‘Caped Crusader’ Might Be Batman’s Best Screen Outing Yet

Batman: The Animated Series was a landmark in superhero storytelling, reimagining the Dark Knight as a noble and valiant specter in an Art Deco-drenched film noir landscape of demented and damaged villains.

Airing from 1992-1995, it piggybacked off Tim Burton’s 1989 big-screen blockbuster to cast Batman as a righteous redeemer propelled by tragedy and compulsion to protect his beloved Gotham City. Rousing, romantic, and melancholy, it was a triumph that permanently altered the character and his rogue’s gallery of adversaries (not to mention introduced a novel one in Harley Quinn). Three decades later, it remains—with all due respect to Christopher Nolan—the definitive portrayal of the DC Comics crime-fighter.

Consequently, building on such a legacy is a daunting task. Yet Batman: Caped Crusader, a new animated offering developed by The Animated Series mastermind Bruce Timm, does just that, recapturing its predecessor’s magic by harkening back to the early days of its title character in Gotham, where he’s known to few but, before long, feared by many.

Executive produced by J.J. Abrams and The Batman’s Matt Reeves, this sterling Prime Video affair, premiering August 1, is the rare worthy prequel, pitting its nocturnal protagonist against a collection of high-profile and lesser-known enemies in episodes that are marked by sumptuous old-school form, exciting action, and novel takes on several familiar faces. Less a wholesale reinvention than a stylishly tweaked throwback, it once again reestablishes Batman as the genre’s most compelling and cool do-gooder.

Though it should be watched in chronological order, Batman: Caped Crusader mostly delivers stand-alone episodes during its ten-chapter first season (a second season has already been greenlit), thereby allowing it to focus on a wide variety of baddies and, relatedly, to capture different aspects of Batman.

From corruption-centric crime fiction and supernatural horror to detective mystery and rock-’em-sock-’em mayhem, the proceedings segue effortlessly between different tones and modes. At the same time, though, they maintain a consistent aesthetic approach (highlighted by swift, swooping movements and simple, sharply drawn lines) that’s nothing short of magnificent. Set to Frederik Wiedmann’s horn-heavy score and drenched in shadows and mist, the show stays true to its ancestor, albeit with more classical flourishes, including with regards to Batman, whose pointy cowl and simple black-and-gray costume (and chest logo) are of an original Detective Comics vintage.

Batman: Caped Crusader doesn’t identify its time period, but its every flourish—be it black-and-white televisions, hoods in wide-brimmed hats and trench coats, or its depiction of the movie industry—suggests the ’40s. This means that its more modern touches (including a fleeting lesbian romance) stick out like sore anachronisms, although they hardly interfere with the series’ thrills.

Refusing to begin with the oft-told tale of the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents (which is handled via flashbacks in a later installment), Timm’s latest drops viewers into a Gotham that’s gone to seed and is wracked by rumors of a silent and deadly predator who dresses like a winged creature. Batman is the talk of a police fundraiser being held on the Iceberg Lounge cruise ship, where Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and his public defender daughter Barbara (Krystal Joy Brown) are joined by star district attorney and mayoral hopeful Harvey Dent (Diedrich Bader). Their host? Oswalda Cobblepot (Minnie Driver), aka the Penguin, who’s ruthlessness extends to her treatment of her two sons.

Oswalda isn’t the sole character who’s been slightly altered in Batman: Caped Crusader; fresh variations of Harley Quinn (Jamie Chung) and Nocturna (McKenna Grace) are also introduced, and figures such as Clayface (Dan Donohue) and Gentleman Ghost (Toby Stephens) receive origin stories that are only faintly related to their comic-book roots.

Fidelity isn’t the guiding principle here; rather, empathy is, for Batman as well as his opponents, who—per tradition—are tortured souls whose traumas have driven them malevolently mad. Pure evil certainly exists in this universe, most notably in kingpin Rupert Thorne and his crooked-cop cronies Flass (Gary Anthony Williams) and Bullock (John DiMaggio), but Timm ultimately cares more about men and women whose infamous presents are the byproduct of anguished pasts. To that end, he’s aided by a fantastic cast of performers who embody Batman’s rivals with personality and humor, be it Christina Ricci as the devilish Catwoman or Bader as the smug Dent.

Batman: Caped Crusader does not, alas, boast the participation of Kevin Conroy, who passed away in 2022 after voicing Batman for 30 years (beginning with The Animated Series). Instead, that duty falls to Hamish Linklater, who acquits himself admirably as both the gruff and determined Dark Knight (who’s often at odds with his butler/guardian Alfred Pennyworth, played by Jason Watkins) and the charming and superficial Bruce Wayne.

It takes a minute or two to get used to Linklater’s iteration, yet it proves to be a solid and nuanced one, and in tune with the material’s entertainingly somber vision of this world. Tensions between right and wrong, justice and vigilantism, and money and poverty course throughout its various narratives, as does the issue of Batman’s own grief-stricken psyche and the violence it breeds. Nonetheless, Timm avoids getting bogged down in overly grim-dark adult concerns. No matter how earnestly it takes itself, it never forgets that it’s still a half-hour cartoon.

As interested in peripheral scoundrels and corruption-related threads as much as marquee wrongdoers and out-of-this-world conflicts, Batman: Caped Crusader comes across as something of a hybrid of the many Batman sagas that have preceded it. In that regard, it’s a work of expert synthesis, giving fans a taste of everything they like about the character and little of the excessive brooding and mythological world-building that has sometimes weighed down his screen adventures.

Only in its final two episodes does it assume a straightforward serialized form, and even then, the series stays light on its feet, wrapping up its maiden run at the same time that it lays the groundwork for future seasons.

“This is a losing battle,” says Dent to Batman about his mission to clean up Gotham. That may be so, but it’s a fight that—in Timm’s assured hands—continues to be well worth waging, and watching.