The Batman Animated Series had amazing art deco style

[CharlesB]

Wonderful animation

 

[metropd]

BEST CARTOON SHOW EVER!!!!! I will never be to old to watch that show! To bad with all the Justice Leaugue kindergarden junk afterwards.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Best Batman Ever.

I liked the Tim Burton films in their time, and I own and respect Batman Begins... but the Animated Series found the perfect synthesis of all the different interpretations of the character over the years, had wonderful writing, that brilliant dark deco style, fantastic music (each episode had its own original score, recorded with a 30-piece orchestra, no damn synths), and incredibly well chosen and directed voice talent!

I have raved about this series so many times here over the years that I won't bother to go into detail again. Suffice it to say that I watched it religiously when it first aired when my kids were little, and I own all the DVD boxes now. Mega-brilliant in every way!

A fantastic resource for anybody interested in B:TAS:

http://anbat.toonzone.net/

 

[Edward]

Doctor S, a friend of mine's elder sister has a memorabilia collection to die for if you're a fan of that series - including some very iconic original cells from the show. I agree with you that's it's as near perfect a rendition of the Bat's world as we'll ever see on film - certainly it was my favourite take on the Joker, and as for it bringing us Harley Quinn.... I was desperately hoping the follow-up to The Dark Knight would be the ballad of Joker & Harley, but I don't know where that will go after the tragic death of Ledger. I'd love to see Mark Hamill play joker in "real space," though, given how perfectly he breathed life into the animated character.

The thing I loved about it especially was that although much of its target audience would have been children, it never condescended to them (there was also an X Men cartoon of the time that was very similar in this respect). Actually, many of the themes it covered were very adult indeed, which I believe is a good thing for kids, myself.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Edward, I think the main reason that the show didn't condescend to the kiddie audience was that these next-gen WB animation guys (Paul Dini, Bruce Timm, etc.), besides personally being lifelong Batman fans who took the character and mythos dead seriously, took the approach that earlier WB animation genius Chuck Jones had often stated:

Q: "Did you make these cartoons for kids or for adults?"
Jones: "Neither. I made them for ME."

They made the Batman stories that they, as very knowledgeable Batman fans who adored the character and his milieu, wanted to make. While production time and money were short, their enthusiasm and relative freedom, and enormous talent, drove the excellence of the series.

And yeah, no disrespect to the deceased, but no matter how good Heath Ledger's Joker will be, it simply won't be the DEFINITIVE interpretation of Mark Hamill! (In the same way that Christian Bale is very good... but he's no Kevin Conroy.)

Addition: Of course, one of the major advantages the Animated Series had is time. You can do a lot more with Batman in 85 22-minute stories (*) than you can in a couple of feature films. (* 25 more if you count the later New Batman Adventures, though that watered-down, overly design-simplified series has some real clinkers and "eh" stories, and only adds a handful of outstanding episodes to the tally.)

 

[CharlesB]

I think one of the key elements beyond simply the art itself was the tone of the series. At least within this world of batman death was a very real concept. How many cartoons (I dare not say Kids Shows) at that time, that were being viewed by mainly preteens after school had DEATH as a central theme.

Characters died, they were maimed or crippled. When someone was annihilated in a confrontation they bled, had broken bones, the y were MORTAL. And so time and again the heart of the show really was an examination of the pitfalls of living beyond the bounds of mere mortals while altogether being very mortal.

Also, the fact that Batman often would discuss just how messed up in the head he was and that the show blatantly pointed out that there are very messed up people doing very messed up things and sometimes there is just no reason for it other than that the world really can be horrid...

I mean my god to take that all and still make it suitable for afterschool viewing. thats groundbreaking

 

[Doctor Strange]

According to Paul Dini's excellent book on the series, Batman Animated, it was understood by everybody right from the initial concept stage that the show would be violent, though it would be done tastefully. But there was a long list of things they absolutely couldn't show: bloody fights and broken bones (if you watch carefully, you'll see it was suggested vs. being shown), sex, drug use, kids in jeopardy (one of the reasons that Robin was made a college student), etc.

Ironically, the limitations that were set for the show by Fox Kids' Standards and Practices forced the writers to be more creative: The classic example is in the flashback in the (outstanding!) Robin origin episode where Dick's parents are not shown falling from the sabotaged trapeze. Instead, a close-up of the fraying rope cuts to Dick seeing it and trying to shout and warn them, then cuts to a shadow of the Graysons falling, then to startled reaction shots of the crowd (epecially Bruce Wayne), then to the end of the broken rope hanging limp as the crowd's screams become quiet. This editing, with a strong assist from the scoring and sound editing, it is actually far more emotionally effective than simply showing them fall.

As far as Bruce's mental state, I loved that the series continually showed him to be extremely distressed and obsessed... but not over the edge into insanity proper. He was still a virtuous hero, not a loon like the villains he contended with (one of the things I didn't like in the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton films).

Great, great stuff. Simply the best half-hour dramatic cartoons ever made, and they only get better on repeated viewings!

(If you're interested in this show, I highly recommend the site I linked to up above. Insightful essays and episode reviews, extensive image and music galleries, writing and voice credits - it's wonderful.)

 

[CharlesB]

Apparently the voice of Batgirl/Barbara Gordon was voiced by the lass that did "Princess Clara" in the short lived but genius cartoon Drawn Together

 

[Doctor Strange]

Tara Strong (aka Charendorff)? She does lots of cartoon voice work. She was actually the second or third actress to voice Batgirl, in the later New Batman episodes. Melissa Gilbert voiced her in her initial appearances (she was just Barbara in a several episodes before she became Batgirl).

I sort of liked Drawn Together. It had isolated moments of absolute brilliance scattered amidst way too many shock-for-its-own-sake, let's-see-how-outrageous-we-can-be, anything-for-a-cheap-laugh gags. Not really as clever as it thought it was, but it did come up with a great idea every now and then.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

I'm one of those nuts with shelves and shelves of BTAS stuff. Drives my wife crazy.

 

[J. M. Stovall]

Here's something I drew pretty recently for no reason except to further ingrain my obsession.

 

[Doh!]

Excellent drawing!!

I don't remember the episode, but they even managed to slip a Bettie Page cameo into it. I believe it was when Dick Grayson was trying to track down his parents' killer.

I must track down the complete set on DVD...

 

[Lady Day]

Im partial to the more naturalistic character design of the first and second season, as opposed to the revamps in later seasons. I thought the characters too seemed more accessable, not so much in the sharp graphic shoulders and 5 ft wide chests and overall flatness that seemed to take over the cartoon stlyes of later shows across the board.

Also, the episodes Feat of Clay (pt 1 and 2) has some of the most fantastic animation ever done on network television.

LD

 

[Doctor Strange]

I'm with you on that all the way. The redesigns were disastrous, far too stylized, and the female characters in particular were just awful. (Vibrant, sexy ladies like Catwoman and Poison Ivy turned into impossibly wasp-waisted pale cadavers!) While Bruce Timm's evolving theories of how to get the most character and action out of simpler graphics was, um, interesting, it missed the charm that the earlier fuller animation had (all those rumpled suit wrinkles and facial shadows) - not to mention the more Burton-films-derived retro setting, with all the old-school fedoras and Tommy guns.

But it wasn't just the designs that put The New Batman Adventures into a lower category for me - changing the dynamic of the show from the lone Dark Knight Detective to a full-time cast of thousands (Bats, annoying kid Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing, etc.) and the general weakness of the bulk of the stories also hurt. While there was excellent continuity in the voices and storylines, there are only a handful of outstanding episodes - Mad Love, Over The Edge, Old Wounds, Knight Time. Alas, most episodes lack the verve and sparkle of the earlier series, which has surprisingly few mediocre episodes and only a couple of outright lame ones.

Newsflash: The Batman (which isn't bad, but doesn't hold a candle to B:TAS) ends its run today. It was just announced that the next animated Bat project - a direct-to-DVD film in "anime style" timed to come out after The Dark Knight hits theaters - will have Kevin Conroy voicing Bats/Bruce again! (Which is nice, but I'm still not interested.)

PS - I said in my first post that I wouldn't blather on and on in this thread, but I can't help myself. Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!

 

[Doh!]

Doc, excellent take on the series.

And here's that Bruce Timm book he mentioned. I can't recommend it highly enough; even if you don't know the show but are just a fan of animated art:

http://www.amazon.com/Batman-Animat...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205025393&sr=1-1

 

[Lady Day]

I agree Dr. Strange.

I felt the stories of the first two seasons delved more into Bruce Wayne's life and spilled over into Batman's world. Both personas had equal screen time, and both men were efective in what they did to progress the story.

I cant tell you how many times Ive watched my box sets.

The last direct to DVD Batman TAS based movie I can recall was Batman Mystery of the Batwoman. It wasnt too bad, and I was jonzing for ANYTHING Batman at that point. There is a great short on it called 'Chase Me' where Batman chases Catwoman across the city.

I also LOVED Batman Beyond. Their focus to make sure we didnt see him as a Batman Jr was quite effective. It wasnt the greatest show, but I felt it was cut too short and could have developed into something fantastic.

LD

 

[Doctor Strange]

I liked Batman Beyond, and watched it religiously when it first aired, but I've had no desire to revisit it since then. It was certainly gutsy and well done, but both the whole "this could be Bruce's future" and giving the real focus of the show to Terry and the high school kids didn't appeal to me very much. And the new villians invented for the show were pretty lame compared to the classic Rogues Gallery.

I liked it best in terms of Bruce, and Kevin Conroy did a masterful job of playing the bitter old coot. In the rare cases when the focus shifted to him (as in the great "Out of the Past" episode, where "Talia" offers him a chance at rejuvination in the Lazarus Pit), it attained a bit of the old B:TAS goodness.

I also mostly enjoyed Justice League and Justice League Unlimed, and my favorite sequences in those shows were always the little Batman moments. It was clear that Timm and company dearly loved Bats, and dug making him the brains of a primarily slugfest-oriented show, and they never missed a chance to give him awesome little detective or fighting-skill grace notes. And I dug the redesign that put him back in the blue/gray color scheme.

I haven't gotten around to seeing Mystery of the Batwoman and "Chase Me" yet, but I surely will eventually... In the meantime, having the B:TAS DVDs is an enormous pleasure! (Especially for a lifelong superhero fan and film collector like me: I got my first copy of a Fleischer Superman cartoon in Super 8 sound back in 1972!)

 

[Lady Day]

To me, with Beyond, was the Rogues gallery not being a person, per se, but a persona, the Jokers for instance, making them a gang, was a great way to bring some of that nostalgia back from the original, as well as giving it a new life as interpreted by the young hoodlums of that present time.

I also liked what they did with splicing, and wished they had explored more of that.

Yes, the highschool aspect of the show was silly. I could of cared less about his friends. They tried to tie in a forbidden love mirroring Batman/Catwoman, with that gal from the Royal Flush gang. Also the 'hiding' of stuff from his family was silly too. Only one of his friends was smart enough to get it, and she needed a computer to figure it out, come on!

I thought Terry would be a more vengeful Batman, especially with how his father died, and that Bruce would be that conscience trying to keep him in check. But the show never got that dark.

Have you seen the Batman Beyond movie? That was pretty compelling and there are two deaths in it. You have to get the unrated one, not the PG-13 one.

Never really got into Justice League. Just not a big Superman fan (the animated one anyway). I didnt care for the love triangle they tried to do with Lois, Bruce and Clark in that Superman movie. It was just silly.

LD

 

[Doctor Strange]

LD - I got the VHS release of BB:Return of the Joker when it first came out, the watered-down cut, and watched it once with my kids. I eventually checked out the differences in the later, unrated version on the Internet. Frankly, the changes didn't make much difference to me - I was pretty underwhelmed. Oh, it was clever, well-done, suitably tough, but it didn't do much for me. The bottom line is, it was still BB, which was never my fave. (One thing I did like in it was what we saw of Bruce and Barbara's relationship in flashback, as it filled in how bubbly Batgirl had evolved into the tough Commissioner.)

So, if you never watched the Justice League series, does that mean that you've never seen "Epilogue"?!? Given your level of appeciation for Batman Beyond, you must see this episode of JLU!

It essentially provides closure on BB, taking place a dozen years later than the series, when Terry has really grown into his role as Batman, and it features some very interesting revelations... and even has a cameo appearance by Phantasm. (It was intended to be the final episode of JLU - though they ended up doing one additional season - and it harkened back to both B:TAS and BB, seeking to be the capstone on the continuity that extended back to the first episode of B:TAS.) It was yet another instance of what I mentioned above about JL/JLU - it was clear that the creators felt that Batman was the central charcter, even more so than Superman, and they always came back to him for the show's especially important moments.

Anyway, if you think the BB storyline ended with ROTJ, not so. You gotta see JLU's "Epilogue"!

Okay, that's enough animated-Bat fixation...

 

[Sunny]

I just want to say...

... that I watched this when it was on during a regular babysitting job for a piano teacher down the street. I was 9 years old and knew next to nothing about Batman. And yet I still remember many episodes vividly, not plots and logic necessarily, but images and emotions. It was incredibly powerful and I've identified immediately with what you all are saying.