"Beware the Batman" in 2013! New Animated Series

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Admiral_Young, Oct 4, 2011.

  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    He's both. Remember the line in the hostage scene? When Alfred started to take charge, Simon Stagg looked at him and said, "Who are you?" and he replied, "I'm the butler."

    Again, it's much the same as in Johns and Frank's Earth One graphic novel. There, Alfred is a former British intelligence agent that Thomas brings in as a bodyguard for young Bruce, a role he's reluctant to adopt at first, and when Thomas and Martha are killed and he learns that he was appointed Bruce's legal guardian, he thinks it over for a bit and then goes into the grieving boy and introduces himself as "your butler."



    Which is why I'm smart enough to wait for more information so that I can find out. There's nothing wrong with being made to wonder. It inspires curiosity, and curiosity is good.


    Obviously you're forgetting many of Alfred's awesome action moments from comics and television. My favorite is in the '66 series' "Flop Goes the Joker." The climax of the episode has the Joker breaking into Wayne Manor to avenge himself on Bruce for some perceived slight. Alfred confronts the Joker, gets into a swordfight with him, and wins, sending the Joker retreating into the study, where he stumbles upon the Batpoles (which are mercifully unlabeled because Alfred's just repainted them), takes them as an escape tunnel, and slides down. Whereupon Alfred uses the emergency lift controls to keep the Joker from reaching the bottom, and sends the Joker sliding up and down the poles repeatedly. By the time Batman and Robin arrive, the Joker is begging for mercy. Alfred defeated the worst arch-criminal on Earth singlehandedly in five minutes, without the Dynamic Duo needing to do a thing.

    In short, if you want Alfred to be some doddering old weakling useless for anything but housework, then you don't know a thing about Alfred. There's more verbiage devoted to him in TV Tropes's Battle Butler entry than to any other single character (even Hayate the Combat Butler!).

    And as I've already pointed out twice, the show is set in the early years of Batman's career. Everyone is therefore younger.
     
  2. Redfern

    Redfern Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    As long as I get a curvy 'toon babe in some type of form fitting attire, I'll be happy, and it looks like we will.

    Yeah, I'm an incorrigible horn-dog. ;)

    Sincerely,

    Bill
     
  3. kirk55555

    kirk55555 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Batman can do all those things but so can almost any random masked vigilante. It was the most batman like thing the whole episode, but one scene doesn't make it a batman show.

    Then why use the license if you're not going to take advantage of it? Make your own superhero cartoon free of licenses if you hate the character and his villains. If you're making a batman show, it needs to have Batman, his rogue's gallery (the real one, not the legion of poorly thought out obscure villains), and other familiar characters.


    Well, they're doing everything they possibly can to be the exact opposite of everything Batman, so making him The Punisher in a batsuit seems like its something they'd really enjoy doing.

    Trying new things is overrated. Teen Titans Go! is trying new things, and its the worst DC animated show I've ever seen. Just because you change something doesn't mean its an improvement over the old stuff.

    As for The Batman, the first 2 seasons were pretty bad They pulled it together eventually and it became a good show, and thats an accomplishment. I enjoyed season 4 a lot, and I just ordered season 5 (and I'll probably get Season 3 eventually). I just hope BTB doesn't start going downhill in season one, since I doubt it will get a few seasons to help the show get better like The Batman did.

    Yeah, but Diggle was not a long established Butler of Oliver Queen in the comics with his own perosnality and way of doing things that has been consistent between the 80's and present day. I get what they're doing with "Hulk" Alfred, and I'm not saying that kind of story can't be interesting. It just can't be done with Alfred, which is why I'm assuming the real Alfred isn't being used, just a random muscle bound former military guy with his name. I just wish they hadn't decided to drag Katan down with Alfred in this show. They atleast could have chosen a character I didn't like to be his partner. Any random person would have made as much sense as his partner as Katana, so maybe they should have just gone with someone picked at random. If Vibe or Azrael were his partner, it would just be stupid, and not involve a character I like being used in one of the stupidest ways possibly.

    Well, maybe Murakami and Register are just tired of doing batman, and instead of letting people who actually want to make a Batman show do it, they decided to just make it Batman only in name so that they could do a show about a new hero they weren't burned out on. It definately doesn't feel like anyone who knows or likes batman is working on this show. Character burn out would explain why they refuse to add any normal Batman stuff, because they're tired after being involved with him for so long. Its just a theory, but it seems to fit. Why else would you make a Batman tv show that is almost unrecogniseable? Its not a money thing imposed on them, because I doubt DC or cartoon network are super excited about the merchandising potential of Magpie or Professor Pyg. I don't know who exactly came up with the idea to make a batman show that is barely a batman show at all, but I really wish they weren't allowed to make tv shows.

    Normal is the real batman. The guy with the loyal butler (who has no fighting skills) some partners, and a rogue's gallery of actually interesting characters. Sometimes having a lesser known character is ok (you don't want to use the big guns every week) but you should be seeing characters like Joker, Mr. Freze, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Man-Bat, Clayface, The ventriloquist, etc. atleast a couple times a season each (maybe one episode devoted to the slightly lesser known guys like Ventriloquist, but cameos a few times a season for most villains) and fill some of the left over episodes with obscure guys (and episodes that aren't centered on a villain, B:TAS had a lot of good ones like that). If you're going to have Pyg, or Magpie, its either as a group with other villains, a one off episode, or in connection to another story.

    I started reading Batman regularly around the time of Final Crisis (I had a read a good amount before then, but thats when it became regular). So, I read it from basically Dick Grayson becoming batman to the new 52 reboot. I also read Batman & Robin. So, I read a good chunck of Morrison's run (or atleast the later stuff). I saw Pyg once (in Batman & Robin), Mr. Toad never. Pyg was the worst pre-reboot Bat villain i've ever read. He randomly mutilated people for no reason, and wore a pig mask while doing it. He was a generic psycho, nothing more. Morrison's Bat writing was starting to devolve around that point anyway (what he did to Jason Todd should be a punishable offense).

    Maybe he wrote Pyg better before his appearances in batman & Robin, but when I was reading, Pyg was just a lame villain written by a writer whose Batman writing was fluctuating between good and godawful almost at random. I liked some of his run (like batman & Robin, not counting the Jason Todd stuff) but I'd never call Morrison more than an average batman writer once his really good and really bad Batman stuff balances each other out. He was a very bad event writer (Final Crisis is still the most confusing comic I've read) but thats not connected to Batman. Still, looking on comicvine.com, Pyg has been in 27 comics, which doesn't really make him a "normal" presense.


    Atleast with actual batman villains they'd have a chance at making them interesting and having good villains. I'm not against all change. Heck, The Batman had some interesting takes on classic villains that were different. They aren't all improvements (making Mr. Freeze a generic jewel theif really confuses me) and I while still prefer the classic B:TAS versions characters like Riddler and Clayface were interesting, and fairly different than the B:TAS versions. Batman has had a lot of foes, and there is a reason some are well known and popular and some are extremely obscure. The obscure ones just didn't work. I wouldn't want to see Ten Eyed Man used seriously, but he's actually more likely to be seen on this show than Robin, and thats just lame.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2013
  4. Pavonis

    Pavonis Commodore Commodore

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    :lol:

    You're probably not going to like BtB, kiddo, so don't bother watching it.
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2013
  5. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Not like Batman can. This felt like Batman to me.


    Again, that's a ridiculous straw man. Of course they don't "hate" any of that. They love Batman; they just want to try something new with him. Just like B:TAS did -- presenting Batman in a way he'd never been seen onscreen before, featuring many villains and allies who'd never, ever been seen onscreen before, and making big stars out of third-rate joke villains like Clayface and Mr. Freeze. If we'd been posting on Usenet or whatever in 1992, the week after the series premiered, you'd probably be telling me how much Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski must hate Batman.


    One more time: Before B:TAS, no one outside the comics audience had ever seen Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Ra's al Ghul, Talia, Killer Croc, the Ventriloquist, Rupert Thorne, etc. The pilot episode of the series featured Man-Bat, of all characters.


    Again, I have no idea how you think you can jump to these conclusions after seeing only 20 minutes of content. You're not even judging the show I watched. You're judging some fantasy construct that only exists in your own mind. We're not even conversing in the same universe of discourse.


    Yeah, B:TAS made a horrible mistake introducing all those new characters and applying innovative designs and animation techniques. That was a total disaster and everyone hated it. They should've just made another season of Super Friends.



    That's a completely unresponsive answer, because it's been established that "the real Batman" over the decades has been many very different and contradictory things. You're not even trying to defend your position intelligently -- you're just locking your mind shut and refusing to listen to anything that goes against your prejudices.


    Wrong. We've thoroughly established that the comics' Alfred Pennyworth is a combat veteran and retired intelligence officer and field medic. You've had that pointed out to you enough to know that, so you're not just ignorant now, you're intentionally lying.


    Three of which had never been seen on television prior to B:TAS, and at least two of which were minor, third-rate villains before B:TAS made them interesting. You're contradicting yourself.


    I'm done trying to get through to you. You've obviously completely closed your mind to anything outside your narrow preconceptions, and that's just sad. But you're only hurting yourself. I'm walking away from this, and I'm going to go on enjoying the show.
     
  6. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

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    That's not a cliche, that's a dodge. ;) Re-imagine Alfred if you want, but don't re-imagine me. :rommie:

    And there's the crux of it right there. If Alfred isn't Action Man, with muscles and military experience and other macho credentials to impress the kids, then he's a useless and doddering old weakling. It's possible to write Alfred the butler as an interesting and useful character-- it's just not desirable.
     
  7. Pavonis

    Pavonis Commodore Commodore

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    We're one episode in, with an Alfred that will be less action-oriented because he's not as mobile now. Why not wait to see where on the feeble-action spectrum BtB's Alfred lands?
     
  8. kirk55555

    kirk55555 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Regardless of wether this post gets replies, I feel the need to explain some of the things I posted.


    That was B:TAS, not Beware the Batman. B:TAS was special, it had a whole team of awesome people working on it. BTB has a few guys who did some ok stuff at one point. Unless Bruce Timm or Paul Dini are secretly working on it until false identities, what B:TAS did means nothing to this show. I know B:TAS made stars out of less popular villains, I'm not saying it can't be done (although I was not very clear on that in my posts). What I'm saying is that BTB can't do it. If you were to tell me people Timm or Dini were working on an episode of Batman about Pyg or Magpie or Mr. Toad, I'd be excited to see what they do. I'm sure they could make these lame villains awesome.

    In the end, this is not B:TAS. It doesn't have the crew or writers who worked on that show and made it great (the big people from the show is what I'm talking about, even if someone who was a storyboard artist on the show at one point or something is working on BTB). B:TAS established, to me, what is normal for Batman. BTB has thrown that out. Its not that the third rate, obscure villains used by BTB can't be good, its that they probably can't be good in the enviroment of BTB.


    I'm not lying. Alfred has no fighting skills in comics set in the present day. He's a man in his 60s or 70s who uses a shotgun to defend himself. He may have been a good fighter at one point, probably when Bruce was young, but I'd say 30 years (atleast) of not being an active combatant plus advanced age have probably left him with no fighting skills.

    B:TAS did make some of them interesting (which I knew), but like I said before, BTB is not B:TAS. Any villain could probably be made interesting, but I don't think the BTB people can do it. Take people who were instrumental in B:TAS, give them a Batman show with a premise like B:TAS and not like Beware the Anti-Batman, and even Ten Eyed Man could be cool. But this show has nothing going for it that makes me think it can make any villain popular that wasn't already.


    This is what I'm talking about with Alfred. He can be cool and not be an action hero.
     
  9. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Right because you can judge the quality of a series by it's pilot alone. No series has ever improved after the pilot. And no one other than the people who worked on BTAS can ever tell a good Batman story.:rolleyes::brickwall:
     
  10. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^I think this was a terrific pilot. It really sold me on the show's approach and voice, and made me excited about what lies ahead.
     
  11. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    I saw it and loved it.

    - Batman's face looked a bit effeminate and both he and Bruce seem a bit unremarkable so far. No matter, the real highlight for me is that the show is shaking things up.

    - The one thing that did impress me about the Batman character was the opening fight where we got to see his ninja-like astuteness and skill at work. As much as I love the Nolan movies, they didn't give us anything like that.

    - Jason Statham Alfred. Best part. For me, he's the real highlight of the show so far. I thought he was younger, almost Bruce's contemporary, until he said that he made a promise to Bruce's parents.

    - RJ, you should check out the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon. I'd love to know what you think of Aunt May.

    - Gordon means Batgirl. I hope.

    - Liking Katana's role too.

    - I'm impressed with how lavish the batcave is. Same with Wayne manor. With it overlooking Gotham, you'd think that it would make it difficult for a batplane to come and go without someone noticing. As for the batmobile, I'm sure people would notice that it heads across the bridge in that direction.

    - Mr. Toad threw me a bit, but as mentioned, a fantastical character like that lets us know what to expect.
     
  12. Nick Ryder

    Nick Ryder Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Sort of has a bit of that B:TAS style yet fits into the more 'modern' CGI series aesthetic that like it or not we're stuck with. I really did like the more MI6 trained Alfred instead of him being some veteran of some 'foreign war' like they kind of implied with the Nolan Alfred it slipped it into a more plausible reason why he would know things he does and I like how really while Bruce doesn't see him as his 'partner' Alfred's like 'yeah, whatever I'm still your partner... now here, take this hot Asian chick I hired and probably banged as your field partner. Now no backtalk. She's got a nice bum."

    Good ol' Alfred. I kind of hope that we never see Bats with a Robin in a way, just to shake up things a bit.
     
  13. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

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    Looks like the same kind of thing to me. Trying to be kewl by making the characters younger and more dynamic. It's lazy, lame and pandering. I prefer stories that have more diversity and variation among the characters.
     
  14. Pavonis

    Pavonis Commodore Commodore

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    ^You want things to be the same as always? Yet keep things dynamic? Contradictory!

    Personally, I never liked the old feeble Aunt May, and any change of the character is for the better, IMO. Similarly, this Alfred seems like a positive change to me while still being a definitive Alfred.
     
  15. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Actually, according to Mitch Watson, the model for this version of Alfred is "Sean Connery from The Untouchables": Someone formerly on a par with the hero but now in his 60s and past his prime, reduced to a support/advisory role when he'd rather be a man of action alongside the hero.

    And it might alleviate some viewers' concerns about this version of Alfred to know that Glen Murakami advised the other producers to scale back their plans for Alfred's role lest he overshadow Batman. The early promotional image of a gun-toting Alfred fighting by Batman's side may represent those early plans that have now been scaled back.


    As I've mentioned, this show is earlier in Batman's career. Gordon is younger and just a lieutenant. Barbara might not be old enough to be Batgirl yet.


    Hadn't thought of that. It is kind of exposed, isn't it? But having Wayne Manor be set apart on its own island is an interesting variation.


    Good grief, you're way off the mark there. Wikipedia says that this version of Katana is Alfred's goddaughter, and her father was his partner in MI-6.


    I'd hardly call them the same. I've got nothing against revisionism, but Ultimate Spider-Man is pretty weak, and it's definitely skewed toward younger viewers. By contrast, BTB looks like the oldest-skewing superhero show currently on CN, on a par with Young Justice in its maturity, and I enjoy it a whole lot more than USM (or the new Avengers Assemble from the same producers and in the same continuity, which is dull and generic compared to Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes).

    And given that Word of God is apparently that this Alfred is meant to be sixty-something, a Conneryesque mentor figure, I don't think they're de-aging him as much as you imagine.

    In fact, think about it: An older man who was formerly a formidable fighter himself, now past his prime and walking with a cane and serving as a tough-love mentor and advisor to a young Batman... this Alfred has a lot in common with Batman Beyond's Bruce Wayne.

    Although I just checked, and it turns out this Batman isn't quite as much of a novice as I thought. In the article I linked to at the top of the post, it says that this Batman is in his early 30s and has been Batman for 5-6 years. So he's about halfway between the experience levels of Bruce in The Batman and Bruce in B:TAS. Which makes it a bit surprising that Gordon's still a lieutenant. Maybe that's a Nolanverse influence.
     
  16. Admiral_Young

    Admiral_Young Fleet Admiral Admiral

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  17. Pavonis

    Pavonis Commodore Commodore

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    Maybe it's to let Gordon fight crime on the streets occasionally? A lieutenant in the field, busting heads from time to time, is more realistic than a commissioner in the field. Maybe.
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Seriously? She says it's this Saturday? Maybe she just means she'll be voicing Barbara. In any case, it's good news. Strong is one of the great voice artists of our time, and she's up there with Yvonne Craig and Dina Meyer as my favorite Barbara Gordon portrayers.


    Yeah, I've thought that myself, that Gordon's implausibly hands-on for a commissioner. And come to think of it, we've been seeing "Lieutenant Gordon" here and there ever since Batman: Year One, which was the influence the Nolanverse itself drew on at the start.
     
  19. Admiral_Young

    Admiral_Young Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I think one of the episode descriptions stated Bruce will test Katana with her loyalty. Perhaps this is how he'll do so?
     
  20. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

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    Not contradictory, just challenging. It's the same challenge writers always face when working within an established format: Keep things dynamic and expanding without violating the artistic integrity of the core concept. These type of re-imaginings are a lazy avoidance of that. Something like this might be an interesting "What If" or "Imaginary Story," but that's all.