Batman: Bad Blood (2016)

(On TV, August 2022) As I write this, Warner Brothers is having almost comical difficulties creating a slate of decent live-action “DC Extended Universe” (DCEU) films from DC Comics superheroes, with rare successes being overshadowed by baffling decisions and no evidence of any intelligence at the strategic level. Meanwhile, of course, there’s a growing corpus of perfectly serviceable animated movies that are able to present a vast shared universe of DC superheroes. Batman: Bad Blood manages to touch upon material that can’t even be brought forward with the current state of the DCEU: Batman not as a loner, but as the central character of an extended group of family and friends. (The closest we got to that idea being explored in cinema was… The Lego Batman Film, and a few other animated films.)  This brings a welcome spin on a character portrayed very differently in live-action films, and shows just how much the animated wing of the DC superhero movies is able to riffle through some deep-cut mythology in order to bring something interesting on-screen. Now, I won’t try to argue that the film is that good—the dialogue is ordinary, the cinematography is average and it’s too short with too many characters to allow for anything beyond a cursory plot. (In that way, you can at least say that it’s faithful to the comic book arcs.) Nonetheless, Batman: Bad Blood is watchable enough—especially for fans of the extended Batman cast of characters that rarely make it to live-action movies before they’re rebooted in favour of yet another origin story. What’s less fun, of course, is that those animated films are made with low ambitions—it would be interesting to see one with the budget and running time attempt something as ambitious as some of the Elseworld one-shots.