Movie Review: The Long Halloween Pt 1

It’s hard to know where to start when reviewing this animated film adaption of The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. However, to be fair to the film makers, I decided I wanted to start the review by highlighting the challenges that are part and parcel when attempting to translate any written work into a film, be it live-action or animated. First and foremost there is the problem of pacing and content. A written work has the relative luxury of user buy-in right from the start. A person picking up a 500 page novel or 130 page graphic novel knows what they are getting into right from the start. They can read it in fits and bursts, starting and stopping as they see fit. However, movies are usually digested in one sitting and what works on the page often won’t translate to the screen. So, it is incumbent upon the screenplay writer to try and condense the story into something that works on the screen while remaining true to the work that it is based on. This is a difficult task and one that can not be underestimated. In order to accomplish this, even the best writers must have a thorough understanding of the source material, an understanding of the characters they are writing, and a desire to pay homage to what came before in order to churn out a script that can be successful on the screen. That said, screenwriter Tim Sheridan (Superman: Man of Tomorrow) had a major task ahead of him. How did he do? Read on and we’ll discuss it.

Before we get into the writing in the film I wanted to discuss two other aspects that are always important to an animated film, namely animation style and voice-acting. Let’s tackle voice-acting first. The voice talents in this film are first rate and, by and large, I thought their performances ranged from acceptable to outstanding. Harvey Dent, voiced by Josh Duhamel, and Selina Kyle, voiced by Naya Rivera, are both perfectly acceptable. The voice work didn’t blow my socks off but neither did it take me out of the story. Batman, voiced by Jensen Ackles, is above average. He pays homage to the classic Conroy growl from Batman The Animated Series and is very successful in doing so. I want to hear more from him in the future. Billy Burke, Julie Nathanson and Jim Pirrie were above average as well as Gordon, Gilda Dent and Sal Maroni respectively. Alberto Falcone, voiced by Jack Quaid, was a mixed bag but mainly for writing reasons which we will get to in a moment. The truly stand-out performances were delivered by Titus Welliver, Alastair Duncan, and Troy Baker. Titus Welliver’s Carmine Falcone is utterly believable. I could listen to him over and over again and believe that this is the dread “Roman” brought to life. Alastair Duncan as Alfred Pennyworth once again shines. He is a worthy successor to Efrain Zimbalist Jr. who played the part in BTAS. Finally, Troy Baker once again shines as Joker and is a VERY close second to Mark Hamill in that role — words I never thought I would write. That is not a knock on Baker but merely a recognition of the iconic status Hamill established for himself in that role. Finally, I want to give a special shout out to Fred Tatasciore as Solomon Grundy. Famously, Tatasciore also voiced The Hulk in a number of projects and the man certainly has a penchant for voicing hulking figures with convincing reality. I almost forgot, I also wanted to give a shout to David Dastmalchian as Julian Day, The Calendar Man. Absolutely haunting.

Next, let’s talk about the animation. I’ve included a few stills from the film to give you an idea of the general level of animation. Overall, I have to say that the animation was perfectly acceptable, bordering on great at times. I believe that one of the difficulties of adapting a graphic novel to animation is that the level of art in the film can never match the level of art in the graphic novel. It is impossible. I’ve seen this critique from others many times, most notably on The Killing Joke adaption, and I don’t think it is entirely fair. The amount of work and money it would take to animate a film to that standard is prohibitive. Consider that it takes a professional artist a week or more to churn out 22 pages of material for a comic book. Now, consider that an 80 minute animated feature at 30 FPS has roughly 144,000 frames that must be drawn and you understand the scope, and cost, of the problem. With that said, there are several outstanding sequences I wanted to highlight. The opening title sequence is absolutely incredible as a piece of art and as an homage to the original graphic novel and the art of Tim Sale. Whatever you do, try and watch the opening titles. Likewise, the death of Johnny Viti looks like it was pulled right off the pages of the graphic novel. I was genuinely surprised by the quality of this scene. Viti looks virtually identical to the way he looks in the graphic novel and it was an incredible way to start the movie. Finally, the Christmas scene with Joker and Harvey Dent is incredibly well done and one that is worth watching over and over again.

All right, I’ve avoided it long enough so let’s discuss the screenplay adaption by Tim Sheridan. Ultimately, any movie is going to live and die by it’s screenplay. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the movie is or how good the acting — you can’t polish a turd of a screenplay that much. Unfortunately, the screenplay delivered by Tim Sheridan fails in almost every measurable way. I know, I know — that is a rather bold statement and one I’m prepared to back up with examples. As I stated previously, in order for a screenplay adaption to be successful you have to have an understanding of the source material, an understanding of the characters and a desire to pay homage to what came before. Sheridan fails on at least the first two points. I can’t speak for the third as I’m not a mind reader at the time of this writing.

(Warning: Beyond this point are major plot spoilers for both the film and the graphic novel)

I’m going to start in reverse order with understanding the characters. While understanding the characters IS part of understanding the source material…it can go deeper than that because of the necessity to add new scenes or modify existing ones when writing a screenplay. As I stated before, because of time constraints and pacing issues it is almost impossible to produce a one for one text to screen adaption. Thus, it is often necessary to produce new scenes in a screenplay so that the story flows and you produce a cohesive whole instead of a hodgepodge of scenes clipped from the original book. I understand that. However, if you’re going to add new scenes you MUST have a thorough understanding of the characters you are writing for two reasons. First, fans of the original work are immediately going to spot character discrepancies in their favorite characters and are going to be angry if the character on screen differs too much from what they fell in love with. (Raises hand) Second, when you combine new scenes with old scenes character incongruencies can be even more glaring. To illustrate Sheridan’s failures here I’m going to look at two examples — the relationship between Alberto and Carmine Falcone and Batman.

Let’s start with the relationship between Alberto and Carmine Falcone. In the graphic novel, the relationship between Alberto and Carmine Falcone is a complicated one. On the one hand you have a father’s love for his son and his desire that his son take a different path than the one he follows. Carmine Falcon, while being a ruthless gangster, is also a loving father who already has one child in the business and in prison (Sofia Gigante). Not wanting that for his son he sends Alberto to the best schools hoping that Alberto will succeed in a different way. Meanwhile, Alberto wants to be part of his father’s life and chafes at the gentle rebuffs he gets from his father as he orbits around his father’s criminal enterprise while being locked out. Ultimately, this is part of the reason that Alberto fakes his own death and commits several of The Holiday Murders, and admits to all of them. (More on that in the next section) The relationship between Alberto and Carmine Falcone is very much an homage to the relationship between Michael and Don Corleone in The Godfather.

In the screenplay Tim Sheridan completely fouls up this relationship and there are two glaring examples of this in the movie. The first involves a meeting taking place after the death of Johnny Viti. It is a new scene written by Sheridan and in this scene Falcon has a man murdered right in front of Alberto. Then, the assembled group decides to discuss criminal financial matters and Carmine instructs Alberto to leave so that he can be kept out of the business. Excuse me?!?! You’ve already made your son an accessory to murder, he’s in the business now. To further muddy the waters, Carmine berates his son as he is leaving the meeting which is so out of character for him as to be maddening.

These errors are compounded in another scene. In this scene Alberto reveals to his father that he has taken steps to establish an alibi for both his father and the Falcone crime organization in the attempted murder of Harvey Dent and his wife Gilda. This is out of character for Alberto, especially in the way the scene is written. Alberto, in the graphic novel, is a mousy character who doesn’t have the strength of will to confront his father directly and demand to be part of the family business. Instead, he commits some of The Holiday Murders, and implicates himself for all of them, in order to force his father to allow him into the business, or win his father’s love, in the most passive-aggressive manner possible. To further cock things up, Sheridan has Carmine Falcone beat the hell out of his son and utter “I wish I had never sent you to Oxford.” That is so out of character for him as to bugger belief.

Finally, there is Batman himself. Throughout most of the first part of the movie various characters deride Batman’s detective skills. I wasn’t sure what was going on but I knew it didn’t sit right with me. However, I wasn’t prepared for the payoff. Sitting in the Batcave with Alfred, Batman utters this line. “I thought this job was going to be about scaring criminals off the streets. I never thought I would have to be a detective, a good one at that.” Excuse me? People can have varying opinions as to Batman’s level of detective skills at this point in his career. This story takes place approximately two years into Bruce Wayne’s tenure as The Dark Knight. However, what can not be denied is this. First, Batman traveled the world for the better part of a decade building the skills he thought necessary in order to fulfill his vow. Martial arts, escape artist, chemist, and detective among many others. He most certainly knew he would need to be a detective and a good one. To have Batman utter such a line is inexcusable. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the character and what drove him to become The Dark Knight in the first place, namely the unsolved mystery of his parent’s death. As my friend Shadewing said, he is the World’s Greatest Detective…it’s not hard it’s right there in his tag line.

Alright, deep breath, that brings us to an understanding of the source material. Why did I save this for last? You can make errors with the characters but as long as you get the plot right you can still pay homage to the source material. It’s going to be difficult but it is possible. However, through part one Sheridan fails in this regard as well. I say through part one because there is still the possibility that Sheridan has reversed course in part two, coming later this year, and introduced some of the missing elements of the story there. We shall see. However, all I can do now is judge the story in front of me and judge it I shall. One of the most compelling parts of the graphic novel is the constant intrigue around the identity of Holiday. This is so true that the identity of Holiday is still a topic of controversy. What most will agree on is that each of the murders were committed by one of three people: Gilda Dent, Harvey Dent and Alberto Falcone. Each of these people have a different motive and each murder after the first is either a continuation of the original killer’s motive or a copycat murder to further someone else’s agenda. In the graphic novel that is why Batman has such a difficult time figuring out just what the hell is going on. Even after Alberto Falcone admits to all of the murders that explanation doesn’t sit right with him. He knows, in his heart, that Gilda and Harvey were involved somehow. It is an incredible piece of storytelling by Jeph Loeb,. However, in this adaption of the graphic novel Sheridan appears to go after the low hanging fruit and wants to blame everything on Harvey Dent, so much so that he has other characters rubbing Batman’s face in it and deriding his detective skills. As I said above, Sheridan may be setting us all up for a second part reversal and I sincerely hope that is the case. There are a few moments where Gilda Dent has that far away look of a woman who has done something unthinkable and I sincerely hope she has. However, for the moment, I can’t help but think that Sheridan has ripped the soul out of this graphic novel. If this is truly the direction he decided to take he has turned a murder mystery that baffled The World’s Greatest Detective into a Two-Face origin story. I’m not okay with that.

So, let’s wrap this up. I can’t, in good conscience, recommend this movie at this time. Do I think there are good elements? Absolutely. Do I think part two could bring some redemption to part one. That is also possible. However, until it does so I don’t think it would be right of me to recommend that you go out and spend your hard-earned money on this adaption, especially if you are a fan of the graphic novel. The real travesty here is that there are many, who have never read the graphic novel, who will love this movie and think that this is The Long Halloween. It is not. If this were instead Batman: Two-Face — written by Tim Sheridan — I’d have far less problems with it. (The Batman line still wouldn’t fly) However, that isn’t what this is supposed to be. This is supposed to be an adaption of a seminal Batman book. A book brought to life for the enjoyment of fans of the graphic novel and to introduce new fans to this incredible story. In that regard, this movie fails utterly.

Animation – 4 of 5 Stars
Voice-Acting – 4 of 5 Stars
Writing – 1 of 5 Stars
Screenplay Adaption – 1 of 5 Stars

Overall – 2.5 of 5 Stars

Original Graphic Novel by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
Screenplay by Tim Sheridan
Directed by Chris Palmer
Released by Warner Bros and DC Animation

Notable Cast

Jensen Ackles – Bruce Wayne/Batman
Josh Duhamel – Harvey Dent
Naya Rivera – Catwoman/Selina Kyle
Troy Baker – Joker
Billy Burke – James Gordon
Alastair Duncan – Alfred Pennyworth
Julie Nathanson – Gilda Dent
Jack Quaid – Alberto Falcone
Titus Welliver – Carmine Falcone

Author Profile

Nemesis

Nemesis is a poet, writer and author of the upcoming novel The Long Game. He is a writer of science fiction and supernatural thrillers. Besides novels and short stories he writes for UK based ASAP Comics developing new stories for Level 8 and OPSEC. Nem is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and tries to bring those experiences into his writing.

He lives and works out of his home in Riverside, California with his wife and three children. When not writing he enjoys reviewing comic books and graphic novels for ComicCrusaders.com and living the Southern California life with his family.