I was already very excited to play Warner Bros and TT Games’ upcoming Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight when it arrives on consoles and PC later this month. But a new launch trailer, out now, somehow has me even more pumped up to play this plastic brick spin on an open-world Arkham-like Batman adventure when it lands on May 22. And you can thank Seal for that, I guess?
On May 7, WB released what is likely to be the last big, new trailer for its upcoming Lego Batman game. Normally a launch trailer isn’t much to write about, but this time around, someone working on the game’s marketing team decided to craft the entire video around Seal’s iconic “Kiss from a Rose” and in the process created one of the year’s best trailers. Let’s enjoy it, shall we?
Wonderful. Perfect. No notes. Well, okay, one note: I learned while talking to Kotaku‘s own Ethan Gach that apparently “Kiss from a Rose” first arrived alongside The NeverEnding Story III, before it was re-released and packaged with Batman Forever the following year and became a super hit.
Including “Kiss from a Rose” is yet one more example of how Legacy of the Dark Knight is mixing and blending together nearly all of the Batman franchise into a mega adventure that tells its own story using characters, moments, and vehicles from the past 80 years of the Caped Crusader. And it’s not just Batman costumes from the comics, Arkham City references, or famous movie scenes that you’ll find in Legacy of the Knight. There’s even a direct reference to a Jim Carrey story about how much Tommy Lee Jones hated him while working together on the set of Batman Forever. How many kids will get that joke, or understand why “Kiss from a Rose” is a perfect trailer song? Not many, but they were going to play this game anyway, so why not have fun and get all the adult Lego and Batman fans pumped, too? Seems like a good way to sell extra copies of the game.
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on May 22. A Switch 2 version is planned, but it has no specific release date yet.