The Big Picture

Batman: Caped Crusader
pays homage to the character’s original roots, featuring a young Bruce Wayne in a detective-noir setting.
The series struggles to establish its own identity despite new takes on characters, delving deeper into Batman’s psyche but falling slightly short of offering something interesting.

Caped Crusader
delivers 10 detective stories with Timm’s iconic art style, maybe a bit too reminiscent of
Batman: The Animated Series
, ultimately providing a somewhat fresh but familiar take on the Dark Knight.

What makes a good Batman story? The character has been around for over 80 years, with each iteration vastly different from the last. Be it the wonderful campy-ness of the Adam West classic or the highly-stylized gothic lens of Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns, the character has proven to be a mainstay of pop culture, one who can adapt to serve the audience of that particular era. Yet the most beloved take on the character is none other than Batman: The Animated Series.

BTAS started as a tie-in to the Burton films but stood out on its own, thanks to the beautiful direction of Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Eric Radomski. It also featured generational performances from Mark Hamill as the Joker and the late Kevin Conroy as Batman. Over 30 years later, The Animated Series is still regarded as the definitive take on the character, even in a world that saw Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy change the landscape and Matt Reeves’ The Batman reboot the character for the next generation. Now, Bruce Timm is back, alongside Matt Reeves, with a brand-new take on the World’s Greatest Detective, the first animated Batman series in nearly a decade. But can lightning strike twice with Batman: Caped Crusader?

Batman: Caped Crusader (2024) In Gotham City, where corruption and crime are rampant, wealthy socialite Bruce Wayne transforms into Batman following a personal tragedy. His relentless pursuit of justice attracts unexpected allies within the GCPD and City Hall, but also spawns deadly consequences. This series reimagines Batman’s mythology through the creative lenses of J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Bruce Timm.Release Date August 1, 2024 Creator Bob Kane, Bruce Timm Seasons 1 Franchise(s) Batman Expand

What Is ‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ About?
Batman: Caped Crusader takes place in a version of Gotham City that is clearly inspired by Batman stories from the 1940s and 1960s. There, we meet Bruce Wayne (Hamish Linklater), who’s still in the early stages of his life as a vigilante, as he faces new threats. Not unlike Batman: The Animated Series, Caped Crusader is mostly serialized, as Batman battles different villains in each episode. While the episodes are self-contained, each one offers us more insight into the characters leading up to the finale.

Like most Batman tales, Bruce is a loner. After his parents’ deaths, he vows to stop crime in Gotham so no child will ever experience the same pain he did. This version of Bruce is cold and distant, to the point where even his relationship with Alfred (Jason Watkins) is less of a father-son dynamic and more of a standard arrangement between employer and employee, evoking the original comics by Bill Finger and Bob Kane.

This world feels familiar, still featuring Bruce Timm’s iconic art style — the dark deco aesthetic that made BTAS is known for returns and larger-than-life character designs — but the reason Caped Crusader stands out is its tone. In this new series, the detective noir aspects of the character shine through as he faces more grounded versions of Catwoman (Christina Ricci), Clayface (Dan Donohue), and other iconic villains. Caped Crusader reinterprets the Batman mythology in unexpected ways, including an entirely new origin for Harley Quinn (Jamie Chung) that fits within this universe.

‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Takes Us Back To The Character’s Beginnings

While Caped Crusader echoes a lot of what fans have come to love about the character, it does struggle to carve out its own identity. Sure, there are new takes on Harley or a gender-swapped Penguin (Minnie Driver), and while those moments are memorable, they don’t really make the show stand out on its own. Hamish Linklater delivers a solid performance as both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and the series attempts to dive into the character’s psyche more than ever before. What makes Batman tick? Does the way that Bruce processes his trauma hurt Gotham more than it helps? This introspective of the Batman is one that we’ve seen glimpses of in previous iterations, but Caped Crusader is the first to make it a main plot point, and while it does offer a unique perspective, it’s a bit shallow. We can never actually deconstruct who Batman is as a character because, at the end of the day, we don’t want him to hang up the cape and cowl; instead, we justify his existence so we can continue to follow his adventures.

Batman’s battles against Onomatopoeia (Reid Scott) or Clayface are just too awesome to give up, right? In a way, you can also interpret this dilemma as us feeling the same as Bruce. We know he might not actually solve Gotham’s crime issue, but at least it’s a short-term solution. Yet the grander themes of Caped Crusader become lost here and there, and while the episode count or runtime can play a small factor, it’s a problem you can easily look past. Each episode serves as a 22-minute-long caper where the detective solves a case — be it large-scale, mystical, or a cat burglary. Through that lens, this new series delivers, but you can’t help but wish it took things a tad further.

Part of what limits Batman: Caped Crusader could have been the boundaries of its score and art design. The character has always had incredible music, from the Burton films all the way up to Michael Giacchino’s outstanding work on The Batman. While the series’ art style is in the vein of the Timmverse, there are brand-new designs for characters like Alfred, Penguin, Clayface, and Harley Quinn, and these changes are a highlight of the show. However, Batman looks largely the same, aside from slightly flared ears and much shorter gloves, which serve as a direct translation of his original costume (sadly, they did not commit to the purple gloves). Yet seeing this Batman design while not hearing Conroy’s iconic voice might be hard to accept for longtime fans. Meanwhile, an overall new art style for a new generation of viewers might have helped the show stand out more from its predecessors.

Overall, Batman: Caped Crusader manages to tell 10 intriguing detective stories that bring the Dark Knight back to his roots, while Timm’s iconic art style and approach to the Batman mythos are the best they have been since the end of Justice League Unlimited. Although this new series favors the original Batman: The Animated Series style a bit too heavily at times and could have pushed even more boundaries than before, this new interpretation does manage to distinguish itself in places. If you enjoyed Batman: The Animated Series, Reeves’ take on Batman, or simply want a new crime drama to watch, Batman: Caped Crusader is still worth your time.

Batman: Caped Crusader will be available to stream on Prime Video on August 2.

Batman: Caped Crusader (2024) Batman: Caped Crusader sees the Dark Knight returning to his roots in a new interpretation that struggles to carve out its own identity.ProsBatman: Caped Crusader is a great reinterpretation of the Batman mythos.The series’ entertaining episodic adventures makes it feel like a comic come to life.The show is a wonderful homage to the early days of the character. ConsUltimately, Caped Crusader still feels like it’s trying too hard to be Batman: The Animated Series.The series fails to follow through on some of its more complex concepts.

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