Batman the deadbeat dad. What
shame. Something else to hang over the head of my good
friend William, a self-proclaimed 'DC', and his precious
Batman. But I'm not going to bother because William will
go out of his way to point out to me the latest DC /
Warner film 'Son of Batman' adheres to 'The New 52 universe'
and he does not acknowledge this universe. Just as well
as I guess because while I enjoyed almost every single DC /
Warner animated film, that streak of enjoyment was disrupted
somewhat by the last one I saw in 'Justice League War',
based on this New 52, which I did not care for all that much,
and I do believe I enjoyed 'Son of Batman' even less.
Apparently a few years back, Talia (voiced by Morena
Baccarin), the daughter of the infamous Ra's al Ghoul
(Giancarlo Esposito), tricked the Batman into sleeping with
her and impregnating her. From this union sprung the
psycho kid Damian (Stuart Allen), who is now ten or so, and a
crazed killer. He was raised by the league of assassins
so what choice did the kid have, really? One sunny day,
the League is ambushed by my main man Slade Wilson, a badass
name if ever there was one, but not nearly as badass as his
villain name Deathstroke. Deathstroke, I think, wants to
take out the league of assassins or something, and his
assassins are doing a great job of wrecking stuff, until he
runs into little Damian. Then he runs from little
Damian. The kid is like ten. Come on
Deathstroke. As a side note, we know Talia al Ghoul is a
comic book female and D-cups mated to a 14 inch waist is part
of the package, but maybe she should zip up. I hate to
be prude, and probably because I'm getting really old, but who
seriously goes into battle with their zipper down to their
belly button, and D-cups flopping around. I mean if she
zipped up, she would still have big boobs. Just saying.
Anyway, Talia needs to keep her psycho son
safe while she figures some things out, so she drops him off
at the doorstep of his surprised father. Damian is a
handful for poor Bruce (Jason O'Meara) and Alfred (David
McCallum), rude, impetuous, and dead set on murdering those
who have done him and his family harm. Bruce tries to
tell the punk 'that we don't kill', but whatever old
man. Somehow Bruce needs to get through to this kid how
things work, that there is another way, other than the ways
the league taught him, but nothing is working. Bruce
even brings Nightwing (Sean Maher) in to talk the punk, but
he… like me… like you if you watch this movie… does not like
Damian. Damian is awful.
Still, Batman is his dad and he has to work with him.
Gives him focus by letting him be the new Robin, and even
brings him along on the death defying mission to take down
Deathstroke. Worst. Dad. Ever. I mean Nightwing, a
grown man, was right there, why not take him instead.
Does Damian appreciate this? No. Does he follow
orders? No. So when the Deathstroke v. Damian
battle happens, am I going to be rooting for the New
Robin? No. And Deathstroke is a terrible person
too.
So I've never read any of these comics that this new spate of
animated films is based on, thus I can't comment on their
accuracy or anything, but I can tell you that the longer the
really brief 'Son of Batman' went on, the more it got on my
nerves. Fortunately for me I don't have to dig too
terribly deep to find the essence of this annoyance as it is
the existence of Damian Wayne. Now I would imagine that
in a comic book setting, which has multiple issues to build a
character and warm you up to a character, such as is probably
the case with Damian in the actual text, but in a short movie,
there was no time to warm up to Damian. He started out
the movie annoying, he ended the movie annoying, and since the
movie is called 'Son of Batman', it's all Damian almost all
the time with the Batman playing support.
Typically, there is a plethora of action crammed into this
short feature, and typically I wouldn't have minded if some of
the action was sacrificed to bring the character of Damian
along so that we liked him a little bit more. And while
we also know that this is just a cartoon, but maybe this ten
year olds baddassery was just a little bit much. Most of
Damian's fight sequences were pretty ridiculous, but none more
so than the kid getting impaled like the Lord and Savior, but
still managing, not only to fight on with almost no
ill-effect, but also conquer his opponent. And not just
any old opponent either.
The voice acting was okay I guess, the animation was pretty
good, there were gallons upon gallons of animated blood spray
to go along with the plethora of animated action, but with a
super annoying Damian taking center stage and the entire
narrative taking a back seat to service this action and its
truncated running time, that makes two times in a row we've
been disappointed in a DC / Warner animated film.
Something which has never happened before.
