The Batman: The Complete Series - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Batman: The Complete Series



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
Inteeeeereesssting. It seems like the last of the early 2000s DC shows that were the tail end of the golden age are finally coming into play on Blu-ray. We have Kevin Conroy’s Batman, Superman came out a few months back, Batman Beyond (and of course Batman: the Brave and the Bold) and finally 2004’s The Batman gets the high def treatment. I honestly wasn’t sure that this would get the upgrade as I was sort of a “like it or love it” show, but I really dug the series during my early 20s. It ran for 5 seasons, and went back to the beginning of Batman (much like the new Robert Pattinson Batman is doing this year), and sported a very stylized look by producer Jeff Matsuda. A look that sort of blended the old Bruce Timm look with what would become The Teen Titans look of today. It was one of those looks that really jazzed up the Batman world, or you ended up being turned off by the stylistic decisions.

The Batman was a very solid starring a Bruce Wayne (Rino Romano) who has just 3 years under his belt as Batman. He’s rough, raw, and just starting to form the team like bonds that would defined his career over the decades. It was fun, and the re imagining of the villains and their back stories made for some entertaining stories. It also sported a wide variety of high level voice actors ranging from Adam West (yes, THE Adam West), Alastair Duncan, Ming-Na Wen, Mitch Pileggi, Clancy Brown, Gina Gershon and even Ron Perlman. The only real blow against it was that we were right in the middle of the Nolan trilogy, and everyone was on a fever pitch of having Batman be as dark and narcissistic as possible, so a “kiddy” show like The Batman got pushed to the side a little bit.

Despite the hangups of being labeled a kids show (even though it really wasn’t any more kiddy than Batman Beyond or Batman: The Animated Series), the show managed to eke out a good 5 season run with a much less serialized nature to the show. Doing the old “villain of the week” method along with new back stories and changes to classic characters made it a bit more interesting. Ethan Bennett becoming Clayface was a nice twist, and the addition of Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson so soon into the run was fun. However, it does have a few issues with repeating episodes, and the voice casting for Bruce just isn’t as iconic as Kevin Conroy was (not a fault of Rino Romano, he did a great job, but by this times fans wanted Kevin or nothing). And fun little fact. We get to see Mark Hamill return to the Batman universe, but this time as someone other than the joker (he’s not hard to spot when you hear him).

The Batman: The Complete Series is a solid show, and one of the most fun DC animated works from the first decade of the 21st century. It kind of got looked over a bit more than it should, but I really did have a blast going through the series. It may not rise to the epic heights of Batman: The Animated Series or even Batman Beyond, but it was a VERY good show and had some fun twists to it. Well worth adding to an animated Batman lovers collection, that’s for sure.




Rating:

Rated TV-Y7




Video:

The Batman was animated for 1.78:1, but for some reason was hastily cropped and slapped onto a 4x3 format for broadcast, and the resulting DVDs from back in the day kept that framing. However, this time we get the full 1.78:1 framing for the Blu-ray, and the disc looks rather solid. Definitely looks a bit flat and dull compared to other shows, but it’s relatively clean and free of artifacting. The only real artifacts that I could notice is the obvious banding in low light shots (and there’s a lot of low light shots in a Batman show), but other than that the art style is non molested. The series has a sort of weird gritty and surrealistic look to it, with hand drawn animation lines that show their age, and minimal detail. Compression issues are mostly the banding, but I also noticed that the artwork style sometimes mimicked it as well (they went from flat night skies to an almost hallucinogenic swirl that looks enough like banding that you could mistake it for such… and even hides some of the banding when your brain gets used to the swirled art). The DVD discs that I still have lying around show that while this is not a perfect presentation, it is light years above the old 4x3 discs that were much dingier, with even duller colors. Solid image on Blu-ray, but in no ways is it even close to the old broadcast images or the DVD.







Audio:

The 2.0 stereo mix that the show was recorded in is maintained here, and with a welcome boost to DTS-HD MA lossless as well. The show is nothing fancy as it’s your basic made for TV animated show, but it is still quite nice to listen to. There’s no audio glitches or problems with the dialog, and the shows almost Halloween esque opening them song rings out with impressive clarity. Vocals are above reproach, and the music shows some nice panning effects in the two mains. Nothing fancy, but everything is done so that there are no problems.







Extras:

Disc 1

• The Dark Dynasty Continues

Disc 3

• Season 3 Unmasked
• Joining Forces: The Batman's Legendary Teamups

Disc 4

• Season 4 Unmasked
• The Batman Junior Detective Challenge
• The Batman Junior Detective Exam-Level 2
• Building The Batman

Disc 6

• Gotham PD Case Files
• New Look New Direction, New Knight

Final Score: ​

The Batman is a show that was sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. On one hand it was succeeding the legendary Batman: The Animated Series AND Batman Beyond, but also competing with the wild success of the Nolan franchise that valued darkness and gloom over comic book style stories. It’s a fun series that is well worth checking out, but it got sort of ignored by the general public as it was poo poo’d as not be as epic as what came before, or was not as “adult” as the live action Nolan movies. However, it IS well worth checking out, and as long as you don’t mind the animation changes, is a blast to watch. The show gets a nice upgrade in audio and video, but extras are kind middle of the road.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Rino Romano, Alastair Duncan, Evan Sabara, Ming-na Wen, Mitch Pileggi, Adam West, Gina Gershon
Created by: Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Eric Radomski
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 2.0, French, Spanish DD 2.0 (
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish, Dutch
Studio: Warner Brothers
Rated: TV-Y7
Runtime: 1385 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: March 1st, 2022

Recommendation: Solid Buy

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I will check this out..My favorite series of course is "Batman the animated series"..