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Batman Beyond has some stellar episodes, a great movie and an incredibly strong premise, but it also has a lot of really lovely episodes. Its batting average doesn't live up to its potential. Even when they directly tried to echo BTAS (Big Time's origin is obviously inspired by Two-Face), it tended to come across much shallower. The show had a lot of writers who went on to work on Smallville, and boy does it show sometimes with the "Drugs are bad" episodes and the underwritten relationship drama. I'm not trying to say Batman Beyond is bad, I really like it still, but I think it's rated just about where it deserves to be.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:00
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| # ? May 14, 2024 04:26 |
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There were bits of Beyond that were too freaky for me when I was younger. There was Bane being reduced to a desiccated old invalid who's on a constant Venom IV drip, for example. But the one that really sticks out in my memory is "April Moon", where the bad guys are these crooks who blackmail this surgeon into giving them various robotic implants, without realising that he's included a failsafe that'll deactivate them when Batman uses a code word: there's one guy who has chainsaws in his wrists and his knees, and when Batman uses the word, his arms and legs just fall apart and fall off. 
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Aug 6, 2016 18:06
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Oh yeah, the show's definitely got some body horror going on, like that guy who's in love with Inque and when she promises to give him powers like hers it just ends up making him a horrible human blob. Even that stuff gets underwritten sometimes. Big Time is a good-looking buff dude who gets turned into a huge deformed freak, and it doesn't bother him at all. He's just like "Yay, I can punch harder  "
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Aug 6, 2016 18:09
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Lurdiak posted:Oh yeah, the show's definitely got some body horror going on, like that guy who's in love with Inque and when she promises to give him powers like hers it just ends up making him a horrible human blob. Even that stuff gets underwritten sometimes. Big Time is a good-looking buff dude who gets turned into a huge deformed freak, and it doesn't bother him at all. He's just like "Yay, I can punch harder Well, ya gotta look on the bright side, y'know!
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Aug 6, 2016 18:12
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Wheat Loaf posted:There were bits of Beyond that were too freaky for me when I was younger. There was Bane being reduced to a desiccated old invalid who's on a constant Venom IV drip, for example. But the one that really sticks out in my memory is "April Moon", where the bad guys are these crooks who blackmail this surgeon into giving them various robotic implants, without realising that he's included a failsafe that'll deactivate them when Batman uses a code word: there's one guy who has chainsaws in his wrists and his knees, and when Batman uses the word, his arms and legs just fall apart and fall off. You left out the best part-- The head crook blackmails the surgeon into giving them the implants by saying "we have your girl" but it turns out she's been screwing the head crook the whole time. The surgeon finds out of course, and by the end of the episode only the head crook is left free. The crook runs to the surgeon for implant-repair, unaware of that the surgeon knows the full game. The closing shot is literally the shot of the crook going under anesthesia while the surgeon implies he's going to do.... well quite literally anything you can do to someone while they're sedated for surgery. I was lucky to see Bruce Timm and some production staff at a panel at San Diego a year or so after JLU ended, they were doing a DCAU retrospective, and they were all laughing about how despite Batman Beyond's conception as the kiddiest show in the DCAU it wound up being the absolute darkest in places.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:21
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Lurdiak posted:Oh yeah, the show's definitely got some body horror going on, like that guy who's in love with Inque and when she promises to give him powers like hers it just ends up making him a horrible human blob. Even that stuff gets underwritten sometimes. Big Time is a good-looking buff dude who gets turned into a huge deformed freak, and it doesn't bother him at all. He's just like "Yay, I can punch harder Or the Terrific Trio. Sure, they may well have just been subdued and arrest, but from what I remember, it looked a lot like you had the magma guy being turned into an inert lump of charcoal, the freon lady being ripped apart by their lab's ventilation system, and the stretchy dude being shredded or something when he's sucked into some kind of air duct. mind the walrus posted:The head crook blackmails the surgeon into giving them the implants by saying "we have your girl" but it turns out she's been screwing the head crook the whole time. The surgeon finds out of course, and by the end of the episode only the head crook is left free. The crook runs to the surgeon for implant-repair, unaware of that the surgeon knows the full game. The closing shot is literally the shot of the crook going under anesthesia while the surgeon implies he's going to do.... well quite literally anything you can do to someone while they're sedated for surgery. Oh, yeah, the episode ends with him instructing the surgeon to make him faster, stronger and to hold nothing back, and the guy's like, "Of course; no holding back," then the last shot is the guy going under as the doctor looms over him with a power drill.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:21
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Lurdiak posted:Batman Beyond has some stellar episodes, a great movie and an incredibly strong premise, but it also has a lot of really lovely episodes. Its batting average doesn't live up to its potential. Even when they directly tried to echo BTAS (Big Time's origin is obviously inspired by Two-Face), it tended to come across much shallower. The show had a lot of writers who went on to work on Smallville, and boy does it show sometimes with the "Drugs are bad" episodes and the underwritten relationship drama. imo the movie was the series' biggest black mark. well, aside from the perfect "Terry loving with the Joker and pissing him off like Bruce never could" scene.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:32
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The Tim Drake business at the start was p. drat good. The stuff with the Jokerz is bland and forgettable as hell, but the opening and end are strong as hell.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:38
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I think the single weakest point of Batman Beyond is the Kobra arc in the final season, which is where the majority of the weakest episodes are in general. Pretty much everything before the final season maintains a really high level of consistent quality, though. I actually think it's better than BTAS in that regard. Beyond was also good about building up characters and maintaining continuity over a long period, which isn't something BTAS was generally interested in. Terry changes as a person over the course of the show, as do a couple of secondary characters, like Max.
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Aug 6, 2016 18:59
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebI8H5nq5L4 I really think this is one of the defining moments of Batman Beyond right here.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:02
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Also, as that clip illustrates, there's just huge potential (successfully mined by the show) in the character of old, bitter, grumpy Bruce Wayne, who's too old to be gadding about in pyjamas any more and whose city is if anything even worse than before. It's very humanising and a hugely interesting take on the Batman character.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:08
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WickedHate posted:imo the movie was the series' biggest black mark. That is a ridiculous thing to say.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:19
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I can't get over the Tim Drake thing. Maybe everyone else likes it and I am objectively wrong for not liking this perfect piece of art, but I just cannot get over that. The only way I can still like BB at all and the entire DCAU in general is pretending that didn't happen.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:23
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WickedHate posted:I can't get over the Tim Drake thing. Maybe everyone else likes it and I am objectively wrong for not liking this perfect piece of art, but I just cannot get over that. The only way I can still like BB at all and the entire DCAU in general is pretending that didn't happen. Batman Beyond is explicitly a future where terrible things happened to the entire Bat-cast and caused them to retire. Like hell, this is a universe where Superman spent years as a mind-controlled slave. BB is a pretty dark story about a failed DC future where megacorps run everything and the greatest heroes are struggling to do good. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 19:29
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Android Blues posted:Also, as that clip illustrates, there's just huge potential (successfully mined by the show) in the character of old, bitter, grumpy Bruce Wayne, who's too old to be gadding about in pyjamas any more and whose city is if anything even worse than before. It's very humanising and a hugely interesting take on the Batman character. Yeah, the premise of Beyond is the darkest the DCAU gets in my opinion. Batman Beyond is explicitly a story about Batman being a complete failure at everything. EVERYTHING. Gotham is arguably worse, all of his family is either dead or wants nothing to do with him, Wayne Industries is being taken over in a merger, and Bruce is just a few inches from dying sad and alone. It's the Batman mythos at its most cynical in every direction. Lurdiak posted:Oh yeah, the show's definitely got some body horror going on My mind always goes to....Sidewinder? Blink? I don't remember, but whichever one gets the power to phase through stuff. Eventually their power fucks up and they phase through the planet. That's scary as poo poo.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:40
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ImpAtom posted:Batman Beyond is explicitly a future where terrible things happened to the entire Bat-cast and caused them to retire. The 2099 line did it better. Speaking of which: 
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Aug 6, 2016 19:41
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Cangelosi posted:I really think this is one of the defining moments of Batman Beyond right here. Android Blues posted:there's just huge potential (successfully mined by the show) in the character of old, bitter, grumpy Bruce Wayne ImpAtom posted:Batman Beyond is explicitly a future where terrible things happened to the entire Bat-cast and caused them to retire. Right on all three counts. This is why I think probably my favorite scene from Batman Beyond was the coffeehouse talk between Barbara and Terry. Where she reveals that she stuck with Bruce when Tim left, but eventually had to leave herself, because he just refused to allow anyone else into his life. He was all bat, no man.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:42
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ImpAtom posted:Batman Beyond is explicitly a future where terrible things happened to the entire Bat-cast and caused them to retire. Well B:TAS is my absolute favorite Batman continuity and with Superman and Justice League it becomes the platonic ideal of my favorite shared universe and it's a huge loving downer to think that's how it ends.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:43
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Aug 6, 2016 19:44
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Travis343 posted:Well B:TAS is my absolute favorite Batman continuity and with Superman and Justice League it becomes the platonic ideal of my favorite shared universe and it's a huge loving downer to think that's how it ends. Terry and the Justice League are still out there doing their thing, and Bruce gets to die with a son that loves him. Even if it wasn't a happy ending for like 99% of the cast in JLU, it's still far from a wash.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:49
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Yeah, it's more that whenever things get so bad, there are heroes to help right the way. poo poo gets to the point it's at, but then Batman helps restore hope.
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Aug 6, 2016 19:54
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"Batman failed" is an inherently dumb idea in a world where Gotham is in danger of complete and utter annihilation or acts of mass murder that would dwarf 9/11 every other week. Good thing nothing happened between Bruce retiring and Terry taking the cowl. But then I guess that gets into the weird juxtaposition of Batman vs crime as a realistic system being the main idea yet mostly focusing on things like the crazy environmentalist chick who controls giant man eating plants with her mind. Sorry there's still gangs of punks in the future, I guess Bruce was too busy disarming the sixteenth nuke Ra's al Ghul hid in the city to get around to that. What a failure. WickedHate fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 19:56
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WickedHate posted:"Batman failed" is an inherently dumb idea in a world where Gotham is in danger of complete and utter annihilation or acts of mass murder that would dwarf 9/11 every other week. Good thing nothing happened between Bruce retiring and Terry taking the cowl. It's pretty clear things did in fact happen they were just handled by other people. WickedHate posted:But then I guess that gets into the weird juxtaposition of Batman vs crime as a realistic system being the main idea yet mostly focusing on things like the crazy environmentalist chick who controls giant man eating plants with her mind. Sorry there's still gangs of punks in the future, I guess Bruce was too busy disarming the sixteenth nuke Ra's al Ghul hid in the city to get around to that. What a failure. He is, in fact, a failure because his goal was to Stop Crime Forever at the cost of his own happiness which is an explicitly impossible goal. This isn't even exclusive to BB, it was an ongoing thing throughout BTAS.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:06
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Travis343 posted:Well B:TAS is my absolute favorite Batman continuity and with Superman and Justice League it becomes the platonic ideal of my favorite shared universe and it's a huge loving downer to think that's how it ends. What, the fact that Bruce makes an offhand reference to Ras causing a war that killed a bunch of heroes wasn't enough of a downer for you?
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Aug 6, 2016 20:09
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Beyond is a story where Batman spent too much time being Batman and not enough time being Bruce Wayne. It's why he's lost control of his company, Megacorps own most of Gotham, and crime keeps happening because now the corporate espionage is driving it. Batman can punch people and disarm bombs, but Bruce Wayne can actually save the city, and he didn't.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:13
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mind the walrus posted:I was lucky to see Bruce Timm and some production staff at a panel at San Diego a year or so after JLU ended, they were doing a DCAU retrospective, and they were all laughing about how despite Batman Beyond's conception as the kiddiest show in the DCAU it wound up being the absolute darkest in places. It's weird that they assumed it would be the kiddiest show when the underlying premise is an ultra-nihilistic "Everyone who says Batman's war on crime is doomed to pointlessness and failure is right" take, but maybe that grew out of the planning phases as a natural consequence of wanting a younger character as a Batman-in-training sort. I think I might've been at that panel - were they also showing off that short-lived Legion of Superheroes cartoon? Small world. Anyway, content - Mr. Weatherbee is sick of bears, and your poo poo:   e: Source is Jughead #8. SomeMathGuy fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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Aug 6, 2016 20:23
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SomeMathGuy posted:Anyway, content - Mr. Weatherbee is sick of bears, and your poo poo: The art on this is absurdly good and I'm kind of crushing on Jughead and that's weird as hell.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:26
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I'm also digging Mr Weatherbee being snarky and sarcastic as opposed to the easily outwitted dimwit I remember when I was a kid.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:32
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SomeMathGuy posted:It's weird that they assumed it would be the kiddiest show when the underlying premise is an ultra-nihilistic "Everyone who says Batman's war on crime is doomed to pointlessness and failure is right" take, but maybe that grew out of the planning phases as a natural consequence of wanting a younger character as a Batman-in-training sort. I don't recall if they did the LoS cartoon, but it definitely would have been that year or the year before. I just recall the Q&A to be honest. That and sitting through the end of the panel on the then-new TV show Bones while waiting for it to start, which is funny because at the time I hadn't watched Angel and if I had I would have been much more interested in David Boreanaz. My memory definitely remembers Timm saying that the show was meant to be kiddie in a tone that implied that was how the show was sold to the higher-ups. You're very probably right that all the darkness came out of examining what kind-of circumstances would necessitate a kid Batman taking up the mantle from an old Bruce, and one thing you've got to credit the DCAU from Superman onwards with was that they were all about keeping the ridiculous DC stuff as internally consistent with the characters as possible which is how we got all the Cadmus business. SomeMathGuy posted:Anyway, content - Mr. Weatherbee is sick of bears, and your poo poo: I will never stop being pleasantly surprised by the Archie Renaissance.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:38
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This was the best story from Zdarsky's run on Jughead, actually, mostly because it didn't have the stupid fantasy sequence gimmick and devoted the time to actually having Jug and Archie in conflict and then resolving the conflict.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:43
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Gaz-L posted:This was the best story from Zdarsky's run on Jughead, actually, mostly because it didn't have the stupid fantasy sequence gimmick and devoted the time to actually having Jug and Archie in conflict and then resolving the conflict. The whole first arc felt like Zdarsky dove into the deep end of the crazier parts of old-school Jughead without the decades of mundane context that made those things work. This one benefited a lot from being more grounded, I felt.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:49
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SomeMathGuy posted:The whole first arc felt like Zdarsky dove into the deep end of the crazier parts of old-school Jughead without the decades of mundane context that made those things work. This one benefited a lot from being more grounded, I felt. Agreed. I'm super-jazzed to see Ryan North's take on Sabrina, though.
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Aug 6, 2016 20:51
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You think the first two are about as contrived as it can get, but then the last one is like a living Rube Goldberg Machine.
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Aug 6, 2016 22:05
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Aug 6, 2016 22:12
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I understand that's the joke, it's pretty obvious. I'm just stating it's even funnier how much more ridiculous the last one is than the other two.
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Aug 6, 2016 22:14
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The last one is the most sensible, because in all the others at least one party is clearly wearing something that'd get in the way.
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Aug 6, 2016 22:16
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Batman Begins opens with middle-aged Batman having a heart attack while fighting thugs and having to resort to threaten them with a gun to not get beaten to death. I do not understand how Timm et al presented it as the kiddiest DCAU show
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Aug 6, 2016 22:48
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No he said it was sold and aimed as the kiddiest show. There is no way they didn't realize early on in development "Holy poo poo we are going to dark loving places with this. Eh whatever it's Kid's WB they don't give a gently caress we're one of the pillars of their lineup."
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Aug 6, 2016 22:56
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Unless you are going to post funny panels about Batman maybe you should take your opinions about Batman cartoons elsewhere. Please?
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Aug 6, 2016 22:58
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Blame Neal Adams and Hannah/Barberra for Long-Chin Joker (Scooby-Doo, 1972)
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Aug 6, 2016 23:05
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