Batman: The Animated Series

it’s entertaining! mostly!

it’s easy to nitpick it away but it’s heart is def in the right place and the performances are charming

It's fun! Definitely goes off the rails In the last half hour, but without retroactively ruining the whole movie. Looking forward to the next one.

I love that the praise for the most highly-acclaimed DC movie is still saddled with qualifications (which, TBF, is also true of every decent non-MCU Marvel flick). But I'll check it out.

i mean it’s no mask of the phantasm, that’s fer sure

Well, I'd feel bad giving it a 100% thumbs up as it's not a 100% great movie. But like Biz says, the flaws aren't dealbreakers - whereas e.g. I still wish I could get back the hours of my life I wasted watching Dark Knight Rises. I had a similar feeling about Homecoming - charming but too long.

Oh man, Homecoming was fantastic! Completely exceeded expectations.

But this is not the place!

To give DC props, they are still treating the DCAU with the respect it deserves. BTAS is coming out on Blu-ray early next year, and they're surprisingly still releasing trades of the companion comics (my faith in their follow-through on that front being super low, having gotten burned most recently on the Sandman Mystery Theatre reprints which they cancelled after a whopping two collections).

Is the Superman show any good? It's the only one I've never seen.

Oh yeah. That, All-Star, and the first several years of Byrne & co.'s reboot are pretty much all the Superman I'll ever need.

STAS started off kinda slow but got real good by the end in my memories, same thing with Batman Beyond

I especially dig how Kirby's Fourth World stuff slowly encroaches upon the light-hearted Superman adventures taking place in the foreground.

Wonder Woman was so dull and slow and colourgraded and not-about-a-woman that I walked out halfway through and saw The House instead

same with the justice league cartoon - started slowly then knocked it out of the park when it became unlimited

that's true. though i'd say even by season 2 of JL they were killing it, like with that 2-part Joker ep

the Justice Gods one was also S2 i think

If we want to make this a recommendation thread for the best DCAU episodes, I wouldn't complain.

I decided to watch the recent Wonder Woman movie at motel room rental prices and fell asleep halfway into it. Such are vacation mistakes.

BTAS is still excellent every time I feel the need to rewatch. The balance of the animation style, noir tropes honored and subtly commented on, the little quips that paint Batman as self-aware, sometimes tragically, make it age well.

HFS @ Hopey Glass cameo in Batman, someone was having a lil fun at the animation studio that day

wait waht

I forget which episode it is but bruce wayne puts someone on a bus at the end of the episode and one of the other riders on the bus is v clearly Jaime’s Hopey.

I think it’s “I Am the Night”

I noticed it a few nights ago while watching w my daughter but only just now remembered i meant to post about it cuz it was p unexpected

huh, awesome!

I'd about say Batman: The Animated Series might be the best version of Batman done. It ties together so many of the things from the comics in the right tone.

kevin conroy is def the best batman ever

ok it wasn't that episode and it wasn't some random character it was the Penguin and Hopey's cameo is at about 4:05 here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x50of14

ha! no chance that’s not supposed to be hopey

It's definitely Hopey, check the coat:

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q166/iagainstcomics/hopey%20style/hopey5.jpg

Now I'm visualising a Love & Rockets animated series that would probably never happen in a million years.

*wistful sigh*

jaime’s style would work so well in animation too

Hopey had a cameo in the tie-in Batman Adventures comics as well!

That is *definitely* her. Nice spot!

iirc Cameron Stewart's 00s run on Catwoman is basically him doing Jaime for two years

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/how-paul-dini-and-mike-mignola-changed-mr-freeze-forever-plus-other-revelations-from-the

I did not know that Mignola was in any way involved in BTAS!

The blu-ray set is a thing of glory.

https://imgur.com/gallery/D02OcwO is glorious and now I just remembered Herman von Klempt in HB and so this makes perfect sense.

I've never seen the whole series, but I pretty much think the cartoon might be the best take on Batman ever. It is a perfect balance in many ways.

The TV show is the best Batman, and Mask of the Phantasm is still the best Batman movie.

I've long said (perhaps even itt) that if DC-related material can't meet or exceed the quality of the DCAU, the people involved probably just shouldn't bother.

Still, they persisted

Has anyone seen the 2017 animated feature “Batman vs. Two-Face” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6142314/)? My son has watched it a few times.

It’s pretty bad, but also weird/sad — the voices are performed by Adam West (shortly before his death), Burt Ward, Julie Newmar, William Shatner (as Harvey Dent), etc. So while it’s “cool” that they used the OG actors (plus, uh, Shatner), and got work for those folks, their voices do not exactly match the (young) characters... particularly in the case of West, who sounds unwell and geriatric. So it’s bizarre and somewhat grimly humorous to hear these voices coming from the animated 1966 Batman crew.

(One other odd thing is that Warner apparently doesn’t control the rights to the ’66 Batman theme music, and couldn’t bother clearing it? — so they have use a dumb knockoff of it, like any other fakey production.)

Warner had nothing to do with the show, so it's absolutely fine that they don't control the rights to the theme music

Sure, but it’s odd they would create a new movie set in the 1966 world, and go so far as to cast the OG actors for “authenticity,” yet give it an “off-brand” feel by imitating the theme rather than paying to use it.

How much was the fee, and what proportion of the overall budget was that?

Let me check my records... oh wait, I didn’t work on the production. Why you dragging me on this, LOL?

The theme is one of the most beloved and iconic aspects of the old series... whatever it cost to clear, perhaps it would have been more worth the expense than whatever it cost to hire Bill Shatner (who has nothing to do with the property)? Is his involvement drawing anyone to this thing? Meanwhile, when the knockoff music plays, it just sounds dumb and leaves you thinking, “huh, they cheaped out.”

I’m just saying it’s the opposite of “odd”!

I mean, we’re talking about a direct-to-video feature whose idea of a clever in-joke is a Catholic hospital called “Our Lady of Perpetual Irony,” so maybe I’m expecting too much. But the casting implies the movie will be “going the extra mile,” when it really stalls out at least 14 miles short of Gotham City.

I loved and still love B:TAS and the other DCAU series (well, most of the time), but I've never been particularly impressed by any of the animated specials that have come out since then. It's pretty disappointing seeing that on some occasions some of the same people were involved. The execution always seems half-assed.

man these blu-ray remasters are gorgeous huh

Worth buying if I have all the DVD boxes?

if you’re a btas stan and you’ve got the cash, definitely - the episodes look extraordinarily crisp and clear

check this handy comparison video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LZJ-HJsWHk

i'm a sucker for these remasters when they're done well. they even managed to make TNG look beautiful!