Few comic book adaptations have cast as big of a shadow as Batman: The Animated Series; for many people, this ’90s classic is the GOAT. That’s no doubt why Warner Bros. Animation and Amazon MGM Studios brought back one of that show’s co-architects, Bruce Timm, to oversee Batman: Caped Crusader.
Timm is credited as Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1’s developers (alongside The Batman‘s Matt Reeves and Star Trek‘s J.J. Abrams) and his fingerprints are all over this latest Bat-cartoon. True, Caped Crusader‘s not a carbon copy of its predecessor. Batman: The Animated Series takes place in a mishmash time period; Caped Crusader is rooted firmly in the 1940s. Batman: The Animated Series targeted kids (while appealing to adults); Caped Crusader courts a slightly older demographic.
Yet for all these superficial differences, Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 is essentially a remixed version of Timm’s original series, with all the good and not-so-good that entails.
Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 charts the exploits of Bruce Wayne/Batman (Hamish Linklater) early in his crime-fighting career. The odds are stacked against our rookie Dark Knight, too. Gotham City is rife with corruption overseen by gangster Rupert Thorne (Cedric Yarbrough). Local law enforcement is no help, either. Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and Gordon’s public defender daughter, Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) think he’s a menace. Shady District Attorney Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader) and bent cops Harvey Bullock (John DiMaggio) and Arnold Flass (Gary Anthony Williams) also want him out of the picture. Batman’s only ally is faithful butler Alfred (Jason Watkins) – but will they be enough to keep a rising tide of supervillains at bay?
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It’s a rock-solid if increasingly overused set-up that more often than not delivers. Timm, Reeves, and Abrams have assembled a strong writers’ room for Batman: Caped Crusader‘s first season (including acclaimed comics’ scribes Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker) and they nail the brief. The plotting is engaging and briskly paced, the dialogue sharp and the tone suitably brooding (to a fault; a few more lighter moments wouldn’t have hurt). Plus, Caped Crusader‘s few major character reinventions are largely inspired. There’s nothing wrong with this show; we’ve just seen it all before, and done better. That’s ultimately the challenge Timm and co. face here: cooking up a definitive take on an iconic character like Batman once is tough enough, but twice? That’s nearly impossible.
True, Caped Crusader does at least iterate on the Batman: The Animated Series “Dark Deco” aesthetic. Gone are the striking red skies and moody palette of the 1992 series. In Caped Crusader, brighter, more naturalistic hues are the order of the day. But James Tucker’s character designs are still very much in the Timm mold, and as good as they are – and they look great – they’re heavily indebted to the Animated Series design bible. If only Batman: Caped Crusader pushed things further and had its own, clear-cut identity. The show’s credit sequence adds a textured, black-and-white filter over recycled footage; imagine an entire season’s worth of that? (Good luck getting a black-and-white cartoon greenlit in 2024, though.)
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The same goes for Batman: Caped Crusader‘s voice actors. There’s not a bad performance between them, however, for the most part, they sound like they’re mimicking the Batman: The Animated Series‘ ensemble. Linklater’s gauche Bruce Wayne and gruff Batman sound like Kevin Conroy impersonations. Watkin’s stouter Alfred has near-identical pipes to Efrem Zimbalist Jr, and so on down the line. The few exceptions include Bader’s smarmy Dent, Minnie Driver’s cabaret-singing, gender-swapped Penguin, and Jamie Chung’s colder, less anarchic Harley Quinn. But again, these are exceptions to the rule. Admittedly, I don’t know how you voice the denizens of Gotham without aping Batman: The Animated Series, but doing so feels like a missed opportunity all the same.
In fairness to Timm, Abrams, and Reeves, they do occasionally zag from the Batman: The Animated Series formula in meaningful ways. Notably, Batman and Alfred’s all-business relationship is more like Reeves’ take on the duo’s dynamic in The Batman than the cordial partnership depicted in The Animated Series. What’s more, the evolution of their relationship – and by extension, Bruce’s overall emotional arc – is, if not quite fresh, then untested enough to be compelling. Indeed, it’s arguably the closest Caped Crusader comes to justifying its existence, beyond the real-world demands of the IP conveyor belt.
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But even if Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 lacks the clarity of purpose that defines its titular protagonist, it’s still 10 new episodes of Bruce Timm-shepherded animated Batman adventures. That’s a undeniably good thing – just not necessarily the game-changer we might’ve hoped for.
Batman: Caped Crusader premieres on Prime Video on August 1, 2024.
Published: Jul 29, 2024 09:00 am