My Review of Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham (2023)

 

Written by Jase Ricci

Directed by Christopher Berkeley And Sam Liu

Ras Al Ghul: "It's beyond your human comprehension. Behold! This Thing! Gaze upon it. It's to incur ... Madness."

A couple of years ago, the DC Animated movies did a pretty good adaptation of Gotham By Gaslight and it seems that you can be lucky twice, because this adaptation of an Elseworlds of the same name also turned out well.

You've got a 1920s setting in the Antarctic. It's where Bruce Wayne (David Giuntoli) has set up base with Alfred Pennyworth (Brian George), Dick Grayson (Jason Marsden), Kai Li Cain (Tati Gabrielle) and Sanjay "Jay" Tawde (Karan Brar). The latter two characters being versions of Cassandra Cain and Jason Todd.

Anyways they're there to figure out what happened to Oswald Cobblepot's (William Salyers) expedition and soon find themselves coming up against the monstrous, Grendon (David Dastmalchian). Yup, the latter's basically a more horror tinged Mr Freeze and the former has made friends with a certain flightless birds.

Of course, Bruce and company wind up back in Gotham with Grendon and of course, trouble wasn't far behind them. You had allies in Oliver Queen (Christopher Gorham) and Harvey Dent (Patrick Fabian) warning them of Kirk Langstrom (Jeffrey Combs) turning into giant bats and dangerous cults led by the deadly Talia Al Ghul (Emily O'Brien).

Talia and her Doomsday cult folllowing certainly drive the threats to this movie. Not only do you have the likes of Grendon and Man Bat as threats but the arrival of Poison Ivy (Gideon Adlon) and Killer Croc led to a horrifying turn of events for Harvey and death for two of the Bat kids.

The third act was by far the best of the movie, especially with the likes of Etrigan (Matthew Waterson) and Ras Al Ghul (Navid Negahban) being added into the mix, leading to a tragic ending for this movie. It's an ending that I do have mixed feelings on to be honest.

- Gideon Adlon also voiced Barbara Gordon in this movie. We didn't see a lot of Barbara.

- There's something about David Dastmalchian that belongs in the Batman side of things. May this be a repeated thing in his career.

- The graphic novel in which this movie's based on came out in 2001 and was written by Mike Mignola with Richard Pace, and illustrated by Troy Mixey and Dennis Janke.

- Chronology: 1920s Antarctic and Gotham setting. 

Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham will not be a story for everyone and I'm certainly mixed on that ending but as an Elseworlds piece, I appreciate the heavy horror leaning of it all. It's somewhere in the middle for DC animated movies.

Rating: 7 out of 10