Movie Review: Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023) *Spoilers*

Movie Review: Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023) Spoilers

Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham Poster

I don't know why I go into every WB Animation/DC Comics animated movie hopeful that it's going to be good. It almost never is.

You'd think my expectations would be so low by this point that it wouldn't take much to be pleasantly surprised but apparently not.

I can only guess that WB Animation's latest DC offering, Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is intended to be some kind of special release for Halloween with the amount of monsters and supernatural elements that lie within.

The trouble is, I don't know who this is for? Given the body count, it's not for kids and, with all the magic and supernatural elements front and center it's not really a detective story?

Set in 1920's Gotham, an ancient evil is awakened, and only Batman can save the city (I guess? I mean a good proportion of the city gets burned to the ground so... did he save it?).

Given the time period I was hopeful this could be something of an interesting take on Batman along the lines of Gotham by Gaslight (2018) but there's really no reason this needs to be set in the 1920s, other than maybe superstition, monsters, and magic were more of a mainstream concern in that era.

Beyond that we see Batman occasionally using some advanced gadgets for the time period. We don't see a heck of a lot of interaction with the citizens of Gotham, while all the main players seem like versions of Batman's rogue's gallery if their origin stories all began with ancient magic.

This is based on a year 2000 series of comics by Mike Mignola apparently. I don't read Batman comics and, quite frankly, if WB/DC Animation is anything to go by, I'd have a collection of disappointing comics to match my collection of disappointing DC Animated DVDs I own.

The sad thing is, the art, animation, voice cast, production quality is all really good for straight to video releases. I'd watch these DC animated movies all day. They just don't seem to be for me... there's some very niche Batman fans that probably love Batman fighting gods and monsters. I'm not one of them.

I don't mind Batman going up against weird, or even supernatural characters but he's first and foremost a street level detective, with a lot of money, and a whole set of toys that would make James Bond green with envy. I don't think we even saw a Batmobile in this movie?

Honestly this is bad in terms of the story. It starts out interesting with Oswald Cobblepot being on some kind of fatal arctic expedition. You think it's leading to some interesting versions of Batman's rogue's gallery but ultimately it all goes south and I found myself wishing it would just get on with it so it could be over.

It's just Batman following a convoluted prophecy that he's given in the first act but, of course, doesn't think anything of. As a story it goes nowhere. By the end, everyone of note is dead and Batman is now a literal man sized bat who didn't do anything that wasn't in the prophecy.

Sure it's an Elseworlds story but it's not really a Batman story. Better suited to Shazam, Black Adam, or even Wonder Woman since all their history is based in ancient mythology.

Just awful. Watch the first act and see how you go. It had potential to be something but then it forgot why it was set in the 1920s, and turned into a generic monsters and magic movie... and not a good one at that.

Can we please just get a good Batman and Robin detective story in Gotham with any of his A or B list rogues gallery?

Comments

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

Review: Beware the Batman - Animated TV Series

I first wrote about the 26 part TV series, Beware the Batman in my Animation and Video blog when the initial trailer was released back in June of 2013. At the time I was underwhelmed with the shows CGI and almost immaculate Gotham City streets. For some reason the show was only ever aired at odd times on late night TV here in Australia, which seems to have been it's fate for the second half of the series in the USA too. As a result I only ever caught two or three episodes before the show disappeared. Apparently being declared a financial failure by Cartoon Network .

TV Series Review: 12 Monkeys (2015 - Season 1 ) Spoiler Free

Being a fan of the 1995, Terry Gilliam movie, Twelve Monkeys , when I discovered SyFy channel had adapted it into a TV series, 12 Monkeys , I was interested to see how that would pan out. Although the show has been aired in Australia on free to air TV (I'm pretty sure I've seen it listed there at ridiculous hours on occasion), it's only recently that the first two seasons were added to Australian Netflix. So I added it to my list of shows to watch. This article is not so much a review of the show, rather it's my thoughts on adapting to the TV version after being a big fan of the film. At this point, I've only seen all of season one and the first episode of season two. Going into the TV series I literally went in cold, not knowing anything about the approach to this adaptation from pre-publicity or trailers beforehand. I didn't really have any expectations other than wondering if the show would stick to the movie plot lines closely and, if they did, how w...

James Gunn's Social Media Monkeys Joke Was a Highlight of His Superman Movie For Me

B efore James Gunn's Superman Movie was released there was a whole rumor going around that the movie would feature monkeys on computers trolling Superman's social media, sparking much outrage. #supersh*t. I didn't know this was even a thing until just prior to writing this article. I did a search to see if anyone had posted a clip of the monkeys scene from the movie and got pages of discourse featuring videos and articles prior to the film. Most of it from Gunn detractors (let's say) seeing it as some kind of childish swipe at them... well not them specifically but, you know, those other people who have every right to hate on anything sight unseen. Anyway, I'm not going to give even one such example a link or air because it's kind of sad watching someone devote so much commentary to a throw away gag that is absolutely a nod to James Gunn's Superman trolls. The whole reason this post exists, is to say I loved the joke, because fourteen years ago, and I...

Commodore Computers Are On Their Way Back With a New CEO and Many of the Original Team Founders

Commodore 64 Ultimate: Starlight Edition. An updated C64 for today. C hances are, if you grew up in the 1970s and 80's, the first computer your family owned was a Commodore 64 (or possibly the Vic-20, also by Commodore, that preceded it). I taught myself to code in BASIC on our Commodore 64 (C64), making ASCII based games (i.e. graphics made from the letters and symbols assigned to the various keyboard keys). I coded a Tic Tac Toe two player game, a simple shooting gallery game, and a flash card game to help me learn the Periodic Table, which (much to my... I want to say horror... got me bumped up to an advanced science class in high school). Later I'd go on to dabbling in true 8 bit, and 16 and 32 bit, graphical games, when we upgraded to the C128, Amiga 500, then Amiga 600, but I never actually finished anything because, by then I'd gotten into skateboarding, so I was trying to make my ultimate skateboard game - ambitious much? It was Commodore machines that showed me mak...

Big Hero 6, Baymax and Real Inflatable Robotics

Baymax - a fictional example of a 'Soft' robot. Baymax , the inflatable robot from the animated Disney movie, Big Hero 6 is probably the most famous 'soft' robot in the world of fictional robots today. I didn't really give it much thought when I saw the film but it's not too surprising that Baymax is inspired by real research into the potential of soft robots. I realize I'm a bit late to the party as Mashable wrote about this very subject in their post 'Big Hero 6' star Baymax was inspired by a real robot back in November of 2014 (which is where I first discovered real world soft robotics). However, since I'm somewhat obsessed with the almost certain robot uprising of the not too distant future, I thought it best to bring soft robotics to your attention.

Tesla Unveils Optimus Robot Prototype and Second Generation Prototype - Movie, iRobot, May Be a Documentary?

Tesla Optimus Prototype One, Development Platform. September 30th finally rolled around along with Tesla A.I. day and the unveiling of not one but two Tesla Optimus Robot prototypes. Which was quite a bonus since we hadn't heard anything much about these robots when I wrote about them in July of 2022. Before revealing the first prototype, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, made a point of managing everyone's expectations, just in case anyone was thinking they were about to see anything close to the actual human concept 'robot' we saw last year. I honestly don't think anyone was expecting that. Prototype One - Development Platform The prototype that walked out on stage, for the very first time without ever being tethered to anything (apparently), was still incredibly impressive despite not being streamlined and highly refined in its capability. It walked quite well - eerily similar to the first generation robots in the 2004, Will Smith movie, iRobot , and even did a bit of a dan...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog