Random Movie Review - Batman: Soul of the Dragon

You know, since the days when these direct to home media films were something that DC nor Warner Bros. thought would amount to anything, they have been pretty darn successful. Sure this way of releasing films has a reputation of making them out to be failures that would never really give much money and yet it's now 2021 and DC are still at it. There's probably more DC films released this way than there are for Scooby-Doo which hasn't fared well with his own films in recent times. Also, since things have changed for DC's management, the priority of these films are now more on original concepts than anything that already exists, but they still do the latter occasionally too. So here we are with a film that seems to bring Batman into a Bruce Lee style of film. Should be interesting for sure given how most variants of Batman are bought up with martial arts, so let's take a look:

Many of us fans know that before Bruce Wayne (voiced by David Giuntoli) became Batman, he travelled a fair bit to learn martial arts as part of his training to become the caped crusader. In this film, he travels to a secret monastery in a region of the Himalayas to do just that, as is taught by the caretaker O-Sensei (voiced by James Hong) alongside five other students of his. Something to do with demons causes this little group to fracture and go about their separate ways. Years later, one of the students Richard (voiced by Mark Dacascos) travels to Gotham to seek help from Bruce when a cult gains possession of an item that can bring the demons back, prompted Bruce to suit up as Batman to assist Richard and reunite the students to stop the demons from returning again.

As an original story with no connection to any particular continuity, it's pretty good. The action is very much in the style of those Bruce Lee films, which seems to work well for Batman. I gotta say, it's kind of nice to have a Batman film that features some of the lesser known DC martial arts characters and not a single Batman character apart from the man himself and at least one person associated with the League of Assassins. Very original for sure and a good Batman film overall with great kung fu action, some 70s style music and good animation too. 9/10