Like most nerds, I
like Batman. Most people do, if one takes the shear amount of times the
character has appeared in print and on the small and big screens as evidence of
his popularity. But I’m kind of getting tired of Bruce Wayne and his rogues, if
I’m being honest… after all, there’s only so many times one can watch a trust
fund orphan dress up like a rodent and beat up mentally troubled people on the
streets without getting a bit bored. Batman: Caped Crusader, a new
animated show on Amazon Prime, is in many ways an exceptional Batman
experience that goes out of its way to
offer something different. But despite this I still couldn’t shake the feeling
that we have already seen all of this before.
Caped Crusader has a lot of the same
DNA as the popular 90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, which makes
sense, considering that DC’s animation maestro Bruce Timm is the mastermind
behind both. The animation is very similar, as is the respect that the subject
matter is treated with—it does not dumb things down, despite the fact that kids
are among the target audience. They're both shows that adults can enjoy as
well, particularly Caped Crusader, which is a bit more violent and
considerably darker than its predecessor.
Caped Crusader does some cool things
with the Batman mythos, reimagining some characters, genderbending others, and
setting the whole thing against the backdrop of a vaguely 1940s era of Gotham
City. The noir approach that Caped Crusader takes is appreciated, the
serialized tales of crime and murder really leaning into the detective facet of
Batman’s nature.
But at the end of the day, Batman: Caped
Crusader is still the same old Batman stuff. Bruce is humorless and dour,
Alfred is concerned and frustrated, Catwoman is sassy and flirtatious. Despite
all of its attempts to be different Caped Crusader is still what we’ve
seen over and over again since Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the character
in the late 30s, and I wasn’t able to appreciate the craftsmanship of the show
that much as a result. This is not a problem with the Caped Crusader as
much as it is a direct result of media saturation. Why not do a Wonder Woman
cartoon instead? Or maybe a lesser known DC comics character like Midnighter or
Zatanna? There’s only so many times you can run back to the Batman well without
the thing running dry. I don’t subscribe to the idea of super hero fatigue in
the media; I think that as long as there is innovation the genre can be as long
lived as action films or comedies. But man, Batman: Caped Crusader just
exhausted me.
But it’s a great show! This is the Dark
Knight at his best. But the fact is that we have so many examples of the
character at his best that the sum of those feels lesser because of it.
Batman: Caped Crusader season 1 is
now available on Amazon Prime.
This review was first published in the Keizertimes on August 9th, 2024. Visit at www.keizertimes.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment