Crew
Director – Jeff Wamester, Screenplay – Jeremy Adams, Based on the Comic-Book Batman: Knightfall (1993-4) by Jim Aparo, Jim Balent, Norm Breyfogle, Peter David, Chuck Dixon, Jo Duffy, Alan Grant, Doug Moench, Graham Nolan & Dennis O’Neil, Producer – Jim Krieg & Kimberly S. Moreau, Music – James Jennings Boyd & Eric V. Hachikian, Supervising Animation Director – Mac Whiting, Animation – Studio Mir (Animation Directors – An Tae Kun, Kang Sun Gi & Kawk Jae Euz). Production Company – Warner Bros. Animation.
Voices
Anson Mount (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Michael Mando (Bane), Jack Griffo (Robin/Tim Drake), Pablo Schreiber (Jean-Paul Valley/Azrael), Bruce Boxleitner (Commissioner James Gordon), Toks Olagundoye (Shondra Kinsolving), Jessica Camacho (Renee Montoya), David Dastmalchian (The Riddler), Jason Flemyng (Mad Hatter), Bayardo De Murgia (Warden), Noah Mendes (Boy Bane), Anthony Crivello (Franco Bertinelli), Adriana Isabel (Bane’s Mother), Simon Templeman (Alfred Pennyworth), Andrew Morgado (Victor Zsasz), Jeff Bennett (Ventriloquist/Scarface), Luis Bermudez (Catman)
Plot
Batman comes up against a new vigilante Azrael, who wields flaming blades and brutally kills criminals. Behind Azrael’s mask is Jean-Paul Valley who is troubled by the power he has inherited and Batman takes him in in the hope of focusing and training him. At the same time, Batman is dealing with Tim Drake, the new Robin, and trying to get him to follow orders, but is still haunted by the death of Jason Todd, the previous Robin. Someone blows up Arkham Asylum, releasing all of the imprisoned criminals. In the aftermath, people begin noticing that Batman is exhausted dealing with multiple crises as he tries to apprehend the escapees. Behind this is Bane, who grew up as a child in a prison in Santa Prisca. In all the time he was in the jail, Bane was obsessed with Gotham City. He was taken for experiments to create a super-soldier using the drug Venom. These made Bane someone who transforms into a super-sized steroid enhanced figure of massive strength and invulnerability every time he injects the drug. Bane is now seeking to cause chaos to weaken an exhausted and over-extended Batman with the intention of bringing him down.
Batman: Knightfall (1993-4) was a DC Comics event. It came out not long after the massively popular The Death of Superman (1992-3) storyline and was intended to do similar things for Batman. It consisted of three storylines that ran through two main Batman comics, along with a bunch of ancillary titles, over the course of sixteen months, detailing how Bane snaps Batman’s spine, the violent and murderous Azrael inheriting the role of the Bat and Bruce’s subsequent recovery and return to the role.
Batman Knightfall – Part 1: Knightfall is one of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies. These have been going since 2007 (see below for a full listing). Knightfall comes out after a two-year gap where the future of the series seemed to be in limbo. I had assumed that lowering financial returns had meant the cancellation of the series. Or maybe the reorganising of the live-action films under James Gunn had put them on pause. Whatever the case, the series makes a triumphal return with Knightfall. As with the last few animated films, Warner Bros. Animation have taken the step of adapting a famous event storyline and spreading the story out over 2-3 film releases.
Whatever the reasoning behind the pause, it has allowed the series to return to considerable strength. Many of the animated films over the last few years had felt routine – they were being churned out with a conveyor belt efficiency (2-3 per year) and while there were some fine and standout films, some of the works being made couldn’t help but feel routine. Knightfall however produces one of the best entries in the series in some time.
Perhaps the first thing you note from the opening prologue with Batman encountering Azrael as he slaughters a bunch of criminals and then the subsequent scenes with the young Bane in prison is just what a violent film Knightfall is. It is something that more than clearly signals that the audience for the DC Universe Original Animated Movies stopped being children some years back and these films are now being made for adults. Elsewhere, the script digs in to Batman’s psyche with a more adult complexity than we usually get, showing him torn between the guilt of Jason Todd’s death, a double life and the overwork and stress.
The film also gives Bane decent stature on screen. The character has appeared in two of the live-action films. In Batman & Robin (1997), he was no more than the hulking manservant of Poison Ivy. The character was given decent incarnation in The Dark Knight Rises (2012) (which notedly borrowed some elements from Knightfall such as the crippling of Batman) with a great performance from Tom Hardy but where the more fantastical elements such as the use of Venom and Bane’s origin story were stripped out. A number of other Bane appearances on tv shows such as Gotham (2014-9) and Harley Quinn (2019-25) and assorted cameos throughout the other DC Universe Original Animated Movies have tended to transform him into no more than a hulking killer.
Bane wasn’t created in Knightfall but first appeared in a different title three months earlier, although the film backtracks to incorporate that origin story. By contrast to the other film incarnations, we get a full Bane origin story fairly much the way the comics had it (one or two details have been trimmed down to make the story work better but essentially). This also reintroduces what was missing from the original conception of the character – Bane as a brilliant mind who can outthink Batman and has engineered the bombing at Arkham Asylum as part of a plan to bring Batman down.
In addition, Knightfall also gives a fine roster of other Batman villains (many of them lesser ones that don’t usually get their own time like The Mad Hatter and The Ventriloquist). It all works well in a solid and satisfying story. Some of the other multi-parters from the DC Original Animated Movies have had mixed results, especially in drawing their stories over multiple films. However, this ends up the perfect and shocking cliffhanger where Bane breaks Batman’s back.
The other DC Original Animated Movies are:- Superman: Doomsday (2007), Batman: Gotham Knight (2008), Justice League: The New Frontier (2008), Green Lantern: First Flight (2009), Superman/Batman: Public Enemies (2009), Wonder Woman (2009), Batman: Under the Red Hood (2010), Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths (2010), Superman & Batman: Apocalypse (2010), All-Star Superman (2011), Batman: Year One (2011), Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (2011), Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part I (2012), Justice League: Doom (2012), Superman vs. The Elite (2012), Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part II (2013), Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (2013), Superman Unbound (2013), Batman: Assault on Arkham (2014), Justice League: War (2014), Son of Batman (2014), Batman vs. Robin (2015), Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015), Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015), Batman: Bad Blood (2016), Batman: The Killing Joke (2016), Justice League vs Teen Titans (2016), Batman and Harley Quinn (2017), Justice League Dark (2017), Teen Titans: The Judas Contract (2017), Batman: Gotham By Gaslight (2018), The Death of Superman (2018), Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay (2018), Batman: Hush (2019), Justice League vs The Fatal Five (2019), Reign of the Supermen (2019), Wonder Woman: Bloodlines (2019), Justice League Dark: Apokolips War (2020), Superman: Man of Tomorrow (2020), Superman: Red Son (2020), Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021), Batman: The Long Halloween Part One (2021), Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two (2021), Injustice (2021), Justice Society: World War II (2021), Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons (2022), Catwoman: Hunted (2022), Green Lantern: Beware My Power (2022), Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (2023), Justice League: Warworld (2023), Legion of Super-Heroes (2023), Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One (2024), Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Two (2024), Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three (2024), Watchmen: Chapter I (2024) and Watchmen: Chapter II (2024).
Trailer here