The Movie:

Batman: The Soul Of The Dragon is the latest Batman animated feature, an ‘Elseworlds' story that takes place out of established DC Universe continuity and not adapted from any specific comic book. Set in the 1970's, the story takes place in the present when a gang of ninjas steals a sacred sword. This ties into Bruce Wayne's (David Giuntoli) past, specifically the time when he was training to become Batman by learning martial arts from a man referred to only as O-Sensei (James Hong). Wayne wasn't the only student at this time, as he learned alongside fellow students Shiva (Kelly Hu), Richard Dragon (Mark Dacascos), Ben 'Bronze Tiger' Turner (Michael Jai White) Jade (Jamie Chung) and Rip Jagger (Chris Cox), that last character being a nice nod to Charlton Comics' Judomaster character.

Since those days have past, they've all gone their separate ways but the theft of that aforementioned sword sees the team put aside their differences and get the gang back together to stop the fiends who have it from using it to open a portal to another dimension and wreak all sorts of havoc for all sorts of people, not the least of which his poor old O-Sensai himself.

Batman: Soul Of The Dragon is okay, but never great. It has some nice action set pieces and there are a few fun nods that comic book fans will pick up on as well as a few other nods for fans of seventies martial arts films to geek out over (Michael Jai White is basically playing Ben Turner as Williams, Jim Kelly's character from 1973's Enter The Dragon, the writing makes this obvious!). The animation style is slick and nice to look at, the characters all ‘move' well and there's some very cool set and costume design work on display throughout the movie. You've got to appreciate the fact that the Batmobile in this movie is essentially a tricked out seventies muscle car! There are moments of effective humor present throughout Jeremy Adams' script as well, that help add to the fun.

That having been said, the first half of this Batman movie suffers from a pretty obvious lack of Batman. Yeah, it's interesting enough to see Bruce Wayne doing his training and getting to know some of the supporting characters and all that, but these scenes do tend to drag a bit and the film suffers from some pacing issues for this reason. The Caped Crusader himself gets only a minimal amount of screen time until the last third of the movie. At this point, Bruce suits up and gets down to business, but at that point things do start to feel a bit rushed. The ending, without wanting to spoil it, does leave plenty of room (too much room, some might say) for a sequel, and there's potential to deliver a follow up that could improve on some of the shortcomings noted above, but this one never quite reaches the heights that you hope it will.

There's still enough working in its favor to make it worth watching, however, even if it isn't a stone cold classic. The voice acting is strong across the board and James Hong steals pretty much every scene that he's involved with, adding some welcome humor to the proceedings without making it seem forced or corny. There's some impressive scope and noticeable ambition in a few of the action set pieces, a car chase scene with that muscle car Batmobile standing out as noteworthy, if maybe not so realistic. You could definitely do a whole lot worse than spend an hour and a half with this picture. Just don't go into it expecting a masterpiece.

The Video:

Warner Brothers presents Batman: Soul Of The Dragon on UHD in an HEVC / H.265 transfer in 2160p framed at 1.78.1 widescreen. The HDR10 enabled disc looks very good even if there isn't a massive difference here between the 4k UHD disc and the included Blu-ray disc (which uses an AVC encoded 1080p transfer, also framed at 1.78.1). As you'd expect for a brand new animated feature there's not a trace of damage or dirt to find, the image is spotless. There are no noticeable compression artifacts on the UHD at all and some scenes really exhibit some excellent depth. Black levels are nice and colors are beautifully reproduced here (as you'd expect, this is the area where the UHD most obviously surpasses the Blu-ray disc), and this is in spite of the fact that large portions of the movie take place inside dreary looking Batcaves and exteriors at night. While this isn't a massive leap forward for UHD over Blu-ray, the 4k transfer does offer some noticeable improvements in the areas you'd expect it to.