.…and it’s not the Rid­dler, at least not yet. On the heels of The Dark Knight, Warner Premiere, Warner Brothers’ direct to video pro­duc­tion branch plans to show you an even more dis­turb­ing Gotham this sum­mer. “Bat­man: Under The Red Hood” plans to bring to life one of the dark­est chap­ters in the detective’s his­tory as he has to deal with a loss more tragic than the one that made him first don the cape and cowl. The cre­ators have assured us that this one will be more vio­lent than Christo­pher Nolan’s last block­buster by describ­ing the open­ing scene. Taken straight from the pages of the clas­sic story “A Death In The Fam­ily,” fans will be treated to the Joker lit­er­ally beat­ing (Jason Todd) Robin to death. The irony here is that some might think this scene is too much for a PG-13 movie but it was actu­ally the fans that voted to have Todd killed back in the ‘80s when DC gave them the choice. Bat­man has lit­tle time to grieve as a new vig­i­lante arises in Gotham; one with a name he is already too famil­iar with — Red Hood. The big prob­lem is that Red Hood is ready and will­ing to cross the line that Bat­man never will. Any­one that has kept up with the last few DC ani­mated movies knows that these sto­ries have been enjoy­able and well writ­ten. I look for­ward to this one espe­cially after hear­ing about the cast: Bruce Green­wood is Bat­man, Jensen Ack­les is Red Hood, and none other than Neil Patrick Har­ris will voice the fea­ture film debut of Nightwing! Looks to be a good sum­mer this year in and out of the­atres. I’ll leave you with the fol­low­ing quote by Bat­man on the Joker:

“All I’ve ever wanted to do was kill him…A day doesn’t go by where I don’t think about sub­ject­ing him to every hor­ren­dous tor­ture he’s dealt out to oth­ers and then.…end him.”

Wow.

Sources: www.batmanredhood.com and www.imdb.com for voice tal­ent (Andrea Romano is the voice director)

DC con­tin­ues to out­shine Mar­vel in the film depart­ment, both on the big screen and directly-to-video in your home. With the new “Jus­tice League: Cri­sis On Two Earths,” DC has put forth its sec­ond full-length fea­ture star­ring mem­bers of its pre­miere super team. The manda­tory trio of tri­umph: Bat­man, Super­man and Won­der Woman, head up the team along with favorites like Green Lantern, Mar­t­ian Man­hunter, Flash and oth­ers. The good (and not so good) thing about the movies is that they look to sat­isfy fans of both the comic and the tele­vi­sion shows. The JL car­toon on Car­toon Net­work used Jon Stew­art as the Green Lantern, while the new movie uses Guy Gard­ner who is the more pop­u­lar and arguably the best of the (Earth) Green Lanterns. I am guess­ing that the recent GL movie which showed Gardner’s ori­gin may have had some­thing to do with this choice as well. Any­way, the story is quite the clas­sic one, hav­ing been dealt with on a smaller scale in an episode of Bat­man: The Brave And The Bold, another DC car­toon from Car­toon Network.

The story opens on an alter­nate Earth with Lex Luthor and The Trick­ster (alter­nate Joker) pulling off what appears to be a crime. They steal a small device and try to make their escape as the “good guys” are clearly in pur­suit. The Trick­ster stays behind to buy time for Luthor and is con­fronted by Hawk­girl and Mar­t­ian Man­hunter, only it’s not so much the heroes we know as hawk­girl runs Trick­ster through with her sword (not mace). Luthor man­ages to tele­port to the Earth we know and asks the Jus­tice League for help (and he does it but­tnaked, no really). I will leave the rest for you to see as there is plenty of action and fight­ing to keep you enter­tained. This movie, more so than her own, is proof pos­i­tive that you do not wanna piss Won­der Woman off.…ever.

The voice act­ing, while top notch, always puz­zles me in these films. I never under­stand why they choose to use tal­ent other than the well estab­lished voices for Super­man, Bat­man, Won­der Woman and the Flash. Still, Andrea Romano always puts qual­ity inot the voice direc­tion and it is the minor gripe of a fan of the tele­vi­sion shows. The art direc­tion was incred­i­ble and I can­not wait to watch this again on blu-ray. While not exactly the same, this is prob­a­bly the clos­est that any of the movies have come to the look of the orig­i­nal JL car­toon, which was always a joy to watch; fans will not be dis­ap­pointed. The story is prob­a­bly not as deep as some of the other DC movies, but I would for­give that because any story touch­ing on infi­nite Earths has to be done very care­fully; this was a plot line that almost destroyed the DC uni­verse because it got too out of con­trol for the writers.

Cri­sis On Two Earths releases on DVD and Blu-Ray next week on Feb. 23 and if you have enjoyed any of the last five DC movies then you will love this one. The only one I per­son­ally liked more was Pub­lic Ene­mies and that is because that is the only one that was prob­a­bly the most mature of all the DC movies. This is def­i­nitely one that you want to have in your col­lec­tion. Won­der Woman vs Super­woman, Bat­man vs Owl­man, Super­man vs Ultra­man, Green Lantern vs Power Ring, Flash vs Johnny Quick; who will win? Check this flick to find out.