That’s a Batman movie in name only, even when Bruce Wayne is around all the time and has a major role. What this really is though is a martial arts movie set in the 70s where an old friend of Bruce Wayne gets the band of martial arts disciples together who all trained under an ancient master a couple of years back. Their mission is to fight a dangerous cult of snake-worshipping believers who have taken control of a portal to another dimension and plan to summon their snake god to this reality.
As bonkers as the concept is, it does work surprisingly well. Part of that is the animation, it really looks good and carries that 70s vibe the movie is going for exceedingly well. Batman here is either at the start of his career or in his early years, so the other disciples mostly haven’t heard of his superhero persona yet, though they have to acknowledge that he seems even more capable when he dons the mask and cape (though honestly that’s just written in there as justification for him to get his costume on, they could have done the entire movie just with his Bruce Wayne persona and it would have worked just as well).
Bruce isn’t the focus though, all the disciples get their parts in the flashbacks when they trained under their master, how their relationships with each other, and also their skills developed and the movie isn’t shy about showing what they can do. There’s lots of fighting here (appropriate for a martial arts movie) and it looks pretty good.
If that came out as a comic it would be classified as an Elseworld story and barely of interest to anyone, but it works just so well as a movie, that you don’t mind that this isn’t part of any relevant canon. The first half showing who the characters are and what they can do, then the final confrontation with the snake cult, and then an impressive climactic battle with the summoned thing from behind the portal. Usually, a big villain introduced only in the last minutes of a story doesn’t work well, but they used a trick here (he’s using the body of a friend) that makes for a chilling confrontation, especially since he knows all their personal history and uses it against them, first to weaken them mentally before taking them apart physically.
Really great movie and the ending even set up a sequel which I hope DC actually does.
The Entropy Pump 