Random Recommendation: Batman: Under The Red Hood

One reason I'm sort of biased against the Nolan movies is that the Animated show and the subsequent animated movies are so good.

Downloadable from Amazon for like $2.99 or something is Batman: Under the Red Hood, from a year or two ago. I watched it expecting little and wound up being nicely surprised.

A long time ago Batman had a second Robin. The first Robin had split off to be his own superhero, Nightwing. The second Robin, Jason Todd, was generally disliked by the fans. DC did a nasty little stunt-- they wrote a plotline in which Joker apparently murders Jason Todd, and asked readers to call in (paying $0.50 a call, of course) to vote on whether to Keep Him or Kill Him.

They voted to kill him. And DC did.

Under the Red Hood is about this incident, or, rather, the aftermath of it.

They did something comic books always do -- they brought Jason Todd back. But it's one of the few times All Is Forgiven because it's a pretty neat storyline. As to how he came back -- well, I won't spoil it, but it makes sense (in the comic book universe of Batman, anyhow).

And when Jason Todd came back, he came back angry. Angry at violent criminals, and angry at Batman, whose coddling, morally weak non-lethal manner of dealing with violent crime resulted in his own death. Although the Joker is a major character in it, the main conflict is between Batman and Jason Todd's vigilante alter-ego, the Red Hood, and it's actually pretty well done.

They took a lame, unpopular character and made him pretty interesting.

Below is a clip from one of the last scenes in the feature. It's kind of stupid to include such a late scene -- spoilers -- but I really like it.

If you have any interest in this movie, though, don't watch past 2:00. Just watch the first two minutes to see if you like the central conflict here. If you watch past that, you kind of just watched the whole end of the movie.

I never was a big fan of Batman and Robin, but somehow Batman Versus Robin is pretty compelling.

One major demerit because Mark Hammill doesn't do his perfect voicing for the Joker. They got someone else. This guy's pretty good, but Mark Hammill is so plainly the definitive Joker Voice, it's a little disappointing.

The Second-Best Batman Storyline:

posted by Ace at 08:58 PM

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