Batman: The Long Halloween Part One (Blu-ray)

This film left me impatient for part 2 being released next month(can be pre-ordered now). The mystery in engrossing and leaves you guessing as various suspects are explored. I'm looking forward to what is sure to be an intriguing resolution and the revelation of the Holiday murderer.The story is set early in Bruce Wayne's career as The Batman before his Bruce Wayne Gotham's most eligible Playboy and crime fighting caped vigilante personas have fallen completely into place. He wears the mask but the separation hasn't completely been set in place yet which the director and actor chose to subtly hint at by having a slighter differentientation between Bruce's voice and his Batman voice than he will develop later in his career as the Caped Crusader. He still sometimes misjudges situations and people, but shows himself a quick learner.The writer Tim Sheridan put together a great story that keeps the audience interested while still allowing for more personal character beats all moving the story forward. It keeps you guessing and waiting for what will happen next.The voice cast is all around excellent. Jensen Ackles(The Boys, Supernatural) is superb and subtle as Bruce and Batman. He made an excellent Jason Todd 12 years ago in the classic Under The Red Hood and he's even better here. Let's hope we see more of him in this role in the future. Josh Duhamel is also excellent as Harvey Dent and the late Naya Rivera is a lively and lovely Selena/Catwoman. The whole cast as well as the director deserve kudos.Don't forget to watch the after the credits scene.

Just some quick thoughts on this Blu Ray release...Batman: The Long Halloween Part One (2021) is a DC Universe movie with a very good story, characters, and animation. The voice acting for the Batman character is well done, as is the voice acting for The Joker (in fact, the guy voicing The Joker sounds very much like Mark Hamill). Excellent atmosphere all the way through. The Blu Ray picture and sound quality are excellent. This Blu Ray release comes with many extras that will keep you interested for quite a while, including two episodes from Batman: The Animated Series.I recommend this Blu Ray release.

This is definitely up there with the best of the animated DC films. The film is well-paced and has done an excellent job of adapting the source material. Sometimes the casting choices for certain films seem a little off, but the voice work for this movie sticks to the best character work that fans have come to love while still bringing something new to the table. Absolutely nothing to hate about this one, and after a few recent poor adaptations by WB/DC it is refreshing to have a quality entry. As a true fan this is worth the purchase.

Taking place in the what has been labeled as the "Tomorrowverse", DC's new line of animated movies hase the Dark Knight's premiere in it as a two-part story based on the hit 90s maxi-series, Batman: The Long Halloween. Part 1 comes with a DC Showcase bonus of The Losers based on the original 60s comics and not the Vertigo remake. Both features are done in the same style recently done in Superman: Man Of Tomorrow.The Losers short is set during World War II with an elite U.S. military team given the nickname of "The Losers" due to all their deadly missions, making them a protoype to DC's original Suicide Squad. The team gets sent to a hidden island to shut down an operation run by the Red Chinese forces who are using a time portal to harness energy from the past, but also allowing herds of dinosaurs to run loose all over the place. The opening looks like something out of a Tarentino flick, and the rest mixes in elements of Predator and Jurassic Park into an orgy of bullets and blood sure to thrill any Dino Crisis fan. Like the Sgt. Rock Showcase short, The Losers takes a standard soldier story and cranks it up to a weird war epic.The first half of The Long Halloween takes place in modern day, but at the early part of Batman's career. Gotham City is still largely in the pocket of mafia don Carmine Falcone. On Halloween night, his nephew Johnny is mysteriously killed before he was going to testify against Falcone for D.A. Harvey Dent. Batman, Commissioner Gordon, along with Dent form a secret trinity bent on bringing down Falcone, and revealing the identity of the killer referred to as Holiday as the murderer carries on their personal quest by terminating a gang of Falcone's associates on Thanksgiving. Catwoman shows great interest in this caper too as she leads Batman to a warehouse full of the mob's hard cash. The serial killings ruffles the feathers of a certain homicidal clown as the Joker busts out of Arkham to show Gotham who is the real top dog of maniacs in town. On Christmas Eve, after Joker invades Falcone's home, Holiday arrives to assassinate one of the mob boss' bodyguards. A week later on New Year's Eve, Joker is still loose and planning on dropping off some deadly gas amongst Gotham's festivities. Batman manages to stop his nemesis, but then believes he has finally uncovered Holiday's identity. The caped crusader confronts Falcone's son Alberto as the likely suspect, but Holiday arrives to debunk that theory by shooting Alberto and escaping. The movie concludes during Alberto's funeral where Falcone' introduces Bruce Wayne to Poison Ivy.The movie takes a hard turn from the original source material as it was actually Alberto who did the majority of killings as Holiday, leaving new viewers guessing as to where Part 2 is going to lead. It is refreshing to see Batman having to become more of a detective at the dawn of his crimefighting campaign, an element that was a major plotpoint in the recent live-action, The Batman, which was largely influenced by The Long Halloween. It was a better idea to split this story into two installments to be able to give a full narration of the rich intriguing mystery.

I really enjoyed this first part of the movie. I couldn't believe when it was over, I was so invested in the story that it flew by. It has a good setup for part 2. Excited to see the next movie!

This animated movie is good. However I would like to point out something about the disc would not play on my Xbox One Blu-ray disc console. Still I say as a DC comic book fan The Batman Long Halloween is a good animated movie.