Wayne returns to Gotham after several years abroad, training himself for his mission of fighting crime after witnessing his parents' deaths at a criminal's hands when he was just nine years old. His initial work has limited success, and he realizes the need for a psychological dimension to his crusade. Inspired by an invading bat, he begins to create the costume, weapons and other gear that will make the Batman the scourge of Gotham's underworld.
At the same time, police lieutenant James Gordon, newly transferred from Chicago, is finding the Gotham City PD to be little different from the criminals they're supposed to thwart. His refusal to take part in the corruption isolates him in the department, especially since the police commissioner is more or less best buds with local crime boss Carmine Falcone. Gordon and Batman become unlikely allies in reining in both the criminal police and the criminal criminals in their first strikes against crime in Gotham, aided at one point by the even more unlikely ally Selina Kyle, now wearing a costume of her own and committing robberies as Catwoman.
Year One was an excellent, tightly-written crime drama in which the fact that one protagonist dressed up in a costume to scare people was incidental to the main story. The movie adaptation wisely follows suit and both writers and artists hewed closely to Miller's noirish dialogue and artist David Mazzucchelli's stylized, simple artwork. Several of its narrative elements showed up in Christopher Nolan's vision of Batman in his movie trilogy. The voice cast does good work, with Bryan Cranston standing out as Gordon. Batman fans who want to see Bruce Wayne become their hero probably enjoyed Year One the most, but it's good entertainment for anyone who likes super-hero stories with a noir crime drama edge.
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Every now and then, it seems the comic book DC universe gets tangled up and complicated and hard to figure out. In 1986, the company dealt with their multiple worlds problem with the year-long maxi-series crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths, and a problem-solving technique was born. It was employed again in the mid 1990s to handle timeline issues in Zero Hour. Both series changed the DC universe in multiple ways, and both were responses to storytelling situations that were becoming such mares nests that they hampered ongoing storylines and limited creative possibilities.
Then came 2011 and the decision to unload decades of continuity and completely revamp DC's universe with "The New 52" project. The editorial decision was to introduce this new continuity through yet another maxi-series crossover, focused on the Flash and called Flashpoint. 2013 saw that tale put into motion in the 17th DC animated feature, Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox.
Barry Allen, the Flash, responds to a break-in at his museum and finds a trap set by Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash. The Justice League helps him thwart Zoom's plan to destroy Central City. But we next see Barry awakening at his desk in a very different world, one threatened with destruction by a war between the Aquaman's Atlanteans and Queen Diana's Amazons. And he himself has no speed powers, although he finds that his mother, killed in a criminal break-in when he was a boy, is still alive.
Allen tracks down Batman, only to learn that he is not Bruce Wayne but Bruce's father Thomas. The street mugging which he knows took the lives of Thomas and Martha happened differently in this world, in which the parents survived but Bruce was killed. Thomas became to Batman to fight crime, and Martha went mad and became the Joker. I include that last tidbit even though it matters not at all to the plot, but that's OK: So does Flashpoint Paradox.
Eventually, Batman helps Allen recreate his Flash-originating accident (on the second try), and the two join with remaining heroes to defuse the Amazon-Atlantean war before it destroys the Earth itself. In the meantime, there are several scenes showing both Amazons and Atlanteans murdering lots of people, some of whom have counterparts in Barry Allen's universe and some of which might not. These scenes mean nothing, but they do make the movie longer..
In the final confrontation, Allen learns that he himself screwed up the world when he used his speed to break the time barrier and save his mother. Even his limited journey through time set up ripples that messed up Batman's origin, started the Amazon-Atlantean war, sent baby Kal-El's rocket into Metropolis instead of Kansas, and so on. He will have to break the time barrier again to stop himself and return the world even as the one he's now in is destroyed. He's successful, but some of the ripples remain, and thus we have the New 52 universe, which is not as different from the old timeline but is not exactly the same, either.
Flashpoint Paradox is easily the worst of the DC animated features. The character designs are just awful, the drawing is ugly, and in the crowd scenes especially the animation is as limited as the old Super Friends TV show. The story has more gaps than narrative, and wastes time in giving different characters cameos that show up for not much more reason than showing how the characters are exactly the same/entirely different than they are in mainstream continuity.
Part of the problem is that this story exists pretty much only to set up the New 52, one of the lousier ideas to come from Dan DiDio's Bad Idea Factory in some time. It's an obvious combination of retread ideas, (alternate dystopian timeline, butterfly effect, don't mess with history), dashed off and offered up with little imagination and less heart. People sometimes look at bad books and lament the trees that they represent, anyone who looks at a DVD of Flashpoint Paradox can lament all the plastic shopping bags that we gave up in order to create it.
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