The comic is one of my favorite Batman stories, and such this was the animated movie I'd been wanting DC to make for ages, basically ever since they started the line. And for the most part, it was a solid adaptation that made interesting changes, like beefing up Catwoman's role, the new origin for Two-Face's coin, etc.
Part 1 as a whole was excellent, in fact, distilling that section of the comic in a really good way. My only gripe about it was killing off Alberto definitively at the end, but even so, I felt like it mainly just removed a red herring, and was curious as to how Part 2 would handle that.
But speaking of Part 2, it started off equally strong, but it started to unravel by the time it started dealing with Two-Face's origin, and lot of that stuff felt clunky compared to the comic.
And the ending, yeah, that didn't do it for me. I'm well aware that the comic's ending is presented in a confusing way and is a bit weird, and I'm all for an adaptation tweaking it and foreshadowing it a bit better (which Part 1 actually did in a few places), but the changes here just made it worse in my opinion.
Specifically, Holiday's new motivations are just too much. giving Gilda a dark history with the Falcones, and making the whole thing a revenge plot, just felt extremely cliched to me. And making a large part of it a forced abortion that made her unable to have kids just felt nasty, and a touch sexist. And they removed the twist that there were multiple Holidays, a memorable part of the original story. If you're going to adapt a well loved story, why make such significant alterations that mess with the substance of the piece?
Overall, good animation, solid voice acting, and a mostly well done adaption, brought down by frustrating story changes.
P.S. - I've read Butch Lukic also wanted to adapt the sequel comic, Dark Victory, at some point. I kind of have to wonder how, now, as Alberto Falcone is dead in this continuity, and they were a significant part of that comic's plot.
Disappointing
The comic is one of my favorite Batman stories, and such this was the animated movie I'd been wanting DC to make for ages, basically ever since they started the line. And for the most part, it was a solid adaptation that made interesting changes, like beefing up Catwoman's role, the new origin for Two-Face's coin, etc.
Part 1 as a whole was excellent, in fact, distilling that section of the comic in a really good way. My only gripe about it was killing off Alberto definitively at the end, but even so, I felt like it mainly just removed a red herring, and was curious as to how Part 2 would handle that.
But speaking of Part 2, it started off equally strong, but it started to unravel by the time it started dealing with Two-Face's origin, and lot of that stuff felt clunky compared to the comic.
And the ending, yeah, that didn't do it for me. I'm well aware that the comic's ending is presented in a confusing way and is a bit weird, and I'm all for an adaptation tweaking it and foreshadowing it a bit better (which Part 1 actually did in a few places), but the changes here just made it worse in my opinion.
Specifically, Holiday's new motivations are just too much. giving Gilda a dark history with the Falcones, and making the whole thing a revenge plot, just felt extremely cliched to me. And making a large part of it a forced abortion that made her unable to have kids just felt nasty, and a touch sexist. And they removed the twist that there were multiple Holidays, a memorable part of the original story. If you're going to adapt a well loved story, why make such significant alterations that mess with the substance of the piece?
Overall, good animation, solid voice acting, and a mostly well done adaption, brought down by frustrating story changes.
P.S. - I've read Butch Lukic also wanted to adapt the sequel comic, Dark Victory, at some point. I kind of have to wonder how, now, as Alberto Falcone is dead in this continuity, and they were a significant part of that comic's plot.