Batman: Bad Blood is a mess. A confusing mess of problems with the writers and director choices. Content stolen from other films, not even from DC. Stories stolen from DC comics thrown into a blender and put on puree. Murder and death for no reason. It's the worst team-up to come out of WB Animation.
I can't explain the story well enough because when I watched it wasn't explained. The most simple way of saying what happened is for really dumb circumstances Batman goes missing and a few other people replace Batman in Gotham. One is a black guy and one is a woman, who is a lesbian, that is as much depth as they gave those characters.
Oh, Blackbat, I mean Batwing caused more problems than helped. He's a rip-off of Iron Man. Instead of maybe stealing, I don't know Falcon from the Avengers films they ripped-off Iron Man. His Iron Man suit comes on to him just like Iron Man's and he steals the Helicarrier scene from the Avengers. They put in a few of Batman's flyer enemies just to knock them off and give him someone to fight because he would be way to overpowered on the ground.
Batwoman is boobs in this. WB animation is Heavy Metal subtle about this with her getting into a catfight (not with Catwoman) and fighting in her underwear. We have no problem with this, but WB animation could've given her some sort of character other than being b*tch.
Nothing else matters in this story that takes its marks from comic story arcs from Batman being dead to something called Battle for the Cowl, where different heroes tried to replace Batman and then the somewhat strange use of a semi-Brother Eye and the Justice League satellite. The Cowl story-arcs took a long time to come out and the film pretty much cut them down into and hour and thirty movie which it shouldn't be. That's multiple comic story arcs on top of each other that intertwined. The real story could've have just centered on Robin (Damian Wayne) and Nightwing ( Dick Grayson.)
There's too many characters and you'll care about none of them. Everyone in this film is unlikable and un-relatable.
I'm so confused as to what the Hell the writers and director were going for. Did the executives behind this screw up or did the director not just care? They blended so much in nothing made sense. By the end you'll forget as to why the film even started.
As a fan of WB animation it's just troubling to see the state of the company now and how it treats its heroes. For some reason they split the home market to be for little kids with Batman having animal powers or something and then going for an MA rating. They don't want anything in-between. So head explosion for an Irish version of a long time Batman villain. No brilliant stories or building something people can love. Just dumb deaths.
The random sprinkle of over-the-top violence for no reason. Why kill Batman's villains so horribly? You put them in jail, you sickos. That's what heroes do, they capture super villains. They aren't even memorable or funny deaths. Steal from some good anime next time if you can't think of anything.
I'll guess that director Jay Oliva was out to lunch as he's storyboarding big name films while directing animated features. It shows, not in quality, but in how little effort was put in. A good connected story is missing from this feature. If you're wondering why you never hear about these films winning awards there's a good reason. They suck.
I missed Andrea Romano as voice director and I always wanted somebody else to do it or have some new people fill out that role. I was wrong to want change as the new voice director somehow got worse sounding people for new roles.
This is one of the poorest excuses of an animated feature that DC has come out with. Skip it, it's not even worthy of rental. Even for hardcore Batman fans, maybe if it was cut up into a few other films or shorts it would work. Batman Bad Blood is Frankenstein patch work monster of plot and people with Bat in their name. Blech!