Hello. I’ve been gone for a while: yes. I’ve decided to return and review a certain animated film I acquired recently.
That film is: Batman vs. Robin.

A little background first:

A few years ago, DC began releasing straight to DVD animated movies to distract from the fact that unless Christopher Nolan’s name is attached to it, DC can’t write a good movie to save the franchise. We all know about the Dark Knight Trilogy and what a big hit that was; so the logical thing to do is to rush everything else and give MARVEL and its viewers a giant middle finger. With all the hype that DC is rushing the next Superman movie by bringing in Batman and the Justice League, I decided to look back at some of DC’s animated films, and I came across the movie ‘Son of Batman’. ‘Son of Batman’ was an animated film based on the story of Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s son. They explain how he came to be rather well in movie but did nothing else right after that. The animation was amazing but the rest of it fell hard. It had little to do with the comic it was based on, and they brought in Deathstroke for…no reason, really. The whole idea of Batman having a son can fill a movie of about 2 hours or so, in and of itself. But, nope! DC said, ‘Screw you, and give us your money.’ How? By giving us a sequel to piss us off even more. So, let’s dig into: ‘Batman vs. Robin’.

Now to the credit of the movies, Son of Batman and Batman vs. Robin both have some great animation and good voice actors. As for the rest…Let me say this: while ‘Son of Batman’ was entertaining and watchable when you ignore that it had nothing to do with the comic, ‘Batman vs. Robin’ can’t even do what the damn title says. When you hear “Batman vs. Robin”, you imagine Batman and Robin duking it out right? Well, in an hour and a half movie we only see them fight once….FOR 6 MINUTES!!!!

They throw banter and argue with each other throughout the movie as families do, but they only trade punches for 6 MINUTES OF SCREEN TIME!!! They had a great opportunity and they ruined it! This could have been a coming of age story where Batman has to come out of his shell, and face the fact that he has a family. He could open up to Damian, and regardless of Damian’s prior training at the hands of Ra’s Al Ghul, and become like a real father. Batman could train him seriously and become more of a humanized character. But instead; they go on a mission in the first 10 minutes, argue, watch a movie, argue some more, finally fight each other for 6 MINUTES, then spend the rest of the movie brooding.
Now don’t get me wrong; I love Batman. He’s my favorite DC superhero and has a great mythology behind him, but this movie could’ve taken what the ‘Batman & Son’ comic had and fleshed out Batman more as a humanized character. They missed a great opportunity to make one of the greatest superheroes of all time more human. But instead, we have a film with Batman and son arguing while the Court of Owls haunt all of Gotham.

Oh yeah: there’s a secret society of Gotham’s wealthiest that use undead ninja assassins to slowly take control of Gotham. And Batman has to stop them. And Robin, being the “brooding son” that he is joins their ranks, and eventually goes back to his father’s side because he only has one father. And one of the assassins named ‘Talon’ kills the entire society because Damian reminds him of himself years ago.

Okay, first of all: Court of Owls??? I know a lot about Batman’s Rogue gallery but I’ve never heard of ‘The Court of Owls’. Is it just another made up organization because the League of Shadows was on vacation or something? I have never heard of these bozos and I’ve talked with some of my fellow Batman fans and they haven’t heard of them either. Second: Talon is just a Ra’s Al Ghul clone. Not literally, but he has the same mentality as him. He’s an assassin, he trains Damian like he did Bruce, and he has a miracle juice that lets him heal himself. That is such a copy of another character that I’m speechless. And the Court’s army of undead assassins: stupid. Why do they need that!? That’s so stupid! And finally: everything about them is entirely unneeded!! Like I said; the dilemma of Batman coming to terms with his son can fill a movie alone. They didn’t do much of it in ‘Son of Batman’, so I was hoping they’d do it here. I was wrong.

Okay, now that I got the bad out of the way; what’s good about the movie?

Well….the animation is good. So are the voice actors….that is about it. There is nothing else good about this movie. Apart from the cameo of Nightwing, there are no other recognizable Batman villains in this movie. No joker, no Ra’s Al Ghul, no Scarecrow. Talia Al Ghul doesn’t even make an appearance. Instead, we get the ‘Court of Owls’, who have a connection to the murder of Bruce’s parents. I am not even kidding. If you thought that the idea of the Court was dumb enough, they tie Bruce’s parents getting killed to the Court when it was established in many other films and shows that it was a common thug who killed his parents, or in the case of the Burton films the Joker did it before he became the Joker. Damn, this movie is stupid!

So, after all of that; was the movie good? NO!
Watching this movie hurt me. I have never felt such disgust for something with Batman’s name on it since Batman & Robin! Not only do they miss a chance to tell a great story about family in animation, but they screw it up even more by giving the lame Court of Owls a connection to Batman’s parents’ murder, giving us a bland villain with some of the simplest forms of motivation, and giving the title of the damn movie only 6 MINUTES OF SCREEN TIME! Only 6 minutes or so of Batman and Robin actually fighting each other; that still angers me!

Bottom line: Batman vs. Robin sucks! I give it 1 out of 5. In other words: it is dog s***!

Thanks for reading this, and I hope to have more reviews up soon. Laters.