Batman: Bad Blood

While on a routine patrol of Gotham City, Batman (Jason O'Mara) encounters a mysterious new villain known as Heretic (Travis Willingham). However during his investigation of this new evil, Batman goes missing and Batwoman (Yvonne Strahovski), a new addition to the Bat tree, was the last one to see him alive. Due to the absence of Batman, Gotham plunges into chaos and Alfred is forced recall both Damian (Stuart Allan) and Nightwing (Sean Maher). In order to fill the void of the Bat and restore order to Gotham, Nightwing must wear Bruce's mantel. In addition to temporarily being Batman, Dick must not only solve the mystery of his former mentor's disappearance, but keep his crime fighting family cohorts together.

Though Batman was fairly absent throughout this movie, I thoroughly enjoyed the new roster of crime fighters added to the roster. As many of us know, Batman's vast universe is constantly evolving as well as expanding and Jay Oliva masterfully presents us with a daunting dangerous universe that requires more then just the presence of Batman. That being said, it would be nice to see a future Batman movie that primarily centralizes on just Batman. A great area to focus on for such a project would be the Arkham atmosphere portrayed in the video games. In the end, the story, animation and music of Batman: Bad Blood made this animated Bat film an excellent addition to the DC animated film series.

7 stars.

I liked Batman: Bad Blood, but it could have been tighter in the writing.

The many subplots dragged the potentially strong story down, because the summary of the movie sounded hell of a lot interesting. Instead we get a rather unfocused juggling of way too many characters in a way too short movie.

But I will say that I enjoyed a lot of what was presented in here, but after thinking about it one more time after finishing the movie it just felt like it lacked something.

Not a bad movie, but far from the best executed Batman movie I've seen.

I wasn't very impressed by this one. I like the look of the characters, for the most part. They don't sport the enormous jaws that a lot of the animated superheroes have. That's perhaps the best thing I can say.

The movie was OK, but not great.

The fighting and action didn't really look that good. Especially the fighting, was just too quick, lacked any real impact. The story is, well, it's OK. The voice acting was decent, but nothing special.

Some of the animation was a little sloppy, I caught a few mistakes here and there, but nothing too serious though.

Too many of the heroes are just normal people, with all kinds of gadgets. Now, that can be cool, but it was just a little too much for my taste. When characters can fly because of some kind of technology, I just don't like that. Also holograms are stupid.

A lot of these animated superhero features have a lot of cool stuff in them, awesome scenes, cool characters, but Batman: Bad Blood just lacked stuff that make you go: awesome!

With that being said, lots of cred and respect to the animators! I know how much work it is.

Batman: Bad Blood has way too many characters, specifically villains and has two separate third acts but it's still a really good continuation of animated Batman franchise with an enjoyably epic sense of scale.

Sean Maher gives his strongest performance yet thanks to a more depth and screen time. Stuart Allen is reliably determined and cold and Yvonne Strahovski is an excellent Batwoman with the required charisma stoic nature.

The animation has once again improved on it's predecessors and the fights are a standout as usual. The music by Frederik Wiedmann still lacks any memorable themes but sounds great in the moment and fits the tone.

First things first: this film is good but some major flaws stop it from being among the best of its kind. If you enjoyed the other films DC's released since its universe restarted, this one is definitely a nobrainer.

The pros are definitely good animations with some really strong pictures, crazy ideas and an interesting story that allows some character development.

You could say the film tries to be an action film with story - unfortunately the fusion doesn t quite work. One reason for this is, that the film favors action over story. This wouldn t be as bad, if the protagonists wouldn t turn to punchline-swinging clichés while fighting, just seconds after they had some actually interesting conversations that drive a plot that is supposed to give them depth. This luckily applies a bit less to Batwoman and not at all for Robin.

The second major flaw for me is that I feel like the writers don t respect the motivations, aims or morals of the protagonists. Some other reviews also mention the ridiculously accidental dying of super-criminals. Your protagonists can t kill someone, so Karma has to do justice or what? If Batman would take his code of honor seriously, he had to kick all of them, due to them being unable to watch out.

A last minor flaw for me was Batwing. This guy got some clichéd background and then continued to just being there, well and kick major ass. Maybe he marks the point where the writers didn t have time for more plot, since Batwing really misses some dialogs to make his integration into the Batfamily somehow authentic.

On the bright side of characters there is Robin, who gets just little screen time but I think they got really a lot out of it. I think Batwoman also deserves a character-development shout out, even though I feel like she would have been more plausible if she wouldn t be the clear loser on the "Kick Ass-O-Meter".

I personally feel like if the film had given the story more room, it would be a contender for the likes of Batman and the Phantom. This way it s "only" a good film.