Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons.
For the first time since Superman: Unbound, we’ve got one of these movies that’s not part of the “DCAMU.” It’s not untethered from a pre-existing continuity altogether, however, as this one is, for all intents and purposes, deliberately invoked synergy between the animated direct-to-video films and the Batman: Arkham video game franchise. I’m not really familiar with those; I played through about 20% of the first game, decided it wasn’t really the kind of gameplay that I’m into, and never really returned to it. They’re popular games, critically and commercially, but I’m just not that into that much sneaking and stealthing. With that admission, I have no idea how this movie is supposed to fit into that continuity (Wikipedia has that covered for you, if you’re interested), and if there’s something I’m supposed to be annoyed about here because it contradicts this or that here and there, you’ve come to the wrong place for that bit of criticism. But as you can already tell from the star rating above, this one turned out a lot better than the last couple of times the studio plopped out a cross-promotional tie-in.
The Riddler (Matthew Gray Gubler) is up to shenanigans, and Amanda Waller (CCH Pounder) has one of her black ops teams on murder duty, but Batman (Kevin Conroy) takes care of the situation and remands Riddler back to Arkham Asylum. This prompts Waller to put together—you guessed it—a Suicide Squad, to infiltrate the facility and reclaim a thumb drive in Riddler’s cane. Her recruits are Deadshot (Neal McDonough), Captain Boomerang (Greg Ellis), Black Spider (Giancarlo Esposito), King Shark (John DiMaggio), and Killer Frost (Jennifer Hale). Oh, and Harley Quinn (Hynden Walch), of course, and our sacrificial goon who gets his head blown off to prove Waller’s sincerity to the others is KGBeast, if you’re playing bingo at home. Harley lets herself get caught and taken to Arkham as part of the infiltration plan, but things are complicated by the fact that she and a thoroughly locked-down Joker end up interacting. This triggers her rage and ends up with her attempting to shoot him through the holes in his Hannibal Lecter-esque cell, which is only effective insofar as creating a tear on the inside of his cell that will allow him to escape later. There are plans within plans, of course, as one or more of the draftees may be there to “take care” of Riddler, and their competing agendas mean that there are going to be some changing loyalties throughout.
This isn’t a Batman movie – not really. I’m not all that shocked that this falls under the “Batman” label, however, and not just because it’s extended universe (sigh) stuff for the Arkham games. There are (roughly) 52 of these, as noted in the introduction, and within those titles, “Wonder Woman” appears all of twice (3.8%), “Superman” ten times (19.2%), and “Justice League” thirteen times (25%). “Batman” appears in twenty titles (38.5%), and that’s all down to the fact that WB marketing knows what side of the batbread is batbuttered. Batman is around but this isn’t about him. This is a Suicide Squad movie, through and through, with a plot that, in some ways, both presages the much-maligned 2016 feature and pre-emptively improves upon it. There’s bound to be character overlap, of course, but the premise of this one is a lot more sensible; instead of sending a crew of mostly-mortal criminals who happen to have good aim to try and stop a magical apocalypse, here we’ve got a few different skill sets that are tasked to work together to pull off a heist, and some of them also have “assassination” in their specific dossier. When he does appear, Batman is working his own parallel investigation that periodically overlaps or interacts with the Squad pulling an Ocean’s to get into a vault.
As when she voiced the character before in Public Enemies, Pounder once again proves that she was born to play Waller, although the character is reduced to being a bit more one-note and villainous than more nuanced portrayals since, in case you forgot, this is a video game tie-in. Walch is fun as Harley Quinn, who’s played comedically in this deadly serious world, which makes for a nice touch. Other characters get in on it, too, with the odd romance that grows between Killer Frost and King Shark drawing a few chuckles. Shark himself looks a lot like Venture Bros. character Baron Underbheit, which adds to the comedy, and when his head explodes, it seems that direct visual inspiration is taken from the goombas in the Super Mario Bros. movie. It’s a tad obvious from the outset that Joker will escape from his cell and complicate the plan, but there’s a lot of real tension in the helicopter escape scene. All of the fight scenes are decent, and the animation is nice and fluid.
There should be no mistaking; this is a product first and a creative endeavor last, but it’s a product of good quality that ticks off all the right boxes. Conroy is Batman, forever (no pun intended) and always. If you’re looking for a fun little Suicide Squad story, this is well above the median. And the breakout scene where all of the villains get to show off a little is fun. There are worse Suicide Squads out there, even if this one only exists to milk a few extra dollars out of fans of the game series.
-Mark “Boomer” Redmond