A wave of holiday-timed murders forces Gotham's masked protector into an uneasy alliance with the city's law enforcement in this animated take on a landmark Batman story, released in 2021.
What is Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One about?
Directed by Chris Palmer, the film opens with a brutal killing on Halloween night that pulls Batman into partnership with Police Captain James Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent. Their shared target is the Roman, head of the powerful Falcone crime family that has long ruled Gotham's underworld. When further deaths follow on Thanksgiving and Christmas, the three allies realize they are chasing someone far more elusive than an ordinary mob boss, a calculating figure whose motives and methods shift with every new clue. The animated format leans fully into the moody, noir-inflected visual language the source material is known for.
About the cast
The English-language voice cast draws heavily from television and prior animated features. Jensen Ackles voices Batman, with Josh Duhamel, Naya Rivera, Billy Burke, Titus Welliver, Troy Baker, David Dastmalchian and Amy Landecker filling out Gotham's officials, mobsters and detectives. The ensemble brings a lived-in, procedural energy to a story that spends as much time in interrogation rooms and back alleys as it does on rooftops, treating Gotham itself as a character under strain.
Context & significance
Part One adapts the first half of a celebrated comic-book run, condensing its year-long mystery into a tighter animated runtime. Action, crime and mystery elements sit alongside stretches of genuine horror, and the film's sci-fi tinge comes through in its heightened, stylized version of Gotham rather than any fantastical technology. At 85 minutes, it moves briskly through its holiday-by-holiday structure, setting up a second chapter that continues the investigation into who is really behind the killings.
Watching Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One on Ktime
Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login; the page itself costs nothing to browse. K-Time's Farsi-language interface makes it easy for Persian-speaking audiences to find and queue up English-language titles like this one alongside the rest of the catalogue.