Made it home alive last night, but certainly had no small amount of plane trouble this trip. Argh. The way there was much worse than the way back - I only had to deal with the second leg of my flight being delayed an hour on my return, which is pretty simple compared to my flight out of KC being flat-out cancelled and subsequent rebooking. What the hell is with airlines these days?

Trip details to come. For now, slightly belated happy birthday wishes to professor, who had hers yesterday while I was in transit.

I will be reviewing The Dark Knight quite soon, but for now, let's look at the direct-to-DVD animated movie that ties in with it.

Batman: Gotham Knight - This is an Animatrix-style compilation of anime-style short films that take place in the universe of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight in-between those two movies. Animatrix had 11 films that varied wildly in style and ranged from 5 to 11 minutes; the 6 Batman films here are closer to 15-20 minutes each, and slightly more consistent in style, although the visual design DOES change a bit. The stories also interlock, which Animatrix didn't even attempt to do. Despite that, the quality just isn't as high on this collection overall.

The vignettes include "Have I Got a Story For You," which is silly but kind of diverting, "Crossfire," which introduces the characters of Anna Ramirez and Boss Maroni (both players in The Dark Knight) through a tale that is almost devoid of any story whatsoever and therefore pretty damn sub-par, "Field Test," which is a really fun bit dealing with Bruce trying out some wicked new tech from Lucius Fox, "In Darkness Dwells," which is an incredibly disjointed and disappointing attempt at throwing in a couple of recognizable villians for Bats to fight, "Working Through Pain," which shows a little more of Bruce's training during his world travels and actually tells a pretty compelling (though slow) story, and "Deadshot," which is a pretty neat action piece that parallels Bruce against the playboy/professional assassin of the same name.

The collection is maybe just barely over 50% successful, and certainly a lot slower and harder to get into than the varied visual punch of Animatrix. One of its biggest problems, though, is that they were unable to get ANY cast members from the movies! So unlike Animatrix, which used ALL the original cast members where needed, this movie uses substitutions across the board, and it's really too bad. One of them is a blatant appeal to the fans - Kevin Conroy voices Bruce/Batman, the role he's owned since the early '90s thanks to Batman: The Animated Series and its many spinoffs. Although it's always nice to hear Conroy's voice in the part, hearing it come out of an anime-stylized version of a young Christian Bale is pretty screwed up and jarring.

I guess your interest might depend on how much you love the current Batfilms, or Batman in general. I'm still happy to own it despite the slowness and the failures it contains, but I certainly hope that next summer's Termination - an anime compliation of short films around the Terminator universe, naturally - follows more in the mold of The Animatrix than that of Gotham Knight.