In short: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)

Warning: structural spoiler ahead!

It is not a difficult feat to suggest that a few too many of the animated Batman movies made for home video or tiny theatrical releases and then home video in the decades after Mask of the Phantasm have gone back to the well of “Batman: The Animated Series” in one way or another, even when they weren’t actually connected to it. But then, when they don’t, they can easily end up like that absolutely dreadful The Killing Joke adaptation, so while there might be a certain lack in originality in that approach, it does tend to result in a film that’s not a disgusting piece of crap, so it seems to be the right one.

Rather ironically, the villain of this particular film as directed by Sam Liu and with a script by James Krieg that’s based on an Elseworlds tale by Brian Augustyn and the great Mike Mignola seems to share that version of The Killing Joke’s makers opinion of women (at least based on that film), seeing as he’s Jack the Ripper stalking the streets of an alternative Victorian age Gotham.

The Batman (as voiced by Bruce Greenwood whom I like nearly as much as Kevin Conroy in the role), clearly rather early in his role, is there, too, and he is going to be more than capably assisted by a pretty heroic version of Selina Kyle (Jennifer Carpenter, also excellent) whose instant mutual attraction here does make perfect sense. Aesthetically, this one is still clearly indebted to BTAS, with some genuinely successful attempts at injecting a hint of early Mignola into the proceedings (don’t expect shadows quite as thick, though), giving the film’s Victorian era Gotham the proper mood and feeling. There are some fine action set pieces but the film’s also – despite an mere 80 minute runtime – deftly creating its world and its characters.

Part of that is of course the old Elseworlds trick of understanding that the audience of an alternative reality version of Batman and other characters of his universe will have a working understanding of them, so you really only need to emphasise what’s different here; the rest, the audience will do for you. However, the script to this one goes one step further and bases one of its central twists on what an audience will expect from these characters and then delivering quite the opposite, while at the same time playing fair with the audience and – not alas a thing you can expect in plot twist land - still making sense.


All of this comes together exceptionally well, so well indeed the film really doesn’t end up being a copy of BTAS’s approach, but rather one that uses what it has learned from the show like it used its own aesthetic predecessors.