Batman: Year One Blu- ray. A solid DCU animated original movie, flaws and all.. Reviewed by Kenneth Brown, October 1. There are countless Batman tales and many more to be told, but only a select few have stepped out of the shadows, struck a nerve and left a lasting impact on culture.
The man responsible for two of Batman's most seminal stories? When it was announced that the latter would be adapted as the 1.
DC Universe animated original movie, I was ecstatic. But that excitement was soon tempered by doubt. Not every Batman tale is created equal, and not every DCU Animation production is either.
How faithful would co- directors Sam Liu and Lauren Montgomery and screenwriter Tab Murphy be to Miller and illustrator David Mazzucchelli's original vision of Gotham and its denizens? How much would be lost? Would anything be gained? Fortunately, Liu, Montgomery and Murphy are exceedingly faithful to Miller's words and Mazzucchelli's pens and pencils. Unfortunately, there's still a little bit lost in translation.
I was eight years old when I picked up an 8. Gotham City was cold shafts of concrete lit by cold moonlight, windswept and bottomless, fading to a cloud bank of city lights, a wet, white mist, miles below me. The street sounds were a soft, sad roar, unbroken and unchanging. Then somewhere, somewhere in the stone rat's maze down there, tiny but unmuffled, a pane- glass window shattered.
The sound was almost pretty, like chimes. The chimes became a single ringing bell, a burglar alarm, the old kind. A Thompson machine gun spat at the bell. A madman laughed wildly, maliciously. The laughter echoed forever. A shadow fell across me, from above. Wings flapped, close by and almost silent.
- Two-Face begins robbing Rupert Thorne's business in revenge while both the gangster and Batman hunt the dichotomous supervillain for their own reasons.
- A project based on the 1960s Batman TV series is being developed to coincide with the show’s 50th anniversary, and the original two leads are returning to voice the.
- Fueled by remorse and vengeance, a high schooler named Terry McGinnis revives the role of Batman. Under supervision of an elderly Bruce Wayne, he fights crime in a.
- Batman is a 1960s American live action television series, based on the DC comic book character of the same name. It stars Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin.
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- Batman was a thirty-minute prime time, live-action television series broadcast by the ABC Network between 19. Premiering on January 12, 1966, as a.
Glistening wet, black against the blackened sky, a monster, a giant, winged gargoyle, hunched forward, pausing at a building's ledge, and cocked its head, following the laugh's last seconds. Moonlight glanced across its back, across its massive shoulders, down its craned, cabled neck, across its skull, striking a triangle at one pointed bat's ear. It rose into space, its wings spread wide, then fell, its wings now a fluttering cape wrapped tight about the body of a man. It fell past me, its shadow sliding across walls, growing to swallow whole buildings, lit by the clouds below. The shadow faded into the clouds. The 8. 0- page giant comic cost 2. I bought it anyway.
In the comic, Wayne snaps handcuffs in two, a rather superhuman thing to do. In the movie, he doesn't snap handcuffs, but he does chase a fleeing vehicle on foot near the end of the film and manages to keep pace. More on that in a bit, though.) Year One is, first and foremost, a dual character study that focuses on two men of action and principle: Bruce Wayne (voiced by Benjamin Mc. Kenzie, Southland), returning to Gotham after extensive training overseas and putting his newly acquired skills to the test, and Lieutenant James Gordon (Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad), struggling to get a handle on his career and personal life while battling crime on the streets, working to bring a certain nocturnal vigilante to justice, and rooting out corruption within his department.
And each extraordinarily ordinary hero is forced to overcome a series of hurdles. Wayne has to keep his extracurricular activities secret, learn through trial and rather deadly error, and gain a foothold in Gotham's underworld, specifically in the corner of the city mafioso Carmine Falcone (Alex Rocco, The Godfather) has claimed as his own. Gordon, meanwhile, has to contend with mixed feelings about his wife's pregnancy, the city's crooked police commissioner (Jon Polito, Miller's Crossing), an unhealthy attraction to one of his female detectives (Katee Sackhoff, Battlestar Galactica), and the emergence of a second masked menace, Selina Kyle aka Catwoman (Eliza Dushku, Dollhouse). But something is amiss. A few things actually. Comic readers are savvy to reading between the panels. And while the pacing of Miller's .
Batman (also known as Batman: The Movie) is a 1966 film adaptation of the popular Batman television series, and was the first full-length theatrical adaptation of the. Check out an exclusive behind the scenes clip from Assassin’s Creed, on DVD and Blu-ray March 21. Welcome to ComingSoon.net’s look at all the top titles arriving.
Likewise, Mazzucchelli's artwork boasts a flow and hard- boiled fluidity, despite its static nature; the DCU Animation approximates his illustrations nicely, but also exhibit a uncharacteristic emptiness and woodenness from time to time, especially when it comes to the film's climactic car chase. It's a small nitpick, I'll admit, but what works in comics doesn't always work on the screen. It doesn't help that Mc. Kenzie is miscast as Batman, at least when it comes to Wayne's narration. His flatlined, deathbed delivery is reminiscent of Mat Lucas' voicework as Anakin Skywalker in Genndy Tartakovsky's 2. Clone Wars shorts, and no, that isn't a compliment.
Miller's comic reads as two equally important, ever- converging stories: one featuring Bruce Wayne and the other featuring Jim Gordon. But Mc. Kenzie's performance is so indifferent and innocuous at its lowest points that it, every so often, makes Batman: Year One a more lopsided adaptation: as if it should be titled The Life and Times of Lieutenant James Gordon instead. Where's fan- favorite Kevin Conroy?
Or Bruce Greenwood (Batman: Under the Red Hood)? In Mc. Kenzie's defense, though, his ineffectiveness only extends to the film's narration; when Bats hits the streets or when Wayne invites Gordon to his home, Mc. Kenzie handily bests William Baldwin (Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths) and Jeremy Sisto (Justice League: The New Frontier). All that being said, Year One still gets a lot of things right. Bryan Cranston is outstanding as Gordon, tapping into the meat and muck of the lieutenant's inner thoughts without hamming up a single line or overreaching a single time. Gordon's character animation helps, and there are even moments that are elevated above their comicbook counterparts thanks to small touches like a downcast glance, a furrowed brow, a faint smile, a pause, a brief twitch of fear, a haunted stillness, an explosive attack, reason mixed with emotion, or a face of firm determination. Combined with Cranston's voice performance, Gordon comes to animated life, wades through his troubles, suffers for his mistakes, and punishes himself for his failings.
It's just that convincing. In fact, if it weren't for the mishandling of Batman, Year One might be one of DCU Animation's finest.
The rest of the voice cast does their part too (minus Dushku, who solid work but doesn't contribute much in the way of a memorable performance), as do many of the less flashy stretches of animation. There's a real cinematic quality to the production (credit there goes primarily to Miller and Mazzucchelli, of course, as their four issues were practically storyboards in the hands of the creative team) and many a scene resonates. Yes, Miller's climactic bridge showdown is better on the page than on the screen, but it still packs a wallop.
Yes, there are several brief beats from the comic that have been removed entirely (. And yes, you can expect the sort of tweaking and shuffling that comes with adapting any graphic novel or miniseries. But Batman: Year One is far more faithful than most. I suspect some will embrace it more than I have and others will feel it isn't as evocative of the original as it should be. Either way, Batman: Year One is worth a blind buy in my humble opinion, if for no other reason than to turn you on to Miller and Mazzucchelli's four- issue classic.