I guess on one hand we should take umbrage
with Warner Brothers / DC and their animated film 'Batman:
Assault on Arkham'. I mean it has Batman prominently
featured on the cover and The Batman's name is in the title,
but it is not a Batman film, it is a film about the team of
psychos, miscreants and never-do-wells known as The Suicide
Squad, with The Batman off to the side in support.
But on the other hand, we know Warner Brothers / DC has to
move product, and most unsuspecting mothers probably aren't
going buy their nine year olds a movie with Deadshot and two
over sexualized women on the cover blazing the title 'The
Suicide Squad'. I know my mom wouldn't have
brought it for me back in the day, but loving some Adam West,
she would've brought me Batman all day long. Yay
deceptive marketing! We didn't mind this so much because
the movie was actually pretty darned good.
The abhorrent agency boss Amanda Waller (voiced by CCH
Pounder) needs a job done. She needs a certain group of
people possessing a certain skillset to retrieve an item, this
item being the cane of the Riddler (Matthew Gray Gubler) which
has some critical information and is locked away somewhere in
the notorious Arkham Asylum. Now I'm thinking Amanda,
being as juiced as she is, could've just asked for it, but Ms.
Waller is nothing if not a control freak.
Thus Amanda has kidnapped six very dangerous people, these
being the total whackjob that is Harley Quinn (Hynden Walch),
the overly righteous Black Spider (Giancarlo Esposito), the
super annoying Captain Boomerang (Greg Ellis), the cold as ice
but super-hot Killer Frost (Jennifer Hale), the cannibalistic
King Shark (John DiMaggio) and lastly this films real star,
the lethal assassin Deadshot (Neal McDonough). There was
one more killer Waller hired but he wasn't really a team
player, nor a believer in her methods of control, and now
KGBeast is no longer with us.
So what we have on our hands here is Oceans
Six, as these criminals attempt to execute this heist at
Arkham with as little fanfare as possible, grab the cane, and
then just casually walk out. While also making sure not
to alert The Batman.
Did any of that happen? Of course not because that
wouldn't have been very entertaining. If Waller said
keep it low key, the Suicide Squad heard 'make as much noise
as possible'. Batman has gotten wind of this little
operation and is on his way to bust some heads at Arkham, and
since Harley is around The Joker can't be far
behind. And if The Joker is added to this already
combustible mix, then Chaos and Mayhem shall be the order of
the day. And as suspected, Chaos, Mayhem and exploding
heads shall ensue.
It would appear with each animated film released by Warner /
DC, they push the envelope just… a little bit… further.
I don't think I've seen a more violent animated film from
Warner / DC than 'Assault on Arkham', will the exploding
heads, murders, violent deaths and whatnot, and I know haven't
seen a more sexualized one. Ah… what kind of animated
world would it be if villainesses and heroines didn't have 22
inch waists and weren't in possession of solid C-cups?
It would be a terrible animated world I tell you.
But of course an overload of violence, inappropriately dressed
animated females and cartoons getting down doesn't mean a
thing if the content contained in all of this animated
debauchery is lousy, and I personally found the content in
'Assault on Arkham' entertaining. Wildly so at
times.
Based more on the video games than the actual Batman comics,
videogames I have played a bit, there's a couple of things at
work here. For starters, our heroes are villains, with
Deadshot being the lead here, a character who is nothing if
not inconsistent in his presentation from the various TV
Shows, animated shows, movies and comics we see Floyd Lawton
in. Since our heroes our villains, the writers of this
epic have a little more leeway in how they treat these
villainous heroes we will be spending time with. In a
Justice League movie, we can be pretty certain nobody goings
to get their heads blown clean off, in this movie… anybody can
go at any time, and that does amp up the tension just a little
bit.
The script written for our voice cast was smart and clever in
spots, there was some nice humor… dark humor perhaps… but
humor nonetheless. Obviously there was a lot of action
as that is staple of all of these Warner / DC animated
features… be they good or bad… , the voice acting was rock
solid and the anime styled animation was amongst the best that
Warner Bros. Animation has put out to date. Even the
running length, which is almost always at 75 minutes and also
almost always feels like they rush to cram everything in,
seemed to work for this one as it was paced just about
right. It was a fast moving piece of work, to be sure,
but it didn't feel like a rushed piece of work.
Other than the fact that the narrative isn't much to write
home about, and in the age of Ray Rice, the Joker / Harely
Quinn relationship may be a little upsetting for some, I'm
pleased with what I got from 'Batman: Assault on
Arkham'. And I guess if I were a bigger Batman fan I'd
be upset he wasn't in it more, but we are even okay with
that.
