DC Animated Superhero Retrospective Series - Son of Batman (2014)

Written In April 2014

 Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

Batman learns that he has a violent, unruly pre-teen son with Talia al Ghul named Damian Wayne who has secretly been raised by Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Assassins. When Ra’s al Ghul apparently dies after a battle with his former right-hand man Deathstroke, Batman must work to stop his long-lost son from taking revenge and guide him to a righteous path, in order for the pair to truly acknowledge each other as family.

Now, let me be blunt. This movie is not good, but the weird thing is it’s not really terrible. I can’t definitively say whether or not I think it has more pros or cons, and what’s weird is by all merits it should be a pretty good movie. It has two Firefly alum in the form of Sean Maher and Morena Baccarin as Nightwing and Thalia Al Ghul Thomas Gibson AKA Aaron Hotchner from Criminal Minds, Jason O'Mara is back as Batman who I thought was one of the few highlights of Justice League War *gag*, it has mother fucking Giancarlo Esposito AKA Gustavo Fring from Breaking Bad as the voice of Ra’s Al Ghul! And on the writing and directing end, this is Joe R. Lansdale, the guy who wrote Per Chance To Dream, arguably one of the greatest episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, along with one of my favorite DC Showcase shorts, Jonah Hex! As for the director, he directed some of my favorite episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Avatar and The Firelord, Nightmares And Daydreams, The Western Airtemple, The Blind Bandit, Return To Omashu, Bitter Work, Tales of Ba Sing Se. What could possibly go wrong?!

But something did, and I think I know what it is.

1. The Lazarus Pit literally brought Jason Todd back to life after he was killed in an explosion, so why the fuck can’t it do the same for Ra’s who was actually still conscious right before he reached the pit.
2. Since when was Slade ever Ra’s Al Ghul’s apprentice? According to the Batman Wikia, Deathstroke has only ever had Ra’s as a client, never his possible heir.

I mean, I get the feeling I wouldn’t care if I weren’t at least vaguely aware of these characters through comics, movies, video games, and animation. Like, if this were my first exposure to Slade Wilson and Ra’s Al Ghul, I likely wouldn’t care. But I am, so I do. But don’t get me wrong, this is not a bad movie! It is nowhere near the lows of Justice League War, and especially not Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, or Superman/Batman: Public Enemies. There are several good things about it! And we’ll get into that now!

PROS:

• The little guy playing Damian is really good! He’s a little shaky in parts, but I’ll blame that more on direction. And speaking of direction!
• Giancarlo Esposito was one of my favorite parts of Breaking Bad, I was really excited when I read he was voicing Ra’s Al Ghul. He’s a little less noble king or a blood thirsty warlord, and a little more wizened old mentor. But he’s still terrific!
• Thomas Gibson does really great work, yeah he sounds a little bored at times, but he makes for a great Deathstroke. He’s got this sort of sarcastic Slade Wilson. Everything he says sounds really sort of dry, I kinda like it!
• Morena Baccarin does some really great work as Thalia, and it helps that she’s returning to DC animation actor having voiced Cheetah in an episode of the Brave and the Bold and Black Canary in three JLU episodes. She’s got the natural sex appeal of the character while still coming off as mothering and a badass warrior and leader.
• Jason O'Mara again does some pretty good work! Again, he’s not Kevin Conroy or Bruce Greenwood or even Rino Romano or Diedrich Bader, but he’s better than say, Ben McKenzie! Say, isn’t Ben attached to something else Batman related right now? Set to hit kind of soon actually? What was it again?
  
  Oh... Um… Well, hopefully he’s a better live action actor than a voice actor… Bastille tell the people how I'm feeling. Yeah listen to it for a minute I think you might get my thoughts on this matter.
• On a far more positive note, Sean Maher is PERFECT as Nightwing here! He is not in this movie nearly enough, but when he is here he is terrific!
• We got a bit of a wink towards the REALLY hardcore batfans. Some folks may consider Val Kilmer the forgotten Batman, seeing as how he’s between Michael Keaton, who kicked off the franchise, and George Clooney, who killed the franchise, and long before Christian Bale who resurrected it, and not as memorable as the delightfully camp Adam West Batman. But! Here, we have the truly forgotten Batman, Bruce Thomas, who played Batman in the pilot of episode of Birds of Pray and those silly little OnStar commercials from that ran from 2000 to 2002. And what’s he doing here? He’s voicing COMMISSIONER GORDON! And he’s not bad either, nice job Brucie.
• The action is nothing special, but it’s really good at times!

CONS:

• Why all the blood? This is Batman, not 300!
• Why is Deathstroke Ra’s Al Ghul’s former apprentice?
• I’ve never been a huge Damian fan so I wasn’t especially psyched to see him make his animated debut here I’m sorry to say.
• We get to see Dick holding a sword before Damian kills someone, we see him challenge the kid, then we cut to him on the phone with Bruce all bloodied up and cut with Damian tied to lamppost. We then don’t see him accompany Bruce and Damian on their missions until the final 10 minutes of the movie where Dick swoops in on the Batplane at the last second. Why do we not get to see Dick be a badass at any point?
• At one point Dick is arguing with Damian and he says he’ll never get to be Robin. What is the point of that scene when you literally know if you’ve seen the trailers or read the comics that that is literally who he becomes! And eventually Dick becomes his Batman! There’s no point to that scene.
• This is kind of a petty complaint, but why does Thalia’s shirt always have to be open in each and every single scene she has, except for a scene where she’s in a dress, which even then is cleavage-y as hell, has no back, and has a high slit on both sides of the actual skirt, I mean I realize there she’s coming onto Bruce, but what’s the actual point of making her so damn sexy all the damn time? I mean look at some of these character designs.
  
  
  Batman Beyond
  
  
  Batman: The Brave And The Bold
  
  
  Batman: Under The Red Hood
  
  
  Batman: Arkham City
  
  
  Miranda Tate in Dark Knight Rises
  
  
  Thalia Al ghul in Dark Knight Rises
  
  
  And Son of Batman… Yeeaah… And that’s not to say it’s somehow wrong to dress “sexily” in real life, but it doesn’t really make sense from a practical standpoint to dress like that if your supposed to be a badass ninja warrior. And you just know, that when they decided to make her wear this super cleavagey outfit, they weren’t thinking “This is something Thalia would wear because that’s what she likes.” they were thinking “This is something Thalia should wear because that’s gonna make strait teen guys like this movie more.” And I think we can both agree, that’s a load of crap.
• I kind of feel like a the quick Joker cameo we got, with Dee Bradley Baker doing the laugh, was kind of unneeded. In fact, I think showing off the fact that “We are in ARKHAM ASYLUM MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!” There’s no real point in it.

Overall, I can’t get really mad at this movie, I can’t really be disappointed with it because I wasn’t looking forward to it, and I’m ultimately not satisfied with it. I’m gonna go 6.65 out of 10.

I’ve seen better, I’ve seen worse. I don’t want to watch this one again, but I won’t suffer if I do. I’ll see you guys again before the year ends with a review of

Which doesn’t look a damn thing like those games and is being directed by this chump

maybe it won’t suck- Oh who the hell am I kidding?