BATMAN VS. ROBIN (2015)

 

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

The second Batman film for the "DCAMU," following SON OF BATMAN, takes place six months after that film. VS. charts the difficult progress of the relationship between Batman and Damian Wayne, his ten-year-old son, raised by the League of Assassins without the hero's knowledge, and now assuming the role of the Fourth Robin. As the title indicates, the course of filial affection does not precisely run smooth between the two characters.

The title owes something to one used by Damian's creator Grant Morrison, but whereas SON dumbed down the actual content of a Morrison arc, VS. adapts material from three separate comics-arcs, according to Wikipedia. I glanced at the two I had not read and decided they probably didn't contribute that much to the structure of VS. The arc with the most influence on this entry was Scott Snyder's first "Court of Owls" sequence. This I had read, and judged it to be of merely fair mythicity, to say nothing of not being relevant to the Damian Wayne narrative. So VS. almost comprises a new, alternative take on that narrative as it developed in the comics.

Despite the new Robin having worked with his cowled tutor for half a year, the partnership is a difficult fit. Batman can't manage the easy quasi-paternal relationship he had with "First Robin" Dick Grayson. When faced with a son of his own blood, one raised by an organization of killers, he compensates for his own fears by relentlessly riding the ten-year-old. He fears that his son, who has sometimes expressed a casual disregard for the termination of lives, may be too far gone, and incapable of living his life without killing again, in keeping with the ideals of The Batman.

Damian, for his part, desperately wants his father's unqualified approval, irrespective of his performance as Robin. At the same time he chafes at being reined in, and becomes fiercely jealous of the First Robin, now operating as Nightwing. And to make a tense situation even worse, during Damian's takedown of a criminal named Dollmaker, Dollmaker's slain by a third party, and for a time Batman's not entirely sure Damian didn't do it.

The third party is an acolyte of the Court of Owls. The killer is billed only as "The Talon," though in the bigger picture the Court is served by several deadly minions, all of whom are called Talons. The script faithfully reproduces the Snyder concept: the Court is a cabal of many wealthy elites from Gotham, who have built up a shadowy organization of influence to the extent that they've become a part of Gotham folklore. As a child, Bruce Wayne even conceives that the Court might have stage-managed his parents' deaths, and while this was not the case, the Court still represents for modern-day Batman the epitome of the societal corruption he battles. 

The Court, having shut down operations at some unspecified time, seeks to become a force in Gotham, and one of their current schemes is to bring the prominent Bruce Wayne into their fold-- with the broad implication that refusal brings a penalty of death. At the same time, The Talon approaches Damian as part of his own plan to increase his importance, by encouraging Damian's bloodlust as the mark of the superior man. He spins Damian a sad, and possibly true, story about having been abused by an older tutorial figure, in effect offering the New Boy Wonder a Faustian bargain: to take on The Talon as a new parent/perceptor, and to throw off all piddling moral quandaries.

This is a rare DC animated film, offering well-choreographed, imaginative fight-scenes without stinting on the dynamics of the four principal characters of Batman, Damian, Nightwing, and The Talon (with faithful Alfred serving as chorus). The credited scripter is Marc DeMatteis, whose comics-work I have never liked, but who has on occasion managed to convert so-so comics-stories into better than average adaptations, as he would also do five years later with SUPERMAN RED SON. Credit also devolves to the voice-actors, with a much improved Jason O'Mara as Batman, Kevin Conroy as Thomas Wayne, David McCallum as Alfred, and "Weird Al" Yankovic, strangely effective as the psychotic Dollmaker.