Warning: mild SPOILERS for Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham are ahead!
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham, the latest of the animated DC movies, doesn’t just stand out from other Batman movies by being set in the 1920s. This story also mashes the Caped Crusader’s mythology with Lovecraftian lore, as Bruce Wayne finds himself colliding with the forces of the Lurker on the Threshold. Without going into specific spoilers, combating these supernatural threats results in Bruce turning into something… less than human. While that makes for a great sight for people watching the movie, voice actor David Giuntoli is “afraid” to see the footage of himself voicing this version of Batman in his monstrous form.
This marks the second time David Giuntoli voicing Batman, having previously done so in Batman: Soul of the Dragon. With that earlier movie being a 1970s-set martial arts-centric flick spotlighting characters like Richard Dragon, Lady Shiva and Bronze Tiger, needless to say that Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham makes for a much different watch. On the subject of Bruce Wayne losing his humanity in this new movie, I asked Giuntoli what his mindset was when voicing this version of the character, and he answered:
I don’t know what I looked like when I was doing that voice, but I do know that video exists and I know that I’m afraid to see it, if that answers your question. I was doing very abnormal things with my body, I’m sure my face looked like I was wearing some terror mask. I let Wes Gleason and Sam Liu, the two directors of the two [Batman] movies I’ve done, respectively, but they were both there on each movie in different roles, guided me there. I’m in this dark little sound booth and they tell me to go deeper and deeper, and I tried to, so we’ll see how it goes.
Just because an actor’s face isn’t seen when they’re voice acting doesn’t mean that they can’t get incredibly emotive with their faces and physical with their entire bodies. From what David Giuntoli said, it sounds like he didn’t hold back when he was reading lines for the transformed Bruce Wayne while being guided by Wes Gleason and Sam Liu. The downside is that the footage of Giuntol going all out is pretty embarrassing, but since it’s not included among Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham’s special features, it’ll undoubtedly remain locked away.
During my conversation with David Giuntoli, I also wondered how his time on Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham compared to Soul of the Dragon, which co-starred Mark Dacascos, Kelly Hu, Michael Jai White and James Hong, among others. The actor explained how because he wasn’t a newcomer to voice acting anymore, he felt comfortable allowing himself to be even more expressive with his performance, saying:
I came in to Soul of the Dragon completely drained. I had never done voiceover work before. I wasn’t even that acquainted with the world of Batman. I mean, I didn’t grow up in a cave… It was a whole new process for me, one in which you’re not working with other actors and you’re just going from the script and what the directors are telling you to do. So to answer your question, having watched Soul of the Dragon, I realized, ‘Oh, I can make much larger choices. I can go much further with the performance in animation, in voiceover, than I can onscreen.’ So I kind of went for it more in The Doom That Came to Gotham. I just let myself be as big as I think I wanted to be. So it was really fun, an even better experience.
Based off the same-named, three-issue miniseries from Mike Mignola, Richard Pace, Troy Nixey and Dennis Janke, Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham also stands out for its inclusion of Tati Gabrielle’s Kai Li Cain, an original character that director Sam Liu and writer Jase Ricci created with producer Jim Krieg. The cast also includes Christopher Gorham as Oliver Queen, John DiMaggio as James Gordon, Patrick Fabian as Harvey Dent, Brian George as Alfred Pennyworth, Navid Negahban as Ra’s al Ghul, Emily O’Brien as Talia al Ghul and Martha Wayne, Jason Marsden as Dick Grayson and the young Bruce Wayne, and David Dastmalchian as Grendon.
If you’d like to see how David Giuntoli’s first Batman outing turned out, Soul of the Dragon can be streamed with an HBO Max subscription, and The Doom That Came to Gotham will surely make its way onto that platform in the months ahead. For now though, the latter can be purchased on Digital, 4K Combo Pack and Blu-ray from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. Giuntoli can also be seen playing Eddie Saville in A Million Little Things, which is in the middle of its fifth and final season on ABC.
