Movies / Animé and Toons

Comic Con Exclusive: Batman: Year One

By Dan Horn
July 26, 2011 - 11:22

If you've read Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, don't expect many surprises going into the iconic story's animated film adaptation. In a Q&A session about the film, producer and legendary animator Bruce Timm was asked how he made Year One his own. To which he replied, "I didn't. This is Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's comic book." The film really is a direct translation of Miller and Mazzucchelli's four-issue Batman run from 1987, the script almost verbatim from the books.

The story oscillates between Lt. James Gordon, a recent transfer to the  Gotham City Police Department, and Bruce Wayne, the wealthy "Prince of Gotham" recently returned from a self-imposed exile after witnessing his parents' murders. Gordon finds himself in a precarious position when he uncovers just how corrupt GCPD really is, but, with his pregnant wife at home, he's got everything to lose should he go against the grain. Meanwhile Bruce has finished his extensive physical and mental training to exact vengeance on the Gotham underworld for the death of his mother and father, and when he dons the mantle of Batman he and the crooked GCPD Commissioner Loeb are set on a fateful collision course, one that puts James Gordon in a moral quandary that he can't easily shake off.

So, how does this twenty-four year-old story perform today? Surprisingly well, actually. I became painfully aware of something during this film: this wasn't just Miller's take on Batman's origins, as I think many of us have naively assumed for many years; this was his direct response to the Philadelphia MOVE firebombing of 1985, to police corruption and brutality, to dirty politicians, and it's a message that resonates especially today with America at the brink of defaulting as the Senate and House squabble over politics. Who really represents the American people: The congressman who is caught having extramarital affairs or taking bribes while his district crumbles into anarchy, or the idea of vigilante justice? It's easy to see that what Frank Miller is telling us is that in a perfect world there would be an equally perfect foil for our country's societal problems, someone like Batman, perhaps someone like a Fawkesish NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, or even a masked Barrack Obama. It's a refreshingly hopeful perspective in lieu of bleak reality, when hope is what we need.

There are a few inherent problems with adapting Miller word-for-word. Some of his hard-boiled crime noir dialogue rings silly at times, and his hyperbole, like kicking trees in half for example, is glaringly divergent from Year One's somewhat realistic take on Batman's humble beginnings. Also, a plot thread involving Detective Sarah Essen is never concluded in a satisfying or definitive manner. It just seems to subsist to add one more twist, and, once it's achieved it, it's gone.

Batman: Year One also moves at a breakneck pace, to a fault sometimes, excluding Mazzucchelli's attention to atmosphere in favor of succinctness, but it's enormously entertaining nonetheless. The fight animations are fluid and vicious, perhaps the best I've seen in a WB animated feature. The voice work lent by Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston (Gordon), Ben McKenzie (Wayne), Katee Sackhoff (Sarah Essen), and Eliza Dushku (Selina Kyle) is phenomenal. Cranston's Gordon is tough, but conflicted and human, and McKenzie gives Bruce a novice vulnerability, whether by virtue of a fantastic performance or due to this being his first time doing voice-over work. Either way, it really works.

In the end, it's just absolutely exhilarating to see such a classic and quintessential Batman story brought to life in this way. It's not perfect, but it ranks among the best animated films Warner Bros. has released and gives Under the Red Hood a run for its money.

Batman: Year One hits store shelves on BluRay and DVD the same day, October 18, 2011, as the Batman: Arkham City video game.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12