My Review of Batman: Bad Blood · 1:33am Jan 30th, 2023

Rating Scale:

12/10—a complete masterpiece; flawless and outstanding
11/10—Excellent, near-perfect film
10/10—the standard rating; awesome film with a couple of flaws
9/10—a wonderful film with several flaws
8/10–a great film with numerous flaws but not enough to ruin it
7/10—a fun and entertaining movie; not great but still enjoyable
6/10—a slightly above average film; it is something I might watch again
5/10—mediocre movie; not awful but not great either
4/10—a below average film; it could have been much better
3/10—a bad film; poorly written and poorly executed
2/10—a very bad movie; the few good things in the movie overshadowed by the bad things
1/10—a terrible movie; a total waste of time
0/10—a worthless piece of abomination; should have never been made

Greetings, everyone! This is Mr. J back with another movie review for tonight! This evening, I will be reviewing Batman: Bad Blood from 2016! I remember watching this movie two years ago and really enjoying it while doing so. Since it’s been so long, I decided to rewatch it on HBO Max earlier today and see if it was good as I remember. Now that I have a full recollection of everything that happened in this film, I gotta say…it is still pretty great! Warner Brothers Animation still managed to knock it out of the park with its awesomeness! Unfortunately, it suffers from a lot of character issues which I’ll get to in a moment. So here it is!

This takes place some time after the events of “Batman vs Robin”; a new villain in Gotham manages to both knock out and capture Batman, forcing Nightwing to disguise himself as Batman and Robin to work with him to find his father. However, a mysterious Batwoman comes in as she plays a part in finding out who they’re up against.

Now, while the movie does a great job making this a highly entertaining story, it wastes a lot of villains and didn’t bother in giving them any compelling personalities at all. Heretic was the most poorly-done antagonist out of them all. Here I thought he would be another fantastic villain like Talon…only to find out he had little character to begin with. About half-way through the movie—after the revelation of his origin and how he is genetically connected to Damian (being a perfect clone of him), Talia unceremoniously kills him with zero hesitation.

What was the point of including this guy? He gets killed off as if he was an afterthought, and it would have been interesting to see him live throughout the rest of the movie where he could live a life of his own—become his own hero in a twisted way and maybe even become a life-long nemesis for Damian. That would have been more interesting than what we got, in my opinion. Why waste a perfect opportunity to give him more character growth and possibly a villain arc? Such wasted potential.

We also have Firefly, Husk, Electrocutioner, Onyx, and some other baddies. Sadly, they were nothing more than cannon fodder who have zero personalities. I didn’t care about them, and they have no value except for plot-related reasons. At least they gave Mad Hatter some personality which isn’t saying much…

But the one thing I find the most frustrating is how idiotic some of the decisions our heroes made during the final battle. Batwing literally sent Firefly into one of the thrusters of the Wayne Summit hovering in the air, killing him on scene. That caused the summit to malfunction and crash right through a building in the city. Great job, asshole, you just killed hundreds of people because of your stupidity.

And Robin just accidentally let Husk get shredded to pieces by a turbine. Then he was like, “Oh no! Anyway…” Seriously, kid? And yeah, I know, naturally, he would be satisfied if he was still influenced by his grandfather’s teachings, but I’m pretty sure he has learned from Bruce about the importance of never letting his enemies be put in a situation where they could be killed while he has the power to get them out of said situation so that their blood won’t be on his hands. He should not be casual about this! Plus, the Bat Family is so reckless when it comes to civilian casualties.

But in spite of this film’s problems, I did enjoy the action, the choreography, the animation, and the storyline. For the most part, it was pretty cool and entertaining to watch. As far as the voice acting goes, some of their dialogue needed more work and emotion, but it wasn’t all that bad.

I also liked Batwoman in this movie; I love how they incorporated a lesbian version of the character and make it as natural as possible within the story. Her backstory and character development were well-written as well. The way she interacted and talked with Nightwing and Robin was pretty fun to watch too.

Lastly, the way they emphasized the theme of trauma and family was very important to me. It just shows that no matter the background or how painful the past is, you can still emerge victorious as a new person—willing to protect and help others who can’t help and protect themselves. I only wish the film spent more time giving dialogue between Kate and Batman and see them develop more.

Overall, this was a great but heavily flawed sequel. I’ll give this a solid 8/10.

Peace!