Batman Hush Movie Review

I am going to lead with something that would become apparent later.... I did not like this movie. Like at all.  Even tho I am the host of a show called the Marvel Hacks, DC animation has been a huge part of my life since I had kids.  When my kids were younger, they gravitated more to DC than Marvel and because their animation studio was pumping out solid comic book adaptations, it was easy for them to watch and for me to read and compare the movies to the comics.

As they got older, the shift to Marvel began and its pretty much stomped out any DC love they had.  The MCU movies > DC Animation and the awfulness of the DC cinematic movies kicked DC out of my house completely.  And I missed that because I was enjoying watching and reading DC books for the first time in my life and when they dipped, I kinda forgot about the DC animation movies.

Twitter and social media help when fans get excited about a movie coming out, but I have missed so many of the movies over the last five or so years.  I caught the Batman: The Killing Joke and that was pretty terrible, but when I heard they were doing Hush, I got really excited.  In the comics, Batman Hush was a 12 issues series by Jim Lee and Jeph Loeb.  It told the story of a new villain to Gotham and how he was manipulating Batman rogues into doing his dirty work and mind fuckin' Batman all at the same time.  The books had great art,  action, dialogue, fight scenes and a surprise ending... several surprise endings that made the book and absolute must read( and I am not a Batman guy).  Plus a love story with Batman and Catwoman!  This is on part they actually get right!

When I heard the movie was coming out, I went out and read the books again to get myself familiarized with the story again.  That was mistake number one.  While the movie sticks with the basic principals of the comics, it falls flat in many areas.  One, the animation.  At this point, DC animation is still giving us a slight better version of their tv animation.  One of the reasons Hush the comic is so good is the art by Jim Lee. Now recreating that is not possible, but something closer than Batman the Animated series.  Two, the movie takes broad, unnecessary strokes from the comic book.  They coulda did an almost panel for panel remake like they did with Batman: The Killing Joke but they skipped over so much... especially the stuff with Bruce's friend, Tommy Elliot, which I will come back to later.  Three, the fight scenes come about every 5 minutes like labor pains.  Any emotion that the story should carry is wiped away by the BAM, BIFF, WHOP of fight scenes.  And even tho they stick closer to the comic than the rest of the movie, it still is overkill; especially the final Boss scene between Batman and Hush. Lastly, and this is me being petty, there was NO reason to stick Damian Wayne in this movie. NONE.  I hate the character and this cameo made me hate him even more.

Overall, and I am not sure what the plan is because Hush is really a two part story.  I do not want to spoil anything but they really only told the first half and they kinda fumbled the ball with it. Tommy Elliot's role in Hush is vital to the story and they gloss over it pretty quickly.  It did not seem they were setting up the second part and the reveal of who Hush actually is and that would be a shame because the true reveal is better than the reveal in this movie.

Batman: Hush shoulda been called Batman: Rush because this felt like a rush to the finish of a classic story.  It deserved better and DC needs to do a better job of making sure these classic stories match up with classic animation and story telling.  They really missed a chance right here.  Read the book and skip this.

The Producer