The Long Halloween Part 2 - Review

The Long Halloween Part 2 hits the ground running from the previous instalment’s cliffhanger ending–with Bruce Wayne (Jensen Ackles) completely under the influence of Poison Ivy (Katee Sackhoff), who’s mesmerised him into signing over his various businesses and holdings to Falcone. Poetically, Part 2 picks up on Valentine's Day, with Gotham City remaining firm in the tentative grip of ‘Holiday’, the mysterious serial killer who’s been striking on a different holiday each month.

The killer continues to target the members of Falcone’s organised crime syndicate, with Harvey Dent (Josh Duhamel) and Commissioner Gordon (Billy Burke) experiencing mounting pressure to cap the serial killer and thwart the writhing criminal underworld of Gotham, all while more and more of Batman’s zaniest enemies are unleashed on the city.

The Long Halloween pt. 2 is a deep exploration into the seedy underbelly of Gotham, and with it, we begin to understand how Gotham is uniquely built to be an incubation chamber for so many depraved supervillains. In focusing on the rampant organised crime, this film’s heroes and villains exist in a binary spectrum of systems–the law and the criminal. Neither fully understands the chaos that the other is capable of unleashing and beyond the central mystery of this film, this metropolitan commentary on Gotham reigns.

Flows

Harvey Dent

For movie goers, the transformation of Harvey Dent to Two Face is probably most recognised from Aaron Eckhart’s performance in, “The Dark Knight”. Whereas Joker, and the personification of chaos that he represents, is the source of Nolan’s Dent descending into violence, The Long Halloween undertakes a more nuanced approach. A man who once believed that the law would bring justice loses faith in the system he’s been sworn to uphold and, like the Batman, looks for a justice that exists outside of the law. Dent’s transition, which is wonderfully documented by Josh Duhamel, does not have a Two Face championing chaos, duplicity, and chance. Instead, this is a man who wants to finish what he’s started with the freedom that only the warped morality of a criminal can warrant. This is, hands down, the best depiction of Two-Face, and his origin story, available on the screen today.

Fight Scenes

Part 2 is laden with many more fight scenes, with Catwoman and Poison Ivy clashing straight out of the gate. If you’re like me, and was hoping for a faster pace, and upped ante and more action, then Part 2 will give you everything you need.

Catwoman

As the story progresses, we begin to understand more about why Selina Kyle has such an investment in the Falcone’s empire. Naya Rivera does captures Catwoman with excellent poise, aloof yet passionate and masterfully exhibiting a femme fatale energy that has become synonymous with Catwoman and helping to leave us totally disconcerted about her intentions and motivations. This is a free spirit, not a loose cannon, who operates strictly to her own moral code and nothing else and the moments when Selina’s vulnerability is on display are genuinely tender and heartfelt. Naya Rivera did an excellent job in this role and it’s heartbreaking that she won’t be able to reprise it in the future.

Ebbs

Poison Ivy

Poison Ivy is introduced quickly and dismissed just as quickly and I feel like, with how slowly paced the first part of the duo was set, Poison Ivy’s capture of Bruce Wayne could’ve had a more significant moment to breathe. There are many ways to add the film’s tertiary characters that gives them more heft (The Joker isn’t a primary antagonist of this film but his role could’ve been cut to give Ivy a little more focus).

Art style

(I still can’t help but desire a more faithful adherence to ​​Tim Sale’s art style)

Batman

Less a criticism and more of an observation: this is a Batman at his weakest. The Long Halloween is almost a rite of passage, a pivotal moment that forced him to become the version of Batman that we see so often (inventive, resourceful, genius level intellect). But this version of Batman is not that. He’s flawed, susceptible to fear toxin, frustrated at himself for not being able to figure the central mystery of this story out–this shows the more human side of a man who’s superhumanity is often a narrative choice to make him cerebrally invincible–and here we see a version of Batman that is struggling to find his footing.

SPOILER WARNING:

The identity of Holiday

Holiday’s identity is the same as in the book. At the end of the film, it’s revealed that Gilda Dent (Julie Nathanson) is The Holiday Killer. However, in The Long Halloween’s comics, Batman never discovers who’s at the bottom of the killings and Gilda’s motivation is an attempt to save her marriage and free her husband from his crusade to end organised crime. The Long Halloween pt. 2, instead has Gilda explain to Batman at the very end, that Alberto Falcone and his whole family rejected her when she fell in love with his son. Pried apart from her love, she was forced to abort her child and vowed to destroy the Falcone family out of spiteful vengeance. This deviation from the comics is meant to give more weight to the story, and although Batman finding all this out and choosing to let Gilda go free, the change of motive feels like a pointless attempt to try to make the story more woman-centric. There are lots of ways to exhibit Gilda’s scorn, which is what this story is ultimately about, but the deviation from the comic’s is arbitrary, as the film’s reasoning has the same flimsiness as the comics.

Conclusion

As a 2-part epic, these films amount to 172 minute run time, with the former half masterfully building up tension in the noir, art-deco streets of Gotham city and the latter releasing that tension through a series of high-octane action sequences with explosives, projectiles and hand to hand combat to boot. But the central themes of this film–the mystery, the individuality of internal conflict, how the cruelty of the world can break us, how our intentions can seem honorable and still harm–are themes proudly present from the comic that translate seamlessly on the screen. Even as someone with very little regard for the throwback, golden-era aesthetic and tone, which seems to be set anywhere between 1940 and 1990, and despite the fact these infinite iterations of Batman are making my head spin, I thoroughly enjoyed the story and, being one of the more complex and heady films in the catalogue of animated Batman films, this is a refreshing first movie in this new DC Tomorrowverse.

What did you think of The Long Halloween pt. 2? Comment your thoughts below!