Batman: Caped Crusader Review

Bruce Timm finally returns to Batman

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Timm For Batman!

This is a deeply flawed Batman

There’s absolutely no debate about it, Bruce Timm revolutionized American cartoons when he unleashed Batman: The Animated Series into the world in 1992. To this day, that show is arguably still the best representation of the vigilante to translate off the comic book pages and onto a screen. That’s why it is a monumental occasion that in 2024, the show creator reunites with the character that launched an entire universe.

Batman: Caped Crusader is not only a homage to TAS, but it’s also a referendum to modern superhero media that relies heavily on cameos and sophisticated overarching storylines. This show is also specifically a clear cut sign of the times we live in as it was produced and distributed by the streaming services of Amazon Prime Video. A distinct contrast to TAS and their original run on broadcast television. While there’s a lot of Batman as we remember from those Fox Kids days here, Caped Crusader is also a cloak full of darkness that enthralls imperfection.

This time around back in Gotham, Bruce Timm and his star studded team of writers wanted to bring Batman back to his roots. As Spider-Man once said that I also believe Batman to hold a claim to, handling street level crime is where this hero should be primarily stationed at. This is something many of our superhero figures have abandoned in favor of a sexier metahuman conflict. Batman properties have also been guilty of this, by pitting the hero against world-ending threats like Darkseid instead of solving mob crime using his detective roots.

Caped Crusader brings Batman back to the gritty, and grimy streets of Gotham City during the early onset of his war against crime. While the premise of a year one Batman has been ad nauseum, this particular show reinvents many of Batman’s rogue gallery into twisted, and sometimes terrifying foes for the detective to face.

A Bruce Full of mistakes

This is also a Bruce Wayne who wears more than one mask. He’s a man who has encrypted his brain and heart to disassociate compassion in order to declare war on crime. He addresses Alfred Pennyworth, the butler who essentially stayed by his side through thick and thin, only by his last name. This Bruce Wayne cares not to know who or where his butler came from as long as he assists him on his mission. As this is the beginning of his war on crime, this Batman has not opened his heart to a “Bat-Family” concept yet. By the end of the first season, some of those walls are starting to crack and we get a glimpse of a Bruce we’re more akin to seeing in modern media.

Is this the real Bruce Wayne? Or is Bruce Wayne becoming a manifestation of the man behind the cape? It’s a fascinating take as I honestly don’t recall any Batman comic that I’ve read where Bruce calls his butler Pennyworth and refuses to address him by his first name. This small detail was already a stark painting to the world of Caped Crusader as many other classic Batman standards have also been twisted.  

Caped Crusader’s Batman is selfish. He’s angry. He loses a lot. He makes mistakes. He’s not a hero. At least he hasn’t become the hero we know he is destined to be yet.

Bruce and Pennyworth

A glaring example of this was during episode 9 towards the climax of the 10 episode first season run. Batman just arrives on the scene after falling behind the trail of a deranged Harvey Dent during his descent into Two-Face. The former DA just set a man on fire and is escaping in his vehicle. Hearing a loud scream with fire setting the windows ablaze, the scene clearly shows Batman deciding to turn the Batmobile around to follow Two-Face, instead of rescuing the victim.

Effectively making the decision to abandon potentially rescuing the man (albeit a bad guy) from death to chase the villain is something we don’t normally see our heroes do. I’ve read and watched a lot of Batman over the years, and I think a majority of those Batmen would have directed the hero to go into the fire to try and rescue the victim while letting the villain escape. Heck, that’s an actual trope that has been followed for decades. A villain knows the hero will always attempt to save a hostage so they throw the hostage in a dangerous situation and run away as the hero easily picks the rescue over the chase every single time. I was pleasantly surprised to see this NOT happen in Caped Crusader.

While that decision wasn't very heroic of Batman, I didn’t find it out of character for this Batman either. As I said earlier, this Batman is a bit selfish navigating full of tunnel vision. He easily dismisses suggestions from Pennyworth that his deduction could be wrong or clouded. Then he deeply broods over it as a situtation get more dire. In this case, Bruce knows that Pennyworth was right about him pushing Harvey too far and too fast, thus indirectly driving his fragile-mind over the edge. His desire to reverse his mistakes led him to abandon attempting to rescue a life and chase after Harvey.

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Gotham City feels a lot like TAS

Golden Age

Aesthetically, there’s a lot of Batman: The Animated Series ingrained into the world building of this new show. The vehicles and buildings have a similar design to the 90’s show, which itself was inspired by Tim Burton’s Batman film in 1989. Where the vibes delve deeper into their Noir roots is with the characters in this universe. It’s an odd thing to say as the 90’s show was a predominantly white male, on-screen cast, which one would associate with an American metropolitan in the 1940’s. Caped Crusader tinkers with the race and gender of some characters to flesh out the diversity, but ironically, I felt this represented that era of Americana better than TAS did.

Before you harp on me for spewing blasphemy, I do want to note that I have extensive knowledge of Golden Age comics. I may not own as many, or enjoy the Golden Age stories as much as the Silver and Bronze Ages, but I have read my share of anthologies like Detective Comics and Journey into Mystery where many of our favorite characters first debuted. They were rough concepts of what they have become fleshed out into in modern times. Still, I love reliving the age of what many people call “the greatest generation” to grasp a small picture of how humans interacted in those times (albeit fictionalized).   

Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger went through a few metamorphosis for their legendary creation in the early years of the character. It wasn’t until writer Gardner Fox and some of the second generation DC staff writers that molded the character into what we recognize today. It isn’t easy capturing a snapchat of 1940’s authentically, but the one man who knows how to do it is Executive Producer, Ed Brubaker. Known for his standout period pieces like Batman: Gotham Noir, and Fatale (a great Image comic), I wasn’t surprised to see his name in the credits as a force behind building out this Gotham City.

Babs is a lawyer who often works with Batman

Add in another big geek in producer J.J Abrams, and Matt Reeves, the Director of The Batman (2022), and this really was a production made from the who’s who of Batman creators. No one can deny that between Timm, Brubaker, and Reeves, Batman: Caped Crusader may just very well be consist of the most experienced cast of Batman experts.  

A new take on classics

The respect for the beloved intellectual property clearly shows even with the changes made to certain characters and their backgrounds. I’m usually not one to advocate for coloring the skin of pre-existing characters strictly for the sake of diversity in comic books. I actually prefer the creation of new characters that carve their own identity like what Marvel has done with Miles Morales and Kamala Khan. Those were far better attempts at diversity than DC’s botched attempts at rewriting Wally West or Alan Scott, which essentially make them brand new characters anyway because they’re so different.

However, I have no issues with the direction in which Caped Crusader takes the Penguin. Traditionally, the classic villain who debuted in the Golden Age is a stubby, stout man who hobbles around with an umbrella named Oswald Cobblepot. The first episode of this new series sets the tone straight off the bat by revealing the villain to be a woman named Oswalda Cobblepot who runs a criminal operation with her two sons. Unlike some of the campier takes of classic Penguin, this lady is vicious. She has no qualms offing her own flesh and blood if she feels betrayed by them. There’s a real intimidating fear that this character gives off that I can’t recall an animated series version of Penguin portrayed.    

Then there’s this universe’s version of Jim and Barbara Gordon. It’s easy to make comparisons to Joe and Iris West from the CW show Flash, as their skin color changes and their relationships are almost exact mirrors of one another. However, I found this Barbie Gordon to be an extremely strong character that represents the best of the animated Batgirl that we know and love. Of course she isn’t Batgirl in this season (and may never be), but the character itself fulfills a lot of what Bruce Timm originally designed her to be in TAS. As an ambitious, “never knowing when to quit” fighter who doesn’t need to wait for approval from a man, there’s a lot to like here. Once again, the Babs Batgirl we know today was essentially revised and championed by Timm through TAS. Ironically, the character devolved by the end of the original show’s run, but I do feel she’s done justice in this adaptation.

Another character with a significant background change is Caped Crusader’s Harley Quinn. Completely independent of the Joker, Harleen Quinzel is still active as a therapist in her day life and well socialized with many of Gotham’s prominent characters. In fact, the Asian Harley Quinn of Caped Crusader is romantically involved with detective Renee Montoya, and extremely close to Barbara Gordon. So much so that she exposes herself and foils her own criminal plan to save her friend from a self-destructing bomb. The classic blonde bombshell with a Jersey accent that we’re accustomed to seeing as Harley Quinn is no more. Once again, I normally would say that I don’t like it when existing characters have their skin color changed, but this is Bruce Timm doing it so it’s absolutely fine. After all, this is the actual creator of the original character. His vision of his character is absolute. If he wants to try something new with the character, there’s no one else who can interpret the core competencies of their creation. I thought this Harley Quinn was a surprising breath of fresh air from the shackles that the main universe Harley has struggled to fight off over recent years.

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supernatural?

This adaptation of Batman on the silver screen is remarkably grounded and rooted in reality. For most of the show, I could actually envision this Batman and his trials happening in real life. Here’s a conceited, hard-headed vigilante challenging underground organized crime syndicates. It’s a fight that many of our real life detectives and police officers face all around our own world. In that case, I don’t necessarily agree with the inclusion of supernatural foes and storylines for this particular show. At least not yet.

Yes, Batman will always be intertwined with metahumans and supernatural aspects, but Caped Crusader was doing so well in carving an identity rooted away from all of that early on. It was then oddly jarring to see stories about Gentleman Ghost and a vampire like Nocturna. These characters felt out of place in an otherwise realistic Gotham City. I would have liked these aspects to appear in later seasons when the inevitable power creep of Batman’s rogue gallery was bound to show up. They’ve already confirmed that an intimidating version of Joker is on the horizon for next season that I’m absolutely hyped to see. 

I’m also somewhat disappointed in the lack of actual in-depth detective work that Batman does in this show. For a series that is rooted in gritty realism with a bunch of Gotham PD inclusion, I was expecting to be impressed with deductions and “gotcha” moments from a master detective. Going into the show I was somehow anticipating more Cased Closed than Batman: The Animated Series in terms of plotting. That wasn’t the case as I felt that TAS actually had a stronger take on detective work than the ten episodes of Caped Crusader.

What to look forward to

Now that we have a baseline for what Bruce Timm has in store for Caped Crusader thanks to season 1 of the Amazon Prime Video show, there’s a lot to look forward to for the future. On the surface, this Timm reunion for DC resembles Disney+’s revival of X-Men ‘97 that we raved about earlier this year. However, aside from the surface similarities, Caped Crusader is an extremely unique take that we don’t often see of the Dark Knight. There have been a few Batman cartoons that have attempted to cultivate the hero into this World War II era, but nothing has come close to creating such a well defined Noir identity like Caped Crusader.        

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