YMMV / Batman: The Long Halloween

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was Carmine's lifelong mistreatment of his son Alberto stemming from Alberto's conception forcing Carmine to be "rid" of his mistress (Selina's mother); and/or later did Carmine force Gilda's child with Alberto to be aborted just to lash out at his son for committing the same "stupidity" (his wife's and his mistress's simultaneous pregnancies) he himself did?
• Complete Monster: The Joker, unwilling to let the mysterious Holiday Killer replace him as Gotham's most notorious criminal, escapes from Arkham Asylum to conduct his own reign of terror. Beating Harvey Dent in his own house and threatening to murder his wife, the Joker goes on a killing spree through Gotham, targeting members of the mob to show he won't tolerate competitors. The Joker caps off his rampage by hijacking a plane and attempting to fatally gas everyone in Times Square on New Year's Eve, hoping to kill Holiday and as many people as possible in the process.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sofia Falcone only appears in part 2, in a supporting role, but is one of the more popular characters for retaining her comic counterpart's formidability while also getting a little more vulnerability to her character and not ending up as the Hangman Killer in the aftermath of the Long Halloween due to her Death by Adaptation.
• Funny Moments:
  • Alfred pulls a Stealth Hi/Bye on Bruce at the beginning of the movie. Bruce's sheer annoyance over it really sells it.
  • Basically everything involving Calendar Man, from being forced to acknowledge it's Taco Tuesday by an eager security guard, to being the only one left in his cell when Two-Face broke all the other villains out, because he made a wrong call of tails against a coin toss.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many fans were interested in checking out this film just to see Jensen Ackles as Batman. Others for Naya Rivera as Catwoman or non-comic book fans who just wanted to see her in her final role.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Harvey Dent, after months of being suspected as the Holiday Killer and getting scarred by Sal Maroni, goes insane and develops a Split Personality known as Two-Face. Killing two assassins sent after him by Carmine Falcone, Two-Face is washed into the Gotham sewers and recruits Solomon Grundy to help enact revenge. Upon being confronted by Gordon and Batman, Two-Face immediately realizes his wife Gilda is Holiday and prevents the two from giving chase when she kills Maroni. Breaking into Arkham Asylum, Two-Face sends half of the villains into the city as a distraction while he takes the rest to assault Falcone's penthouse. With Falcone at his mercy, Two-Face decides to give him a chance to live with a coin flip, and despite Batman and Catwoman's interference carries out the ruthless execution when the coin lands on its scarred side. With Falcone finally dead, Harvey turns himself in, taking credit for all the Holiday murders to protect Gilda.
  • Selina Kyle, the illegitimate daughter of notorious mobster Carmine Falcone, sought to gain revenge on the father who abandoned her as the master thief Catwoman. Falling in love with the Dark Knight, Selina aids him in his own crusade against Gotham's crime families and the city's emerging supervillain presence, notably saving him from Poison Ivy's control and Scarecrow's fear gas. Selina successfully spies on Falcone's operations to prevent assassinations and locate his hidden blood money, even convincing Batman and Harvey to burn it all simply to deny the mobster success, and always emerges at the last second to snatch victory from the jaws of disaster.
  • The Holiday Killer, in truth Gilda Dent, was forced to annul her marriage with Alberto Falcone and have an abortion that left her sterile after Carmine discovered that they were having a child out of wedlock. Seeking revenge, Gilda began murdering members of the Falcone family on holidays using guns modified to be untraceable. Killing the man who supplied her with her weapons, various assassins sent to kill her husband Harvey, and even Alberto himself, Gilda consistently evades capture and remains under suspicion, even allowing Harvey to be framed as Holiday when her guns are discovered in their house. After Two-Face personally murders Carmine, Gilda burns the evidence linking her to the killings while explaining her motives to Batman, uncaring towards the complete destruction of the crime family but regretful of what her actions shaped Harvey into, before promising that Holiday is finished.
• Moe: Barbara Gordon as a little kid looks adorable, with waist-length hair and freckles which she doesn't normally have, and dressing as a cop for Halloween.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Joker crosses this when he plans to gas half of Gotham on New Year's to kill Holiday. He figures he has a 50% chance, and if he gets it wrong then at least he killed a lot of people.
  • If Carmine Falcone didn't cross it with all the murder and corruption he caused as a crime lord he certainly crossed it when he forced his son to break up with his girlfriend and forced her to get an abortion, simply because they would have had a child out of wedlock. This is also implied to have caused Gilda fertility problems (as she was late in her pregnancy). It stands out in extreme hypocrisy as Falcone always makes a big deal about how family is important to him, and himself fathered an illegitimate daughter (Selina) with a mistress.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • A few fans have expressed disappointment that the character designs don't resemble Tim Sale's memorable and surreal depictions, instead giving the movie an art-style similar to that of Superman: Man of Tomorrow and Justice Society: World War II.
  • The film's changes to the ending in which Batman learns that Gilda Dent is the Holiday Killer but chooses to let her go because she assured him that she was done killing has drawn some criticism. As Batman being against killing is one the things he is known for, him letting Gilda off the hook is viewed by some as out of character even if she did has sympathetic reasons for her actions.
  • Many fans of Batman: Dark Victory mourn how the changes to the fates and actions of several Falcones cause the story to diverge in a way that makes it extremely doubtful that story will ever be a sequel to this movie, especially since Dark Victory has already tended to get ignored in adaptations that borrow from The Long Halloween despite being widely viewed as an equal or superior sequel.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While Gilda's reasons for becoming Holiday are sympathetic, her lack of regret for Alberto's death and how her actions unintentionally turned Harvey into Two-Face can make her this to some viewers. She says she doesn't regret Alberto's death, who deeply regrets what happened between them and before getting killed seemed like he was going to say he would rather be with her than with his family. She spares no thought or care for what sort of life Alberto must have been trapped in or how what happened would have affected him, though it's understandable to an extent why she wouldn't. With Harvey while she explains that she did love him, she seems to push most of the blame of Two-Face on him and admits she only married him since he was her best chance to see Falcone brought to justice. She tells Batman that since Harvey had his own demons she was forced to confront her own by herself, but she seems to suggest that his were far worse that her own despite the fact that his mental issues were worsened by her actions as Holiday, so her claims that she feels alone come across as hollow.
• The Woobie: Alberto Falcone is the abused son of the mob boss Carmine Falcone. His father neglected him through his whole life, sending him to a boarding school when he was still in diapers, and then forced him to give up his girlfriend. If that wasn't enough, unlike the comics, he's not Holiday, and wants nothing to do with the crime family and would rather just live a normal life, despite Batman accusing him. He ends up getting killed by Holiday (who was said girlfriend's husband) and shredded by a ship propeller. You can't help but feel really bad for the guy and wish that he had a better end.

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