie the same girl sets up an explosive to device to blow up the cruise ship, and she sassily tells Batman that the code to disarm escapes her. He just growls at her and they move on. C'mon Bats, I know you’re a gentleman who doesn’t hit women but threaten her at least! Try to force the code out of her somehow! I get the feeling that this team is trying to tell a feminist story. If you want to be explicitly feminst, if you want to explicitly tell a story about women dealing with issues that are intrinsically linked to women’s rights issues, tell us that story!

Feminism is not about the treatment of women as superior or delicate or something, it’s about equality. And if you want to show equality, show female characters being punched just as hard as male ones. Show female characters being just as violent as male ones. Show female characters the same way you would show male characters. Show female characters being punished as severely as male characters do. To quote Batman himself in a later series

At one point in this movie one of the Batwomen (Sonya Alcana), who was working at the Gotham Police Department as a detective and a partner to fellow detective Harvey Bullock, is fired for being a vigilante. She remarks to Batman, while she's cleaning out her desk, that the commish may endorse a vigilante, but he draws the line at employing one. Why’re we being told this by her telling Batman about it? Why don’t we see Gordon giving her hell for it? Or him telling her “Look, you’re a good detective, and I get why you did what you did. But you know as well as I do, that I can’t keep a vigilante on the force. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to hand me your badge detective.” Or hell, Bullock is notorious for his disapproval of vigilantes, even going as far as to lead a manhunt against Batman back in Mask of the Phantasm, when everyone thought the guy had gone rogue and was killing people, why not show him talking to her as she’s cleaning out her desk, all the while just trying to piece together how the hell his partner could be a vigilante to?

But no, we have to have Batman find out for us instead of being told in an organic way. This whole Batwoman character feels written to be a discount Catwoman. Let’s just be thankful that in 2006 Greg Rucka decided to dust off this early Bob Kane character and give us a pretty interesting character. Enough ranting, let’s get to the Pros and Cons;

PROS:

• Bane and Penguin are well voiced and well used, and I would’ve liked to see more of them.
• Kevin Conroy is still Batman.
• Tim Drake is Robin this time, I like Tim. Not quite as much as Dick, but still.
• The film has two important relationships in the film and are both interracial. A white man with a black woman and a white woman with an Asian(?) man.
• The film draws no attention to having a Latina as one of the main characters.
• The film draws limited attention to having an African-American woman as one of the main characters.
• The action is entertaining.
• The Batwoman idea, while I think is sloppily handled, is a pretty interesting one.
• While her appearance in the film is random, Kelly Ripa does a pretty good job as her character Rocky Ballantine.
• The presence of actual mobsters in film is good.

CONS:

• None of the characters are developed at all.
• The romance between Bruce and Kathy Duquesne is very tacked on.
• This movie has the opposite problem as Sub-Zero.
• Kyra Sedgwick is wasted.
• At one point Rocky brings up that part of the reason Batman is after them, is because they called themselves Batwoman, thus using his brand and associating their actions with his. This is a good point! You know your actions are gonna garner his attention, why are you attracting more of his attention!
• Barbara has a nice cameo, where she tries to flirt with Bruce. She’s at least 18, and Bruce is at least 40, that’s fucking creepy!

When I reviewed Sub-Zero, I noted that there was a surprisingly small amount of Batman for a movie with his name in the title. This movie has the opposite problem. Now let me explain that with something else. In a lot of Punisher stories in the comics, the writer will often have Frank all but absent for multiple issues, just building up how much of a dickbag his target is and how much they deserve to be killed. And then in the final issue of the story, Frank shows up. Bullets fly. People die. This story needed to leave Batman far away in the background, just seeing this Batwoman character show up and slowly try to piece together who she is, while the woman herself is already known to the audience. The story should’ve been about the conflict between the Batwomen and the mob with Batman trying to solve the mystery as a subplot, and then he confronts all of the women at their lair and tells them all “I know who you are, I know what you want, but you’re going about it wrong. Back off or else… And quit using my symbol as your own!”

But, of the film’s own merit, I’ll say there’s more right with it than wrong with it, it’s just that it’s not a very good movie at the end of the day. I’ll be giving it a 5.5 out of 10.