By JT REID For the Keizertimes
Like most nerds, I like Batman. Most people do, if one takes the shear amount of times the character has appeared in print and on the small and big screens as evidence of his popularity. But I’m kind of getting tired of Bruce Wayne and his rogues, if I’m being honest… after all, there’s only so many times one can watch a trust fund orphan dress up like a rodent and beat up mentally troubled people on the streets without getting a bit bored. Batman: Caped Crusader, a new animated show on Amazon Prime, is in many ways an exceptional Batman experience that goes out of its way to offer something different. But despite this I still couldn’t shake the feeling that we have already seen all of this before.
Caped Crusader has a lot of the same DNA as the popular 90s cartoon Batman: The Animated Series, which makes sense, considering that DC’s animation maestro Bruce Timm is the mastermind behind both. The animation is very similar, as is the respect that the subject matter is treated with—it does not dumb things down, despite the fact that kids are among the target audience. They’re both shows that adults can enjoy as well, particularly Caped Crusader, which is a bit more violent and considerably darker than its predecessor.
Caped Crusader does some cool things with the Batman mythos, reimagining some characters, genderbending others, and setting the whole thing against the backdrop of a vaguely 1940s era of Gotham City. The noir approach that Caped Crusader takes is appreciated, the serialized tales of crime and murder really leaning into the detective facet of Batman’s nature.
But at the end of the day, Batman: Caped Crusade is still the same old Batman stuff. Bruce is humorless and dour, Alfred is concerned and frustrated, Catwoman is sassy and flirtatious. Despite all of its attempts to be different Caped Crusader is still what we’ve seen over and over again since Bob Kane and Bill Finger created the character in the late 1930s, and I wasn’t able to appreciate the craftsmanship of the show that much as a result. This is not a problem with the Caped Crusader as much as it is a direct result of media saturation. Why not do a Wonder Woman cartoon instead? Or maybe a lesser known DC comics character like Midnighter or Zatanna? There are only so many times you can run back to the Batman well without the thing running dry. I don’t subscribe to the idea of super hero fatigue in the media; I think that as long as there is innovation the genre can be as long lived as action films or comedies. But man, Batman: Caped Crusader just exhausted me.
But it’s a great show! This is the Dark Knight at his best. But the fact is that we have so many examples of the character at his best that the sum of those feels lesser because of it.
Batman: Caped Crusade season 1 is now available on Amazon Prime.