TV Reviews - Beware the Batman

I loooove Batman. I love superheroes in general, but Batman is definitely one of my favorites. Naturally, whenever a new animated Batman series is announced, I toggle pretty rapidly between excitement and skepticism. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, will ever surpass Batman: The Animated Series as a TV Batman. Nothing. Ever. There have been other good TV Batman series. The old live action show with Adam West and Burt Ward was campy fun, and The Batman and Batman: The Brave and the Bold both had their good points and bad points, but Batman: The Animated Series is as close to perfection as we are ever going to get, and it spawned its Superman counterpart, Justice League, and Justice League: Unlimited all of which ranged from being better than average to being great. However, watching these old shows gets less exciting with time, and eventually a Batman fan just wants more Batman, and so now we have this new series, Beware the Batman, which, rightfully, has been garnering some pretty mixed reviews.

I finally got around to watching a DVRed episode of the new series last night, and went on to watch another online, and boy do I have something to say about it, but first I want to talk about the primary show that I will be comparing this series to, not Batman: The Animated Series, but The Batman. Batman: The Animated Series was really the first ever serious and credible Batman series ever on TV, and it had a really cool noir feel to it. Fans loved it for that, and for the fantastic voice cast, which is still often utilized today, and which included one of the best Jokers ever put to film, voiced by Mark Hamill (yeah, that Mark Hamill). When B:TAS ended, fans lamented, and then The Batman came along, bringing to the table new voices and designs for our favorite characters, a more lighthearted and more modern feel, within the realm of a show that was still largely serious, and a different perspective, seeing how many episodes were told from Batgirl's point of view. It did many things right, but it was still largely disliked, due to the huge risks it took, many of which didn't really pay off. While the writing was good, several of the voices and character designs felt out of place, and while the character art was good, the backgrounds were drawn far more gritty, and so the characters sometimes felt like they were simply fighting in front of a backdrop. It was a good series, but not a great one, and while Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the show's successor, was also pretty good, and I think overall more liked, if only because it was fun and campy again like the Adam West show, fans of Batman will always long for a serious Batman, and so that is what Cartoon Network decided to give us with this new show.

Now, you may be wondering why I plan to compare the new series to The Batman instead of B:TAS. Well, it's simple, like I said before, B:TAS is essentially perfection, and to compare this new show to it would be unfair. Also, like The Batman, Beware the Batman takes several risks in terms of how it changes the Batman formula, from character designs, to story, to the characters themselves. Heck, it takes more risks that The Batman ever did, and like with The Batman, not all of them pay off. First of all, like The Batman this is a more modern Batman series. Not only does he have an interactive, talking Bat Computer, he also has a full, high tech security system around Wayne Manor, including a forcefield. It also takes some risks with animation and character design, using the same CG from the recent Green Lantern series. While this works with some designs, like Bruce Wayne, it just ends up looking silly when it comes to others, like Wayne's alter-ego himself. Batman in the cowl just looks disproportionate. Not to mention his entire costume is the same shade of black, and while the CG allows you to see the details despite this, it looks bland. This series, though, takes things even further than The Batman. Where The Batman used the same, familiar villains as B:TAS, Beware the Batman utilizes lesser-known villains. That means no Joker, no Riddler, no Harvey Dent. Also, rather than Batgirl or Robin, Batman is teamed with rogue League of Assassins member Katana. While I admit that I respect this bold choice, I will also admit that I will eventually come to really miss the more classic characters. If they never appear, eventually I will stop watching the show, no matter how good it is otherwise. On the bright side, the voices are all pretty good, but really they aren't good enough to make up for the show's deficiencies.

Speaking of deficiencies, and even though I said that I would primarily be comparing this show to The Batman, there is one aspect of this show that I cannot help comparing to B:TAS, and that's the tone. While this show promised to be a more serious show that focuses on the mystery aspect of Batman, all I've seen of it so far has been pretty fast-paced and action-oriented. While this is fine, B:TAS found a great balance between lightheartedness, seriousness, story, and action which this show simply doesn't succeed in replicating, even though that seems to be the intension. This really worries me. If the stories rely too much on action and gadgetry, they aren't serious, intelligent Batman stories, they're Adam West stories with darker colors.

Now please don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike what I've seen of this show. If anything I'm pretty indifferent to it so far. It's just such a mixed bag. For example, the episode I saw last night gave us some hints to Katana's backstory, which was cool, and strangely I actually like Katana a lot more than Batman as a character at this point, but Batman in this episode seemed like more of a backdrop than anything else, and the attempts at comic relief in the episode were just pitiful. While the show has potential, right now, there just isn't enough of it to really form an opinion about it, not until it reaches that point where the creative staff starts to take note of what works and what doesn't and the show begins to settle into a more refined state.

Well, there is one thing that I can form an opinion of: the guy called Alfred in this show is not Alfred. As far as I'm concerned there is no Alfred in this version of the Batman universe, and that guy is just some bald bodyguard with a cockney accent.

Overall Beware the Batman is far from a perfect show, and it is far from my favorite Batman show ever. It's okay, and I will watch in hopes that it will find itself and improve, but to be fair I don't actually expect it to last long enough for that to really happen, seeing how quickly Cartoon Network cancels action cartoons these days. Really it's kind of a tossup whether a Batman fan who watches it will like it, and so it's a tossup whether or not the show will take off. As for me, I've already deleted the episode from yesterday from my DVR and moved on to my DVD of The Best of Batman: The Animated Series. Like I said above, I wish this show luck, but for now it only gets an average 6 out of 10.