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version seven. http://demongin.org |
Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Eric Radomski and Bruce W. Timm
Impression published on Sunday, 2010-05-09 | Film | 4 stars
This is a really good Batman movie.
And even though, while watching it, I couldn't stop thinking about how much more meaningfully this movie worked with the Batman character and how much more stylish it was than Chris Nolan's ill-fated 20XX live-action Batman reduxes, reiterating my low opinion of the dragon-voice Bale-man fan-fic movies or trying to explain how Mark Hamil and Jack Nicholson "get it" in a way that Nolan and Heath Ledger couldn't be made to understand with diagrams and puppets, I'd rather not waste the space on hate.
Not that space is ever really "wasted" if it's used to castigate idiots, but that's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is a kick-ass animated feature that runs for less than an hour and a half, features formidable voice talent (including Abe Vigoda, Dana Delaney and the fore-mentioned Mark Hamil, in addition to the regular animated series guys) and tells a (ninja-less!) Batman story that builds on the fundamentals of the Batman character, does a cool thing with the Joker (by hinting at an intriguing alternate origin, without tediously over-explaining it to death) and offers a stylish Gotham that sits on the edge of an abandoned World's Fair. Indeed, one of the best things about this Batman is the Gotham: I'd say that, for my money, the moonlit 20th century penumbra in which conscience and id meet on the concrete for pistols-at-dawn has seldom been as evocatively represented as it is here.
Definitely see this movie.
