Batman Year One premiered at Comic Con. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is, it’s excellent. The bad news is, if you didn’t see it at Comic-Con, you’re going to have to wait until October to see it. But, better news? You can pre-order it here, it won’t break your bank, and during my interviews for the movie at Comic Con Katee Sackhoff invited me into a threesome. SPOILER ALERT: she was joking.
If you’re a fan of comics, you probably recognize that Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One is one of the most important comic books/graphic novels ever. If you haven’t read it yet, stop reading this review right now, click on this link and buy yourself a copy, then come back.
Just like with Watchmen, which was one of my first reviews for BSR, the main question is always going to be in how faithful the adaptation was to the source material.
“We really wanted this to be a very faithful adaptation of the graphic novel,” Lauren Montgomery, one of the directors, told me in an interview at Comic-Con. “We wanted to make it good enough for the fans. Obviously this book has a following. The greatest challenge is living up to their expectations.”
In terms of the look, given the somewhat minimalist leanings of the source material’s art, they had to add some more in, but also they wanted to keep the spirit of the original art. “We absolutely tried to follow it as closely as we could, from the colors to the characters. We tried to make it as dirty and ugly as we could… when you color things digitally things end up looking relatively clean, so we had to go in and add that extra bit of detail,” explained Montgomery. “The city kind of had to be a character in itself,” she added, explaining that we, the audience, needed to feel the corruption, the dirt, the edge of the city- sort of an oppressive feeling as it closed in on Gordon and Batman. In this, they completely delivered. The art was exactly as I’d pictured it. And they delivered on the character.
And as for the characters themselves, the voice talent was brilliant. We have Bryan Cranston as a pitch-perfect, world-weary Lt. Gordon. As voice director Andrea Romano put it in our interview, “Thank God he’s good at this.” Eliza Dushku puts in double duty as Selena Kyle/Catwoman (and yes in this version they retain her origin as a prostitute, just like in the book) and also in an animated Catwoman short that will be packaged with Year One. A little more about Catwoman- some have mentioned the similarity between the character design in this and the leaked pictures of Anne Hathaway in the upcoming Nolan Dark Knight Rises. Executive Producer (and superhero himself) Bruce Timm said it’s purely coincidental. “I’m in awe of them,” talking about his admiration for the Nolan films. But? “I don’t think I’m even on their radar.” So modest.
And then there’s Katee Sackhoff, who plays Det. Sarah Essen, who (SPOILER ALERT) has an affair with Jim Gordon. Sackhoff admits she has an obsession with Batman dating to back when she used to steal her brother’s comic books. “And here I am… not quite playing a villain.” Sackhoff did take her role as that of the villain, saying she’s “basically a homewrecker.” She relishes being the bad guy, or girl in this case, comparing it to the unfortunately short run of the Bionic Woman reboot (on which she did amazing work, imho). Roles like Sarah Essen are particularly good, according to Sackhoff, because when you play the villain they’re so much more complicated and fun to play. She wants to make the audience like you and “then you’ve done your job.” And, Katee revealed she did a lot of research for the role of a homewrecker, propositioning any available married male. Then this happened:
Me: “I’m a married man.”
KS: something like (I stopped typing) “Well do you want to get your wife on the phone, see if she wants to get in on this?”
So, that’s how Katee Sackhoff sorta propositioned me into a threesome.
Anyway, the movie is awesome. Preorder it and get ready to enjoy. It’s probably my favorite so far of the DC direct to dvd movies. Another classic from WB Animation and Bruce Timm.