Certificate – 15
Directed By – Christopher Berkeley, Sam Liu
Starring (Voice By) – David Giuntoli, David Dastmalchian, Tati Gabrielle, Christopher Gorham, Jason Marsden, Karan Brar, Patrick Fabian, Emily O’Brien.
Running Time – 86 Minutes (1 Hour 26 Minutes)
Every time I review an animated DC straight-to-DVD movie, I greatly enjoy them. It could be because, being a 90s kid, it’s growing up on the incredible DC animated shows like Batman, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans, Superman and the Justice League.
For a large part, I’m also a fan of the DCAM. However, this doesn’t stop them from having a bad day and Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is one of those days.
Set in 1920’s, explore Bruce Wayne must return to Gotham after unleashing an ancient evil and must battle the Lovecraftian supernatural forces threating the sheer excistence of his city.
The film is an adaptation of the popular DC Elseworlds miniseries of the same name as was written by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. You can tell it had his fingerprints over it, as this is a far more creature horror mind trip of Gotham as you would expect.
Because of this, I didn’t enjoy the film as much. I didn’t understand a hell of a lot of what was happening and even when the film was explaining it, it just flew over my mind.
This movie sums up the issue within DC that they lean so heavily into Batman for their home entertainment and I’m sure DC and Warner Bros Discovery would point to the sale numbers. However, they’re clearly digging into the cave so far that there are not many dark knight stories left to tell.
I hope DC Studios look into this moving forward, and we can see other heroes get the spotlight.
With that issue aside, the DCA always smash it with the design and colours of their movies and it’s no different here. It’s a stunning looking film. Also, Stefan L. Smith did a great job with the score.
Elsewhere, Giuntoli does a wonderful job voicing Bruce Wayne and Batman that it feels like (if he wanted to) be the man to take on Kevin Conroy’s mantle and be the voice behind the man with the cowl.
Sadly, the other voices didn’t stand out as much.
The other thing I enjoyed was seeing the different versions of known Batman/DC characters like Harvey Dent and Oliver Queen, with Gorham delivering some fun moments, and a scene involving Bruce, Harvey and Oliver and their close friendship was one of the best in the film and something I hope to see in future depictions.
Verdict
While it’s beautiful to look at and listen to the music, Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is a lower-tier DC animated movie with the main positive being Giuntoli is an excellent voice of Batman and I would love to see him continue for years to come.
The Bear Cave 