Bruce Timm’s Batman: Caped Crusader begins with a group of armed goons getting up to no good in the middle of the night. “There ain’t no freakin’ Batman,” one of them confidently proclaims, only to have the last word cut off by an expertly thrown Batarang. It’s a quick, effective way of telling us where in this oft told and re-told story we’ll be picking up: This Batman might still be early enough in his crimefighting career that his very existence is in doubt, but the caped crusader (gruffly voiced by Hamish Linklater) is no beginner.
Timm, creator of Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond, has described Caped Crusader as less like Frank Miller’s original story comic Year One and something closer to Week Two. This isn’t Christian Bale’s Batman clambering around Gotham with a ski mask and a handful of gadgets. This Batman has already assembled his full Batsuit, and he wears it well. And the series itself seems every bit as comfortable in its own skin, seamlessly melding the goofier aspects of the Batman universe with more serious, noir-ish ambitions.
Caped Crusader’s 1940s vision of Gotham is all fedoras, trench coats, and Tommy guns. The monochromatic opening credits, accompanied by a somber string score, set the tone for a series that channels classic noir, even before one episode title references Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. This mid-century milieu also informs Caped Crusader’s sci-fi and supernatural elements, which include mad scientists, crackling electrodes, and gothic apparitions of the kind you’d find in vintage sci-fi novels and pulpy horror magazines.
Ideas like the nature of crime and the meaning of justice are discussed in a fairly sophisticated way and, like Batman: The Animated Series, there’s a genuine sense of danger to the show’s criminal world. Caped Crusader is particularly adept at implicitly conveying violence, never putting anything on screen that would traumatize younger viewers.
In this Gotham, Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and his daughter, Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown), are fighting the good fight from within the legal system while DA Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader) warns his colleagues that they should stay on his good side. Other familiar faces crop up across the show’s 10 episodes, though many have been re-imagined (Minnie Driver’s Penguin, for one, is a brutal matriarch who doubles as a cabaret performer).
Caped Crusader operates under the assumption that most are already well-versed in Batman lore, and it uses this familiarity to introduce new characters with minimal fuss. But while it likes to play the hits, the series isn’t afraid to reach into the more obscure parts of Gotham’s rogues’ gallery and throw bug-eyed pyromaniacs and onomatopoeia-obsessed hitmen into the mix.
Rather than simply follow Batman as he battles with a new villain each week, the series moves like its protagonist, finding crafty new access points to slip into its story. One episode might revolve around Detective Montoya (Michelle C. Bonilla) as she works a case, while the next centers the charming cat burglar, Selina Kyle (Christina Ricci), whose been making the rounds.
Caped Crusader is willing to let its main character recede into the shadows so that it can provide a more fully fleshed-out sense of Gotham and the people who live there. But even if he’s often slinking around the edges of any given episode, this show’s Batman still feels complex, swaying between a compassionate desire for justice and an obsessive need for revenge.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
