There are two kinds of Batman fan: those who remember 1993, and those who have only heard about the pouches. Warner Bros. has now given both camps a date. Batman: Knightfall Part 2: Knightquest, the middle chapter of the R-rated animated trilogy, arrives on digital, 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on 15 December. The announcement came with new clips, including a Nightwing-led scene debuted by IGN in which Dick Grayson steps up to defend Gotham after Bane’s handiwork, and a peek at a featurette on Azrael’s redesign.
For anyone who missed the comics, here’s the set-up. Bane has broken Batman’s back, and Bruce Wayne, paralysed from the waist down, has to pick a successor. Rather than the obvious candidates, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, he chooses Jean-Paul Valley, alias Azrael, a man raised by a secretive religious order to be its avenging angel. It’s a bit like leaving your dog with the neighbour because he has a lovely big garden, and failing to notice the garden is full of bear traps. Valley’s idea of justice soon turns ugly, and the trailer shows him moving from the classic cape and cowl into a suit of Batman armour of the kind that would once have come with its own holographic trading card.
Anson Mount returns as Bruce Wayne, Michael Mando as Bane and Pablo Schreiber as Valley, with Jack Griffo as Tim Drake, Bruce Boxleitner as Commissioner Gordon, Simon Templeman as Alfred, Toks Olagundoye as Dr Shondra Kinsolving, David Dastmalchian as the Riddler and Jason Flemyng, flying the flag, as the Mad Hatter. Max Mittelman is credited as Jason Todd, while whoever is voicing Nightwing has yet to be named. Jeff Wamester directs from a script by Jeremy Adams. The extras include a featurette on bringing Azrael’s 1990s look up to date, and another in which the cast, crew and DC experts chew over the old question of whether Batman should ever kill.
In that redesign featurette, Adams admits that the story’s DNA is thoroughly nineties, tropes and all, and frankly that’s the charm. Knightquest was a story about the comics industry’s own appetite for grim, armour-plated heroes, told at the exact moment that appetite was at its height, and it was never subtle about it. An adaptation that keeps the blades, the brooding and the moral panic is doing the job properly. Part 3, KnightsEnd, follows in 2027, at which point the original Bat may have a few words to say about the state of his wardrobe.
If the embed above stops working, the trailer is on YouTube here: Batman: Knightfall Part 2: Knightquest official trailer.
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