Batman: Knightfall Part 1 Suffers from Breakback Pacing
Part of a new wave of DC animated projects, when Warner Bros /Animation and DC Comics announced they would be adapting the Knightfall saga of Batman, I was excited. This excitement was fueled by various factors; 1. Batman: Knightfall is my favourite Batman comic storyline and 2. DC animated films had been a steady and reliable part of my childhood, allowing me interaction with the wider ecosystem of comics. This is all to say that I was looking forward to the first film in this trilogy, the question is, were my expectations met? Overall, Batman: Knightfall Part 1 is a good attempt. It contains strong character moments, an animation style that shines in its fight scenes, and clearly cares about the source material it’s adapting. It is by no means a return to the highs of prior DC animated films like Batman: Under the Red Hood, Green Lantern: First Flight, or the animated duology of The Dark Knight Returns. Now, thats as far as i can comfortably review the film without minor spoilers so be warned from this point onwards there will be the discussion of some plot points and the films choices in adapting this comic storyline.
The most glaring issue with the film was sadly one I predicted before watching and that was the pacing. Coming in at a measly 1h 18m, I already knew the script, written by Jermey Adams, would have to slash whole plot lines from the comic. In truth the Knightfall saga is a whole lot of comic to cover, which is why I was happy they chose to make this a trilogy, with Part 2 and Part 3 tackling KnightQuest and Knight’s End respectively, But so much of this films runtime is spent exhaustingly trying to balance its three leads.
Whilst Bane and Batman understandably dominate the film’s runtime, the breakneck (or should i say breakback) pace of this film removes a lot of their juicy character moments from the narrative. For Batman, the film’s main goal is to make the audience understand that Bruce is at a low, running on near empty and emotionally breaking down. What works against the film’s ability to show this however is that, for all intents and purposes, we have never met this Batman and therefore the film relies on the audience’s background knowledge of the Dark Knight’s history to prestage the arc for Bruce in this film.
This approach to try and cram in what is a longer arc for the character is hurt by the need to adapt the many comic issues of Knightfall, which see Bruce fighting his rogues gallery and being slowly worn down. In my opinion, this segment of the film needed some further revisions in the villains used, as characters like the Mad Hatter take up more screen time than I believe is needed, whereas villains that would more powerfully make the point of Batman’s breakdown to the audience get allotted cameos. As such, the film adopts a consistent tell not show approach to Bruce’s main arc which sadly falls onto the shoulders of Shondra Kinsloving, Bruce’s therapist, and James Gordon, who spend their limited roles as expositional stand-ins to constantly remind the audience why Bruce is so sloppy as Batman.
Bane suffers the least in the pacing treatment of his arc. I’d go so far to say Bane is the main character of the film, a solid amount of the film is allotted to covering his origins in Santa Prisca prison adapting the Vengeance of Bane miniseries. Bane’s motivations are reworked in the film from his usual want to conquer Gotham into a jealous rage towards Bruce for having a strong father, on which the jury’s still out as to whether I believe this approach works for the character, but I’m leaning towards no. These issues are further heightened with the removal of Bane’s henchmen, who, in the comic, act as a narrative barometer and give Bane more to do in the build-up to his fight with Batman in the climax.
Bane’s use of Venom is also weakened in the film, in part due to the lack of any mention of Batman’s use of Venom in the past to set up the further weakening state of Bruce, and to highlight Bane’s impressive feats. Its only use in the film is scene involving the Riddler, which, instead of making the audience fear this super drug comes across as strangely comedic. These changes to the context around Bane undermines a lot of the mirrored elements between him and Batman
Sadly, Jean-Paul Valley, aka Azrael, is not so lucky to escape the pacing maw which swallowed up much of this story. Quite frankly, Jean-Paul gets zero time to develop in the mind of the audience. The majority of his scenes are used for lazy exposition to cover the plot of the Batman: Sword of Azrael. This corners him in the narrative as an unstable murderer with no real attempt to show the audience why Bruce would even choose to train him, let alone create any stable foundation for Parts 2 and 3 to build off of with their focus on Jean-Paul. Most of Jean-Paul’s scenes are taken up by Robin who, whilst entertaining, only adds to the film’s struggle to present Jean-Paul in a nuanced way and I fear these decisions will only negatively impact the next two films. It would seem the issues of pacing are simply a clash with the sheer amount of context the film must utilise in its short run time and I can imagine for those who have not read the comic this must make for a disorienting, even frustrating experience at times.
Moving onto positives, the performances in this film are very good for the characters who gets the runtime to show off. Bane, voiced by Micheal Mando, is the clear standout. Mando’s performance is how I hear Bane when reading. He is truly having so much fun with the performance that he becomes lost in the character in the best way possible. His ending monologues are just incredible, nearly selling me on the motivation change for his character and make up for the lack of dialogue in the middle portions of the film. Quite frankly, it’s nice to see Mando finally utilised properly in a comic book property for an actor of his caliber.
Anson Mount, who is no stranger to superheroes or Batman, gives a strong performance as the Dark Knight. It’s his best turn as the character so far, bringing just the right amount of gravel to his Batman voice and levity to his Bruce voice. His chemistry with Robin, voiced by Jack Griffin, is good and as stated earlier, Griffin plays Tim Drake well. Pablo Schriber seems fairly good as Azrael, but it’s hard to say with the very little he is given, but I’m confident if given more in the next films, his performance will be a highlight.
Finally, the animation is good but nothing to write home about, if you’ve watched any DC animated film in the last 5 years, or a part of the Tomorrowverse, you’ve seen the style. The designs are great. All of them adapt the fun 90s character styling well and translate it appropriately into the film. I especially loved Batman’s pointed cape and long ears, a favorite of mine in his litany of great costumes. Bane and Azrael’s designs look lifted from the page with zero change and all the cameo villains look great too. My only complaint on the design front is Gotham itself, it trades in the more common gothic city approach for a weird utilitarian architectural style looking more akin to Judge Dredd’s Mega City One than any Gotham I’ve seen before. The other issue in the art style and animation is that when characters aren’t engaged in action they look a little flat and lifeless, but this is outweighed by the fluidity of the action set pieces directed by Jeff Wanester (of various Tomorrowverse animated films) have wonderful choreography. This is especially the case with the final fight scene which leaves a great taste in the mouth for audiences.
Like I said at the beginning, this is a good attempt at adapting what is a very hard comic story to single out into a sole narrative without the help of an established universe or canon for these characters, or even a longer runtime. I hope that the next twoparts of this trilogy work on these growing pains and rough edges as I do truly want more people to engage with what I think is an excellent Batman era, and if Batman: Knightfall Part 1 at all interests you I do highly recommend jumping into the comic storyline as you won’t be disappointed.
