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DC Collectibles- The New Batman Adventures: Batgirl
Continuing my quest to re-watch all the DC Animated features to date and give some thoughts regarding 3 key touchpoints: Animation Style, Voice Acting & Story. These are really just rough notes as I watched the movie and might not make a whole lot of sense unless you have recently watched it. See 290-2, 303-2, 318-2, 331-2 & 344-2 for my previous instalments.
Superman Batman: Public Enemies 2009
Animation Style- I’m not going to bury the lead: Superman Batman: Public Enemies has the worst animated style of all the DC Animated Features to date. And that is not to say that the animation is terrible or the designs are silly, it’s just not my favorite. In fact I can get behind the idea that they used most of the classic costumes for all the heros and Villians and everything looks very bright and colorful, but it just all looks a bit cheap; almost like they were using the same animation model for all the superheroes. For instance, all the hero's bodies look the same, almost like Warner Brothers grabbed a bunch of DC figures from the Mattel Multiverse line and used that as animated models with the same height, stature and muscles.
Voice acting: Growing up with the Timm- DC Animated Universe it is nice to hear all the voice actors take on their well known roles including Kevin Convoy and Batman, Tim Daly as Superman and Clancy Brown as Lex Luthor. Outside of the the main cast some notable voices are Lavar Burton (Star Trek) as Black Lightning, Corey Burton (voice over royalty) as Captain Marvel and oddly enough Allison Mack (Smallville) who recently was charged in conjunction with her part in running a Los Angelas sex cult.
Story- Much like a lot of these DC Animated movies, the plot seems to be pretty dense with a lot of things happening in quick order. This makes sense given that a number of different comic stories, released over a period of months, have been used to develop the screenplay making it all seem very rushed. At the root, Public Enemies is a good guy framed to look bad and has to punch his way into the good graces of public perception. Overall I loved the inclusion of all the other heros and villians that don’t often make the cut of the newer releases. For instance, this is the first and only appearance, that I know of anyways, of Power Girl in a DC Animated Feature. Another random offity is the inclusion of 80’s StarFire and Katana. Lastly and way more out of left field, was the inclusion of the half Superman, half Batman space mission rocket that is being used to blow the planet killing asteroid up; it straight up bananas, makes zero sense and kinda kills the movie for me due to being so ridiculous, but that is how comics go sometimes.
Pros: Despite my current frustrations with them, I feel that DC Collectibles deserves a lot of credit for their animated line as I think it ticks a lot of boxes for most animated series fans. Batgirl is nicely sculpted, has a good amount of character specific accessories and a decent amount of articulation allowing for some decent poses.
Cons: Outside of the typical issues with the Animated line (fragile feeling, terrible design stand) , I am frustrated that her hair restricts her head movement, something that is somewhat fitting given that most movie Batman costumes can’t move their head, but I digress, it's annoying.
