Return of the Caped Crusaders review

[Earth 2 Chris]

Cindy and I take a look at Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders animated movie, and the new Batman: A Celebration of the Classic TV Series coffee table book on episode 66 of Super Mates! Plus, a Bat-quiz you can play along with at home.

http://fireandwaterpodcast.com/podcast/super-mates-66-batman-66-celebration/

Chris

[MIB41]

Fun podcast Chris and Cindy. Thanks for the heads up on the new book Chris. I had not heard about that and it sounds like a true gem to have. I’ll be investing one for my collection as well.

Got around to seeing Return of the Caped Crusaders and found it to be a fun excursion for waxing nostalgia, but one viewing satisfied my interest in this approach. The performances ranged from pretty descent to virtually unrecognizable. So the unevenness of what they were trying to sell kind of took me in and out of the story.

The humor was flat because the delivery required a visual expression that would deadpan the vocal performance and the animators completely missed that in my opinion. In an era where we have cartoons that actually do that, like Family Guy, it was an odd misstep since the live television show was one of the originators to that brand of humor. There were plenty of clever tributes in the script, so the nod to other eras was a good idea. But overall a fun and loving tribute for Adam and Burt, so its merits are easily appreciated here.

Chris I completely agree with your assessment of the Batman projects that take themselves too serious. Recent efforts like BVS and the Killing Joke with Batman getting it on with Batgirl really betray the material from where I stand. It matters not how tragic people want to make him or how gruff he needs to sound. At the end of the day it’s a guy running around dressed up like a bat!

Batman stories can certainly touch on social themes and offer metaphors on a number of different levels to satisfy that literary component that ANY character can possess. But he’s never to be taken literal. It’s not a way of life or a reflection on a culture or class of people. He’s a fictional character that fights crime with style points. In comics, he’s colorful and in live action he needs to be lit right to find those moments, but in NO WAY is any of this remotely real.

Cindy is right. It’s refreshing to see Batman brought back as a family excursion and not a video game extension for the game heads who only get exercise when they take bathroom breaks. It’s refreshing to have Batman in a positive light for a change. Great podcast Super Mates.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Thanks for listening Tom! Yeah, the more creators and filmmakers insist on squeezing the last bits of fun and joy out of these characters, the more absurd they become. You can argue that an ultra-realistic approach to Batman is actually more ludicrous than the 60s TV series in many ways. The concept begins to fall apart when all traces of fantasy and whimsy are stripped away.

Really looking forward to the Lego Batman Movie! Now that looks like just the kind of fun Bat-fix we need, while taking pot-shots at the overly serious, dour stuff.

Chris

[enyawd72]

^Could not agree with you both more. The modern insistence on grounding every single thing in reality has really taken a toll on superhero comics and media. They're not FUN anymore. Every little aspect of a character's abilities don't have to be reasoned or explained. I don't need a 20 page dissertation on how Peter Parker's spider-sense functions...a guy wearing a red and blue suit can stick to walls and shoot webs. That's all I need to know...now tell me a story!

[hedrap]

^"grounded reality" is a marketing farce.

[palitoy]

Yeah my love affair with the Nolan movies waned with every chapter and unfortunately, had it's effect on Superman.

[Hedji]

You can argue that an ultra-realistic approach to Batman is actually more ludicrous than the 60s TV series in many ways. The concept begins to fall apart when all traces of fantasy and whimsy are stripped away.

No joke, that is actually a very profound statement. I'd venture that films done with a little wink to the audience that it's all in good fun will age better than those with no sense of self-aware humor.

[hedrap]

Marvel does well because while they don't buy hard reality, they stay away from whimsy. Outside Pixar, whimsy is box office death.