BIG HUGE TREMENDOUS props to a LEGO builder supreme who completed this Battle Cruiser Yamato replica. If you think this image is impressive, wait until you see the other views.

The Gotham Knight DVD (available now) is a real mixed bag. It’s a messy affair that’s fairly dull except for a few interesting design elements. It’s like the plate of Chinese food in the restaurant window. It’s encased in plastic to keep it looking fresh but that very same plastic also makes it unappetizing.

I have to question the wisdom of even attempting a project like this one. It reeks of “Hey, that Ani-Matrix DVD was cool. Let’s do something like that!” The Ani-Matrix DVD was artistically successful because each animator got to choose his own take on the subject and none of the stories was linked by anything but the universe they existed in. It was more expressive and less corporatized. Gotham Knight is the opposite. It’s like the commodification of the Ani-Matrix idea.

There are five sequences, many of them storied by Jordan Goldberg, which present what I think is supposed to be a single continuous story. Let’s be honest – there isn’t much story here. A few old school villains show up briefly but none of the villainous stars most of us would expect. No, what little story there is revolves around Bruce and Bats and it’s not exciting, interesting, or deep. It just is. If you’re a zen monk you might just LOVE this package. Me? It put me to sleep. That’s not to say that it’s all bad.

There are interesting designs for Bruce and Batman that are all over the map visually but which provide us with something to look forward to in the next fifteen-minute vignette. It’s the only dramatic tension in the piece. What will the next Batman look like? It’s like watching music videos. Yeah, this one sucks but maybe the next one will be cool. The only problem is that in this day of on demand programming I’m more likely to fast forward through the suckage. This project really needed a kick-ass plot to keep me interested. Batman has always needed more than generic villains and a drive toward self-sacrifice. You’d think Bruce Timm would know better after all the miles he’s travelled with this character. Hell, he was instrumental in bringing to the screen one of my favorite Batman flicks, Mask of the Phantasm. So what happened?

It’s hard to know what exactly Bruce Timm had to do with this project (he’s listed as “executive producer”). The old Batman the Animated Series staff is well represented (including Kevin Conroy as Batman) but the look of the older show is nowhere to be seen. Instead, this Batman seems to exist in Christopher Nolan’s Gotham City and with Nolan’s characters but with costumes and props from other films, comics, and sometimes from the animators’ imaginations. This helps to reinforce the disjointed nature of what is supposed to be a melting pot of sorts. I don’t have a problem with moving forward with the look of the animated Batman but if the stories are supposed to be cohesive, there should at least be some common ground to the designs. Since Warner Brothers obviously had a hand in the choice of setting these stories in the same world as the upcoming Dark Knight feature, why not clearly set all five segments (and all five Bats) in that space? For that matter, why even involve five directors? Why not make a film with a single interesting storyline with one of those directors? Hey, it could even be an ongoing series of films like the Masters of Horror series.

I’d actually have preferred wildly contrasting takes on the character in a variety of expressionistic storylines in a variety of lengths. If you’re going to turn talented people loose with your character wouldn’t you prefer to see what they would have done when completely unbound?  Instead these filmmakers were given just enough rope to hang themselves.

PS – There’s a decent featurette about the upcoming Wonder Woman animated feature on the disc. Let’s hope it fares better than this set.