Love animation and have really enjoyed to loved many superhero films, animated and live-action. Justice League has always interested me too. Of the DC animated films, there are some good ones out there as well as some disappointments.
'Batman: Bad Blood' is one of the bigger disappointments and towards the weaker half of the DC animated films. To me, it is not as bad as has been made out, there are some good qualities here, but agree with a lot of the criticisms made and feel it could have been much better. There was actually a good idea on paper here, this good idea just on the most part didn't make it on screen and this is a big shame.
Starting with the good things, the best thing about 'Batman: Bad Blood' is the animation. There are some very nice detailed backgrounds, the characters are designed well and the colours are dynamic and atmospheric. The music is both haunting and rousing, a good fit for the film's mood.
Alfred is awesome as one can hope, just wish there was more, and Dick and Nightwing are also handled well. The voice acting for the heroes is pretty decent, from especially Sean Maher, Stuart Allan and James Garrett. Jason O'Mara is credible as Batman, but has little to do. Morena Maccarin actually does a quite good job as Talia Al Ghul all things considered, that the character is disappointingly written does not rest at her door in terms of blame, it's the writers' fault entirely. Some of the action is well animated and has its thrills.
However, 'Batman: Bad Blood' does have a lot against it. Namely that it has too many characters (most of them handled in a way that underwhelms), trying to include too many subplots of very variable quality, crammed into a far too short running time, meaning that the film . As said, few of the characters are satisfactorily handled.
For a title that indicates that it's a Batman film, even when one is reading the film's summary, there is far too little of Batman and far too much of the significantly less interesting Batwoman, who is not an interesting or well explored character at all and is instead one-dimensional, clichéd and very difficult to like let alone engage with. Saw absolutely no point to the inclusion of Batwing, whose character suffers from all the problems with Batwoman except the screen time issue. A much better job could have been done with the villains, devoid of much menace or complexity on the whole with very vague motivations. The exception is the suitably mysterious Heretic, but needed more to do. Meanwhile Talia Al Ghul is particularly wronged here.
Writing on the most part takes simplicity to the extreme and becomes simplistic and feels stilted as well. So many cringe-worthy lines here. The main story was potentially interesting but wasn't gritty enough or focused on enough, even getting lost amidst the attempts at developing the new characters that come off unsuccessfully. It is agreed that the male villains' voice acting is too similar, mainly because at least three of them are in multiple roles that they all sound too samey in, John Di Maggio a particular example and usually Di Maggio is very good at voicing villains. While Steve Blum is a very talented voice actor and has often excelled in voicing villains, he's over-parted. The action on the most part lacks tension, and the far too easy, abrupt and insulting dispatching of some of the villains does them no justice.
In conclusion, disappointing but not unwatchable. 4/10 Bethany Cox
