BATMAN: BAD BLOOD (2016)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Though there was one more Bat-film that was issued under the "DCAMU" rubric, that last entry, BATMAN: HUSH, appeared three years after this DTV release. In contrast, SON OF BATMAN, BATMAN VS. ROBIN, and BAD BLOOD all came out in three subsequent years, and all focus in differing degrees with the period during which "Fourth Robin" Damian Wayne. son of the Crusader by Talia Al Ghul, became a sometimes unruly member of the Gotham Bat-family. Thus all three together become a rough "Damian Trilogy," even though they select assorted sequences and motifs from different comics-stories. Despite this shared focus, though, the three movies fail to express common themes and are occasionally wildly divergent in characterization. 

BLOOD derives several tropes from the interlinked Grant Morrison serials DEMON STAR and GOTHAM'S MOST WANTED, which focused less on Damian than on the long and complicated relationship between Batman and his sometime love Talia. The Talia character, appearing in the 1970s slightly before her more famous father Ra's Al Ghul, has for the past fifty years been portrayed as angel or as devil by various DC raconteurs, and in Morrison's case, he chose "devil, but with an explanation." Unfortunately, the three DTV Bat-films, perhaps because of over-focusing on Damian, don't come close to consistency, ranging from "angel" in SON, no appearance at all in VS., and then to "devil" in BLOOD. 

I gave VS. a high rating, a just-barely-fair rating to SON, and BLOOD falls in the middle. Since both SON and BLOOD were indebted to Morrison, I suspect that his take on the Bat-verse is just too far-out for DC's animation-scripters to assimilate, not least because the same writer who did a good job on VS. did a mediocre job on BLOOD. 

Though Talia is at least roughly as "devilish" as she is in the Morrison comics, DeMatteis dispenses with any explanation for her evil, except for a line where Damian claims she's all about "control." To be sure, her opposite number Batman isn't exactly an indulgent father either-- that, indeed, was the main theme of VS.-- and in fact for most of BLOOD he's under the brainwashing aegis of Talia, which undermines whatever point the script might've had about contrasting the two approaches to familial dynamics. The script musters a couple of weak lines about how Batman can bring diverse heroes together through their shared pain and trauma, but this idea remains stillborn.

Talia's master plan is strictly Superhero Villainy 101; using electronic brainwashing techniques (facilitated by The Mad Hatter) to manipulate key figures in government. Her deviltry is just a backdrop for tensions between Damian and Nightwing (who masquerades as Batman while the genuine article is Talia's prisoner) and for the animated debut of "the Kate Kane Batwoman" and Batwing. The latter was one of Morrison's creation for his Batman run of the 2010s, while Batwoman, DC's first starring lesbian heroine, had appeared in 2006. Both debuts are decently if not imaginately handled. The biggest indulgence of the BLOOD script is that De Matteis injects far too many unnecessary costumed crooks into the mix, particularly in the movie's first half-- villains who are, as Batwoman herself points out, "C-listers." One wonders why a magisterial master planner like Talia would have bothered with such mediocrities, when she has her own League of Assassins (redubbed "the League of Shadows" thanks to one of Chris Nolan's lesser sins).

Once one gets past the movie's first half, there's some decent interfamilial drama and some decent action, particularly hand-to-hand battles between Talia and Batwoman and between Nightwing and the brain-fogged Batman. But it's a bit of a slog to get there, although this time out, I confer top voice-acting honors on Sean Maher, whose Nightwing provides the glue holding together all the disparate pieces. Amusingly, three years after this uncertain paean to "Bat-family values"-- which at least bore some similarities to Morrison's theme-- BATMAN: HUSH ends on the image of Batman's trauma pushing members of his family away, rather than uniting them.