While the Dark Knight Rises film was a huge let-down to me, a similar animated movie, Dark Knight Returns, was available to fill its shoes. This movie did everything that I originally hoped Dark Knight Rises would do, including visualizing an old Bruce Wayne, introducing a new, female Robin, and returning to Batman's roots as a vigilante who has to fight the police as well as the criminals. The good: 1. The premise is good. Batman returns from retirement. 2. Batman's voice may seem bland at first, but it grows on you. He seems a lot more intelligent and educated than the previous Batman voices I've heard. I like this change. 3. Batman enters into an all-out fight against Superman. The bad: 1. Animation quality suffers greatly during some of the gunfight scenes, and you can easily notice some very lazy animation shortcuts being taken. I have seen more attention to detail in motion comics! 2. Voices of important characters are sometimes very bland and unremarkable. 3. You need to purchase two separate movies (part 1 & part 2) to get the whole experience. I want to touch on the animation issues. There is a moment in part 2 when Robin is scaling a roller coaster by jumping up the pipe structure. She does not have any depth inside the scene and just seems to hover over the scenery like an overlay. None of the bars ever go in front of her, making it seem like she can fly, which is not the case. Overall, both movies are worth getting, together or apart, and will entertain all Batman fans. The Joker is as sadistic as ever. Dark Knight Returns is based on a very old comic, so do not expect a whole lot of fan-service. These two movies will not show a whole lot of backstory and will require the viewers to have some previous knowledge of Batman lore in order to truly appreciate the story. However, in part 2, Superman is awesome, so if you just want to see the cool superhero fight scenes, get part 2. The DVD/Blu-Ray extras are neither amazing nor stale. You get a digital comic version of the story on the Blu-Ray. The Blu-Ray disc also has a few featurettes. The DVD has a few commercials for other DC animated movies, including Superman Unbound. The featurettes include a few interviews, some retrospectives, and 3 "bonus cartoons", which are most likely Batman Beyond episodes. (I have not checked yet, but part 1 had 2 Batman Beyond episodes on it.) For the most part, the extras do not interest me. I bought these combo packs simply because I wanted as many ways to watch the movies as possible. However, I think the bonus cartoons are very nice bonuses.

The adaptation from comic to movie; not bad at all. if you like the part 1 batman. you may enjoy the 2nd part. Also worth buying on blu ray

I've seen, if not purchased most every Batman animation that's been released on DVD/Bluray. That's why I have to say this is the most mature/adult oriented piece I've seen yet. Because of the mature nature of the themes, I'd make sue the audience is upper-high school or above. Bet hey, if your liberal with your kids, then I guess that's on you :-) Don't misunderstand and think there's a lot of blood and gore in this movie. There's some when appropriate, but it can be a bit much for American audiences, when it comes to animation. That might be true for if you haven't seen much Anime (Japanese animation, which tends, not always, to address more mature topics than American animation; but that's slowly changing :-) So, what would it look like if Batman retired? What would that look like? It makes you consider why he retired and what would make him consider coming out of retirement. And it also asks the question: what happens if the government doesn't want you around, because they feel you're an uncontrolled vigilante? And what happens when you throw in an old arch nemesis into the mix? And what happens when the old Commisioner retires (Batman's ally) and is replaced by a new one? Well, what you end up with is great story telling, intense action, great voice overs (including the guy's voice that played Robocop: Peter Weller). And the background music helps to keep you immersed in the story. One of the reasons this movie is so gritty and mature is because it was originally a graphic novel by Frank Miller. So with such a great writing as the source material, you're bound to have an end result of a great piece of animation! Excellent movie!

I love my addition to my Best Buy Exclusive figures collection. The movie was really good.

Lots of action and the animation is pretty great, highly recommend