Under The Red Hood Movie Review

Under The Red Hood Review

Ohhhh boy.

So under the Red Hood is an animated adaptation of the Batman comic of the same name that features the return of Jason Todd. Yeah, remember him? The second Robin?
The one that Joker beat to death with a crowbar and then blew up him and his mother and got rewarded for it by being named the official diplomat of Iran? Yeah, him. Interestingly, there was a vote to save or to kill Jason. They chose death, and why do you ask? Diplomat's Son from Batman #424. Problem is, that story is a blatant Idiot Plot. The story opens with Jason beating down a rapist and turning him over to the police, only to discover that he's the titular diplomat's son: A serial rapist named Felipe Garzonas. As the son of a diplomat, Garzonas had diplomatic immunity, which made him untouchable. A truly rotten piece of shit, Garzonas flaunted this fact. Gloria, the woman that Batman and Robin saved, had been raped by him not once, but twice. When he knew he was about to be deported, he called her, basically promising to come assault her again. Though they hurried, they didn’t get to her place in time. Gloria hung herself, choosing suicide over what Garzonas would have done to her. Jason found her body.

This leads to Robin confronting the rapist on a balcony, where he falls to his death and it's strongly implied that Robin pushed him

That's right, Jason Todd (allegedly) broke the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule against a villain who got away with his crimes due to a legal technicality that doesn't actually exist, and that's why people wanted him to die.


I would also like to note that Batman didn’t see what happened, but he jumped to the worst-case scenario.

Jason looked up at Bruce, and he saw condemnation. He saw that Bruce assumed that because he was angry, because of his history, and because he believed in a sharper definition of justice, he killed a man. And he realized that it didn’t matter what he said. There was a dead man on the ground, and the only one around to blame is him. The truth didn’t matter, because Bruce had already decided who he was—-and what he was capable of. The question of whether or not Jason killed that rapist has never been answered, but the audience will tell you otherwise. Jason must have killed him, because Jason Todd was a “bad” Robin.


So, Jason was killed off, Joker got away with it and continued to make Gotham his own personal shooting gallery for years up until Jason was brought back due to Emoboy Prime punching the Source Wall. Jason became the vigilante known as Red Hood and is still active now.


So let's see how the movie handles this!

Annnnnd it's a bad start. We start off with Ra's chilling in his castle, depressed and mentioning that he never should have allied with a madman. That madman in question? Joker. Yeah, Ra's made a deal with Joker and is freaking surprised when things went bad. Ra's....you are supposed to be smart, right? I'm just saying, Nolan Ra's would have sooner cut the clowns head off than work with him.

We switch to a warehouse where Joker is beating the crap out of Jason with a crowbar and laughing about it, as Joker does. But wait, you ask, how did Joker capture Robin without Batman stopping him? Oh, I'll get to that.

After he gets done beating the hell out of the poor kid, Joker leaves. Robin craws to the door but of course it's locked and in his banged up body, he can't escape. He can only sit and watch the bomb tick down.

Batman is too late and the building blows up, Batman lifts up Jason's body and carries him off. Soooo, you think, Batman is going to kick the shit out of the clown for this one right? Right? NOPE! We cut to 5 years later with Dick as Nightwing and everybody doing their thing in Gotham. Joker is back in Arkham and nobody is talking about Jason's death.

Our story picks up again with a meeting of the Gotham Drug Mobsters, who were lured into one place by the Red Hood who aims an AK47 at them all and makes it clear that not only will he use it but that he is the one in charge here. From now on, they will kick up 40% to him and that he will protect them from Black Mask and Batman and kids are off limits. One of them tries to talk tough so he throws them a duffel bag full of their lieutenant's heads. They agree to work for him now.

Cut to the Shipyard where Batman is tracking a couple of punks in a truck and after it crashes, he squares off with a low-level Amazo. Luckily for Batman, it's a crappy version with just super strength and heat vision. If this had been JLU or YJ, he'd have been boned. Then again, YJ would invoke The Light and nobody cares about them.
Nightwing shows up and is awesome and teams up with Batman to fight the Amazo and after a cool boss fight, they take it down and try interrogating the thugs. But are interrupted by a sniper, Red Hood.

So Batman chases after him with the Goddamn Batwing. Batman needs to chase more people in the Batwing.

We also catch a couple randomly laying down and making out on a rooftop. Seems like it would get kinda cold and public and dangerous, this is Gotham, but hey, whatever gets ya hot.

Cool Chase Scene ensues and it's cool car vs Batwing. I really want to know what kind of car he was driving. I mean, that Batwing Cable turns into a convertible, but I'm still curious.

They end up in Axis Chemicals and Batman has a Bat-Flashback to when the OG Red Hood fell into the chemicals. Annnnd they still have done to cover them up or fix the railings. I mean...seriously? This place is a lawsuit waiting to happen man!

Red Hood pops up and banters with Batman, telling him that this was the place of Batman's greatest mistake.Hood blows up his car which causes chemicals to ignite which blows the joint. I wonder if it was ensured. Huh.

Back at the BatCave, they talk about Hood and how a lot of criminals have used the identity and how Joker is locked up.

They go to Arkham to interrogate him and of course Joker just talks smack and gets on their nerves.

Next Scene!

Some mooks are introduced to Black Mask who is ranting and raving about the loss of Amazo while Ms.Ling, as opposed to Mr.Ling from the comic, snarks. Not sure about raving lunatic Black Mask, but at least it's the real him. *cough Origins cough*. Also he punches out the new guy. Because Black Mask. Black Mask gets ready to have his men start hunting down Black Mask and take care of a new shipment. Also Batman has an audio bug there as does Red Hood. Which begs the question: IF the Goddamn Batman knows every little illegal thing that goes down...why doesn't he just record it all and hand that over to the cops or something? I mean, I know the GCPD are useless, but you think it would have come up or something.

Anyway, Hood hijacks a copter or tries to but Batman and Nightwing stop it and get ready to go after Red Hood.

"Okay then, nice night for a run."
I firmly believe that this version of Red Hood is loosely based off of Deadpool. Just listen to the guy's smack talk!

They chase him around construction sites, rooftops, sides of buildings, off a blimp and more. This chase goes all around Gotham. Batman tries to tie him up with a Batrope but Hood cuts it before it can catch him and the chase continues. I want to take a moment to say that the chase scenes in this movie are awesome.

After a bad explosion and a bad fall onto train tacks, Dick hurts his leg. Hood insults Batman but gets cut off by a roaring train. Batman tells Dick to rest up at home and Batman works with the audio until he can really get it: "You haven't lost your touch BRUCE!"

Shocked, Batman realizes who Hood is. We get a flashback to Batman and kid Jason punking criminals, mooks and Riddler, and Jason having fun and talking smack. Also Jason was not wearing any pants.
Just saying.

Second flashback is an older, teen Jason beating up criminals and a drug dealing pimp. Unfortunately, this shatters the punks collarbone and because Jason actually really hurt a criminal, Batman gets on his case. Not like you could've interrogated the other three criminals with him or anything.

Black Mask is of course still pissed that he can't seem to take this dude so he hires some assassin group of tech users the Hand of Four.

Black Mask's men start killing Hood's men to lure out Red Hood. Hood shows up and kills one of the men and then fights the Super-Villains. Batman joins in and they team up to take them down, including Hood killing the energy blaster after taking a hit for Batman.
They argue about their methods: Hood pointing out that the villains were all assassins and that his way is better since he is controlling crime and taking out the worst of them, and Batman pointing out that he's no better than a criminal. He offers to help Jason but Jason turns him down.

 Taking a sword and testing the blood on it from where it cut Jason, he confirms that Hood is Jason to Alfred's shock.

Black Mask is ranting over Hood killing off his men and destroying his weapon supplies and Black Mask starts beating up his minions in anger. Red Hood shoots a rocket at Black Mask's office and, after surviving this, Black Mask gets the brilliant idea to jump to hiring Joker. I mean, you could hire lethal meta's or 8 assassins or something but NOPE! Hire the clown! There is absolutely no way this could go wrong.

After killing an Arkham Guard, they chat with Joker in a room and of course, Joker breaks the glass of water, because of course you would give him an actual glass and not a foam cup or something. Idiots.

Bruce digs up Jason's body and confirms that it was a fake and goes after Ra's.Oh, yeah, now he's pissed about it.

Batman jumps Ra's in his castle, takes him out and interrogates him on what happened to Jason. Yeaaaah, we're about to find out happened that day and SPOILER ALERT: It's really stupid and a giant plot hole.
Okay, so Ra's had some big plan to attack banks or something and hired Joker to distract Batman. Because Ra's, as I said, is an idiot and had no idea the homicidal maniac would go out of control.

Batman and Robin catch up to Joker in Bosnia and pimpslap his mooks. Joker runs away and Robin chases after him. They go through a door and a mook attacks Batman. Okay, sure, it was shown that apparently the mook got in a punch but are we really supposed to believe ONE GUY stopped Batman?

Now, allow me to further explain why this is a huuuuuuge plot hole. In the time it took Batman to pimp slap one mook, Joker would have had to...
1: Beat up Jason, who has been clearly shown to a be a fast, strong, smart, vicious fighter.
2: Tie him up.
3: Take his shoes, because Jason was shown to be barefoot,
4: Load him up into a car or whatever unseen vehicle Joker used to get away, because none was shown.
5: Get in, turn it on and drive/teleport a million miles away. All while hoping Jason didn't wake back up and attack him again.
All before Batman could turn the corner and come after them. Oh and it was shown that Batman had a tracker, so it's not like he could have lost track of Robin.
In other words, this story does not work on that alone.

Ugh.

Anyway, Ra's continues by telling Batman that he and his guys retrieved Jason's body, switched it with a fake and dunked him into a Lazarus Pit. Mummy!Jason rises, freaks out, beats up Ra's mooks and runs off into the snow and of course, none of Ra's idiot minions can find him.

Batman leaves.

Back In Gotham, we see just how idiotic and useless the GCPD really are.
Joker has tied up Black Mask and his minions, locked them up in a truck, driven it to the middle of a bridge and is just sitting there. The ENTIRE GCPD are now surrounding him with guns drawn while Joker is prancing about and dancing around in front of them. They have a spotlight on him and fucking PERFECT SHOTS! And what does Comissioner Worthless decide to do? "Nobody make a move! Hold your fire!"
I remind you, that literally everything Joker does revolves around mass murder. "Hold your fire!"
He shot Gordon's daughter, ripped her clothes off and took pictures of this but...."Hold your fire!"
He has filled whole graveyards just with the sheer amount of people he has killed but..."Hold your fire!"
And it's not like Joker has any army with him or something, it is him, all alone, standing RIGHT THERE! You guys have freaking guns and sniper rifles! USE THEM YOU IDIOTS!
How do these dumbasses still have their jobs? The GCPD.Are.Worthless. Any sensible person in the world would have blown him away with a chance like this.

Anyway, Red Hood shows up. Now, you would think that he, somebody with dozens of reasons to hate Joker, would just shoot him with a sniper rifle right? NOPE! Because Joker is protected by magical fairy dust of plot convenience, he just captures Joker instead and escapes and then simply beats him up a little.

Red Hood calls out Batman and they fight it out. While awesome, it re-enforces my earlier point that it is impossible that a single idiot mook could have possibly stalled Batman for any length of time given the beatings that Red Hood and Batman both take here.
Eventually crashing into a bathroom, Batman beats up Jason some more and knocks him through a wall. After some verbal back and forth, Jason kicks open the door to reveal Joker and demands to know why Batman continues to let him slide after all the deaths and torment and friends that he has crippled. That's right Bruce, Jason knows about what happened to Barbara. Bruce gives the usual 'If I kill I'm as bad as him' excuse, so Jason decides to make a point here and force Bruce to choose who is more important: Jason OR Joker. If Batman wants to stop Jason, he'll have to shoot him dead. Joker is loving this. Batman can't do it. No Killing Code+Hating Guns and all that jazz. If Batman doesn't do it though, Jason will do the world a favor and blow Joker's brains out.
Soooo what does Batman do? He throws away the gun and starts walking away. And here is another problem. Jason points his gun AWAY from Joker and at Batman and yells at him, with Batman clearly not listening. So, you would think Jason would just say screw it and kill Joker now right? NOPE! He continues ranting and then shoots at Batman, who activates his matrix powers for a moment, and throws a Batarang into Jason's gun, causing it to misfire and hurt Jason's hand. Jason starts the timers on the bombs he put there and Batman tries to defuse them but Joker somehow gets free and starts fighting Batman and then Batman throws him off and tries to grab Jason and the bombs go off.
Batman digs himself up out of the rubble and looks for Jason but only finds a laughing Joker.

A police report later and the movie closes down with a flashback involving Kid!Jason playing around in the Batcave with Batman and Alfred in his Robin outfit and declaring it the best day of his life.

Final Thoughts

2/10.
The animation is great and the fights are cool but that's it.
When you think about it, the story sucks. Joker gets off completely scott free thanks to the magic of plot shields and everybody conveniently becoming stupid.
Seriously, why would ANYBODY hire Joker for help when you could hire dozens of better villains for help like Bane or Deathstroke or Shiva?
We're supposed to root for Batman, but while Jason isn't perfect, his methods work better than just 'Lock them up in Arkham. Again.'
The Gotham Police are useless as always, no change there.
 And in the end, there are no changes whatsoever other than Red Hood is now running around.
.
So, yeah. Watch it for the fights and that's all.