Batman: Caped Crusader Is An Embarrassment For Warner Bros.
I don’t know what’s going on at Warner Bros., but they keep making the most baffling decisions regarding their DC properties. Shelving Batgirl is bad enough, but dropping Batman: Caped Crusader from Max and selling it to Amazon is just bonkers. The company couldn’t embarrass itself more if it took a heavily anticipated Looney Tunes movie and threw it in the tra—oh wait, Warner Bros. did that, too.
Warner Bros Gave Up An Amazing Batman Project
When one entertainment conglomerate offloads a project to a different entertainment conglomerate, it’s usually because it’s a dumpster fire. Otherwise, why not benefit from its success? Batman: Caped Crusader would have been a huge feather in Warner’s cap. Selling the best Batman project in years to a competitor seems like bad business.
Because, make no mistake, Batman: Caped Crusader is the real deal. As a huge Batman: The Animated Series fan, I was initially nervous about Caped Crusader. Bruce Timm’s Batman work without Paul Dini has been spotty at best.
Expectations Were Low
Batman and Harley Quinn (2017), for instance, is the worst thing ever to carry the Batman name. The Bruce Timm-produced/written animated movie features an infamous scene where Harley Quinn assaults Dick Grayson while he’s tied up. Then, as an encore, she eats Mexican food in the Batmobile and rips the raunchiest fart. I wish I was making this up.
So, needless to say, I didn’t have high hopes for Batman: Caped Crusader. Boy, was I wrong. Not only is the show possibly the best Batman series since BTAS, but it manages to feel both familiar and new at the same time.
Firmly Set In The 40s
The show’s art style blends Bruce Timm’s classic DCAU character designs with the comic’s Golden Age—a time period in Batman’s existence we never get to see on screen. Sure, Batman: The Animated Series had a ’40s aesthetic, but there was still high-tech gadgetry hiding behind every Art Deco-inspired corner. Batman: Caped Crusader doesn’t play around with the same ambiguity.
Caped Crusader is set firmly in the 1940s with no computers in sight. Inside the Batcave, a giant map of Gotham sits where the Batcomputer would be in any other adaptation. It’s one of the few times outside of Gotham By Gaslight that the Dark Knight operates in a firm time period.
New Takes On Old Villains
The new characterizations for old characters like The Penguin and Two-Face are a breath of fresh air. These characters have been around longer than your grandparents, so why shouldn’t we get new versions every once in a while? It’s refreshing to see a new take rather than the stale old stories we’ve been getting for decades.
Meanwhile, the tone of Batman: Caped Crusader is just perfect I was worried that all of Bruce Timm’s talk of making the show Fox and Warner Bros. wouldn’t let him make it back in the ’90s, which meant we were getting yet another grimdark, Frank Miller-inspired Batman. Once again, I was wrong—in the most satisfying way possible.
Batman: Caped Crusader isn’t dark and gritty so much as pulpy and noirish. The show doesn’t ape Miller but instead pays homage to pulp heroes like The Shadow, who directly inspired the Dark Knight Detective. It’s slightly more mature than BTAS, but it’s hardly an “adult show” like Max’s Harley Quinn.
Warner Bros Is Failing Batman
The more DC content ends up on streaming services Warner Bros. doesn’t control, the more I wonder if the company wouldn’t be better off just selling Batman and Co. to someone else.
Someone who already has their own stable of superheroes, perhaps? Look, I can’t be the only one who wants to see Superman fight the Hulk on the big screen. The popcorn buckets that would result from a Marvel/DC merger would be insane! Here’s hoping…
