Starring: Kevin Conroy
Directors: Yasuhiro Aoki; Futshi Higashide, Futoshi Higashide, Toshiyki Kubooka, Hiroshi, Morioka, Jon-Sik Nam, and Shoujirou Nishimi
Writers: Josh Olsen, Brian Azzarello, Jordan Goldberg, Greg Rucka, Alan Burnett, David S. Goyer
Studio: Warner Brothers
There are a great many things to thank the Wachowski siblings (don't forget that one of them is a girl now) for. One of them is the plethora of animated tie-in movies released direct to DVD. I'm not gonna lie; I haven't seen The Animatrix in years. Memories of the sequels have kept me far from anything Matrix for a while now, but I do have fond memories of The Animatrix. I remember it being uneven, but some of those short films stood out as being better than the sequels. A few interesting little stories set in the then untapped and rich world of The Matrix.
Sadly, Batman has had his rich world thoroughly tapped harder than a keg at a phrat party. Movies, TV shows, comic books, radio shows, novels, picture books, and even trading cards have told stories about Batman, his friends, his enemies, and people who just know of him. This leaves the Batmanime team with the problem of going over things other people have done before. Even in the confines of the Nolan Batman films, there aren't a terrible amount of questions that beg to be answered. The recent movies give us a good picture of what Gotham City is like, how the public and police relate to Batman, where he gets his wonderful toys, and how he trained to become Batman. A few of these short stories just answer these question again but with anime. A few just have him fight a villain that won't be in the movies anytime soon. One does a new version of a classic Batman story that started as a comic, was an episode of the nineties cartoon show, and now has an anime version.
The bottom line is that none of this is ground breaking. It's a concept borrowed from another film franchise and applied to Batman. It honestly feels disposable and forgettable; they had one of my favorite obscure Batman villains, Deadshot, and even with that little touch of fanboy pandering, I was still pretty unimpressed with the affair. I fell asleep during the third or fourth short, and I can't even remember which one now.
Writing:The biggest problem is making the story line interconnect; it kills the pacing for the entire project. It's also glaring because the different writers and animators handle some of these characters very differently. Instead of being a few short films or a full animated movie; it becomes an awkward hybrid of the two. The interconnected story lines give the feeling like the shorts are building to something, but they aren't. It makes the ending to the entire thing feel arbitrary. It also makes some of the shorts feel slow and uninteresting because they aren't a part of this bigger narrative that's more of an illusion than anything else.
On top of that, the dialog isn't as sharp as it could be; it's often too obvious and expository. It gets a little George Lucas in terms of characters describing their feelings and the themes of a scene. There are some good ideas here and there, but it just never quite comes together.
Directing: The Matrix and The Animatrix had a shared background in their visual style and even the writing. The Wachowskis took from anime, Hong Kong action films, and Grant Morrison comics (don't get me started) to create the iconic first part of their trilogy. It was an easy transition to make.
Batman Begins is not connected to anime in any major way. Parts of the Narrows neighborhood in the film were modeled on Tokyo neighborhoods, but otherwise, these are not styles that work together to well. It's a bit jarring to see the more realistic mobsters of the new Batman movies suddenly look completely different and then have an all out John Woo style gun battle. It simply does not jive with the parent product. Also, certain directors use designs for the characters that are simply hideous looks for Batman and his supporting cast in any style.
Acting: Keving Conroy is still awesome. The rest of the voice work is not.
Editing: For the most part it looks fine.
Sound: Acceptable.
Soundtrack/Score: It sounds like a diet version of the recent film scores.
Self-Awareness: Not at all.
Overall Rating: Wake me when it's over.
-Pete
