‘Batman: Hush’ Review: A Classic Tale of Obsession, Improved By a Few Key Changes
Posted on Friday, August 16th, 2019 by Eric Vilas-Boas
“Deep down, he’s a good person, and deep down, I’m not,” Batman says as he’s about to fight his brainwashed pal Superman in the latest DC Animated Movie Universe release, Batman: Hush. There might not be a single line that better captures Batman’s simultaneously toxic self-loathing and self-mythologizing quite so succinctly in relation to his most hopeful (and much more socially-adjusted) friend and thematic foil.
It’s also such a casually badass Batman line that I couldn’t imagine a movie adaptation of the classic Batman: Hush comic, which was written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Jim Lee, without it. The new film, directed by Justin Copeland from an adapted screenplay by Ernie Altbacker, is full of savvy pulls like this one and cuts alike, slimming a sprawling 12-part saga into a lean 80-minute feature. They preserve nearly all the key themes of the originally printed murder-mystery while making changes big and small along the way. (Small change: Batman wears a pair of kryptonite brass knuckles instead of a single kryptonite ring to fight Supes). Some of the biggest changes in the film’s ending even recontextualize Batman and Catwoman’s final moments of the story, but the film holds together fabulously nonetheless. Let’s talk about why. Read More »
