Okay. My brain is just… fried. Scrambled. I don't even know what I just watched. I'm sitting here on my couch, the credits are rolling on Netflix, and my cat is giving me this look like, "Are you okay, human?" and I honestly don't know the answer.
Batman. Ninja. BATMAN. NINJA.
It started and I was like, okay, cool, anime style, I'm here for it. Then they get thrown back in time. Fine. Par for the course for a comic book plot, right? But then… then it just goes completely off the rails. All of a sudden every single villain is a feudal lord in Japan? And they have these giant castles that are also their faces? Two-Face's castle is literally split down the middle. My brain short-circuited for a second. I had to pause it. Just sat there in the quiet of my living room, staring at the paused image of a giant, half-scarred castle, and just… processed.
And the monkeys. Oh my god, the monkeys. All of Gotham's police force and villains get turned into these… these super-intelligent, weapon-wielding monkeys. At first, I thought it was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. I was literally laughing out loud. But then… then I was kind of into it? Like, yeah, of course, the Monkey Police are a thing now. Why not? I leaned so far forward during that big monkey army battle, my back is killing me now. My blanket pooled around my ankles. I was completely invested in the fate of these damn monkeys.
There's this one shot that's just burned into my mind. It's a close-up of Joker, but he's in this elaborate samurai garb, and he's laughing, but the laugh is totally silent for a split second before the sound hits you. The animation style just makes his eyes these huge, swirling pools of madness. I literally shuddered. It was so unsettling and brilliant all at once. It reminded me of this one time when I was a kid, I went to a haunted house and this clown just stood perfectly still at the end of a hallway, staring at me, not moving a muscle, and that was so much scarier than if he'd jumped out. The stillness. That shot of Joker had that same energy. It was… a lot.
Honestly, I thought I hated the Joker's design at first. It's so over-the-top, even for him. But now that I'm sitting here thinking about it… was it actually genius? I don't know. I'm questioning my entire reality right now. I thought I loved that part, but now that I'm typing this… was it actually kind of dumb? I don't know. Maybe it's both. Maybe this whole movie is both.
And don't even get me started on the ending. SPOILERS, I guess, but you need to be warned. They build up this massive, earth-shattering final battle, and then it's resolved with… a giant bat-shaped mecha fighting a giant monkey-shaped mecha that's also a castle? And Batman's mecha is powered by… bats? Of course. It's so stupid. It's so profoundly, beautifully stupid. I was grinning like an idiot. My cat, Loki, jumped onto my lap right at the climax, probably because I was vibrating with pure, unadulterated what-the-hell energy, and I just hugged him. I needed to anchor myself to something real.
This whole experience was just pure, uncut chaos injected directly into my eyeballs. It felt like a fever dream. The kind you have when you're sick and eat a weird combination of food right before bed. One minute it's a stunningly beautiful, hand-painted landscape of feudal Japan, the next minute Gorilla Grodd is riding a giant, mechanized horse and firing lasers. There is no in-between.
I'm not even sure if it was "good." The plot makes zero sense if you think about it for more than two seconds. The character motivations are all over the place. But my god, was it an EXPERIENCE. I feel like I need to go watch a black-and-white French New Wave film just to recalibrate my brain. Or maybe I should just watch it again. Right now. (Honestly, I'm tempted to just hit replay on Netflix and let the madness wash over me one more time.)
My head is pounding. In a good way? I think?
Okay. I'm done. I need to go stare at a wall for an hour.
7/10.
-Alex
Trailer English - https://youtu.be/CwPFxcefpdU?si=0TcNSPu39noF8Uzg
Review English - https://youtu.be/du7_5TCXIhE?si=0GvBil4cFxHHruLL
EXPLANATION English - https://youtu.be/Xl0BjnfgDNg?si=RCLkCKM5Ial_bd1K
EXPLANATION Hindi -
