Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall
Produced By: DC, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Runtime: 79 minutes
Rating: R
Release Dates: Digital – Aug. 25, 2026; 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD – Sept. 8, 2026
Synopsis: Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall launches a three-part movie event that brings to life one of the most iconic and beloved sagas in Batman comics history. Arkham Asylum has been destroyed, and all its inmates have been unleashed upon Gotham City. As Batman races to round up some of his greatest enemies, he is pushed to his physical and mental limits and into a final confrontation with a new threat: the man called Bane!
Batman: Knightfall Part 1: Knightfall stars Anson Mount (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds) as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Mando (Spider-Man: Brand New Day) as Bane, and Pablo Schreiber (His & Hers) as Jean-Paul Valley/Azrael. The film is directed by Jeff Wamester and written by Jeremy Adams. Rick Morales serves as Supervising Producer alongside Producers Jim Krieg and Kimberly S. Moreau. Sam Register and Michael Uslan are Executive Producers.
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By James Harvey
Dark, brutal, and compelling, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall gets Warner Bros. Animation’s ambitious three-part adaptation of one of the Dark Knight’s best-known storylines off to a rousing start, despite a couple of creative missteps. This streamlined retelling follows Batman’s increasingly chaotic battle against a band of Arkham escapees, culminating in an effectively vicious confrontation with Bane. While not every choice works, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall remains nevertheless a fresh spin on one of the most seminal events in Batman’s comic-book history.
Chaos erupts as never before in Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall! Arkham Asylum has been destroyed, and all its inmates have been unleashed upon Gotham City. As Batman races to round up some of his greatest enemies, he is pushed to his physical and mental limits and into a final confrontation with a massive threat: the man called Bane!
Keeping the core character beats and story elements intact (for the most part), while skillfully building tension to a fever pitch before its jaw-dropping climax, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall largely does right by the source material, even if it isn’t quite a home run. Adapting the first eleven chapters of Knightfall, while also drawing from Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1 and Batman #488 and #490, writer Jeremy Adams does commendable work distilling a sprawling, multi-series crossover spanning hundreds of pages into a compelling 80-minute feature. The necessary streamlining comes with a couple of unfortunate side effects, but for the most part, Adams pulls it off with style to spare.
This review contains spoilers, so readers who prefer to go in fresh should proceed with caution.
More than a few changes are made to accommodate over a dozen issues’ worth of comic-book material, and the end result is actually pretty impressive, though understandably imperfect. With 20 minutes devoted to setting up both Azrael and Bane, leaving roughly 60 minutes for everything else, the Arkham Asylum explosion and subsequent breakout are understandably brief and mostly kept off screen (disappointingly), while Batman’s efforts to track down the escapees are largely reduced to a handful of short action beatss, some longer than others. Thankfully, those truncated sequences are wisely repurposed to emphasize the Dark Knight’s growing physical and mental deterioration, as well as the toll it takes on his family and allies.
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Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall runs through Batman’s battles with The Mad Hatter, Zsasz, the Ventriloquist, Mr. Freeze, Catman, Firefly, and the Scarecrow in what amounts to an extended montage. The Riddler also pops up during the chaos, though his appearance is instead a very abbreviated take on Batman #490. It’s a lot of comic-book material to breeze through, but once Arkham is destroyed, the movie picks up considerable speed (with tension mounting) and doesn’t let up until Bane arrives on Batman’s doorstep.
And boy, is it a brutal beatdown, as Batman fights for his life against the monstrous Bane, and rest assured, it lives up to expectations. Nothing is watered down as the climactic battle plays out in vicious fashion, leaving Batman and his world shattered. Director Jeff Wamester stages the sequence like something out of a horror film, and featuring some fantastic choreography, as the two tear through Wayne Manor and the Batcave.
What really helps sell the finale is how effectively the film establishes Bane as a legitimate threat while showing just how physically and mentally worn down Gotham’s Caped Crusader has become (granted, it perhaps leans a little too hard into this point, with character after character reminding Batman and/or Bruce Wayne just how terrible he looks). Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall does an excellent job building dread in the moments leading up to the inevitable confrontation. By then, the hammer feels ready to drop, and that sense of inevitability only makes what follows, and the immediate aftermath, all the more gutting.
For all the compromises made along the way, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall gets plenty right, delivering a confident and engrossing take on one of Batman’s most iconic storylines. That said, as effective as the film’s compressed approach can be, it also comes with some noticeable drawbacks. More than a few supporting characters are shortchanged (though most are given just enough to serve the story), and there’s a few structural bumps, but the limited runtime makes it pretty clear just how difficult it would’ve been to give every piece of such sprawling source material the attention it deserves.
As mentioned earlier, most of the Arkham Asylum escapees featured in the film are given little more than brief cameos and/or action sequences as Batman struggles to put them back behind bars. That’s not too far removed from the comics, particularly with the characters chosen for the movie, but the timeline is shortened from weeks to days, and a couple of significant events are disappointingly left out. Bane and Killer Croc’s crucial tussle is omitted, as is the Joker and Scarecrow teaming up to abduct the Mayor, an event that further pushes Batman toward his breaking point.
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Also on the cutting-room floor are Bane’s trio of henchmen (Bird, Trogg, and Zombie), along with appearances and/or battles involving Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Two-Face, and others. That said, some of this material could still find its way into Part Two, with further exploration of Azrael’s background being one likely possibility. Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall retains the basic idea of Bane methodically wearing Batman down, but its limited runtime and necessary changes to the story remove much of the escalating ordeal seen in the comics. Even so, what remains does a good job conveying Batman’s complete physical and mental collapse.
Outside of that, there are only a couple of other issues dogging the adaptation, primarily its uneven pacing and occasionally rough animation. The pacing gets a little wonky, particularly when the movie slows down for roughly 15 minutes to delve into Bane’s horrific upbringing before abruptly returning to Gotham. After that, however, the film is off to the races, sometimes moving just a shade too quickly from one sequence to the next, which can make things feel a little rushed, a problem that’s occasionally compounded by the animation itself.
While this is easily one of Warner Bros.’ best-looking DC Comics-based animated features in recent years (excluding the Batman Ninja movies), the more detailed and physically exaggerated character designs are clearly difficult to animate smoothly. At times, the movement can feel a little janky, with stiff or jagged motions and animation cycles that don’t always look natural or even fluid. Dialogue and lip-syncing also take a hit, as does continuity between shots. None of this is exactly new territory for these movies, but it does keep an otherwise impressive-looking production from being as polished as it could be.
Even with its shortcomings, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall is nevertheless a blast, and one that actually gets better with subsequent viewings. There’s simply so much good material here that it becomes pretty easy to forgive some of the film’s slip-ups. Chief among them is the film’s handling of Tim Drake, which, based on this movie alone, is arguably one of the most compelling takes on Batman’s third Robin.
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Not only does the movie lean into Drake’s intelligence (there’s a great line where he says, “I may never be the detective Batman is, but I’m definitely gonna give him a run for his money”) but he also drives much of the film’s plot, taking on the detective work that Batman simply isn’t in shape to handle. Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall is a terrific showcase for Drake and a great reminder of why he remains such a fan-favorite. Jack Griffin’s fantastic performance as Robin III only adds to this memorable take on the character.
And really, the entire voice cast for Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall is consistently good, with only a few minor bumps along the way. Anson Mount, who previously voiced Batman in the 2021 Injustice animated movie, dons the cowl again and seems to have really settled into the role here. He sounds much more comfortable with the character this time around, giving Batman an appropriately gravelly delivery that never feels forced. He also gives Bruce Wayne a lighter delivery that subtly begins to waver as the character’s physical and mental state deteriorates.
Michael Mando effectively captures both Bane’s terrifying presence and calculating intelligence, making him a formidable threat from the moment he arrives. Whether it’s his quiet but intimidating exchanges with Robin or his eventual bombastic beatdown of Batman, Mando brings convincing nuance to a character too often reduced to little more than muscle. The lack of an accent is a weird and somewhat surprising creative choice, but it’s a minor quibble with what is otherwise a terrific performance.
Also worth a nod are Bruce Boxleitner, who’s unsurprisingly pitch-perfect as Commissioner Jim Gordon, and Pablo Schreiber, who gets to ham it up as the melodramatic and increasingly unstable Jean-Paul Valley/Azrael. Beyond the voice acting, the fantastic score by Eric V. Hachikian and John Jennings Boyd deserves recognition for its bold, brooding, atmospheric tone and knack for steadily building tension at just the right moments. When everything comes together, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall reaches some pretty impressive heights, even when the animation occasionally struggles to keep pace.
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A risky but ultimately successful adaptation of one of the biggest Batman comic-book events of all time, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall does justice to its source material. While it obviously can’t recreate the experience of those original pages and panels, the film successfully distills the story down to its most important themes, characters, and events (for the most part), turning a massive, sprawling comic-book event into a focused and compelling adaptation.
However, Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall doesn’t get everything right, and a few shortcomings keep it from being quite the knockout it otherwise might’ve been. The animation occasionally falters, some excised story beats are sorely missed, and the violence level occasionally borders on parody (particularly during the Azrael-centric cold open), though that excess could also be seen as a fitting callback to the “extreme ’90s” sensibilities from which the original comic emerged. Thankfully, there’s simply so much that works (and works, really, really well) that these shortcomings end up being little more than minor speed bumps.
Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall makes more than a few tough creative choices along the way, but it never loses sight of what made Knightfall such a memorable Batman story in the first place. It’s also a very promising start to the Knightfall Trilogy and bodes well for what’s still to come. It may not be a perfect adaptation, but Batman: Knightfall, Part One: Knightfall gets far more right than wrong, successfully condensing one of Batman’s biggest comic-book events into a pretty intense and immensely enjoyable 80-minute animated thriller. Highly Recommended!
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