Batman: Soul of the Dragon

[Hypestyle]

I just watched this yesterday.

it was really enjoyable. The choice to have this take place (presumably) in the early 1970s, making it more of a blatant nod to period "exploitation" films, I think it was pulled off.

Among the surprising parts--
spoilers:

Batman-- more specifically, Bruce Wayne in costume-- is hardly in it. Bruce spends most of his time in this story in his civilian clothes, including getting into fights. I don't view this as a negative, but it was a surprising approach to the story, nonetheless. Of course, his co-stars here already knew his past as a martial artist, so there's no playboy fop image to maintain.

end of spoilers

I liked the co-starring characters: Richard Dragon, Lady Shiva, Bronze Tiger. All the voice actors they picked were pretty good, though I felt like the Batman actor David Giuntoli was trying to channel Kevin Conroy.

Even though this came out in January 2021, I felt while watching this that this nearly was DC's answer to the Shang Chi film project, lol.

I liked that there were sequences and nods in dialogue to Enter the Dragon. I suppose that ETD being owned by Warner Bros. helps.

sidebar: I don't have a history of reading the Richard Dragon character, so the fact that he was "race bent" here to be a Bruce Lee stand-in wasn't controversial to me.

[phonogram12]

I rewatched this recently. While I didn't necessarily love it, I did find it entertaining, especially since I'm myself a fan of martial arts and exploitation movies from that time. I liked the way Bruce was portrayed (I LOVED the Silver St. Cloud cameo), although I did find it more than a little convenient that both Bronze Tiger and Shiva ended up putting down roots in Gotham after leaving Nanda Parbat. One thing that I particularly liked, though, was that while Bruce was good, he wasn't the most skilled of the students who studied under the O-Sensei. That's actually the way I think he should be portrayed in the books as well. Guys like Dragon, Shiva, and Bronze Tiger (as well as other characters like Judomaster) literally make martial arts their entire lives. As good as Bruce is, his fighting skills is just one of the skills he's picked up in his pursuit of justice. He's also the world's greatest detective, one of the world's greatest escape artists, a master of disguise, not to mention an incredibly skilled tactical driver and pilot. And of course there's his keen mind for business. I'm inclined to agree with Chuck Dixon in re to a fight between Shiva and Batman - if at all possible, he would do everything he could to avoid a direct hand-to-hand encounter with her, doing his best to take her down from a distance with various tools from his utility belt.