Review of Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010) by Dalton M — 29 May 2012

Batman Under the Red Hood the movie based off Batman Under the Red Hood the comic. This movie is one of my top 2 favorite batman animated movies the other being Batman Mask of the Phantasm. Like everything else Batman this movie is pretty dark starting off with the Joker beating the boy wonder himself Robin mercilessly with a crow bar and blowing him up right before Batman can come to his rescue.

This scene comes almost directly from the graphic novel Batman Death in the Family. Years after Robins death and burial a mysterious masked man called the Red Hood appears in Gotham and starts doing Batman's job of taking out scum on the streets but unlike Batman he's not afraid to kill.

The Red Hood starts hinting at failures Batman's had in the past and ultimateley leaves Batman questioning wheather his old boy wonder really did meet his end. Its an interesting and dramatic mystery and it really works to the movies advantage.

I'm more of a Kevin Konroy Batman type of guy but I gotta admit Bruce Greenwood was excelennt as Batman although I felt that Neil Patrick Harris as Nightwing was a little too cheery. I dunno, he just didn't seem to fit.

The same thing goes for the joker. I usually like Mark Hamill to do his voice over but the way John DiMaggio voiced him gave the character a more insane menacing feel. They also have the crime boss the Black Mask playing a pretty big role in this film.

This character was especially funny always loosing his temper and punching random people in the face when he gets angry. I also loved the fight scenes in this movie. I dunno but usually in animated films I find the fight scenes uninteresting and simple.

I'm not sure what made me love these sequences in this film but the animated fighting coreography seemed so well done. This movies actually pretty violent for its genre. It really pushed the boundries of what you can put in an animated superhero flick.

I like it when a movie like this, directed towards the younder audiences rather than adults gets the freedom to show violence and death. Now this may seem a little weird for me to say but heres my reasoning.

I watched the whole one hundred and something episodes of Batman the Animated Series (Great series btw) a little while back and because of its TV rating I'm pretty sure not one person was killed in the whole course of the show.

So It took the suspence out of "I wonder if this persons gonna die" and changed it to "I wonder how batman's gonna save the day this time". Given the freedom to show what it wants with more limited boundries makes the movie seem more mature and real.

I Iove it when an animated movie pulls you in like this. Rareley am I captivated by an animated movie to this level. Batman Under the Red Hood is great and it's one of my favorite films in it's genre.