Thursday, June 4, 2015

Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts Review

DC Did Something Right For Once

I loved what DC used to be. It was a great world filled with larger than life heroes who stood for truth and justice. The heroes wouldn't always win, hell some of their greatest stories are of their failures, but they always bounced back stronger than ever before. These stories were always a beacon of hope and inspiration to get through life's many challenges and those stories continue to inspire me even to this day.

Which makes me sad to say DC and I have been having a lover's quarrel for the past five years or so. It all started with the "New 52." Well, actually I blame Christopher Nolan for a lot of this, but that's another topic for another day. With the "New 52" DC's characters became this giant ball of negativity that would just eat away at my soul. These characters would constantly bicker at each other instead of save the people engulfed in the chaos around them. It was as if the writers of these series never read a comic book before. With every passing year it becomes more and more difficult to admit that I am a DC fanboy, because the current state of these characters is simply embarrassing. Batman has been replaced with "Robo-Gordan," Superman's a murderer, and Wonder Woman been turned into a bloodthirsty simpleton. They aren't heroes, they're damaged goods.

What I'm getting at is all of these factors have bled over into the other forms of media: the games, movies, animated series and so on. A lot of that negativity carried over and made every form of DC media frustrating to experience. The last few direct-to-video animated movies have been difficult to sit through. Everything from the team of heroes acting like spoiled brats to extremely inappropriate sexual material becoming part of the story's plot has become the norm for what to expect when watching one of these movies. One of the last films, "Justice League: War" had me wanting to smash my television with a baseball bat when Wonder Woman mugged a food vendor for an ice cream cone. And don't even get me started on "Flashpoint Paradox."

So imagine my surprise when I discover not only was "Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts" not terrible, it was actually pretty damn good.

The story centers around Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman stumbling across a series of robberies committed by a group of animal themed super villains who are being led by Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. The Penguin. Meanwhile, under his public persona, Cobblepot is unveiling new types robots designed for the purpose of search and rescue. Of course, the robots are being used to help in the aid of these before mentioned robberies. So it's up to Batman and his teammates, Green Arrow, Flash, Nightwing and Red Robin to stop Penguin and his "Animilitia" from committing these crimes and to figure out if there's anything more to this scheme outside of simple bank heist.

One of the most fascinating aspects to this movie is its setting. Yes, it all takes place in Gotham city, but it's not "where," it's the "when" that's interesting. This version of Gotham city is a lot more high tech than what we're used to seeing. There are tv monitors at every city skyline. The police vehicles can transform into hover cars. Batman's gadgets can help deflect lasers. And so on. Although, it is not too far advance into the future like in the animated series, "Batman Beyond." In fact, the movie starts out with Bruce (Who also looks a lot older than normal) testing out a new gliding bat suit, one which looks a lot like Terry's suit in "Batman Beyond." It feels possible that the intention was to set this story in between the original animated series and Beyond, which is a touch I really like.

Not only is the setting good, but the film's actually got a pretty good sense of humor to boot. I am a firm believer that all comics, no matter the topic, should always be a little silly or at least be mildly self-aware of how ludicrous these situations are, which is exactly what this film does. The jokes come across in a few different ways from puns said during battle to just general moments of silliness, like Red Robin eating a bowl of oatmeal while researching information for Batman. There's even a funny fourth wall joke towards the beginning, where Nightwing follows a woman with cat ears sneaking into a jewelry store. When it's revealed to be Cheetah, she responds with, "What did you expect, Catwoman?" It got a good laugh from me, because I did think for a moment it would be. But to get back on point, I mention the humor in this film because it was refreshing to see. In previous direct-to-video DC animated films, if there was humor in it, it was either very cruel, harsh or just straight up weird. Like in "Throne of Atlantis," Aquaman is introduced by having him at a bar, drunk, talking to a lobster about his dead father. While here the tone is every light and aren't just cynical digs at other characters. Yes, humor is selective, but here you can tell the film makers are going for another tone than what they've tried before, and it is this writer's opinion that this tone works best for these characters.

Plus there's a lot of fun comic book style fight scenes too. You'll have moments where Green Arrow is shooting boxing glove tipped arrows at a robot gorilla with a wrist mounted laser gun flying on a jet pack, and it is awesome. You don't get much more comic bookie than that. That style of action is throughout the entire film and it never feels boring or repetitive. It never feels too dark either which is nice. Don't get me wrong, these characters are still put into dangerous situations. One scene has Red Robin trapped in the Batcave with Man-Bat trying to break out of his prison cell. It's a tense moment, but nothing an eight year-old couldn't handle. It's just the right amount tension for the film to be engaging throughout.

What's most encouraging about this film is how well the team operates with each other. Again, the last couple of Justice League films where almost nonstop bouts of arguing amongst the team. But here, every character had a role to play and nobody felt like dead weight. I've always thought Batman was a character who worked best in a super powered team. Batman is the straight man in a group of wacko heroes. He's the best at organizing his team and knows how to use their strengths and weaknesses. This film is all about that. Even though the film features his name in the title, he never overshadows the rest of his team.

But that's not to say this film is all sunshine and roses, I do have a few issues with it, mostly with the character designs. To put it bluntly, nobody knew what to do about designing every character's hair style. Every character looks like they're sporting a giant pompadour that would rival most 80's anime high school aged punks. Or it just comes across as every character is having a bad case of bed head. Also Nightwing's costume stinks, but I've always been a fan of the blue and gold "New Titans" look for Nightwing, so take that comment with a grain of salt.

Also while I do like the cast of characters for this movie, there's only one female character in the entire film and that's Cheetah. While it's a good choice, I just wish there were more female heroes in the film like Zatanna, Power Girl, Question and so on to round out the cast a little better. If they make another entry into this "Batman Unlimited" series (which I hope they do), that would be my biggest input on how to make the series better.

And this last complaint is more of me being an old dork than anything else, but they're are moments where it feels like the film is trying to sell me toys. Batman goes through about three different costume changes in the film and each time I got the feeling it was letting me know I could get this toy right now if I went out to S-mart. Also it doesn't help that the movie came with a five dollar off coupon for a Mattle Batman figure of my choosing. But again, if the film's true evil intention was to get me to buy toys, at least the film was entertaining to watch.

So at the end of the day, I highly recommend checking out "Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts." It's a fun superhero adventure movie that's perfect for all the young ones and the kid inside all of us. While I'm not big on the character design and lack of female characters, those are nip picks that could be corrected in future installments. It is nice to see DC get back on track after a long string of missable animated movies and I hope this is the start of their comeback. This film made me believe in my childhood heroes again.

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