My Review of Batman: Gotham Knight · 1:54am Apr 1st, 2022

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: Gotham Knight from 2008. This was yet another animated Batman film I’ve watched sometime last year as I was curious about what this movie was about and to see if it’s just as awesome as other animated Batman movies I’ve reviewed two years ago. Unfortunately, I found myself disappointed with this movie. This is a six-story anthology film that is supposed to take place in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy universe. It specifically takes place after the events of Batman Begins, and it has the Dark Knight fight against a series of new villains and old through a timeline of some sort.

Let me address the big elephant in the room: why the hell is this movie taking place in Nolan’s Batman universe? First off, his universe is firmly grounded on realism which means that it will leave little to no room for villains who rely on certain powerful abilities that may seem unrealistic—including Killer Croc (I’ll talk about him in a moment). Although the producers of this movie stated that this six-segmented story is not necessarily integral for the plot of The Dark Knight Trilogy, that makes me question why they bothered in having it set in that universe anyway. It makes no sense to me. It has certain villains who clearly do not fit in Nolan’s universe which is the main issue I have with this movie.

Moving on, one segment in particular has by far the worst animation style I have ever seen in my life. That segment in question would be the first story “Have I Got a Story for You”. The animation is horrendously atrocious, the story is boring as ever, the voice acting is weak, and the visuals were so badly choreographed. Yeah, these segments were produced by Japanese animation studios, but I’ve seen better animation from them in other things I’ve seen before.

“Field Test”, “Crossfire”, “In Darkness Dwells”, and “Working Through Pain”, were admittedly pretty decent although that’s not saying much. They have fairly generic dialogue with dull voice acting. While the animation in all of them were so much better, none of them were as exciting as I expected them to be. To be frank, I didn’t really care much for those segments in particular. I know this is an anthology movie, but I am more used to films that have a more coherent, cohesive narrative than movies that are just comprised of random episodes that have little to nothing to do with each other.

As for Killer Croc, he has by far the most mediocre design out of all versions of him I’ve seen. His look, his voice....just no. I don’t want to ever see another Killer Croc with that design again. Thank you very much.

Nevertheless, the very last segment “Deadshot” was actually pretty great. I honestly enjoyed that episode a lot more than I did with the other segments which says a lot of the overall quality of this movie. The animation in the last segment was good, the voice acting was decent, and the titular antagonist himself was pretty epic to watch. That segment and Kevin Conroy voicing Batman are the only legitimate good parts of this film.

Overall, this movie was a disappointment albeit not exactly too terrible altogether. It would have been so much better if it wasn’t an anthology movie, wasn’t established in Nolan’s Batman universe, and actually had a cohesive narrative with a consistent, eye-catching animation style. But then again, it did have some moments that are pretty good like what I already mentioned. So this gets a 5/10.

Peace.