DC Comics fans the company is known for it's straight to DVD animated films and well a new one has just been released. Since I have a tradition of reviewing each and every one of these straight to DVD animated films when they are released you just know that I was keeping my eyes on this film and well as for last night the film was released digitally and so join me as I review the latest straight to DVD animated DC Comics film "Batman: Soul Of The Dragon" enjoy.
The plot of the film as far as I can tell is a cult wants to unleash there god upon the world but it's up to Batman , Richard Dragon , Lady Shiva and Ben Turner / Bronze Tiger to stop them before it's far to late. I'm going to be freaking blunt here there's not much here in terms of story at all which is a huge negative since DC Comics straight to DVD animated films always have good plots to them and so it's sad to see one of these films that doesn't even have a decent story in my opinion since the story is so thin that it might as well not even be there.
Starring in the film is David Giuntoli as Bruce Wayne / Batman , Mark Dacascos as Richard Dragon and Kelly Hu as Lady Shiva. Also starring in the film is Michael Jai White as Ben Turner / Bronze Tiger , James Hong as O-Sensei , Jamie Chung as Jade Nguyen , Josh Keaton as Jeffrey Burr , Eric Bauza as Axe Gang Leader , Grey Griffin as Lady Eve , Robin Atkin Downes as Schlangenfaust and Erica Luttrell as Silver ST. Cloud.
As for what I thought about the acting in the film it honestly wasn't that bad but given who is in the film that's to be expected. I would like to say tho that David Giuntoli who plays Bruce Wayne / Batman in the film is miscast since when I hear his voice i don't hear Batman I hear somebody trying and failing to do a Batman impression which is never a good sign however the rest of the voice cast as to be expected sound really spot on.
Doing the animation for this film is the greats over at Studio Mir who did the animation for The Legend of Korra and Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion's Revenge among many others. The animation for me at least is one of the few high points in the film since the animation is honestly pretty good bit there are a few design choices that had me baffled like for example all of the characters have regular eyes and yet in one scene at the start of the movie we see a character with dot eyes which I personally found to be pretty distracting since none of the over characters have dot eyes.
There's also the fact that the jacket that they gave Richard Dragon as alot of shading on it which I again fond to be very distracting because none of the other clothes that the characters wear have that amount of shading done on it. I honestly liked the overall design for each of the characters since all of the main character designs look like they fit in well with the film 1970's setting which for me at least was a pretty huge plus.
For some reason this film chose to have a lot of flashbacks and when I say alot I mean alot since there's a flashback roughly every five to ten minuets for a large of the films very short running time. Usually I would understand why there's a lot of flashbacks in a film but here since you don't have that long to tell what little story you have those flashbacks feel like padding since barring two flashbacks none of the flashbacks in this film add anything to the films story nor it's characters and so the film would have been better of if they cut down on the amount of flashbacks in my opinion.
I'm not giving away anything by saying this but how this film ends is a good example of how not to end a film. Especially when you take into account that there hasn't been a sequel or follow up film announced and so instead of ending in a more naturel way the film just stops which is honestly pretty jarring in my opinion pretty laughable since the makers of the film couldn't be bothered to come up with an ending and so they just chose not to end it and so I have to assume the film makers assumed that we wouldn't have noticed the bad ending or lack of an ending which as you can no doubt work out has failed miserably.
The film has a running time of one hour and twenty two minuets and thirty eight seconds which for a film that has very little actual is a little bit on the long side. I feel that this film could have told it's story in well under that time and all you would have to do is remove all of the pointless and useless flashbacks and that's it since nothing changes with those flashbacks included and so by taking them out once again nothing changes plot wise oh but if you did remove all of the flashback that are pointless then the film would only be about twenty or even thirty minuets or so in length.
Now then boys and girls since this is an action film that does mean that I have to talk about the action that's in the actual film itself. In my opinion the action in this film is honestly really good with al of the main characters each getting a moment to shine in the films many action sequences , however my issues with the action sequences in this film is the fact that there's far to many action scenes in this film and the fact that all of the films many action scenes start every five to ten minuets or so as such there's no time for you the audience to catch your breathe the second that you the audience do catch your breathe the next sequence beings and it's like that for the entire film , just like with alot of the films flashbacks these action feel like padding but that's just what I think anyways.
Overall this is honestly a fairly average film in my opinion since even tho the film does have a so many issues. Those same issues can also be in any other film and aren't exclusive to this film and when the film does have something good in it you really do know it due to how bad the rest of the film is and yes i've covered both the good and the bad things in this film in this very review as such this film gets a 5 out of 10 from me , and as for where I got the images that I used in this review from well I got the images that I used in this review from either the official DC movies fandom wiki page , the official Batman fandom wiki page or Google Images and for once I cannot say which website is the best one to use if you want images from this film since both the official DC movies fandom wiki page and the official Batman fandom wiki page only have one image each and the ones on Google Images range in quality and so I say use whichever website that you guys want to use.