Get ready to root for bad guys! is the tagline for the newest DC Universe Original Movie, Batman: Assault on Arkham, but will that be the case by the time you finish watching the film? I don’t know if I’d go that far, but there’s enough raucous carnage and comic book eye-candy to keep fans watching who have enjoyed the increasingly mature content in the films within the DC Animated Universe.
Set in the same continuity as the wildly successful Arkham video games, Batman: Assault on Arkham focuses on Amanda Waller (CCH Pounder, reprising from Justice League and Justice League: Unlimited) and her Suicide Squad, a group of captured super-villains forced to do black-ops missions for the government to shave time off their sentences. Outside of Harley Quinn, this version of the team is mostly B-list and C-list villains including King Shark (John DiMaggio), Deadshot (Neal McDonough), Killer Frost (Jennifer Hale), Captain Boomerang (Greg Ellis), and Black Spider (Giancarlo Esposito).
When the Riddler (Matthew Gray Gubler) gets sent to Arkham with some crucial information that Waller does not want in the wrong hands, she calls ‘Task Force X’ aka The Suicide Squad into action to infiltrate the legendary Asylum while avoiding the Bat and the baddies within.
Director Jay Oliva has a strong resume when it comes to being chosen for this particular DC Animated Film, having done both The Dark Knight Returns: Part 1 & 2. Only this film bucks the straightforward trend of the recent adaptations, instead relinquishing Batman to a supporting role and invoking the vibe of a brawling heist film, complete with individual freeze-frame title cards introducing each member of the Suicide Squad, while being set in a superhero universe.
The film starts slow and struggles to establish why we should care about the villainous team, whom have decided to follow the leadership of Deadshot on this mission. Much to the delight of fans, Kevin Conroy reprises his role as Batman from the video game franchise, but he shows up mostly in cameo mode throughout.
Batman: Assault on Arkham really hits its groove in the back half of the film, when predictably things go wrong with the caper inside Arkham and all hell breaks loose (w/cameos galore). Much to my surprise, even though the marketing didn’t focus much on the character, The Joker (Troy Baker) has a fairly prominent role in the latter half of the film. Baker is still doing his uncanny Mark Hamill impression, which works for the most part while allowing him to almost get more sadistic than his video game counterpart a few times.
While it was fun to see the Arkham-verse from a different angle (such as The Penguin in the Iceberg lounge, complete with Nolan North reprising the role), most of the Suicide Squad themselves were uninteresting. The only exception is the oddly adorable friendship between King Shark and Killer Frost, but otherwise there’s not much substance to what’s going on in the story.There’s even an awkward brief sex scene thrown in there early on to perhaps spice things up or give a laugh, but it just ends up feeling weird.
The film looks great on Blu-Ray, as you’d expect, and the washed-out color palettes mix with vibrant reds and greens that really pop off the screen. The extras included don’t break the mold and follow the tried-and-true formula that has worked thus far for the other DC animated films, including a featurette titled Arkham Analyzed: The Secrets Behind the Asylum that explores the hospital’s history, and a look at Joker’s incredibly popular gal with The Joker’s Queen: Harley Quinn. Both extras give some fun back story and trivia to fans and serve as an informative way for those unfamiliar with them to learn more about those facets of the Batman mythos.
Always my favorite extra on these discs are the previews of the next DC Universe Original Movie, and this time we get one that I’m very excited about: Justice League: Throne of Atlantis. Per usual, the creative forces behind the comic book story and the animated adaptation talk about the work, while debuting storyboards and other previously unseen visuals from the film. I’m excited to see Aquaman take center stage, especially since it’s based on Geoff Johns’ stellar run in the comics and hopefully this means we’ll see films from characters other than Batman and Superman going forward for a bit.
Lastly, we get our usual “From the Vault” cartoons from classic animated series related to the main film. This time we get the Task Force X episode from Justice League: Unlimited, The Batman episode featuring Harley Quinn titled Two of a Kind, the Batman: Brave and the Bold episode Emperor Joker, and Iniltrator from one of my favorite shows: Young Justice. Kinda cool that the DC Universe has gotten so deep in the animated realm that we can have four related episodes to a Batman film and none of them are from Batman: The Animated Series.
Batman: Assault on Arkham might be one of the weaker outings by Warner Bros Home Video in their DC Universe Original Movie line, but with that being said, it’s still a fun-flashy ride of an animated film for the grown-ups. Unfortunately it might take some undue ire because the bar has been set so high by previous works, and it certainly doesn’t help that the extra features have become almost predictable (yet still solid enough) in their content. Batman: Assault on Arkham is a step sideways in the momentum DC’s Animation has been gathering and won’t work for everybody, but still takes advantage of its premise and creates an entertaining heist film set within the Arkham video game universe.
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