In comic book media, it's impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Batman: The Animated Series. Bruce Timm led a historic team on the series, including writer Paul Dini and voice actor Kevin Conroy, and created a truly iconic series. Over 30 years later, Timm is back with a new Batman animated series with a unique take on the Dark Knight and his city. Can he strike gold again, or is the original series' shadow so long that even Bruce Timm can't escape it? Minor Spoilers follow for Batman: Caped Crusader.
Batman: Caped Crusader
I was about 10 years old when Batman: The Animated Series premiered on Fox. We know now how well-crafted that original series is, combining timeless visuals, mature storytelling, and excellent synthesis of the character's complex history. It was this new, mysterious thing, though. The idea of a serious superhero show was all but unheard of. Batman: Caped Crusader doesn't have to overcome the stigma that animated superhero shows are exclusively for children, but its obstacle might be even bigger--it has to overcome its own history. And we want to try to look at it without comparing it to that classic every step of the way.
There's a lot that Caped Crusader does right, but it's not perfect, either.
The series brings unique takes on almost all of the classic Batman villains it covers; this applies not just to animated takes but live-action and comic book portrayals as well. Like any good Batman series, Caped Crusader is a mix of noir crime and horror of both the bodily and psychological types. It pulls equally from classical versions of these characters and from new ideas that shed new light on the character. Harley Quinn, for example, plays a big role in this series, but her origin and motivations are entirely separate from anything related to her frequent love interest--this is perhaps the single biggest change to the character since her introduction in the early '90s--all the more significant since it's one of her co-creators doing it.
Even as it explores new ideas, though, Caped Crusader is also reverent to Batman's history. While the depiction of the Penguin in the first episode is quite different from anything we've seen in the comics, Clayface's story takes inspiration from some of his earliest comic book appearances, and this grounds him without taking away from the horror of his transformation.
This mix of classic, modern, and new influences makes for fun surprises in the show's portrayal of these well-known characters. My favorite episode focuses on Firebug and showcases some of Caped Crusader's strengths.
The City
It's cliched to say that "the city is a character" in a story, but with Batman it's unavoidable. Gotham feels more like an actual place than lots of real cities. Caped Crusader also wants to place the show more firmly in a particular time, around that of his origins as a comic character. And while this works in some cases, it breaks down in others, and feels like a case of having its cake and eating it, too.
In one scene, two prison guards laugh about having beaten an Irish inmate. Montoya and Gordon are both aware of the precariousness of their positions in the GCPD and how one major screw-up could end their careers.
The show is great about trying to portray a more diverse Gotham City without it feeling forced. In this version of Batman, Jim and Barbara Gordon are black; this actually helps tell Jim's story as a hard-working, honest cop in a corrupt system. As one of the sole good cops, he's also aware that he's viewed as an outsider, and that he has to excel just to be seen as sufficient. Things like this are more implied than they are explicitly shown, but we get hints repeatedly that while Gordon earned his spot, it's one that a lot of people are ready to oust him from.
On the flip side, we have two of the female characters who have some real fireworks early on, and end up going on a date. When one is called away very suddenly, though, she ends the date with a kiss on the lips in a very public setting. The relationship itself is great--the show sets up the chemistry between the two characters well and them spending time together feels like an organic evolution of that. But Caped Crusader wants to both show us some of the realities of life at that time in American history and also play things like a modern story. If these two characters had been seen kissing in the 1940s by the wrong person, it would've ended both of their careers fast enough to make your head spin.
The Dark Knight
Batman himself is an interesting part of Caped Crusader, but one I have mixed feelings about. The show tries to both be episodic and serialized at the same time, with the end result of a Batman who is inside a story that moves forward with each episode, while the Dark Knight himself stays the same.
On the one hand, this Bruce Wayne is a weirdo, and the show isn't afraid to let us know that. I like him for some of the same reasons I liked Robert Pattinson's portrayal of an equally young Bruce and Batman. This Batman is committed fully to his mission, but he struggles to be Bruce Wayne. He comes across cold and aloof, and people notice it. At least one character clocks very early on that there's something weirdly guarded about him--that the playboy lifestyle he leads is a facade he's intentionally put up to hide something else. He doesn't see Bruce Wayne as anything more than a tool.
This Batman is so young that he needs to mature with the world around him. The series tries to give him chances to do that, but by the time credits roll on the final episode, it feels as if he's only barely begun to learn about himself.
Batman Stumbles
I think that some of these episodes are genuinely some of Timm's best work in telling Batman stories, and I don't want to spoil them too much. I found others, though, to be lacking. I'll call one out in particular. In the episode entitled "Night Ride," Batman encounters the ghost of a man who hated poor people so much that he came back from the dead to rob them of their meager riches.
The whole episode feels like one of those Scooby-Doo animated movies where it turns out the monsters are real. The whole episode is cheesy, and I kept expecting the ghost to be unmasked at some point. This isn't the first appearance of this character in Batman or in an animated DC show, but in this otherwise mature story it just doesn't fit. This episode stands out as being significantly worse than anything else this season--the second-worst episode is still pretty good, but this episode is legitimately bad, and I don't understand how it made it to production with all of the other episodes.
Much like with Batman himself, the show also struggles to develop characters meaningfully. This applies to the Gordons, DA Harvey Dent, and other repeat characters. They feel fleshed out at first glance, but they don't get room to grow from there, and this is especially apparent in the show's final two-episode story. Which, again, I won't spoil.
The Voices
Of course, we'd be remiss in not discussing the show's voice cast. Hamish Linklater (Midnight Mass, Legion) voices Bruce Wayne and Batman. Much of the recurring voice cast are experienced working actors who do a great job with each of their roles. Diedrich Bader stands out as Harvey Dent here; he's portrayed Batman repeatedly since 2008's Batman: The Brave and the Bold, but here he plays Harvey Dent as a lawyer whose heart is in the right place but who is too smooth for his own good, and too good at playing the system.
The rest of cast is filled out by guest stars like McKenna Grace, Christina Ricci, Haley Joel Osment, and others. Generally, they manage to bring their characters to life, and the show doesn't lean on their celebrity status.
At the center of all of this is Linklater as Batman and Bruce Wayne. Every Batman moving forward, regardless of medium, will be compared to both Kevin Conroy and Christian Bale, and it's impossible to avoid. The two have contributed so much to our collective image of Batman, for better or worse. Linklater is the one who helps make Batman feel so cold and aloof like the story demands, and I think he offers up a great take on the character.
At the same time, though, this is Bruce Timm's Batman, and something feels missing without the depth of Conroy's portrayal. And I mean that in terms of his literal aural performance. Conroy brought a silky, comforting bass to Bruce Wayne, and an impassioned growl to Batman. Linklater doesn't quite hit the same depths here. With that said, this is just 10 episodes; Linklater has time to grow the character. The show is already guaranteed a second season, so we'll see what he does with the character.
Batman: Caped Crusader has a truly tall order. It's a Bruce Timm-led Batman animated series, but it's also not Batman: The Animated Series. The show brings many strengths to the table. Bullock was allowed to be a jerk in BTAS, but he can be corrupt here, more resembling our memory of him in other stories; this is representative of the GCPD as a whole, which has much more depth. The city itself feels more dangerous, and feels like it needs a Batman. But the comparisons to Batman: The Animated Series are inevitable, and comparing something new to a stone-cold classic never goes well for the new thing--even when the new thing is a genuinely solid, fun project. I'm excited for the second season to see how Timm and his team can expand on some of the best ideas they introduced in this first season of Batman: Caped Crusader.
