Is the new Batman: Caped Crusader animated series worth your time? Find out in our Batman: Caped Crusader review!
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With over eight decades of stories, Batman can come in many flavors and mediums. Some are more successful than others, but one place you can always seem to count on good stories is in the realm of animation. If you ask any Batman fan what their favorite versions of the character are, you would be hard-pressed not to hear Batman: The Animated Series named neat at the top of the list.
Now, over three decades after the launch of that iconic series, a large portion of the creative team has reunited to take another pass at the stories of Batman and Gotham City. This time around, instead of setting it as some ambiguous time with elements from many different decades, we are very clearly in the 1940s, and the noir elements are in full effect.
Bruce Timm was one of the driving forces behind Batman: The Animated Series, and now he’s not only taking another crack at the Caped Crusader, but also taking some time to try out some new angles on characters that he already worked on defining storylines for.
One of the biggest changes everyone is going to notice immediately are the changes to Dr. Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn. This time around she has no known connection to the Joker prior to her putting on her newly redesigned costume.
Courtesy Prime Video
She is more self-actualized than we have ever seen her, and while I had my doubts at first, the changes worked for this viewer.
Overall, this series took some big swings with nearly every villain, with some of them working, and others not so much. In particular, the episode focusing on Gentleman Ghost didn’t work for me on any level. It is such a tonal shift that you anticipated Scooby-Doo and Shaggy to show up at any moment and shout, “Zoinks!”
While the Ghost episode was very much a miss for me, the rest of the series goes in some interesting directions and even has a much more serialized nature than other Batman animate outings.
Possibly the biggest miss of the series, however, is Batman himself. He is still supposed to be fairly new in the role, and that excuses many things, but there is just far too much of the series where he feels like a blank slate. You aren’t sure who he is as a person, and it feels as though he is merely there to serve as an engine to keep the story moving. There are multiple episodes where he only drops in well after you as an audience member understand everything that is happening.
Batman: Caped Crusader tries some new things, and for that, it needs to be applauded. At the same time, you feel as though it may have done well to try to stay a bit more within the lines of the coloring book to keep viewers grounded.
SCORE: 7 out of 10
Disclaimer: Prime Video provided The Nerdy with all 10 episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 for the purposes of this review. We watched them until they were completed before beginning this review.
