Batman: Under The Red Hood

Morning kids

As you can ell by the title, I didn’t get out much this weekend and decided to stay in and watch the latest WB Animated DVD feature Batman: Under The Red Hood. To be honest, I had no idea this was even coming out until the other day, but I made it a priority to see. Now, Batman has been thrown around the animated world for a while now. Batman The Animated Series was an absolute gem back in the day that brought the style and tone of Paul Dini and Bruce Timm to the television screen. Unfortunately there hasn’t been an animated series quite like it in a while now. Batman: Under The Red Hood really reminded me of the original series though.

At a nice digestible runtime of just over an hour and fifteen, BURH is not only a great way to get back into the legendary DC character, but it’s a way to educated yourself on some of the folklore you might not be familiar with. Although the animated movie took some liberties with the original stories from the Batman Universe, BURH did a really nice job in explaining some things to the audience without making us feel stupid.

BURH explains the concept of multiple Robin characters by having both Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. It also partly explains one of the Joker origin stories, which is a key element. Finally, if you pay attention closely, you’ll get a few tidbits of information on the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Ra’z al Gul.

But BURH isn’t just s history lesson or a smash up animated flick, it’s actually one of the better expansions on a well known story line from Batman – Death In The Family. Death In The Family was written by Jim Starlin back in the late 80′s and dealt with the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd. At the time, comics weren’t the huge industry money-makers they are today and I’m assuming someone over at DC felt it was time to shake things up a bit. The result was one of the more brutal stories I’ve ever read in a funny book where Jason is smashed to death and then blown up by Joker. It then follows Batman as he has to deal with the responsibility of his partner’s murder.

BURH doesn’t go into the same detail as Death In The Family, but it does reach that emotional string that animated features hardly ever come close to. It deals with the reaction of death, the revenge that comes with it and the aftermath of people’s lives once the dust settles. Without giving away too much of the story the top three things I really enjoyed about BURH were the appearance of Nightwing (Neil Patrick Harris), the flashbacks to the original Red Hood and the ending.

Even if you’re not a big comic book fan or cartoon fan, Batman: Under The Red Hood is just a really good watch.