BATMAN NINJA (2018)

Studio:       Warner Bros. Japan
Director:    Junpei Mizusaki
Writer:       Kazuki Nakashima, Leo Chu, Eric S. Garcia
Producer:  Kamikaze Douga, Leo Chu, Eric S. Garcia
Stars:     Roger Craig Smith, Fred Tatasciore, Tony Hale, Grey Griffin, Tara Strong, Tom Kenny, Eric Bauza, Yuri Lowenthal, Will Friedle, Adam Croasdell, Matt Yang King

Review Score:

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Summary:

A time machine transports Batman and his allies to feudal Japan, where Batman’s rogues gallery attempts to conquer the country.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Batman battles Gorilla Grodd at Arkham Asylum, where Grodd has assembled several of Batman’s greatest foes. Catwoman interferes with Grodd’s experimental time machine, triggering a pulse explosion that transports everyone to feudal Japan.

In the past, Batman confronts Harley Quinn and Joker, who has become one of five lords of state attempting to conquer and unify the country. After escaping from Joker’s army of masked samurai warriors, Batman finds Catwoman.

Catwoman tells Batman that although he just arrived, everyone else who came from Gotham City has been in Japan for two years. Catwoman explains that The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Deathstroke, and Two-Face also became feudal lords warring for control of Japan. Catwoman adds that Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, and Robin are somewhere too.

Catwoman introduces Batman to Alfred, who reveals that he was transported along with Batman’s vehicles. Batman uses the Batmobile, Batwing, and Batcycle to mount an assault on Joker’s stronghold in an attempt to retrieve the Quake Engine that powers Grodd’s time machine.

Joker transforms his Arkham Castle fortress into a giant robot whose arms destroy Batman’s vehicles. Batman enters an armored form to battle Bane, who assumes the form of a sumo wrestler.

Batman is forced to abandon his attack on Joker when a mother and child are put in peril. However, the mother turns out to be Harley Quinn in disguise, who incapacitates Batman.

Before Joker and Harley can capture him, ninjas engulfed in a swarm of bats rescue Batman. Nightwing and Red Robin introduce Batman to Eian, leader of a ninja clan guided by prophecy to serve a fallen shinobi wearing a bat mask who will restore order to the land. Eian pledges the clan to serve Batman.

Robin brings Catwoman and Alfred to the ninja stronghold. Robin’s monkey companion Monkichi retrieves a scroll that summons Batman to Gorilla Grodd’s compound.

Grodd explains to Batman that he created the time machine to expel his villainous rivals from Gotham, but his plan went awry when Catwoman interfered with the Chaos Engine. Although suspicious of Grodd’s treachery, Batman makes an uneasy alliance with Grodd to take down Joker together so they can return to their time.

Batman and his allies battle Joker’s forces aboard a seafaring steamship. After Joker and Harley are captured, Grodd attempts to telepathically subdue Batman’s ninjas only to discover they are resistant to mind control. Grodd instead summons his secret ally Two-Face to bomb the ship, which allows Joker and Harley to break free.

Catwoman reveals to Grodd that she stole Joker’s power converter from the Chaos Engine and offers to exchange it for safe passage back to the future. Joker blows up what remains of the boat, with Batman becoming caught in the blast.

Grodd plots to have the feudal lords compete on a battlefield to become shogun. Already in possession of Joker and Two-Face’s pieces, Grodd tells Catwoman that they can rebuild the Chaos Engine once they obtain the remaining three power converters from Penguin, Poison Ivy, and Deathstroke.

Batman recovers after being unconscious for two days. Regretting his decision to ally with Grodd, Batman realizes that he needs to rely on his mind, body, spirit, and allies instead of gadgetry and vehicles. Batman decides to master the ways of the ninja and begins readying his clan for the fight ahead.

Red Hood tracks down Joker and Harley living in isolation as rural farmers. Batman stops Red Hood from taking violent action against the duo. Although Batman claims that the explosion caused Joker and Harley to lose their memories, Red Hood remains suspicious that they are feigning amnesia.

One Month Later – Gorilla Grodd activates the Arkham Castle mobile fortress. Penguin, Poison Ivy, Deathstroke, and Two-Face activate their own transforming assault castles and begin converging on the battleground known as “The Field of Hell.” Embracing his legend, Sengoku Batman rallies his ninjas to meet their enemies on horseback.

The five giant robots fight each other on the battlefield. Grodd pauses combat by mind controlling the other four villains. Grodd reveals to Catwoman that his plan all along was to rule Japan by recreating it as a kingdom of monkeys.

Joker and Harley Quinn arrive in a hot air balloon that drops paralysis gas on the villains. Joker takes over Grodd’s control center while Batman and his allies rescue Catwoman and Grodd. Joker assembles the five fortresses into one giant Joker robot.

As repayment for rescuing him, Grodd gives Batman a flute that controls his monkey army. Robin and Monkichi use the flute to summon millions of armored monkeys who form a giant samurai monkey that topples the giant Joker robot.

Batman and his allies mount a ground assault against the downed Joker robot. Monkeys start sacrificing themselves to protect the humans from flames shot by the Joker robot when it recovers.

Ninjas and bats arrive as reinforcements. The bats and monkeys swarm together to form a giant Batman that destroys the giant Joker robot.

With combatants now engaged in hand-to-hand combat, Batman faces off against Joker while Nightwing fights Penguin, Red Hood takes on Deathstroke, Red Robin battles Two-Face, Robin confronts Poison Ivy, and Catwoman handles Harley Quinn. Batman’s allies win their respective confrontations. The monkeys break apart the Joker robot’s remains.

Joker explains how he hypnotized himself in order to fool Batman into thinking he had really acquired the personality of a benevolent farmer. Batman and Joker engage in a samurai swordfight that ultimately ends in Joker’s defeat.

After saying goodbye to Eian and Monkichi, Batman activates the rebuilt Quake Engine and returns everyone to Gotham City. There, Bruce Wayne’s destroyed Batmobile forces him to attend a meeting with the mayor in a horse-drawn mini-fortress while Catwoman sells a vase stolen from the past to an antique dealer.

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Review:

It’s sad to see heat hurled at “Batman Ninja” over its unconventional take on the Caped Crusader’s mythology.  Oh, without a doubt, the head-on collision of Eastern and Western pop culture composes a disorienting kaleidoscope of eclectic action and eccentric spectacle.  Yet this is precisely the kind of creative craziness an 80-year-old idea deserves, flavoring the animated film with imaginative freshness even through a throwback theme.

Gorilla Grodd built a time machine.  Catwoman gummed up its gears.  Along with his closet allies and closer archenemies, Batman now finds himself inexplicably trapped in Japan about 600 years in the past, anxious to find his way back to the future.

You’ll have a hard time finding plot holes in “Batman Ninja” because admittedly, there isn’t enough plot to poke into.  Kazuki Nakashima’s story doesn’t really care to fill out its fiction more than necessary, serving instead as a bare minimum basis to build a battlefield, figuratively and literally, for heroes and villains to frenetically fight upon.

Although Batman just arrived in Japan, Gotham City’s other transplants have already been there for two years.  That’s enough time for Joker, Penguin, Poison Ivy, Deathstroke, and Two-Face to have assumed lordship over feudal states warring for control of the country from massive mobile fortresses.  Other than the obvious exterior motivation of getting the movie moving, it doesn’t make a lick of sense why Batman suddenly dropped in after everyone else conveniently set the table.  Neither is there a sensible reason why Alfred opted to continue a career of servitude while maintaining the Batmobile that transported with him, as though he knew Batman would need it two years down the line.

Other issues with “Batman Ninja’s” writing have to do with dialogue.  Whether Nakashima’s source screenplay or Leo Chu and Eric S. Garcia’s English translation should bear greater blame, cringe-worthy chatter is capable of sending viewers into corners to cower with clenched teeth.

Having Joker cackle, “I’m your biggest fan” while hurling razor-edged folding fans is pretty bad.  Having Catwoman introduce a confrontation with Harley Quinn by announcing, “it’s time for some girl on girl action” is much worse.  Ugh, yikes, and shame on the upturned thumbs that approved abysmal lines like these.

The consequence of dippy dialogue and plotting concerned solely with connecting action dots is that Batman becomes the ‘World’s Dumbest Detective.’  Not only does Bats brood regretfully over dimwitted decisions like allying with Grodd or relying too much on gadgetry, but he is repeatedly duped by obvious treachery.  When Red Hood quickly figures out Joker and Harley’s sinister secret only for Batman to be easily fooled, you know your characterizations are confused.

So how can a movie that misconstrues Batman so badly while saddling him with sad speeches and a Spartan storyline still earn high marks for entertainment? Because after 50-ish minutes of mostly standard stuff, the brakes are finally disabled to storm into a climax loaded with intense insanity that has to be seen to be believed.  We’re talking samurai swordsmen, ninjas, armored monkeys, magic bats, and giant robots merging into an even bigger robot. “Batman Ninja” is just one kaiju shy of throwing every familiar swatch of Japanese fantasy fiction into a pot before beautifully blowing it up.

The natural first instinct is to of course chuckle into an eye roll at Bruce Wayne shaving a bat symbol into his monk-cut bald spot while going incognito as a Christian missionary.  But the further the film takes its bizarre blend of DC icons and Japanese culture, the more its strange sensibility grows on you.

Credit artist Takashi Okazaki with injecting inspired life into fantastically re-imagined character designs.  From Joker looking like Final Fantasy VI’s Kefka to Bane as a sumo wrestler, the visual interpretations of classic characters are wonderfully wild sights to behold.  “Batman Ninja” features a fine-tuned flow that brilliantly puts the look of un-inked comic book pencils into motion.  An interlude involving Joker and Harley as rural farmers doesn’t fully fit, but some additional watercolor work and excellent calligraphy enhance anime-inspired action with eye-catching style.

The animated feature front has lower stakes than the live-action DC Universe, so when something bold like this comes along, it should be embraced for having the guts to take a rare creative risk.  Maybe it’s a messy mixture of concepts and cartoonery, but watching “Batman Ninja” swirl itself together is incredibly fun once it hits peak stride.  A decidedly different sort of Batman adventure, I can’t imagine why anyone would wish he or she hadn’t taken the trip into the movie’s vibrantly visualized world.

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score:  75

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