Red Beacon Review: Batman Knighfall Part 1

It's the review. Batman Nightfall. The story you probably know as The Dark Knight Rises. Just released. Rated R animated Batman film. Felt like it was under two hours. I don't know. I'm a fan. For a little background, you gotta understand. I own the majority of the Batman animated films. The Nightfall comic series is one of the quintessential readings if you're going to get into reading Batman comic books. Gotta read Nightfall. There's a list. If you're interested, we can go deeper and talk about the list of essential comics to read if you're going to read Batman. Because there's a lot of Batman out there, man. So, Nightfall... Hinges on, oh, you know what, here's a caveat that you all should understand when it comes to comic book movies. A series like Nightfall happens over the course of, you know, hundreds of issues, I would guess. I actually don't know the total amount of issues that Nightfall is. But it happens over many, many, many issues, many releases, many weeks. A lot of time, a lot of illustration, a lot of art, a lot of depictions of the story through both image and writing, right? To take, even though this is broken down into a three-part series and Nightfall 1 is all that's released so far, to take a comic book adaptation and turn it into an animated film is no joke. You know what I mean? It really is no joke. to reduce that down and to make it something that is, you know, even the whole first part of Nightfall is, it's a lot, it's an endeavor, you know what I mean, and I thought, to be honest with you, I thought they did a good job with it, I did, I enjoyed it, I thought they did a good job with it, I, what, what Nightfall lacks is what a lot of, um, these animated movies tend to lack nowadays, which I really like, which is sort of the woke side of things. There always seemed to be a little bit of that, a little intrusion on my viewing pleasure. So I watch it and I'm like, Oh man, come on. You know what I mean? Like, what's the point of that scene? What was the point of that? Why did they gender swap? Why did they do this? Why did you like, I just want to watch, you know what I mean? I read the comic. I love the comic. I watched dark night rises. Great movie in my opinion. Um, So this is the base, right? This is the base, the core material for the Dark Knight Rises story, for the Bane-Batman face-off, for the breaking of the bat, right? One of the things that they got really wrong in the Dark Knight Rises, but they couldn't have done it in the Dark Knight Rises, again, the caveat of comic books on film, is really what the first part of Nightfall is all about, which is... really wearing Batman down like the rogues gallery really wearing Batman down because Bane has basically destroyed Arkham Asylum and let the entire asylum out right so this is the comic book series set up the set up is Bane who is absolutely uncanny in this you know what I mean they really did him well Whereas Bane in the movies was Tom Hardy. There's only so much you can do with Tom Hardy, right? In terms of size. And he did a good job as an imposing force against Christian Bale, who's a guy who's bigger than him. He did a good job. You felt that sort of power and dominance that he had. They made Bane enormous. I mean, they made him the way he's supposed to be. Even if you don't read the Nightfall series, to understand Bane, just look at the cover of Nightfall. The breaking of the bat. The particular cover of the Nightfall where Batman's back is broken. And you really get a taste of what Bane should be. You get a real good feel for Bane in the video games. You play video games, Batman video games. You really get a good feel for his size and everything. And they did that perfect. They did the Venom injection perfect. They... What else? Well, so let's stick with the build-up. Because you have to understand. This is what's endearing to me most about the Nightfall series. What's most endearing in the whole thing is not... you know, the super-venomized giant monster Bane, the unstoppable strategic force that he is, right? He's not the Hulk, you know what I mean? He's not all rage. He's serious strategy, genius, brilliance, venomized in a big, nasty body that understands only at the core of life, strength is what makes the world go round and strength is what makes life worth living and power is what we are here for, to gain. But in order to be Batman, he understood, like, we're going to wear him down. And the way we wear him down is by releasing every lunatic out of the Arkham Asylum all at once. And sending him on a cat and mouse chase through Gotham City for days without sleep. And you wind up with a Batman who is at his wit's end, really, breaking. And I just always liked that because, you know, for me... reading that comic book the first time I read it just felt like a metaphor for modern life you know what I mean it just felt like a metaphor it was like you know we're so busy we're so insane with all the running and the rushing and the dashing and the responsibilities and this and that you know never taking a moment's rest it resonated with me you know I'm like oh okay yeah I get it I get it you wear wear him down wear him down and then he's there ripe for the taking And the first part of Nightfall is all about that. And they did a really good job with it. They did a really good job with it. They humanized Bane a lot in the early part of the story. In that weird way that... My only problem probably with the whole story is that... And this is modern villain. This is the making of a modern villain. And it's the part that I really don't like. Like, I don't want to like the villains. Do you understand? I don't want to feel for the villain. I don't want to be on the same level as a villain. That's why I like the Joker. You know what I mean? You can't humanize the Joker. You can't look at the Joker and go, yeah, but he had to deal with X. Or, yeah, but, you know, he's so evil. He's so over-the-top brutal that you're like, this is a villain. This is a super villain. They set Bane up the way they set up so many villains in the modern age, which is, let me make you feel bad for him first, and then we'll make him a villain. So that all through the story you go, well, I mean, I kind of understand. No! I don't want to understand the villain. Don't you understand that? I don't want to understand the villain. I don't want the backstory to make, oh, but what if... But all he wanted was a hug. You know what I mean? I don't want it. I want him to be a ruthless villain that I hate. Right? It's one of the things that, I think it's also one of the reasons that the youth, the youths are navigating away from comic books and into manga. Manga, manga, manga. Navigating into the world of Japanese animation. You know why? Because one of the things that they do really well is they make evil, just evil villains that kill everything. You know what I mean? And no excuses. You know, just like, just I like it. I like to kill. Right? And I think when you start making these softened villains, you really confuse kids in particular. Right? Kids in particular get confused. Like, oh, I kind of feel bad for little Bane in the Santa Prisca prison. I feel bad for him a little bit. And you don't want that. You know what I mean? We're a tolerant enough and empathetic enough society. We don't need to figure out how to feel sorry for monsters like the Joker. And that's what I like about real good villains. I told my son this when he was reading and watching Jujutsu Kaisen. Because he said, I hate Mahito. I just hate Mahito so much. And, you know, I don't know if you're going to get into that or not. You probably won't. But it's just he's a real villain. He's the real thing. He's evil incarnate. And I told him, this is how you know that Gege Akatume has created a real villain. Like, this is how you know. You want a villain that when they come on the screen, you're captivated, maybe a little terrified, and then eventually just filled with hatred. You know what I mean? It's just like, ugh. because that's when you know, you know what I mean? The feeling you don't want to have when the villain steps on the stage is, aww, you know? what I mean? So they did a little bit of that in the beginning. And I wasn't in love with it. But I loved the take on Batman. The sort of pointy, sharp, gothic, scraggly, caped. Batman take it's it's a cool take man I just like it I like the different versions of Batman I really do you know I really I really love the conservative sort of the proficient expert fighter Batman that was sort of the the Justice League series that came out the Batman versus Robin era The Bad Blood era. You know, these are all animations. These are all animated movies. The Son of Batman era. I think his name was Conway. Conrad Conway or something Conway. He was great, you know. No, it's not. I don't remember the guy's name. Jason O'Mara. I'm sorry. Jason O'Mara. I'm pretty sure was the Batman from that era that I really like. But I like this suit. His suit was tight. Ears were short. You know what I mean? And you just saw like a guy who was built for all the techie stuff and all the detective stuff that Batman does. The voice was great. You know, the things that define how a Batman works is always what? It's always the suit, the voice. And then to me, it's like the temperament. You know what I mean? So Jason O'Mara just had it perfect. You know, he was always calm, always focused, always measured. And his voice was great, I thought. I don't know. When I watched this Batman, I dug it. It was different. It was more gritty. It was more... Another thing that defines sort of a Batman story, right, is what does the suit look like? You know what I mean? And what I mean by that is, There are sort of two versions of the Batman suit, and one is a cloth-based, flowy, wrinkled, dappled sort of suit that is clearly made of some sort of cloth, be it Kevlar or something along those lines, over top of all the armor that makes the Batsuit what it is. And you can see it. In some comics, you can see it. In some movies, you can see it. Okay, this is a suit that is crafted from some kind of cloth, right? It has that look. And then there are sort of the more ballistic style Batsuits, right? This is not a suit made of cloth. The cape is barely cloth, you know what I mean? It almost looks like some sort of... uh, tarp, like, tarp material, or some kind of woven, some kind of, uh, rubberized, almost, material, right, and the suit itself is clearly ballistic, like, like Kevlar, uh, or, or, what is it, carbon fiber, whatever, some kind of space-aged or new-age sort of metal plastic type of thing, right, that, um, Stops bullets and knives and all that kind of stuff. But these things clearly define kind of the entire atmosphere of a Batman story, whether you know it or not, right? You're reading a Batman story and you see, oh, okay, we have this highly sort of militaristic suit. Or we have this sort of grungy, you know, and what Nightfall did with the comic book itself, right? And the stylizing of the story was just that. They gave Batman these enormous bat ears, these enormous pointy ears. His suit was very much cloth-based, you know what I mean? You could tell it was wrinkled around the face. The cape is rather scraggly at the end. The shoulders are wrinkled, but they come up to these strange curved points. And it's just one of these things that you look at and you go like, man, this is okay. I like this. For this particular story. And they did a great job capturing all of that, man. And it sets the tone for a gritty and nasty story. And look, this is a rated R Batman flick. Like, I was blown away. You know, there's people getting their faces cut off in the first five minutes of the story by a character named Osriel who plays a huge role in this story. But we don't have to get into that. But it is rated R. There was no sex, no nudity, which was good, but the violence was over the top. So just keep that in mind if you're like, oh, I want to watch Nightfall with my son. It's not as sexualized as Anne Hathaway on the Bat Bike, but ten times as violent as anything that happens in that movie. Like ten times. Guys getting their heads chopped. squeezed in, eyes poked out, you know, just between Bane and Azrael, the violence is, Azrael has these, like, gauntlets that have fire on them, and he just cuts and burns people like crazy in the beginning of the film, so, Nightfall, episode one, for yours truly, it was a wonderful time, I enjoyed it, I thought it was great, I, uh, will, I can't wait. I can't wait to see the broken bat and his recovery and what comes next. And you get to meet the next Batman. There is another Batman. A lot of this story was left out in The Dark Knight Rises. But another Batman arises and he's a very different type of Batman. And then The Dark Knight must return. The Dark Knight must return to... establish order once again in Gotham and he has like you know as you would expect he has insurmountable odds against him so if you're into that sort of thing check it out Batman Nightfall I'll link to it down below talk to you soon folks