Son of Batman Reviews

For every positive attribute, there’s an equally negative one at play in Son of Batman. This sense of balance renders the film one of the more unmemorable and an indifferent entry in DC’s animated film series. It also marks the first entry in a trilogy of directly related films that up to this point had merely been a series of one-offs and adaptations of well-known and beloved titles. (The Dark Knight Returns’ two films function as a split singular volume similar to final entry in the Harry Potter film saga.)

It’s going to take me a while to warm-up to Jason O’Mara’s clenched and constipated vocal inflections as Batman, and I better get used to it since he’s not only voicing the role in the Damian Wayne trilogy, but in the Justice League/New 52 films as well. He just doesn’t feel appropriately intimidating or obsessive enough in the role, and his performance livens up during scenes where Batman engages in snark and humor. It begins to feel like an exceptionally violent sitcom or half-formed satirical take on the material.

While O’Mara’s voice work is a bit flaccid, Thomas Gibson as Deathstroke, Stuart Allan as Damian, and Sean Maher as Nightwing all do tremendous work. Primarily knowing Gibson from Dharma & Greg it’s mildly shocking to hear how dangerous and threatening he can make his vocals sound, but he brings a certain spark to the role that’s hard to pin down. It’s easier to pinpoint what works so well about Allan and Maher, they just absolutely nail their roles. Maher injects playfulness into Dick Grayson that’s entirely appropriate while Allan is perfectly entitled as the heir to one seriously warped family tree.

And all of that is well and good, voice work is a good chunk of the battle in making an animated film work, but the other is the animation itself. Son of Batman alternates between moments of great fluidity and beauty, and ones where the characters fly off model and generally appear like a gauzy, ultra-snazzy Saturday morning cartoon. It seems that all the animators cared about were the action scenes, the monstrous creations, and sight of characters defying physics in the ways that only comic book-style ninjas can. Meanwhile Bruce Wayne’s face frequently goes off model and Talia al Ghul’s characterization boils down to her gravity shattering breats.

This is the same studio that brought vivid life to Frank Miller’s drawings, that turned David Mazzuchelli’s expressionistic Year One into a gorgeous piece of animation, and captured Ed McGuinness’ dynamic drawing style? It’s a bit hard to believe given how disposable so much of it looks and feels. This isn’t just a fizzy early morning cartoon, but one that asks you to suspend your disbelief to such a degree that it becomes nearly comedic. Sure, a 10-year-old could take an entire army of highly trained adults, why not. But he takes two knives to his forearms, pulls them out, and still uses them like nothing happened? That’s beyond camp and quickly escalating towards audience condescension. I think Variety described this thing best when they called it a “chop-socky Full House, or maybe, Full Cave.”