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A Swinging Homage: Batman: Soul of the Dragon stars David Giuntoli as Batman, Mark Dacascos as Richard Dragon, Kelly Hu as Lady Shiva and Michael Jai White as Bronze Tiger.
That ’70s Dark Knight Show Bruce Timm, Sam Liu and Jeremy Adams reveal some of the secrets of their new animated DC feature Batman: Soul of the Dragon. By Tom McLean
B
ruce Timm’s love of Batman is well known — he has animated the character in TV series and movies for three decades. But it’s taken until now for his love of early 1970s kung fu and blaxploitation movies to come to the screen alongside the Dark Knight in the DC Universe animated feature Batman: Soul of the Dragon. Tapping into the martial-arts corner of DC’s 80 years of comic-book storytelling, Batman: Soul of the Dragon finds Bruce Wayne reunited with martial arts legend O-Sensei’s elite students — Richard Dragon, Ben Turner (a.k.a. Bronze Tiger) and the deadly Lady Shiva — to save the world from a supernatural threat only they can stop. Arriving Jan. 12 on digital and Jan. 26 on 4K and Bluray discs, Batman: Soul of the Dragon stars David Giuntoli, Mark Dacascos, Kelly Hu, Michael Jai White and James Hong. Directed by DC Universe veteran Sam Liu and written by Jeremy Adams, it is produced by Liu, Jim Krieg and Kimberly S. Moreau, with Timm, Sam Register and Michael Uslan as executive producers. For Timm, Soul of the Dragon is a chance to evoke the magic he felt growing up in the early 1970s, when the Bruce Lee classic feature Enter the Dragon added a martial-arts movie craze to the era’s already heady mix of blaxploitation
action pics, a wave of modern R&B classics on the radio and a steady stream of innovative comic-book storytelling.
Flashback to a Soulful Era “It’s [a reflection of] my love of the early ’70s in general and it’s also specifically my fascination with kung fu movies and blaxploitation movies of that period,” Timm says. “Those genres were so huge back then, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to kind of mash the two together?’” Timm’s off-the-cuff pitch in a regular meeting with DC and WB execs was met with instant enthusiasm and a green light. “Normally, you have to talk people into stuff, but that one kind of resonated with everybody,” Timm says. ”Some of my suggestions are kind of esoteric, but this one I think everyone liked the fun nature of it.” Writer Jeremy Adams, whose previous tours of duty in DC animation included Green Lantern: The Animated Series,
Justice League Action and DC Super Hero Girls, was primed and ready. ”I had been pitching to [producer] Jim [Krieg] and other people that we should do Enter the Dragon with Batman — ad nauseam,” he says. ”And then one day Jim comes in and goes, ’This is your lucky day!’” The story immediately scooped up martial arts characters from 1970s DC comic books: Richard Dragon, who starred in his own short-lived series; the deadly Lady Shiva; Ben Turner, who later became Bronze Tiger; and wise master O-Sensei. Batman also had a martial-arts phase at the time, with memorable globetrotting stories drawn by comics legend Neal Adams. Most of the material was written by Denny O’Neil, to whom Soul of the Dragon is dedicated after he died in June 2020 at the age of 80. Adams says he felt it was his job as the writer to serve Timm’s vision and create a story that would inspire the rest of the crew to bring their best talents to the table. For example, Adams drew
‘The thing we wanted to do was that we wanted the design of the movie to evoke the ’70s but we didn’t want to make it a parody of the era.’ — Exec producer Bruce Timm
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february 21
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