Batman: Listen, Joker, you’re sick. You need help.
Joker: Well, maybe I am a little off. (Kicks Batman rather hard) But what are you gonna do? Lock me in the loony bin? I’m already here!
From ‘The Bat in the Belfry’
The press release that came with this DVD said ‘The animated series The Batman tells the story of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne and his emerging alter-ego Batman. Bruce is in his mid-twenties and is just starting to come into his own as defender and Caped Crusader of Gotham City. This younger Batman confronts updated versions of familiar foes, meeting each member of his classic Rogues’ Gallery for the first time. With the likes of The Joker, The Penguin, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze and The Riddler, the Dark Knight takes his war on crime to the next level, employing a new arsenal of experimental Bat-gadgets and amped-up Batmobile, all operated and linked by an advanced remote-controlled invention he dubs the ‘BatWave.’ And each contest pushes The Batman’s skills and awesome new gadgets to the max!’ What it doesn’t say is that this Batman is a re-invention yet again of a character and his city which first took shape in Batman: The Animated Series and continued in Batman Beyond.
But let’s first deal with a misconception of this Batman as can be noted in this review from Amazon: ‘This is NOT the Batman you have grown up to love, nor is it the Batman kids have gotten to know over the last few years. Warner Brothers has COMPLETELY LOST FOCUS of Batman and destroyed him. The only thing missing is his gravestone: Batman, killed by Warner Brothers 2004: May he rest in peace.’ Contrary to this sentiment, this conception of Batman is the logical extension of the work done in the two earlier Warner Brothers series noted above. Why this is so will be the gist of my review. But first a look at the city and time frame that The Batman is set in before we return to that matter.
Batman: The Animated Series was set in a reality where, according to clues provided in the ‘Paging the Crime Doctor’ episode (collected volume two of B:TAS) would be about the late 1930s in our world, but the presence of airships and other Gernsbackian technology suck as ornithopters makes sure you know this is not our universe. Gotham’s architecture is firmly rooted in an art deco sensibility that is both brooding and damn impressive in its scale. I remember when watching Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow that the City there (New York I assume) could well have been modeled on the Gotham created here. The very Thirties feel here informs everything in the series from Batman himself to the villains and heroes alike.
To quote the definitive Web site for this series:
In 1992, the birth of Warner Bros. Batman: The Animated Series changed the Batman Universe forever. The dynamic series spawned a new technique in animation using black backgrounds that would eventually be dubbed ‘Dark Deco.’ Dark Deco gave every scene within Gotham an extraordinary look, redefining the image of the city. The series also revamped the classic characters, casting a unique perspective on their origins and personalities. The series included all the popular characters and even created some new ones. The most significant change was the transformation of the Dick Grayson/Robin character in the ‘new’ 90’s costume, resulting in a hipper more adult representation which the character has never seen. The Batman character continued to embody the dark image fans have come to love while maintaining the heroic qualities identified with the character …
That Batman would have been perhaps a decade or so older than our young hero in The Batman. But the next series Batman Beyond moves the series to a very futuristic setting akin to the dystopian futures that writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling have shaped in their writing. The Art Deco sensibility of that earlier series is replaced – with the exception of Wayne Manor, which appears the same – with a nasty, brutish architecture having absolutely no sense of style. The villains too have grown uglier and the violence they inflict has less sense of humor than it had, however limited, in B:TAS. Bruce Wayne, crippled from decades of physical action really on the brutal end of the scale, and haunted by memories of things gone wrong, is no longer Batman, but a younger person has taken over. Even the suit has evolved – no more cape, just a suit that looks almost demonic in nature. Nasty Gotham, a more brutal Batman. Not my favorite depiction, which I noted in my review of Batman Animated: ‘ I actually like the Gotham in The Batman series, as it looks very Victorian, more dated. This one suffers slightly from being framed in a 1930s Art Deco look, an architectural style I never found all that appealing. The least interesting Gotham is the futuristic version in Batman Beyond, but that’s most likely because I suffer from a neo-Gernsbackian allergy to depictions of future cities, having read too much science fiction.’
Now along comes The Batman, the third series done by Warner Brothers that riffs off the Dark Knight that Frank Miller created. Watched on the Cartoon Network where it’s currently airing as I write this review, it’ll drive you nuts as the commercial breaks destroy any sense of continuity which the show has, but watched on DVD they are a complete joy to see. Yes, yet another conception of Gotham emerges with Victorian architecture merging with rather modern technology that suggests a steampunkish reality this outing. This time, we have a young Bruce Wayne, probably in his late 20s, who is in just his third year of being Batman, the person who the Gotham police consider a vigilante. His public persona of ‘billionaire bachelor Bruce Wayne’, as Alfred Pennyworth, his majordomo/cook/mechanic/medic/get-away driver calls him, is as uneasy being Bruce here as he is in Batman: The Animated Series. This Batman is more likely to use force over guile, but that’s not surprising given his relative newness as Batman – a situation that keeps Alfred both worried and busy patching him and his, er, toys up.
Physically speaking, the Bruce here, and the Batman by extension, is indeed a slightly slimmer version of both adult Bruce shown in Batman: The Animated Series at his prime, and the older, now badly crippled Bruce as depicted in Batman Beyond.
The tone of the series is nicely set in the fast-paced intro that features music written by The Edge of U2 fame. It’s not as dark and brooding as the intro in B:TAS or even in Batman Beyond, but it does a nice job of establishing this Batman and what his city is like. Like the other two series, there is a very small cast of voice actors: Rino Romano as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Alastair Duncan as Alfred Pennyworth (perfectly cast), Steve Harris as Detective Ethan Bennett and college buddy of Bruce, and Ming-Na as Detective Ellen Yin. One notable one-shot voice characterization is Edward James Olmos of Bladerunner fame as Angel Rojas – the hulking Victorian garbed Gotham Police Chief who you’ll see in ‘The Bat in the Belfry’ which introduces you to both The Joker and Arkham Asylum. Oddly enough, the Angel Rojas character does not look Hispanic! Rino Romano’s very good at portraying the dualistic nature of Bruce/Batman.
(Digression time. Looking for the classic Arkham Asylum on the hill, which looks like a vast decaying mansion that shows up in Batman: The Animated Series and the live action films? Sorry, it’s not here. Like Wayne Mansion, it’s a square-ish rather tall building not dissimilar to an apartment building set within the city itself. If there’s something outside of Gotham, you don’t see it here. The action in The Batman as shown on these three episodes takes place in the city. Batman: The Animated Series at least admitted from time to time that Gotham was embedded in a larger landscape!)
One of the refreshing aspects of this series is the new voices – even the Joker so famously voiced (and given life) by Mark Hamill is done here as a different, less classy criminal. Kevin Michael Richardson voices a bare-footed straight-jacketed jester complete with dreadlocks – no more sane than the Mark Hamill voiced Joker of the other two series, but refreshingly different. Is it the same person? I’d say not. I like this Joker, but my wife, who loves the Hamill version, does not. If you’ve got the portrayals of Joker, Penguin, and the other villains as represented on the other two series as the correct versions, you won’t like them here. Joker is not that Joker; Penguin is less cultured and far nastier with a mouth full of razor teeth, and the Bane here will give you nightmares. Brrrr!
The pilot episode, ‘The Bat in the Belfry’, sets up the new series. After stopping a heist by Rupert Thorne (as overweight here as he will be in Batman: The Animated Series), Batman returns to the bat cave to learn someone has released all of the criminals in Arkham Asylum. Batman finds out that it’s the Joker, who was not a prisoner/inmate there, who released them. After some sarcastic commentary by the Joker about why would anyone dress up as a bat, he hightails it out of the Asylum after first gassing the orderly. It’s up to Batman to stop him. Detective Ethan Bennett sees The Batman but fails to capture him, Yin first displays her desire to bring him to justice at all costs, and the Batman goes after the Joker. Batman catches up with him at an abandoned toy factory where he takes off in a clown-face shaped blimp full of laughing gas. Will Batman prevent the blimp from exploding over Gotham? Will Joker defeat the Batman? Will the Joker end up at Arkham? If you are already a fan, you know the answers!
The other two episodes on this DVD:
The first is called ‘Call of the Cobblepot’, and it features the Penguin a.k.a. Oswald ‘Ozzie’ Cobblepot whose family grandfather Pennyworth once worked for. Grandfather Pennyworth was obviously desperate for work as a more nasty individual – and one assumes the entire Cobblepot family – would be hard to imagine! Homicidal with deadly umbrellas and other toys, not mention a very bad attitude and some of the nastiest teeth ever shown, this Penguin is not the classy bird who collects Faberge eggs in Batman: The Animated Series. If anything, the Gotham here is decidedly darker than the one in that series.
The final episode here is called ‘Traction’ and introduces the cyborg called Bane. Other than setting up the back story of the relation between Bruce and Alfred, this, in my opinion, is the weakest of the three episodes as Bane has no real personality – he exists only to wreak havoc. Boring! Even the press release note on this episode is less than thrilling: ‘The Batman battles the masked criminal Bane, and once Bane activates his chemical-steroid-infusion, Batman finds himself outmatched by brute strength.’
Now let’s return to the matter of whether this series is in keeping with the gold standard of Batman: The Animated Series. Despite the complaints online at Amazon and other sites, it indeed is. Given that it is the same production crew involved, that is not surprising! Superb animation, great scripts, impeccable choice in actors to give voice to the characters, and a deep understanding of the mythos already in place while being willing to play around with that mythos – all make for classic series. I for one hope this Batman has as long a run as the one in Batman: The Animated Series did! I look forward to these episodes getting a proper boxed set at some point.
Oh, I should mention that there is but little in the way of extras here. The ‘Building the Batman’ featurette in which you join Detective Ellen Yin’s search for The Batman’s true identity, is interesting only for a look at the Batman toys being developed; The Batman Junior Detective Challenge, which allows you to ‘show off detection skills to unlock exclusive content’ is far too easy for any viewer not to solve, and the ‘Cape & Cowl’ toy Easter Egg is, if it is what I think it is, devoid of any content. Never mind – the episodes are well worth seeing in and of themselves!
(Warner Brothers, 2005)
