Batman: The Long Halloween Part 2 Review
Credit to: Warner Brothers Entertainment and DC EntertainmentBatman’s Back For More
Welcome back, y’all! This time around, we’re taking a look at Batman: The Long Halloween Part Two. Now, The Wolf Den wasn’t around when the first movie came out, but let me let you all know that I absolutely loved it. I’ll probably get hated on, but Batman actually isn’t a major character in my life, but that didn’t affect how much I enjoyed that movie. For those new to the Long Halloween story, it’s based off of the comic books with the same name, where we see Batman needing to go full on detective mode to track down a killer named Holiday, who kills on, well, holidays throughout the year. The title is a play on this killing spree that started on a Halloween, hence, The Long Halloween. Now, for this review, I’m going to have a pros section, a cons section, and a final thoughts section to close it out. I won’t give any spoilers because this is a brand new movie, so you absolutely have to watch this for yourselves. With all of that out of the way, let’s just jump straight into it.
Pros
First of all, I gotta start off with the animation style. I sincerely love this new style. The characters all have such detailed designs, and I’m actually a major fan of the thick brush strokes as the outer lining that each character has. The animation is nice and fluid, and for each fight scene, the animations continue this trend. You can really feel each hit, and these fast paced, hardcore fights really lured me in each time. Batman himself was fun to watch, but he surprisingly didn’t use his gadgets, at least not often at all. He instead opted to use his fighting abilities, something I actually enjoyed a lot, because we’re all used to seeing him blend both hand-to-hand fighting and his mastery over his gadgets. Each villain in this film were perfect honestly. I loved their designs, their mannerisms, everything, really. Besides Two-Face (I’m going to dedicate the next part to him), I loved seeing Scarecrow and Poison Ivy be given quite a good amount of screen time. Joker was actually put in the backseat to really give some good character development towards the less known or rather, the less focused on villains.
Two-Face. I absolutely LOVED this version of Two-Face. Here, he really shows that Harvey Dent and Two-Face are really two different people. Even as Harvey Dent before the face melting incident, we see him fiddling with his coin. I won’t give too much away, but over the course of the movie, we do get other little hints of Harvey struggling with his villainous thoughts. It's honestly amazing how well they treated this character. Both Harvey and Two-Face, after the incident, they seem to slightly struggle to find common ground. Not really hating each other, but more so they seem to just not understand each other. But, they eventually do after we see the coin take its place as the decider of fate. Even when Batman is a child, we see this idea of “a flip of a coin” being referenced. It’s such a small reference, but this idea of fate really overtakes the entire movie, and it works perfectly. This is absolutely my favorite version of Two-Face, and it’s interesting to see “them” work as bringers of justice, who do so with their own outlook on how justice should be given. You can also really feel how disappointed both Batman and Jim Gordon are once they find out the terrible things Two-Face has done. The Two-Face version of Harvey disagrees with how the law handles crime, but he respects both Gordon and Batman for wanting to bring him to justice for his crimes. This is easily the best version of Two-Face I have ever seen.
The tone and story of this movie are definitely two more pros for me. The tone is very, very dark, but it’s not so in your face about it. The city of Gotham is treated as just an ordinary city, that unfortunately has to put up with a bunch of lunatics and killers. The Falcone family is a major part of not just the story, but Gotham as a whole. Everyone, including Batman, the police, and even the news has their eyes all over the Falcones, and that seems to take a lot of heat off of our Holiday killer, who makes their move on every holiday when nobody is looking. This family of mobsters, gangsters, killers are rooted deep in not just Gotham’s history, but also the Wayne family. It’s really interesting to see just how important the history of the Wayne family is, the Falcone family is, and even the Gotham PD. The Falcones are wholeheartedly against the police and district attorney Harvey Dent, but they play their cards with them very cautiously. The ties between the Falcones and the Waynes seem to hurt Bruce Wayne’s reputation with the police department, so they tend to go directly to Bruce whenever there’s trouble with the Falcones. It’s really interesting to see how they respond to Bruce and Batman, and it’s also funny in a way. It truly is two sides of a coin. The story is phenomenal, and this movie is so dark, and I loved every second of it.
Con- wait, just one con?
Yup. Just one, so this is going to be a very small section. Like I said before, I’m not a massive Batman fan. I love Gotham, I love the villains, but Batman never interested me as much as a character like The Flash. With this information, you probably would’ve expected me to nitpick this movie, but that’s not the case. I absolutely love this film with all my heart, and the only thing that was slightly problematic to me, was honestly just the pacing. This movie was veeery slow. I appreciate the level of detail to the story, the amount of world building, and the character development for almost every character we’re introduced to, but this movie really took its time. I can’t lie and tell you that I was bored, but I did find myself wanting more action, or at least a little more time with Batman and his villains. Especially Two-Face. I loved Two-Face so much, that I was disappointed we didn’t get a little more of him. No doubt, there will be a part three to this story, but as it currently stands, I feel that this movie was a bit too slow, and that unfortunately impacted our time with Two-Face, Batman, and even Catwoman. This isn’t super major, but it does unfortunately make the overall score slightly lower.
Final Thoughts
This is probably one of my favorite animated Batman movies of all time. DEFINITELY top three, with that list being: Batman: Under the Red Hood, Batman: The Killing Joke, and now this movie in third place, taking over Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2. This is an amazing film, so I highly recommend you all watch it if you haven’t already. If you’re expecting a whooole lot of Batman here, you’ll be disappointed, but don’t let that prevent you from watching this movie, because you absolutely will enjoy it. There’s even a post-credits scene, but you gotta watch it yourself, because it may either lead to a part three for this series or something better! But that’s all from me, what did you all think? You can let me know on my Instagram and Twitter, and be sure you’re following both to get constant updates on all things entertainment. This has been The Wolf Den!
