Over the past 20 years, DC set an unprecedented gold standard for animated adaptations, pioneering the animated medium of storytelling through their animated shows and movies. However, over the past 5 years, the quality of these films have been reduced greatly, namely in their writing and voice acting. However, last year the release of Death of Superman gave me hope, that maybe those days were behind us, however, I was wrong. The most recent addition to the DCAU library is Batman: Hush where they try to force the iconic story of the same name by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee into their contrived, New 52 inspired movie universe, and the result was an abysmally animated, piss poor adaptation of one of the Dark Knight's greatest stories ever written. While I was not surprised to see that the film diverged from the book, I was surprised to see that they absolutely butchered the story of the book and turned the iconic prose of Jeph Loeb feel like the whining ramblings of Tom King.
When you think of Batman: Hush one of the first thing that comes to mind is Jim Lee. Being DC's superstar artistic talent, Jim Lee had filled the comic with some of the most iconic art of the Dark Knight. While I understand that bringing Jim Lee's art to life into an animated medium is going to be difficult and that there is a large chance that there would be a dip in quality in that translation, but this animation is just plain ugly and has no life to it! Below I have a side by side image to compare the comic and film:
The writing in this honestly can just be summed up as bad. You had a master class Batman story, a story that set up things like Under the Red Hood, that provided a deep character study on not only Bruce Wayne, but the world in which he has built. The writers for this literally took this masterpiece and turned it into the living embodiment of Tom King's Wedding issue this past year in Batman #50. It also doesn't help they straight up omit some of the most prolific scenes from the story! What they did to Jim Gordon's speech he gives to Batman at gunpoint is absolutely criminal (or even the entire build-up to it), and that leads into yet another issue. Along with the bad writing is some of the weakest voice acting in the entire history of DC animated features. Jason O' mara returns with is monotonous voice work as Bruce Wayne/ Batman, and he gives absolutely nothing for any of the actors to work with, except for Sean Maher whose work as Nightwing brings the only real personality to the film. The rest of the cast range from mediocre to bad.
The biggest slap in the face about this movie, and trust me there are a lot of them, isn't even that they made Riddler Hush and not Thomas Elliot (I would say spoilers but at this point I don't care, this movie doesn't deserve your time or money), it isn't that they made Riddler's motivation be that he was insecure about being seen as a C rate villain instead of showing Batman that he had figured out the greatest riddle of all, who's behind the mask of the Bat, it wasn't even that they wrote Batman in such an emotionally flaccid way that I was shaking with anger by the end, no the biggest slap in the face is that DC shilled to have bullshit reviews written. IGN said that it was an improvement on source material in their byline, but then when you read the review, it was filled with backhanded compliments and downright complaints, but yet it still held a 9.5 out of 10. While IGN has a terrible reputation for this, they aren't alone! I have seen several other sites do the same fucking thing. Frankly, I am tired of it. I am done watching DC animated features, and honestly, you should be too because this isn't just a spit in my face, it's a spit in yours. I won't be giving them a single cent, I won't waste my time on Bloodlines, because if they were going to put this little effort into one of the best Batman stories ever written, I don't really give a shit what they have planned for everyone else.
This has been another edition of Comic Relief! I hope you have enjoyed and we will see you again soon.
I despised this film so much that even I took the steel case back to Target and got a refund. The moment Riddler was revealed as HUSH, and it was clear Thomas Elliot was dead, I was done. They didnt even show the childhood flashbacks between Bruce and Elliot. Huntress was removed from the storyline. Killer Croc was changed to Bane. I honestly loved the other films in this continuity till this one. I won’t touch anymore of them ever again. I look at what they did to Riddler and Elliot, and I can only think of The Godfather saying “look how they massacred my boy”. It’s so sad to see this. I hope they aren’t allowed to butcher anything else. They need to keep their filthy hands off of The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, No Man’s Land, and Nightfall. I don’t even want to know what they’d do to those. Such a tragedy to what I found to be an interesting continuity.
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