Just finished watching this one off of Netflix instant streaming.
Description per Netflix:
2010 PG-13 75 minutes
There’s a mystery afoot in Gotham City when a shadowy vigilante known only as Red Hood (voiced by Jensen Ackles) sets his mind to stalking Batman (Bruce Greenwood) and his former sidekick, Dick Grayson (Neil Patrick Harris) — who now goes by the heroic name of Nightwing. But the duo can’t get too distracted, lest they fall prey to three familiar nemeses: the Joker (John Di Maggio), Ra’s al Ghul (Jason Isaacs) and Black Mask (Wade Williams).
My Opinion: Another hit for the DC Universe, this is a very dark violent film that does justice to the Batman franchise. A little predictable as I was able to figure out who was under the red hood pretty quickly, but that didn’t take away from some excellent story telling in this must see film. Warning though the violence is a bit higher than most in this category so take care when letting kids watch.
Superman/Batman Apocalypse is another feature-length animated film about our favorite heroes from the DC Universe that came out this past Tuesday 9-28-10, I did have a chance to watch it last night and like the prior films I really enjoyed it,and hope they keep making these. This movie is directed by Lauren Montgomery, produced by Bruce Timm, Alan Burnett, and written by Tab Murphy, and is listedat a 78 minutes run time.
Although the title of the film is Superman / Batman, there are other heroes that play just as big a part if not bigger in this film, so the title can be a little misleading. The story takes place shortly after events that led up to President Lex Luthors impeachment and Batman saving the world from the impact of an arriving meteor. When the movie opens Batman is investigating a meteor that has crashed in a harbor just outside of Gotham City, and a female Kryptonian is wreaking havoc with her uncontrollable powers until she is finally subdued by Batman and a piece of Kryptonite from the meteor that had crashed. When Superman arrives it is revealed that this female Kryptonian is Kara a cousin of his from his home world, Batman is a little skeptical of this and does not fully trust her. Meanwhile on planet Apocalypse we have Darkseid who hears of this news and wants the new Krptonian brought to him for the purpose of brainwashing her to be a general in his evil army.
I’m not going any further into the story as to avoid too many spoilers but the events I just told you about set the stage for an action packed adventure, with lots of fighting, interplanetary travel, and the origin of a superhero. The voice acting is on par with past movies put out which is a good thing, and the characters and animation are done in a very well and comic book like way. Like I said in the beginning they could have called this movie something else like “Supergirl Apocalypse”, but title’s aside I really liked the whole thing from start to finish and didn’t want it to end. DC has been on a role with these films and this is another notch on that belt, so if you liked the prior films, or the Justice League, Batman Animated Series, and Superman animated series, I highly recommend this one.
If you’ve been following movies for the last decade it’s hard to imagine there was a time when comic book based movies were rare, and when they did come out they usually weren’t that good. That was until Tim Burton brought us a dark version of Batman starring Michael Keaton. By the time we got to the third film in this series we had a new batman played by Val Kilmer, and they were starting to go a weird route with villains wielding glow sticks and neon lights everywhere, still the movie was watchable. Then we get to the fourth film which is the one I am listing as an avoid at all costs this one being titled “Batman and Robin”.
*Batman And Robin
Batman & Robin came out in 1997 and featured an all-star cast, we had George Clooney as Batman, Chris O’Donnell as Robin, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, and Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl. Looking at the cast you would think to yourself, how can this fail? I never watched ER but Clooney was well-known for his role on that show, Schwarzenegger playing a villain(sounds interesting) and of course the beautiful Uma Thurman who was probably one of the better parts of this film. This is one of those instances where bigger is not always better, even the sets in the movie were over the top, but with all this the movie was just plain stupid. The other day me and a co-worker were talking about bad movies and this came up, he said to me “it wasn’t that bad was it?” I replied “Batman and Robin in nipple showing costumes, Schwarzenegger with the horrible one liners having to do with ice, and villains that ice skate, I felt like I was watching the Escapades” point taken he couldn’t argue any of those points.
The story of this film has Mr. Freeze robbing diamonds to fuel his cold making machine so he can freeze Gotham City and hold it for ransom, using the money to fund his research into finding a cure for his wife whom he froze when she came down with some disease. Bruce Wayne/Batman’s butler Alfred just so happens to have the early stages of the same disease. Meanwhile we have Poison Ivy who loves nature so much she would wipe out the whole world in order to see her plants survive, she manipulates Freeze into helping her and her sidekick Bane by convincing him that Batman is responsible for his wife’s death. Then we have Barbara Wilson whom is Alfred’s niece and comes to stay with him, she finds the bat cave dons her own costume(Batgirl) and just like that becomes a comparable super hero herself.
Thankfully this would be the end of that set of Batman movies, and then something I never thought would happen did, in 2005 we got a reboot of the series directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale “Batman Begins” this movie was so good and made it so you could say Batman and movie in the same sentence again without being laughed at. Then they followed this great film up with an even better sequel “The Dark Knight” the movie where I went from not liking Heath Ledger to thinking he was amazing when he did the greatest job playing the psychotic villain The Joker. We’ve had our share of not so good comic book based movies in the last few years, Ghostrider, Wolverine, Jonah Hex, and the first Hulk movie to name a few, but even on their worst days those movies are still more watchable then Batman & Robin ever was, avoid this one if possible.
Watch the trailer below and I dare you not to laugh at the lines they gave poor Schwarzenegger.
Games Movies and More 