Batman Year One The Animated Movie

[Travesty]

Great movie!
My favourite of the DC animated movies thus far!
I completely understand why somebody wouldnt like McKenzie's voice but I thought it was great. His cold and considered delivery was, in it's own unique way, very Batman. I'd take something like that over Bales Shouty voice anyday...

Same here.

And I'm surprised at all the UTRH love. I like the movie, but I had no idea people liked it that much. Kinda strange, cause Year One followed the book closer than UTRH, and I think the voice actors are better all around. I still have a hard time with Di Maggio's Joker voice, too.

I dunno, all I can say, is if you like the book, you shouldn't be disappointed.

 

[The Joker]

If you like how he sounds from that one clip of him at the dinner party, then you should like his voice.

Good stuff, because I really liked his voice in that clip.

 

[Mister Meddle]

Regardless of what I said, I'd take this Batman over Bale's throat cancer voice.

 

[joem4077]

As far as other Frank Miller Batman adaptations, The Dark Knight Returns is being released late next year as a two-parter.

I'm hoping for something along the lines of "The Long Halloween" series.

 

[Travesty]

I really don't know what I would like to see adapted. There are so many good stories. I hope they do as good of a job with TDKR as they did with this.

TLH would be a good one too. Hmmmm, what else would you guys like seeing adapted? I can't think of a particular one off the top of my head at this moment. They kinda showed some of A Death in the Family in UTRH, but they kinda had to to explain some things. Maybe I would like to see Tales of the Demon being remade.

 

[Mister Meddle]

I'd love to see an animated film adaptation covering Batman from his first couple years in Detective Comics. I always wanted to see animated films exploring different eras.

 

[Frontier]

I'm starting to go nuts waiting for this. I know it's out and such, but my birthday is the 1st of next month so I decided, since everyone always laments "you're impossible to buy for" that I'd hold off on buying this my own self and let someone get it for me. Damn me!

 

[The Joker]

Mine will hopefully be here tomorrow. I've been reading reviews across the net and it's been very mixed. Probably more leaning towards the bad than the good from what I've seen. With UTRH it was universal acclaim.

I hope I enjoy this. I really love the comic book story.

 

[Travesty]

What are the reviews saying? Are they bummed that there wasn't as much Batman as other Bat-movies?

 

[CConn]

This is an odd thing to admit, but as terribly stilted as Batman's voice was in YO, that's exactly what I imagined him sounding like when I first read the comic.

 

[EliteF50]

Great movie!
My favourite of the DC animated movies thus far!
I completely understand why somebody wouldnt like McKenzie's voice but I thought it was great. His cold and considered delivery was, in it's own unique way, very Batman. I'd take something like that over Bales Shouty voice anyday...

Why can't we just have great Batman voices all around? Why compromise? I hate having to say, "Well at least he's not as bad as _____". I just don't understand how Andrea Romano, a fantastic voice director and caster, could give us what we got in Year One.

Did they have to use Ben? Was he the only choice they had?

 

[EliteF50]

Mine will hopefully be here tomorrow. I've been reading reviews across the net and it's been very mixed. Probably more leaning towards the bad than the good from what I've seen. With UTRH it was universal acclaim.

I hope I enjoy this. I really love the comic book story.

Well, like I said, it's a really good animated DC movie, but it's not nearly as good as UTRH or MOTP.

 

[CConn]

Why can't we just have great Batman voices all around? Why compromise? I hate having to say, "Well at least he's not as bad as _____". I just don't understand how Andrea Romano, a fantastic voice director and caster, could give us what we got in Year One.

Did they have to use Ben? Was he the only choice they had?

Um, he said he liked Ben's voice. He was compromising.

 

[EliteF50]

I just kinda went on a rant, never mind me replying to him. :\

 

[3rdstone]

Couldn't help myself but start watching this flick quite late at night, which means quite low volume not to disturb thy neighbors (couldn't find my extension cable for my head set..). Hence my inability to really judge quality of actors voices. I'll rewatch it regarding that matter.

Since I personally reckoned the amazing artwork by David Mazzucchelli and Richmond Lewis, and the beautiful narrative lettering by Todd Klein would be very hard to transform into an animated movie of the todays popular standard, I held my hopes quite low regarding the artwork of BYO. But even despite that, I miss something in this movie if were talking pure aesthetically and about the art.

It's a bit hard to describe what I mean, the sceneries are great (and I'd love to experience a great director try to make a live action movie just out of those since they're very cinematic for an animated movie IMHO). Probably it's just a matter of taste, but personally I think the "style" of the animation is somewhat bland most of the time.

Batman really do look great here, and I love that you really can tell it's the 80:s just by looking the cars (i.e: Bruce is driving a 928 like in the novel: Brilliant!), the action scene between Bats and the cops is great, the infamous "dinner scene" also totally delievers. However, I miss some heart and soul regarding the artwork when it comes to the interaction between characters.

I know the comparison is far-fetched, but Fleischers old Superman flicks from the 40:s, and of course Timms more modern Batman animations (although the obvious more "cartoonish" style) feels like brilliant and timeless art in comparision to BYO. That's of course IMHO.

I don't want to sound like a negative whining bastard though. The script is great and follows the book quite thouroughly (as I remember it) and although you can't have all the narrative text that was a huge part of the novel, you still enjoy the great story.

Gordons character is as interesting here as in the novel, which of course means more interesting and more complex (and even more badass) than we ever seen before. I do happen to belong to one of those conservative annoying old bastards that think that the only flaw in the story is the presentation and minimal featuring of Catwoman/Selina Kyle, but that's just another matter of taste.

I might sound negative, but I absolutely don't mean BYO is bad. I just personally think it would've been excellent if the artwork was at the same level as the story. To me personally there's some discrepancy there.

EDIT: And of course, if you liked the original BYO-novel you have to watch this flick.

 

[The Filmist]

My problem with the aesthetic direction of the film - from what I've seen, in any case - is that, while it resembles Mazzuchelli's artwork in a more superficial sense, by going with this clean and sanitized sort of look, they're missing the essential "grit," texture and humanity that Mazzuchelli brought to the work.

His artwork in Batman Year One is probably the most pure example of the style he'd perfected working in mainstream comics for so long beforehand - it's minimalist realism; every piece of line-work is essential to the panel's mise en scene, so they're sparse and vary in thickness. But, along with the use of color and shadow, they're used so economically that it creates an image of, say, Jim Gordon or even Batman himself that's far more human and real than anything that Jim Aparo or Marv Wolfman would draw. And, after seeing Mazzuchelli's artwork, as good as those two or any other more mainstream artist might be, you begin to look at their stuff and realize just how extraneous and inconsequential a lot of the elements in their panels are.

Bring that to the work. Make it feel real - as real as Batman can feel, anyhow.

 

[CConn]

Doesn't that grittiness require a level of detail that animation art can't really achieve though?

 

[theMan-Bat]

The animation is impressively faithful to the book. Panels were even xeroxed and used as storyboards. Bruce Timm explained, "There was literally some places where we literally xeroxed panels from the comic and just literally slapped them on a storyboard and said, 'well, there you go, nobody needs to draw that.'"
Co-Director Lauren Montgomery: "We really tried to make it match as much with the comic as we could so that the fans can actually look at the DVD, pause it, look at the comic and see something close to the exact same drawing just translated to the screen."
They were not going for a clean and sanitized sort of look. And they were definitely focusing on giving Batman: Year One the essential grit.
Co-Director Lauren Montgomery explained, "We actually tried to make Gotham as dirty and ugly as we possibly could. That’s a harder thing to do than you realize, just getting the overseas artists to really put that extra detail in the backgrounds with just like cracks and trash. We kept getting these perfectly clean cities back and have to make notes, 'It needs to be dirty. Put graffiti, put crap in there.' So yeah, it’s hard to make – you don’t realize how difficult it is to get a realistic looking alley way because when they’re painting it digitally, a lot of things tend to look pretty clean and pretty pristine. So just to go in and add that extra detail like things being crooked is that much more work. But we tried to get as much as that in there as we could so that the city really felt real."

Toonzone News: "So is this the dirtiest, grungiest animated movie you’ve ever worked on?"

Lauren Montgomery: "I think so because a lot of our other ones – we’ve never really had a Gotham that has looked as dirty as this. It really needed to feel just miserable because so much of the comic is about Gordon being surrounded by corruption and just being miserable in Gotham, and Bruce realizing what Gotham is and wanting to make it better. So the city had to be a character in the movie itself. So we wanted to just make it feel like the dirty, sad Gotham that it needed to be."
http://www.toonzone.net/news/article...ble-interviews

 

[The Joker]

What are the reviews saying? Are they bummed that there wasn't as much Batman as other Bat-movies?

That's one of the complaints. A lot of them were saying it should be called Gordon Year One. Others are saying what some have said here about the voice acting really lacking. Some just said the movie drags.

 

[Sith Scotti]

That's one of the complaints. A lot of them were saying it should be called Gordon Year One. Others are saying what some have said here about the voice acting really lacking. Some just said the movie drags.

These morons should have read the source material . If this was more Batman , than people would be complaining it wasn't faithful . This story is as much Jim Gordon's ....

 

[Mister Meddle]

These morons should have read the source material . If this was more Batman , than people would be complaining it wasn't faithful . This story is as much Jim Gordon's ....

I liked the film but I don't why they should be labeled as "morons" for expressing their opinion. You can't expect everyone to have the same taste as you. Chances are if they don't like the lack of Batman in the film then they're going to feel the same way about the book because they're both pretty much the same.

 

[CConn]

Yeah, the main point should be; if any reviews say anything negative about the story, pacing, etc. It's really a criticism of the comic itself...and not so much the movie.

 

[The Joker]

These morons should have read the source material . If this was more Batman , than people would be complaining it wasn't faithful . This story is as much Jim Gordon's ....

Their complaint wasn't faithfulness to the source material. That's one of the things I've seen the movie get a lot of praise for.

 

[CapedCrusader14]

I just finished watching the film and overall, I enjoyed it. I do have some gripes though. As a forewarning, I have read the graphic novel multiple times and its in my Top 3 Batman graphic novels.

1. Voice acting: as many have pointed out, the voice acting in the film is not exactly the best. Bryan Cranston was easily the best out of the lot and did a fantastic job as Gordon. Eliza was not bad as Selina either. Everybody else was forgettable and seemed like they were just reading off a script. Ben Mckenzie was forgetful as Bruce. He pretty much gave a dead delivery for the majority of his lines. Bare in mind, I thought Bruce Greenwood was fantastic as Bruce in UTRH.

2. Pacing: this was a gripe I had with the GN as well. The story always feels as if it is jumping ahead to quickly. It wasn't as much a problem in the GN but it just didn't seem to work on film.

I'd probably give the film a 7.5/10. The art was great at times and the action was fantastic. The script would have been more enjoyable if the voice acting was better. There was a change at the end of the film when Bruce is going to the bridge that annoyed me as well.

Either way, a faithful adaption that kind of misses the mark.

 

[The Filmist]

I just saw it as well - not bad, but the crisp cleanliness of the animation does take a little away from it's impact, as I mentioned earlier. It was refreshing to see that they shot - well, "shot" because it's animation, I suppose - all of the larger fight sequences in fluid, open style. We get to see Batman move, like he's supposed to. The way he never has in any of the live-action incarnations. That scene where he's fending off Brenden and the rest of his SWAT crew in the abandoned building is a wonder to watch.

But, like a lot of others have noted, the real problem with this film is the voice acting - Cranston's really the best part of it all, and anyone who doesn't have an easy, inconsequential bit-part sounds like they're either asleep (McKenzie, seriously what the hell was that) or playing for a fan film off of Youtube. It's disappointing. More than that, a lot of the reading just sounds . . .unnatural, which is weird because the dialogue they're reading is explicitly naturalistic. Maybe it's because I heard it differently in my head, but it just sounds too canny, here.

I've also always had a problem with panel-for-panel adaptations in general - for anyone who's read my site, that's why I can't stand Watchmen - but, that's a gripe for another time I guess.