WesternAnimation beautifully done animation, great story concept, piss poor pacing.....
Amongst other things....lets start at the top shall we?
Beautiful animation and design- Par for the course with DC,and a decent way to introduce Damian, if anything to give you a good idea how dangerous (for the most part...) he could be.
Great story concept- The concept of the story wasn't bad.... the execution well......
Piss poor pacing- This has been a problem that has vexed many a feature, with both DC and Marvel, that they need to jam every bell, whistle and knickknack into a feature and then expect people to simply eat it up like a fat man looking for death by diabetes by way of engorging on the dessert buffet.
The bad
Slade Wilson- seems to be a fan of the idiot ball in this....bear in mind that he is Batmans villanous equal in the comics and all around scary bastard....very badly mishandled characterization.
Batman- starts off making rookie mistakes (fisticuffs with Killer croc?.....just ....no....)gets better though.....
Talia- too ....well.....motherly? (To be fair I do like this version of Talia...so it is a nice departure from the super-spoiled daddy's girl in the comics)
The Good
The voice acting- spot on and well executed,
Damian, Nightwing, and Alfred- altogether the only characters that were handled the best (yes, I did like the fight between Damian and Nightwing, as it did set the tone for future features with them as the new Batman and Robin,should they ever do it) and Alfreds dry wit is always welcome....
In closing,not horrible, but could have been better, DC should be focusing on quality of product rather than the next feature to crank out.
WesternAnimation Overall Good, but needs improvement
It's a improvement from Justice League War. The plot is straight forward and the characters are mostly fine. True to comic it was based off of Damien Wayne will rub you the wrong way that you wish you could punch him in the face.
Positives: The plot was good. It's not spectacular, but it is also not terrible. It set itself up nicely and the cast is small enough that it doesn't drag. There is a lot of action in it. Warning to parents pay attention to the ratings of this. It is bloody. Watch it first to make sure you are comfortable with letting your child watch it. Alfred is the best. His role isn't big, but he is perfect combo of smart ass, nurturing, and all nice guy he needs to be to take care of family. Talia's characterization is solid. It's nice to see her morally gray again as oppose to some of her latest pure evil actions the comics gave us recently.
Negatives: Deathstroke was a pushover in this movie. He neither ultimate empowered bad ass the comics/Arrow give us or over the top but ultra competent villain the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon gave us. He keeps getting beaten by Damien and when he finally faces off against Batman he gets his ass handed to him. He doesn't even beat Ra's in combat. He just runs and blows up the place to kill him. Nightwing while fun to see, but unneeded. He is in the background for the whole movie. Damien comes off as a bad fan fiction character at times. His accomplishments are so wild you roll your eyes after a while. He mountain climbing at 4 and at 6 is a computer genius. What takes the cake is he swims 50 miles to an oil rig. Even Batman took his jet to get there. Unfortunately since the movie has limited time Damien's character development comes off as rushed and still unlikable.
Final Outcome: The movie is good, but has some big flaws that prevent it from becoming a great film. If you were worried about the future of films because of JL: War this film might give you relief.
WesternAnimation Milking a dead Bat(man)
One word review...Mediocre.
Animation is alright. Not breathtaking, but it gets the job done. The plot is soupy, and sometimes even relegated to the background.
But I suppose it should be said that even if this can be considered the worst of Batman's animated films. It's still better than say, a Green Lantern film. Animated or otherwise.
The double edge of Celebrity Voice Actor brings the quality of the film down, somewhat. Thomas Gibson and Giancarlo Esposito just don't bring their respective roles of Deathstroke and Ra's Al Ghul any weight. Gibson is not menacing in the slightest as Deathstroke, and it's impossible to tell if he's being Creepy Monotone or just plain flat. Gibson does sound like he'd be a younger version of Ron Perlman, but that's about it. He doesn't live up to the voice set by Teen Titans Slade.
Even when Deathstroke is masterminding a hostile takeover of the league of assassins or threatening a persons family or even being a genuine Bad Ass. Thomas Gibson just lacks the gravitas.
The dynamic between Damian and Bruce is amusing but superficial. At the end, Damian goes from murderous little psycho to...not that, without much development for it. Batman just tells him not to kill anymore and suddenly he just does...to the man he spent to whole movie trying to kill.
There just isn't enough rapport between Damian and Bruce to believe he'd go from killing people with a smile to showing mercy, in a short while.
Batman's introduction starts off pretty clumsily. For some insane reason he decides to fist fight with Killer Croc. But afterwards it becomes obvious that was just a set up to introduce Talia saving him. He smartens up afterwards, and acts like a true detective.
The action is high octane with swords, blood, and fists flying. Though some might find the action a bit ridiculous, at certain points, as alot of bullets wind up deflecting off of flimsy katanas. And an eight or ten year old boy managing to completely outclass a man with biceps bigger than even Batman's entire body.
Film overall...skippable. There are other superheroes who deserve an animated movie more than this one...Not Green Lantern though
WesternAnimation pretty good overall.
Definitely disagree with the other review, while Gibson admittedly had big shoes to fill in regards to Slade/Deathstroke, he dosen't quite measure up to Perlman, but I felt he did an admirable enough job of making him a menacing and intimidating villain overall. Damian was kind of annoying at times, but it was nevertheless cool to watch him take on men way bigger then him, regardless of how implausible it was. Didn't really see Batman fist-fighting Killer Croc as Too Dumb to Live(especially since he's done that before in BTAS). I was expecting Rah's to return as a last-minute plot twist and was surprised that he didn't, I actually would've liked more focus on Langstrom as he was pretty interesting and he didn't really get to know that much about him. There were some funny parts and some cool action(that opening battle was simply epic), I will concede that it is the weakest Batman film by far, though it's still pretty damn good(also like the Green Lantern films, though i'd rather have an animated adaption of Batgirl).