The story is engrossing, with a great idea and well-choreographed sequences. The music is great too, very rousing and quite powerful and fits with each scene appropriately. It has a dark, haunting visual style, with smooth backgrounds, well drawn characters and atmospheric colouring, not to mention a beautifully realised Gotham City. I was also very impressed with the animation. The villains in general are also well developed. For example, Batman is not only dark, charismatic and brooding as he should be, but the writers brought a certain edge and poignancy to him too. Not only is it intelligent and smart but it is very deep and complex and delves into the characters far more effectively than any of the Nolan and Schumacher movies in my opinion. The best asset of Under the Red Hood is the writing.
If we include series too, Batman:The Animated Series is your best bet.
Minor faults aside, what we do have is one of the better Batman movies (or anything to do with Batman for that matter) in my view, along with Mask of the Phantasm, the original Batman, Return of the Joker and Batman Begins. I did think it is a little too short though, and Joker's voice did take some time to get used to which is more to do with that I felt the voice didn't completely gel with the character design. Reviewed by TheLittleSongbird 9 / 10 Batman is back!
Vietti doesn't let the pace slacken in this fast-moving actioneer. The Joker is just as dangerous as he has always been. As it turns out, Ra's al Ghul confiscated his corpse and put it into his Lazarus Pit to rejuvenate him. It seems, however, that poor Jason isn't defunct. Batman is haunted by the death of Jason Todd. Batman gets to use his Batplane, his batarangs, and his own traditional weapons. The animation looks terrific, and Bruce Greenwood makes a robust Batman. The scenes where Batman and the Red Hood partner up to battle a quartet of virtually indestructible combatants is exciting stuff, as is the showdown between Night Wing and Batman against Amazo, a robot that can absorb superhero's powers. Not only do we get the zany Joker at his most sadistic, but also Batman teams up with his former partner Dick Grayson who is now Night Wing. The biggest surprise of this animated, 75 minute extravaganza is the revelation about the Red Hood's identity. Batman doesn't seem inclined to want to capture the Red Hood and turn him over to the authorities. "Batman Versus Dracula" director Brandon Vietti has made a first-rate escapade with an enigmatic character, the Red Hood, devastating the Black Mask's crime empire. Batman arrives too late to rescue Todd, and one of the Caped Crusader's immortal enemies, Ra's al Ghul, who had gone into business with the Joker. The opening sequence shows the Joker using a crowbar to soften up Jason Todd before he leaves him trapped in a warehouse wired to blow up. "Batman: Under the Red Hood" is as good as any live-action "Batman" epic.
The Killing Joke is a little gross and is not the return to form for DC Animation that we all had hoped it would be, but the final sequence is fantastic and I don't know that the movie overall deserves quite as much vitriol as it has had.Reviewed by zardoz-13 8 / 10 Another GOOD Batman Animated Epic!!! The story essentially meets that of its source material, but rather than expand the existing story, they chose to awkwardly force an entirely different one in beforehand, to the point that this is essentially two episodes of two different shows, rather than a single cohesive movie. I don't know if he's rusty or just didn't care, but his voice performance is not 100%. There are a couple of occasions that the latter slipped though. Hamill is great, and Kevin Conroy usually is as well. And of these lofty expectations, The Killing Joke falls short.
It sees the long awaited return of both Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill to their famed DC roles, and the comic it's based on is widely regarded as one of the better stories ever published by the company. I think part of the reason the reception for The Killing Joke has been so overwhelmingly negative is that the expectations were so high going in. Shares the few weaknesses of the short comic it is based on, but adds a bunch of its own new weaknesses to try and get it up to a theatrical runtime and justify its cinema release.