Welcome to a brand new Gotham City. Or rather, a much older Gotham City. Amazon’s Batman: Caped Crusader is an ode to nineties classic Batman: The Animated Series, yet while that show had a purposefully timeless feel, occurring in some nebulous mashup of time periods, Caped Crusader gives us a true 1940s Batman show. This is very strictly a period piece, with art deco aesthetics, limited technology, and a flair for noir storytelling and visuals. I like the feel of the show, the atmosphere it captures. It makes the series stand out amongst the many, many other Batman stories being told. I only wish every element of Caped Crusader felt as unique.
To match the city, many of Batman’s allies and enemies are reimagined for the show. Much was made of the gender-swapped Penguin, although it’s hard to form much of a genuine opinion on the new take of the character because she only briefly appears. I like the new, much more low-key take on Harley Quinn, who has her own midseason mini-arc. And Harvey Dent might be the star of the season. I was unsure of the changes at first, he felt too much like a baddie from the beginning, but the twist of the damaged half of his face representing his good side and the intact being his bad, an exaggeration of how he was before his injury, was great. It’s a show brimming with wonderful side characters and shockingly it’s Batman himself wherein the issue lies. He’s far too boring.
This is a radically different Batman story, with new interpretations of the characters, setting, and time period, yet it stars the most standard milquetoast version of Batman. He’s the dullest element of the show. Actor Hamish Linklater does a competent job with his gruff Batman, although his Bruce Wayne sounds too close to Sterling Archer for my taste. Kevin Conroy’s Batman from the DC Animated Universe is seen by many, including myself, as the definitive version of the character. He’s the perfect classic Batman and it feels like there was an attempt to recapture that feeling here. But Caped Crusader doesn’t need the classic take on the character, it needs something as different as the rest of the show.
Caped Crusader is a far more interesting watch as a GCPD or Gotham show than it is a Batman series. The show’s fourth episode, Night of the Hunters, is the best of the season because of this. It focuses on all the GCPD characters, from honest figures like Montoya to corrupt cops like Flass and Bullock as they try to catch Batman. The titular hero is barely in it, and doesn’t speak for the first 16 minutes. I can’t help thinking that the whole show should have been like that at the start, keeping Batman in the shadows and slowly revealing more of him as the season progresses. This is supposed to be a ‘year one’ Batman but I never really felt that was the case. That’s how he’s discussed but not the way he comes across; he already feels confident and established.
Showrunner Bruce Timm, who also shepherded Batman: The Animated Series, describes the Batman of Caped Crusader as an “emotionally messed-up version of Batman, who’s extremely aloof and almost inhuman”. If this is what the writers were going for, I think they failed. That’s not how Batman felt to me. He’s hardly inhuman, he’s just a bit rude. His character arc is simply going from referring to his butler dismissively as “Pennyworth” at the beginning to a respectful “Alfred” in the finale. The flashback to Bruce as a child in the third episode, creepily waking up Alfred to vow revenge on criminals is good but too brief and felt jammed into an episode it didn’t belong. The sixth episode is the most straightforward Batman-focused episode of the season, perfect to explore new facets of the character, yet it’s easily the worst of the season. Bruce is humbled a little, now believing in the supernatural and learning more about Alfred, but it feels like the bare minimum of characterisation.
The seventh episode sees the hero cops on the run, having to bunker down in the Wayne Gardens property estate to survive an assault by Onomatopoeia. It feels like such a missed opportunity to not have them take refuge in Wayne Manor itself. Bruce would have to pretend to be the playboy while hiding that he’s actively trying to protect Gordon and his allies. The location would still fit the great conversation Montoya and Barbara have about rich folk not living in the real Gotham. There’s not enough of the dichotomy between Batman and Bruce in Caped Crusader; rarely does it feel like there’s internal conflict. Bruce feels so undefined in this world.
The final two episodes of the first season dare to push Batman a little further than the rest of the show but it never feels earned. Batman sets the imprisoned Dent loose and even decides to chase Dent instead of staying to save a victim from a fire. Great! I like this dark take on the character but it feels like something that should have happened at the start of the show, to introduce who this Batman is, instead of at the end where instead it feels like “oh right, is this who Batman was supposed to be all season?” Batman even picks up a gun, considers firing it, and then throws it away. This is certainly different from The Animated Series Batman, who quit the costume after raising a gun, but it doesn’t feel like something he’s been wrestling with all this time. There’s been no character building getting him to that point.
I’m happy that Caped Crusader is continuing despite having a first season too scattershot to tell its Batman story totally successfully. It’s been recently announced that the second season has entered production. I could have done without the tease of the Joker, however. Just once I want a debut onscreen Batman story that doesn’t set up the Joker for the sequel. Hopefully the show will have a new take on the villain, befitting this 1940s noir world of corruption and crime, but first it stills needs to figure out what to do with Batman. The show’s hero is currently the weakest part of the series and much too boring to be the star of an otherwise engaging show.
