If you’re anything like me, the prospect of Bruce Timm returning to the world of Batman is the stuff of instant hype. His Batman: The Animated Series (B:TAS) and the DC Animated Universe it spawned remain a benchmark for adapting superhero comics into animation—or any medium, really. Though most famous for introducing new characters like Harley Quinn or Renee Montoya, both now beloved fixtures of the Bat-mythos in other media, Timm’s shows also manage to be remarkably comics-accurate, to the point of enlisting industry greats like Len Wein or Denny O’Neil to pen episodes. And they do all that while maintaining the requisite family-friendly TV-Y7 rating… not that that stopped some episodes from tackling shockingly mature themes.
So, does Timm’s long-awaited follow-up Caped Crusader manage to fill those very large boots?
Uh…
Okay, good things first. Caped Crusader keeps up B:TAS’ famous “Dark Deco” aesthetic, bringing Gotham City to life in all its ‘40s noir glory. Indeed, the new show seems even more committed to the period, as the occasional bits of ‘90s tech that pop up in B:TAS are entirely absent here. Even the episode’s plots are refreshingly non-serialized for the most part, recalling the nasty, one-off crime tales of the Golden Age of comics rather than the multi-year story arcs of today. The anything-goes weirdness of that era is here, too, as we get everything from routine gangster antics to ghostly visitations to carnival horror stories. Coupled with surprisingly accurate throwback looks for the key players—we even get the overweight Alfred from before his diet in 1944!—it makes for the closest thing to a true-to-the-text Golden Age Batman adaptation there’s ever been. Except for the jingoistic movie serial, of course.
Sounds awesome, right? So, what’s the problem?
To my astonishment, I have to take issue with the animation quality. I’m the first to jump up and say that poor animation (unsynced lips, off-model characters, unmoving extras, etc.) is no obstacle to a great animated show. Look at Neon Genesis Evangelion or, hell, Clutch Cargo. But Caped Crusader is one case where the clumsy animation runs directly counter to the show’s stated aim. Whereas the jankiness of Evangelion’s visuals is frankly expected for a ‘90s anime and arguably half the fun, Caped Crusader is explicitly a follow-up to one of the most beautifully animated series of the 20th century. In fact, Timm himself, unwisely tempting fate, declared back in 2021 that this show would be “more Batman: The Animated Series than Batman: The Animated Series.” That’s definitely the case in regard to its unabashedly pulpy aesthetic, but in terms of the moment-by-moment experience of watching the show, it falls considerably short.
That frustration is not entirely the animators’ fault, though. The shortcomings in that department may well have come from the show’s cancellation by the infamous Warner Bros. president David Zaslav and eventual rescue by Amazon. The show’s casting, however, was fixed before all that, but still manages to be baffling and often ill-advised. Unlike B:TAS, which relied mostly on reliable career voice actors like Loren Lester and the late, great Kevin Conroy, Caped Crusader springs for movie stars who simply don’t fit the characters as written. Christina Ricci is an exception to this rule, as her Catwoman is fun and energetic, but sadly, she only features in a single episode. As the Dark Knight himself, Hamish Linklater mostly sticks to a decent Conroy impression, of which the best I can say is that it’s not distracting. Jamie Chung, phoning it in as a deadpan Harley Quinn, and Minnie Driver, inexplicably doing an American accent as a genderbent Penguin, both seem extremely out of place. Unsurprisingly, it’s the veteran VAs who give the best performances: John DiMaggio and Gary Anthony Williams as the sleazy cop duo Bullock and Flass, in particular, steal every scene they’re in.
To be clear, I don’t have any issue with the show’s reimagining of these characters, much derided by the same kind of ‘fans’ who called The Last Jedi too “woke”. Most of the innovations are fresh and filled with potential—good news for such an overexposed IP as Batman. Honestly, I wish the show had done more to explore how, say, Barbara Gordon would navigate being a black woman in the ‘40s. But the bigger problem is that all the performers too often come off as bizarrely flat and subdued, which negates the characters’ potential interest and does not suit the outrageous comic-y dialogue that peppers the series. To give you an idea, one villain actually says, “There was a time when the lower classes KNEW their place!!!” Presumably, they didn’t have the budget to animate him twirling his mustache, as well. What we’re left with, then, is a whole lot of mostly static figures sharing awkwardly paced, ultimately rather boring conversations interspersed with some fairly mundane action sequences.
Suffice it to say, that gets old pretty fast. What’s more, the show is still rated TV-Y7, so Timm’s promise of a “darker” and “uncensored” B:TAS also falls flat. Honestly, Caped Crusader is, if anything, less psychologically complex than its predecessor, as it unfortunately copies Golden Age comics’ archetypal characterization a little too well. The series’ best character arc, jerkass attorney Harvey Dent’s transformation into Two-Face, is clearly cribbing from The Long Halloween and the movie it inspired, The Dark Knight. Oh, yeah, and B:TAS did it better. Honestly, that last sentence could stand in for this entire review.
Amazon has already renewed Caped Crusader for a second season. I know I’ll be watching when it’s out, regardless of my opinion of this batch, and I sincerely hope the show rights its wrongs. On the bright side, I do believe its biggest problems are all highly fixable. The pitch itself—bringing Batman back to his noir roots with a few twists to keep us off balance—remains solid. Timm and his team just need to better calibrate the mix of pulp and psychodrama, get some more voices who understand the material, and hopefully wrangle more of that sweet Amazon money to get the animation up to the bar they set way back in 1992. Alright, that sounds like a lot when I put it like that… but if anyone can pull off such a heroic rescue, it’s Bruce Timm.