Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021)
Dir. Sam Liu
It would be natural to assume that Soul of the Dragon is an actual Batman story, seeing as how it's got his name in the title and he's on the cover art, but it's more accurately a story that just happens to feature Batman a few times throughout.
It's more of a Bruce Wayne (David Giuntoli) story, showing via flashback the time he spent in the Himalayas learning martial arts, honing skills that his Batman persona relies on in the modern era.
At the same time, training under the same sensei (James Hong), are five other students, all of whom are lesser-known DC characters, namely Richard Dragon (Mark Dacascos), Ben Turner (Michael Jai White), Shiva (Kelly Hu), Jade Nguyen (Jamie Chung), and Rip Jagger (Chris Cox).
You can see now why they put Batman in the title. The others may be familiar to long-time comic fans, but for many movie-only fans they may be total unknowns, except for maybe Shiva.
Things are enjoyable enough for a while — especially if you're a fan of 1970s Kung Fu flicks and the Blaxploitation genre — but the second half goes kind of weird, and the motivations of certain characters are flaky. It starts to feel like something more akin to watching videogame characters from a fighting game getting the animated movie treatment - with added Bruce Lee.
It's pleasing to get an original story that's not based on an existing comic. It's just a shame that the end result is so unmemorable - especially given its bold genre choices.
- "I can dig it, for as long as it stays cool." -
No comments:
Post a Comment
"The sleeper must awaken."
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.