Happy Masked Guy

For what it is, Shang Chi delivers a good fun time, bringing new, refreshingly imaginative elements to Disney’s now industrial Marvel formula. Best of all is the movie’s villain: a tragic human being endowed with believable, emotionally driven motivations instead of the usual sleep-inducing, flat-as-cardboard Napoleonic complex. More of this please, Disney. But even bolder.

Not being a Batman aficionado and without any real prior experience with DC animated movies, I went into Long Halloween Part 1 with a pretty unbiased and open mindset. For the most part I had a good time. The animation is powerful and punchy, with lots of angular jawlines and bold black outlines. Gotham City looks beautiful in the background and on the horizon; a kind of gold and black, art-deco Emerald City. Daytime doesn’t seem to exist in this adaptation, and it snows almost constantly, really amping up the bleak, winter atmosphere. Pacing was a little bit staggered, as was the overall tone, especially when the Joker got involved. His scenes are almost too cartoonish, making certain scenes jarringly goofy and hard to swallow (there’s a sequence where he steals a crop duster and successfully pilots it into Gotham despite, on his own admission, having no flight experience. It was all very Looney Tunes-y.) The Joker also never felt like a threat, but more of an annoying overgrown child. The script too is laced with shockingly bad cliches (gangsters unironically say things like ‘sleep with the fishes’, Falcone is called Godfather, etc). Voicework was mostly very good. A lot to like here, but a lot to improve. I look forward to watching Part 2, and to diving into more animated DC films. 7 out of 10