Gotham Knight is an odd little number, an adventurous
attempt to create an Animatrix equivalent for Christoper Nolan’s big-screen
Bat-saga. However, the six loosely-connected shorts play fast and loose with
the continuity and the established “rules” of the Nolanverse, and are really more
fun distractions than serious Expanded Universe material.
Batman has rarely looked better than he does here, due to
the creative freedom given to multiple animation studios to depict him in a
variety of anime-inspired styles. With Kevin Conroy firing on all cylinders as
the voice of the Caped Crusader, the anthology is basically a string of
fan-pleasing touches and dramatic visual flourishes. A hulking Batman erupts
from the heart of a raging fire to attack a gangster. Batman explores the
gloomy, atmospheric depths of Gotham’s perilous sewer system. Batman brawls
with some demented cultists in an underground lair. Batman appears as a vampire
in an impressionable teen’s fevered re-telling of his exploits. Batman has an
epic showdown with Deadshot on a speeding train, and so on.
While hardly vital material, Gotham Knight works as a
thumping love letter to everything evocative and exhilarating about the
character and his world, a reminder of the power of the animated medium to
bring such an iconic, archetypal hero to brooding life.
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