CW's "The Batman" Cartoon Talk

Victor Von Doom

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Conversation carried over from The Dark Knight movie thread to keep that thread from going way off topic (even though some discussion towards the "straight to DVD anime tie-in would still be "on topic" there).

This conversation is mostly for discussion of CW's "The Batman". While not loved by many members here, the topic of the show does come up quite often...but in other threads. This mostly leads those threads off topic and those posts usually get deleted.

I thought about having the discussion in the "Bruce Timm Adoration" thread...but I thought it might veer it off topic too much and we'd get like 4 pages of people spouting hate in a thread that's dedicated to Timm's work and not so much this new(er) show.

So....voila! A thread dedicated to "The Batman".




Assuming there's one problem with The Batman.

All that stuff is obviously much worse than the style, but I still hate the distinct anime style and asianness of the show. The Gotham f-in' City cops wear uniforms nothing like any American cop.... but almost identical to the PAP of China. ???


I like The Batman. But that's not to say the show doesn't have it's faults. It does.

The show focuses more on smooth animation, fluid and elaborate fight scenes, and action sequences than it does on story. Which is a major contrast to the story-heavy episodes of Timm's early Batman series.

In the early seasons of B:TAS, Batman never really got into fights. He might throw 2 or 3 punches or kicks per episode....but that was it. It didn't focus on the fights.



Also, like Ourchair said earlier, is the bad voice acting from Rino Romano. His take on Bruce and Batman is way off. But it's slightly unfair to him since Kevin Conroy did such an amazing job.
 
I enjoy the Batman or what I have seen of it anyway. It's not as good as Batman the animated series but most cartoons aren't. The voice i'm fine with, Not as good but still I wouldn't exactly call them bad.

My only real problem with series is the villains. I hate the batman's Joker. I really hate it. Penguin is just too weird with is Asian Android things, Mr freeze doesn't seem to have the depth to him that the old batman the animated series had.

Not saying they all bad e.g I like Poison Ivy. But the bad out weighs the good. I think the villains are the shows weakest point. Reminds me of Spider-man Unlimited. The show had good, good guys but the bad guys were crap and let the show down. Even Venom and Carnage were made too look ridicules on it.


Now others may disagree with this. But take the Batman as it is. Insert the care that the timmverse gave to the villains and the show would be really awesome in my opinion
 
One thing I really like about this show is Batgirl, I think they did a real good job with her revamp. As for the villains, I hate Joker, but like Harley, Ivy, Firefly(Phosphorus), and am ambivalent about the rest.
 
The show is hit or miss in several areas.

On fluid animation and fight scenes---they are top notch. I really enjoy the fights and often times I find myself rewinding the show just to see them again.

On voice acting---meh. It's not really bad per se.....but when compared to the Timmverse project, The Batman just doesn't hold up. Some characters have really good VOs. Batgirl, Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, Harley, Riddler, Black Mask and a few others. But Rino Romano's Bruce and Batman are just substandard.

On revamps---hit or miss. At first I liked Joker being this crazed, escaped, gymnastic, clown thing. But that was just giddyness at the thought of seeing a decent Batman/Joker fight. The idea behind the revamp was inspired, but it lost it's meaning when I saw a kungfu fight between Batman and Penguin. The Batgirl, Firefly, Killer Croc and Ivy revamps are really great. The rest....not so much.

On storytelling---sometimes there is a decent episode scattered amongst the seasons. I've been seeing that Paul Dini has been writing several episodes, unfortunately his stories often get bogged-down due to time constraints on account of the extended fighting/chase sequences.


Overall---when standing on it's own, it's a decent Batman cartoon. Unfortunately, it has the burden of having to be compared to Timm's masterpiece. And when stacked against that giant....The Batman has about as much a fighting chance as Clock King.
 
Eh

I don't like it.

I loved the opening for the first season, where it was all strange and wacky, but now the opening is cliche and boring.

I also thought this week's episode of featuring Wraith and Scorn was stupid.

No buildup to that at all.
 
On revamps---hit or miss. At first I liked Joker being this crazed, escaped, gymnastic, clown thing. But that was just giddyness at the thought of seeing a decent Batman/Joker fight. The idea behind the revamp was inspired, but it lost it's meaning when I saw a kungfu fight between Batman and Penguin.
Gonna have to disagree with you there. When the Joker appeared for the first time in that show I cringed. 3 minutes later I changed the channel. Going a different direction with it than those that come before you is admirable, but the way they went was all wrong. There was nothing resembling the Joker and worse than that, it was completely uninspired. Not funny, not scary, and not entertaining.
 
I have to admit it's gotten better since its first season. I do like how they're handling the Justice League in this series.
 
I liked this show when it was starting out, but now that it's gone on to include the Justice League and Martian Manhunter and all that....enh. I don't think they should have introduced Robin, because....well, Teen Titans did it so well. Batgirl was good. Riddler was pretty cool, especially played by Robert Englund, but the Joker wasn't all that great. I didn't like original characters like Ethan Bennett or Chief Rojas, because....well, they could have easily gone with any of the zillions of Gotham City cops that were in Gotham Central and other Batman stories, and Commissioner Loeb or Gordon. Also, Hawkman's mask looks very ****ty. Mr. Freeze looks ****ing awesome however. The Batman vs. Dracula special was kind of dumb and pointless.
 
Overall---when standing on it's own, it's a decent Batman cartoon. Unfortunately, it has the burden of having to be compared to Timm's masterpiece. And when stacked against that giant....The Batman has about as much a fighting chance as Clock King.

Speaking of which the Clock King episode in this series was pretty good, I liked how he kept having to constantly redo his fights. My favorite episode so far has been Breakout where it's just Robin and Batgirl against Black Mask's syndicate.

I have to admit it's gotten better since its first season. I do like how they're handling the Justice League in this series.

I agree.

I thought it was cool how they had all of the voice actors from S:TAS came back for the Superman two parter.
 
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Also, like Ourchair said earlier, is the bad voice acting from Rino Romano. His take on Bruce and Batman is way off. But it's slightly unfair to him since Kevin Conroy did such an amazing job.
I can't stress how strongly I hate Rino Romano. I have other things to say, but they are consumed by how much I dislike him as a VO actor, and it's very hard for me to find one I patently dislike. In fact, he's practically notorious for being hired to play characters that were performed by actors ten times better than him.

Christopher Daniel Barnes wouldn't do the Spider-Man videogames and the Unlimited spin-off, so he took over. He also replaced Jason Court to play Kyle Katarn in the Jedi Knight expansion, because there was no incentive to keep Court around without the video cutscenes.

I could present to you audio clips from Star Trek Elite Force, The Batman, Spider-Man Unlimited AND Jedi Knight and they would all sound the same.

Rino Romano should be shot.
 
I've said it once and I'll say it again:

Watch On Leather Wings.

There's this scene where Batman jumps into the Batmobile and drives out of the Batcave, with the Shirley Walker theme blasting in the background for the first time.

My reaction? "HOW DID THEY GO FROM THIS TO THE PIECE OF CRAP THEY HAVE TODAY?!"

The fact that this ultra-****e has gone on for five friggin' seasons makes me ill.
 
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I honestly can't look at animated superhero shows after watching the DCAU (And Teen Titans). EVERYTHING looks substandard to them. If the DCAU had never existed. . .then I probably would have enjoyed The Batman. I'd probably still nitpick (The Joker is just terrible), but I would have seen it as watchable.

It just doesn't compare to BTAS, though. At all.
 
Speaking of which the Clock King episode in this series was pretty good, I liked how he kept having to constantly redo his fights. My favorite episode so far has been Breakout where it's just Robin and Batgirl against Black Mask's syndicate.

2 really good episodes. Their take on Clock King was great. Especially how they never really "said" he was Clock King.



I thought it was cool how they had all of the voice actors from S:TAS came back for the Superman two parter.

That was pretty cool.


What do you expect from the people that brought you Jackie Chan Adventures?

I liked Jackie Chan Adventures. But I'm probably blinded by my love of Hak Foo.


GORILLA STOMPS ON BANANA!
 
I honestly can't look at animated superhero shows after watching the DCAU (And Teen Titans). EVERYTHING looks substandard to them. If the DCAU had never existed. . .then I probably would have enjoyed The Batman. I'd probably still nitpick (The Joker is just terrible), but I would have seen it as watchable.

It just doesn't compare to BTAS, though. At all.

Correctimundo. Having not seen BTAS properly in a couple of years, I found the first season of The Batman to be vaguely entertaining. Then I started watching Justice League properly and TB just oozed suckiness. Then I bought the BTAS DVDs and now it seems like Satan's faeces.

One thing I do find interesting about the show is that most of the gadgety or shticky villains (like Mr. Freeze, Firefly and the Terrible Trio), they seem to like just turning them into literal supervillains by taking their gadgets and making them actual superpowers. Mr. Freeze has freez-blasts, Firefly becomes Dr. Phosphorus and The Terrible Trio are basically Man-Shark, Man-Fox and Man-Vulture. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that they did this, I just find it interesting.
 
I've said it once and I'll say it again:

Watch On Leather Wings.

There's this scene where Batman jumps into the Batmobile and drives out of the Batcave, with the Shirley Walker theme blasting in the background for the first time.

My reaction? "HOW DID THEY GO FROM THIS TO THE PIECE OF CRAP THEY HAVE TODAY?!"

The fact that this ultra-****e has gone on for five friggin' seasons makes me ill.

Yeah, this is basically it.

B:TAS was probably as close as we'll ever get to the perfect Batman show(animated or otherwise). You could say it set the bar too high to be matched. I won't. They didn't try to make a great Batman show here. They didn't even try to make a great show. They tried to make an extremely flashy and action-oriented show that will panders to kids, although is still sensical enough to be tolerated by their parents(unlike B:TAS, which my dad loved and would go out of his way to watch with me whenever he could). The show also happens to be about Batman, so that gives them an audience to start with and a set of characters and places to use, but ultimately, the show could've taken place anywhere and been about any made-up vigilante with wacky kung-fu villains and still basically be the same.

Secondly, just looking at the voice cast for the shows is all you need to know. B:TAS, as they say on the DVDs a dozen times, didn't employ cartoon character voices. They got "voices with character" and treated every recording session like a live-action rehearsal. Kevin Conroy, Efrem Zimbalist Jr, Mark Hamill, Paul Williams, Roddy McDowell, John Glover ..... compared to the painfully pedestrian voices they use on The Batman(with the exception of Englund as The Riddler) that almost anyone could do.

Finally, Doom said it best. Kung. Fu. Penguin.

Yeah, I think they missed the point of a Batman show.

What do you expect from the people that brought you Jackie Chan Adventures?

Jackie Chan Adventures was a really fun, exciting show, because all this stuff was appropriate there. But yeah, applying it to a Batman show was obviously a bad idea, albeit a marketable one, sadly.
 

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