Let’s be honest, the DC Cinematic Universe sucks, five films in and only one that’s any good, and as highly praised as Wonder Women is it can’t get rid of nasty taste of Kryptonite and guano. Luckily, DC/Warner Bros. also make a generally excellent line of animated movies.
Primarily these direct to DVD/streaming movies are part of the Animated Original Series, although other one-offs like Scooby-Doo & Batman: The Brave and The Bold are also released.
The first of 2018’s Originals takes the form of Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, based on the 1989 one-shot Gotham by Gaslight and it’s 1991 sequel Master of the Future. Although a better description would be ‘inspired by’ as the story differs considerably from the source material.
Gotham by Gaslight takes place in an alternative timeline. A Victorian era version of Gotham, home to two shadowy figures, a vigilante named Batman, and a man known as Jack the Ripper, a serial killer preying on women of questionable virtue. Many Gotham residents also believe they are one in the same.
B:GbG features alternative versions of several classic Batman characters including lawyer Harvey Dent, and the morally questionable physician Dr Strange, as well as Catwomen, Poison Ivy, and a group of street urchins named Dickie, Jason and Timmy a.k.a. Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Tim Drake, the three different incarnations of Batman’s sidekick Robin.
In the comic Bruce Wayne meets up with an old family friend named Jakob Parker, or Uncle Jake, a lawyer, who acts on Wayne’s behalf after he’s framed for the Ripper Killings. It;s later revealed…SPOILERS…that Parker is in fact The Ripper. But as the film differs somewhat from the comic Parker only appears as a non-speaking character, the killer being someone else entirely
Parts of Master of the Future are also amalgamated into the new story. The comic features both a World’s Fair/City of the Future style exhibition and a sequence on an airship, these have been transposed to B:GbG, and used to create a thrilling action set piece and a quite unexpected finale.
Have you seen Gotham by Gaslight yet? What did you make of it? Where does it rank against previous instalments in the Original Animated Movies series?