Batman: Caped Crusader is a moody echo of The Animated Series

A recurring observation in pop-culture media holds that the villains featured in Batman movies are so overwhelmingly colorful and charismatic that they crowd the hero out of his limelight. That’s what made the foundational Batman: The Animated Series so novel. The baddies were vivid, delirious fun, but the contrasting darkness and soulfulness with which late voice actor Kevin Conroy imbued the hero ensured that, so long as he existed in the DC Animated Universe, Batman would never play second fiddle to anyone.

This is not the case with Batman: Caped Crusader, at once a spiritual echo of BTAS and a frequently surprising, if grim, detour off the beaten path that presents a Batman so inscrutable that other members of its ensemble cast, nemeses included, are left to amp up the pizzazz. This Prime Video series, which drops all 10 episodes of its first season August 1, claims a more mature take on the character than prior animated versions, free from the constraints that network TV’s Standards and Practices once put on executive producer Bruce Timm during his lauded BTAS run at Fox Kids and Kids WB. (1993’s Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm would like a word.) This freedom might suggest a potentially more dangerous and demented Dark Knight Detective, but don’t get rooked. This new Batman can come off like a sullen Halloween costume display.

With episodes dubbed “Night Of The Hunters,” “Savage Night,” and “Nocturne,” among other evocative titles, Caped Crusader promises a moody, noirish thrill ride through a tough, bleak, and forbidding Gotham City via its mostly silent protagonist. And as a throwback yarn that embraces Batman’s pulp origins instead of merely suggesting them (Timm cites Doc Savage and the Shadow among his influences), Caped Crusader is unquestionably a different beast from previous Bat-incarnations. Set in the early days of Batman’s career, an origin-adjacent take that syncs up with The Batman (directed by series executive producer Matt Reeves), the series periodically checks in on Bruce Wayne (Hamish Linklater) as he establishes himself in a city rife with mob warfare and a corrupt police force led by its honest-to-a-fault commissioner, Jim Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart). So far, so Batman.

But Caped Crusader isn’t satisfied with merely exploring this well-trod two-man war on crime. Timm, again working with Justice League producer James Tucker, expands their purview with a broad swathe of iconic do-gooders and ne’er-do-wells rejiggered past the point of recognition. Strong focus is placed on Barbara Gordon (Krystal Joy Brown), a bleeding-heart criminal-defense attorney stymied by a broken justice system, and shallow, polished District Attorney Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader), whose quest for the mayoral seat is rife with dark insinuation and foreshadowing. Their personal and professional lives move the series’ plotlines nearly as often as its marquee attraction, sometimes even more so. 

This serialized storytelling puts further distance between Caped Crusader and BTAS, an ambitiously constructed format rife with cold opens (à la Justice League Unlimited and Harley Quinn), a fleet title sequence that applies a grainy black-and-white filter over clips from the show (a far cry from this), and stinger endings that show up more than they don’t to tease plot developments that eventually gather into an uncomplicated season-long arc. Dramatic though this series can undoubtedly be, that latter creative choice makes Crusader feel more utilitarian than poetic, surgically excising the sense of ache and tragedy that made so many standalone episodes of BTAS unforgettable.

Timm and Tucker seem conscious of these inevitable comparisons to their prior work and so take great pains to ensure their latest vision of Gotham feels as grounded as possible, even as they grapple with their Saturday-morning proclivities: One murderous plot involves a mega-cannon, one a vampire, and another introduces a ghost without a whiff of existential rigmarole stirring within its skeptic crime-smasher. This new Batman show may have salty language, but thought-provoking grown-up stuff it ain’t.

This self-awareness also hurts the show’s look, a heavily fussed-over but no less facile visual blend of Universal horror pictures and Warner Bros gangster movies. The details are there, sure, but stylistically, there’s no panache. Characters, designed to be boxy and wide-eyed (by Tucker, who heads a brigade of artists, among them Derek Charm, Kat Hudson, and Kano Kimanyen) flatly cascade across the screen, their motions stiff, their expressions taut. (Animation services are from Studio IAM, the South Korean group that has worked on Max’s Velma and Harley Quinn.) The computer-painted environments lack depth, saying nothing of the shadowy romance that often made its predecessor feel like a moving Edward Hopper painting. Forget “Dark Deco”—that’s gone here. 

Digital animation might be what we’re stuck with these days; it’s doubtlessly cheaper and quicker to produce than once traditional methods. Still, there’s a reason why older cartoons that used cel animation and hand-crafted backgrounds are remembered fondly for their richness and sense of timelessness, while the choppy stuff we see today is evaluated more on the merits of its content. Caped Crusader will likely see far more chatter about its progressive character rejiggering (several characters are updated if not outright reimagined to accommodate a more diverse cast) and DC Universe Easter eggs (subtle as a few of them turn out to be) than any full-throated enthusiasm about its visuals. That feels wrong, given its pedigree. 

As it happens, Caped Crusader is also a reunion for writers Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker, whose Gotham Central series for DC remains a fondly-recalled cop procedural with the city’s resident Dark Knight operating in its periphery. Brubaker’s episodes, especially, have the Elmore Leonard-punch of his crime comics. It’s too bad, then, that some of his hard-nosed lines are delivered stiffly, with vocal performances that aren’t always convincing. In truth, the episode “Night Of The Hunters” feels like the closest approximation of Gotham Central put to animation, a rough-and-tumble crime yarn of crooked cops and infrastructural rot and the strongest representation of what Caped Crusader might grow into in future seasons. (Season two is already in production.)

What’s left is this subversive new battery of rogues. There’s a bound-to-be-controversial new take on the Penguin and a more fearful version of Clayface (Dan Donohue). And don’t forget about Catwoman (Christina Ricci), a spoiled-rotten socialite turned klepto thrill-seeker who engages in rooftop dalliances with Batman, as well as the series’ darker, Joker-less take on Harley Quinn (Jamie Chung), who I’m sure internet obsessives will be totally normal about.

As for Batman, Linklater’s efforts to craft a voice for the Dark Knight that is distinctly his own are commendable and curiously underwhelming. His take is a monotone hush that suitably contrasts his urbane alter ego, presented here as aloof to the point of being alien. And the Midnight Mass actor’s differentiation from Bruce Wayne to Batman feels like a kind tribute to Conroy, who could oscillate from a cheery alto to a deep rumble within a single breath. Yet it sounds like he’s still perfecting his rage voice, as if he could benefit from a soothing gargle of lemon and honey to clear his throat. His rasp is fitting in a way. Linklater’s Batman is more specter than icon, which suits the purposes of this rough-and-tumble pulp revival. But he sure doesn’t leave much of an impression.    

Batman: Caped Crusader premieres August 1 on Prime Video