Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero – Film Review

When Mr. Freeze, desperate to save his dying wife, kidnaps Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) as an involuntary organ donor, Batman and Robin must find her before the operation can begin.

If you have read a handful of my reviews in the past, you’ve probably heard me mention on several occasions that I used to go to a babysitter during my last few years of elementary school and my first two in middle school, as my mother and father had to head off to work in the morning and obviously didn’t want to leave me all alone in the house at such a young age. Before my mother dropped me off at my babysitter’s house every morning before school, I made sure my Nintendo DS was fully charged and I always brought my game carrying case with me.

But when I wasn’t busy playing Nintendogs or the surprisingly fun Incredible Hulk movie tie-in game, I spent my mornings there watching various different cartoons including Inspector Gadget and Batman: The Animated Series. Batman has always been a huge part of my life. I’ve probably seen most of the Batman pieces of entertainment that exist believe it or not, and yet, up until today, I have not seen Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero, directed by Boyd Kirkland, so I knew that had to change.

Mr. Freeze has always been one of my favorite Batman villains. As a kid, I thought he was great mainly because he had a gun that allowed him to freeze anybody he shot as well as his deep, gravelly voice and outfit. But it wasn’t until Batman: Arkham City came out that I realized that he was a genuinely tragic villain and one of the most sympathetic comic book villains out there.

Does Mr. Freeze do bad things? Yes, he does. In this movie, he freezes tons of innocent people and in the process, he hurts tons of people that didn’t cause him any harm and he strikes fear into the hearts of Gotham citizens, but at the end of the day, you can understand his motives. He simply wants to save his dying wife Nora, and he gets too caught up in his grief to realize that the way he’s going about his mission is wrong.

Kind of like Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch in Marvel’s WandaVision. She just wanted to live the rest of her days with her dead husband Vision, so she created an imaginary world where that was possible. The only problem was that she was essentially trapping innocent souls in this fictitious world she conjured up, ripping people’s lives away from them.

Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero does a magnificent job at depicting Mr. Freeze as a sympathetic villain. You can always understand his motives even if you don’t agree with the things he ends up doing. His voice actor here, Michael Ansara, is also terrific and perfectly embodies the anger and emotion that’s required to portray such a layered and conflicted character. The story here is quite easy to get into as we are basically thrust right into the swing of things as soon as the film opens up. From that point on, it’s a relentlessly fun animated film that not only delivers the goods with the story, but the action and animation department too.

I’ve always been more of a fan of 2D animation than 3D animation, and it’s because with 2D, I find that animators can more accurately portray emotions on character’s faces than in 3D. Also, I grew up with 2D so I’m always going to have a soft spot for it, but I must say that SubZero looks absolutely remarkable.

Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero is not one of the best Batman movies ever made but it is definitely an incredibly enjoyable animated story that delves deep into Mr. Freeze’s beliefs and his psyche while also being extremely fun with its action scenes and vocal performances, especially from Kevin Conroy and Michael Ansara.