I'm not going to beat around the bush: this thing is bad with a capital B. There are very few things that work, and they don't even come close to offsetting the things that don't work at all. The entire thing is a misfire almost from the very beginning.
The story centers around Damian Wayne, the son of Batman and his sometimes foe, sometimes lover Talia al Ghul. When the League of Assassins is decimated by Deathstroke, Talia leaves Damian with Batman. The two almost immediately butt heads due to Damian being raised as an assassin and Batman having his "no killing rule." Despite this, Batman attempts to train and bond with Damian, even as the newest Robin seeks out revenge.
Since I like to give credit where credit is due: the action scenes are fairly well staged (though much more bloody than is necessary, which is something I'll come back to.) Jason O'Mara continues to do strong work as Batman. The characterization and voice work for Nightwing and Alfred are also good, though their roles in the story are fairly minor. Really though, that's about all that I can say nice about this.
The biggest problem is Damian himself: he's simply not likable. He really embodies everything that drove fans to kill off Jason Todd back in the 1980s: he's cocky without having earned the right to be, he lacks any form of charm, he's precocious, and he does nothing but argue with every single person in his life regardless of whether they are trying to help or hurt him. Having talked to some folks who read the comics, the impression I get is that there Damian was disliked at first but fans grew to like him over time. That's fine on the page, but when these films are kept to a lean 75 minutes there just isn't time for audiences to warm to this kid.
Though he's the biggest problem, Damian is far from the only one. I mentioned the violence already. It's not the fact that people are killed, but rather the bloody fashion in which it happens that feels gratuitous. It might not be such a problem, except that if the film is aiming for a more "realistic" portrayal of violence then it shouldn't go from bloody to cartoonish from beat to beat. Example: faceless assassins are gunned down left and right while Ra's al Ghul deflects bullets with a sword, and later on a character has his wrist pinned to the wall by a knife, but suffers no ill effects from that wound once he's free of it. Talia is also a victim of gratuitousness, though the sexual kind in this case. She has an outfit with a neckline that plunges down to her navel. Not only does this fly in the face of combat practicality and the laws of gravity (regarding her boobs appearing so lifted,) but it's 100% unnecessary since Morena Baccarin is able to deliver an edge of sexuality with just her voice and that would have been enough.
Even Batman himself is out of whack in this movie. He admonishes Damian over lethal force (which really feels like a lost cause since one of the first things we see this kid do is shoot somebody in the head,) specifically he berates the kid for the use of a sword. However it's only a matter of minutes later that Batman himself detonates explosives and collapses a ceiling onto a group of mutated henchmen. And then there's Deathstroke, and this one I'm just going to blame the actor. The character's written decently enough but Thomas Gibson didn't give a single line reading that worked. Every word he spoke was flat and disconnected and just killed a visually intimidating character.
Coming on the heels of the already flawed (though not this badly) "Justice League: War," this just kills my enthusiasm for the films based off of stories taken from the New 52 line of comics.
The story centers around Damian Wayne, the son of Batman and his sometimes foe, sometimes lover Talia al Ghul. When the League of Assassins is decimated by Deathstroke, Talia leaves Damian with Batman. The two almost immediately butt heads due to Damian being raised as an assassin and Batman having his "no killing rule." Despite this, Batman attempts to train and bond with Damian, even as the newest Robin seeks out revenge.
Since I like to give credit where credit is due: the action scenes are fairly well staged (though much more bloody than is necessary, which is something I'll come back to.) Jason O'Mara continues to do strong work as Batman. The characterization and voice work for Nightwing and Alfred are also good, though their roles in the story are fairly minor. Really though, that's about all that I can say nice about this.
The biggest problem is Damian himself: he's simply not likable. He really embodies everything that drove fans to kill off Jason Todd back in the 1980s: he's cocky without having earned the right to be, he lacks any form of charm, he's precocious, and he does nothing but argue with every single person in his life regardless of whether they are trying to help or hurt him. Having talked to some folks who read the comics, the impression I get is that there Damian was disliked at first but fans grew to like him over time. That's fine on the page, but when these films are kept to a lean 75 minutes there just isn't time for audiences to warm to this kid.
Though he's the biggest problem, Damian is far from the only one. I mentioned the violence already. It's not the fact that people are killed, but rather the bloody fashion in which it happens that feels gratuitous. It might not be such a problem, except that if the film is aiming for a more "realistic" portrayal of violence then it shouldn't go from bloody to cartoonish from beat to beat. Example: faceless assassins are gunned down left and right while Ra's al Ghul deflects bullets with a sword, and later on a character has his wrist pinned to the wall by a knife, but suffers no ill effects from that wound once he's free of it. Talia is also a victim of gratuitousness, though the sexual kind in this case. She has an outfit with a neckline that plunges down to her navel. Not only does this fly in the face of combat practicality and the laws of gravity (regarding her boobs appearing so lifted,) but it's 100% unnecessary since Morena Baccarin is able to deliver an edge of sexuality with just her voice and that would have been enough.
Even Batman himself is out of whack in this movie. He admonishes Damian over lethal force (which really feels like a lost cause since one of the first things we see this kid do is shoot somebody in the head,) specifically he berates the kid for the use of a sword. However it's only a matter of minutes later that Batman himself detonates explosives and collapses a ceiling onto a group of mutated henchmen. And then there's Deathstroke, and this one I'm just going to blame the actor. The character's written decently enough but Thomas Gibson didn't give a single line reading that worked. Every word he spoke was flat and disconnected and just killed a visually intimidating character.
Coming on the heels of the already flawed (though not this badly) "Justice League: War," this just kills my enthusiasm for the films based off of stories taken from the New 52 line of comics.