Monday at the Movies - February 8, 2016

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Before the onslaught of superhero movies this year, let’s slow things down a bit with a smaller, animated feature.

Batman: Bad Blood (2016) – Following Son of Batman and Batman vs. Robin, this is the third standalone Batman animated film in a new continuity, the most significant changes being that Jason O’Mara has replaced Kevin Conroy as The Dark Knight, and said Knight has a son, Damian (Stuart Allan). As the third movement in what is ostensibly a trilogy, a few loose ends get revisited – Damian’s tenuous status between his superhero father and his terrorist mother Talia al Ghul (Morena Baccarin, who sounds to be phoning it in more than on Son of Batman), Nightwing’s uneasy relationship with the boy, and an overall updating of the mythology to accommodate its most recent additions. It’s on the grounds of this element that Bad Blood has its greatest success – much of its central content has only just been added to the Batman mythos in the last ten years. Damian, Batwoman (Yvonne Strahovski) and Batwing (Gaius Charles), plus villain The Heretic are newcomers that fit in quite well with the standing Batman lore, and the film does them a great service in introducing them to new fans and old diehards alike. Bad Blood is, as the title suggests, a little bloodier than we’re used to (an exploding head seems out of place for Gotham City), and there’s a surprising lack of Batman here, as he spends a good portion of the film “dead.” Fortunately, the new faces rise to the occasion, particularly Allan’s Damian, who continues to steal the show. Bad Blood does feel a bit transitory, a waypoint on the way to the next film and its larger cast, but my interest in these iterations of Batwoman and Batwing is sufficiently piqued.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week, but stay tuned this Wednesday for the first in a brand-new feature!