Alright so a few days ago I watched the 2011 animated movie Batman: Year One. This is an adaptation of the 1988 Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli comic book with the same title. Let me start this review off by saying I've read the comic book many times, and it remains one of my favorites. I love the comic book and believe it's one of the best Batman stories ever told, and definitely the definitive origin of the character. So going into this I was heavily biased, and my judgement will be more so based on comparing the comic to the movie, although I will give several points that judge the movie on it's own. That being said, I've wanted to watch this movie for a while, I just never really had a deep urge to see it, but it was only an hour long (very short) and on HBO Max so I decided I could fit it into my schedule. I have to say, I was incredibly disappointed by this movie. It adapts Batman: Year One word by word, but at the same time the adaptation was done so poorly.
First of all, the animation is wack. Batman looks like a 40 year old dude when he's supposed to be in his 20's. The vehicles mostly look terrible and Gotham City is not nearly as vibrant in the comic book. David Mazzucchelli's art was perfect in the comic, and the inks and colors done by Richard Lewis created this perfect atmosphere for Gotham City that fit the events unfolding within the book. Here the animation just feels rushed and sloppy. The movie also has pretty bad voice acting. The lines are delivered like they're just reading them off the page, and the depth of Miller's writing just doesn't work when the lines are delivered so flatly and the voices are so out of character. Bruce and Alfred had the worst voices by far, Gordon was passable but still wasn't as good as I would've hoped. The pacing here is also awful, while in the comic the passing of time felt so natural, in the movie it seems like every cut to a new location they throw a new date at you. The movie overall also just felt so soulless and deprived of life. The point of an adaptation is "hey, we're in a movie now, we can make some stuff cooler" but here they literally copied everything with 0 originality.
They didn't put any effort into making Miller's story come to life even more than the comic book. The big moments of this movie also lacked anything special, the comic book felt so much more climatic, and I think that's due to the expert lettering and panel layout. In this movie, they didn't use their medium to their advantage at all. This brings me to my next flaw, the score. I think this is quite possibly the worst score I've ever heard in a movie. You barely even know it's there, and when you do it is so boring and lifeless it makes you cringe. Imagine if they gave this movie a longer run time to fix the pacing, had much better voice actors to deliver Miller's script, better animation, and an amazing score. I think that they could've really made something special, a thrilling adaptation of Miller's comic. Instead we are left with this. As for positives, there's one action scene that I was looking forward to that I thought was animated well with good action. The movie doesn't completely lose your attention, but I was anticipating the ending, not because it would be climactic, but because the movie would be over. If you want to watch Batman: Year One, save yourself some effort and go read the comic book. 3/10.
First of all, the animation is wack. Batman looks like a 40 year old dude when he's supposed to be in his 20's. The vehicles mostly look terrible and Gotham City is not nearly as vibrant in the comic book. David Mazzucchelli's art was perfect in the comic, and the inks and colors done by Richard Lewis created this perfect atmosphere for Gotham City that fit the events unfolding within the book. Here the animation just feels rushed and sloppy. The movie also has pretty bad voice acting. The lines are delivered like they're just reading them off the page, and the depth of Miller's writing just doesn't work when the lines are delivered so flatly and the voices are so out of character. Bruce and Alfred had the worst voices by far, Gordon was passable but still wasn't as good as I would've hoped. The pacing here is also awful, while in the comic the passing of time felt so natural, in the movie it seems like every cut to a new location they throw a new date at you. The movie overall also just felt so soulless and deprived of life. The point of an adaptation is "hey, we're in a movie now, we can make some stuff cooler" but here they literally copied everything with 0 originality.
They didn't put any effort into making Miller's story come to life even more than the comic book. The big moments of this movie also lacked anything special, the comic book felt so much more climatic, and I think that's due to the expert lettering and panel layout. In this movie, they didn't use their medium to their advantage at all. This brings me to my next flaw, the score. I think this is quite possibly the worst score I've ever heard in a movie. You barely even know it's there, and when you do it is so boring and lifeless it makes you cringe. Imagine if they gave this movie a longer run time to fix the pacing, had much better voice actors to deliver Miller's script, better animation, and an amazing score. I think that they could've really made something special, a thrilling adaptation of Miller's comic. Instead we are left with this. As for positives, there's one action scene that I was looking forward to that I thought was animated well with good action. The movie doesn't completely lose your attention, but I was anticipating the ending, not because it would be climactic, but because the movie would be over. If you want to watch Batman: Year One, save yourself some effort and go read the comic book. 3/10.