Directed
by Ethan Spaulding
Although
the outer sleeve of the Blu-Ray packaging sports a sticker touting
this as “Based on the Graphic Novel Batman and Son,”
that is only very loosely the case and in its broadest strokes. And
if Grant Morrison, who wrote that story arc at the beginning of his
seven-year epic run metatextually de-/re-/a-constructing
the very definition of the Dark Knight Detective (for more on which,
see the just-published Anatomy of Zur-en-Arrh
by Cody Walker, see below), is
actually acknowledged in the credits, I missed it. There's not much Morrison here anyway. For all intents and purposes this movie takes the
basic idea of Batman unexpectedly being presented with the fact that
he has a son by Talia al Ghul in the context of a struggle for power
within and over the League of Assassins and leaches it of any of
Morrison's quirky psychological brilliance. I would have hoped for
more, given it is now credited as “a story” by James Robinson,
who can himself be awesome – but who can also be pretty uninspired.
We get the latter Robinson here, depending on how much of his
story passes into the final script by Joe R. Lansdale.
