Well, it just didn't feel very Batman to me.
It felt to me like a very solid and interesting interpretation of Batman. I mean, the way he handled that first fight scene -- knowing exactly what the hood was going to do next, intimidating him by telling him that he knew, popping a dislocated shoulder back in and barely letting it slow him down -- all classic Batman.
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.
The "villains drawn from all over" just feel like the show being obscure for the sake of being different.
Again, I'm bewildered by the assumption that being different is not exactly the right thing to do. Why redo what's already been done?
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.
Honestly, the only thing probably keeping them from that is the TV rating and being on Cartoon network. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they would do that if they could.
I have no idea why you'd assume that.
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.
Also, you're right about the other shows, but the point is BTB has given him a partner, a stupid one that makes seeing the real Batman sidekicks unlikely, which is just another reason for me to hate the choice. I'd rather have solo Batman over batman and Katana.
You're entitled not to watch the show if you don't want to, but I don't know why you'd think Katana is "stupid" just because she's not what you've seen before. If anything, trying new things is a mark of intelligence, not stupidity. You don't have to agree with other people's creative choices, but it's frankly very childish to insult their intelligence just because you would've made a different choice.
And I'd remind you that just a few weeks ago you were insisting that
The Batman was the stupidest Batman show you'd ever seen, but you opened your mind enough to consider evidence to the contrary and now you've reconsidered, at least somewhat.
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.
Well, we have to agree to disagree with that. Since I think the idea of Alfred physically protecting Batman to be idiotic in general (it could work if Batman is injured, the batcave is under attack, and Alfred throws himself in front of an enemy, but thats for a show with a real, normal alfred, not Alfred with Hulk Hogan's body) I don't think it will lead to anything interesting.
But that's exactly what's interesting here -- the incongruity between Alfred's (and now Katana's) nominal, public role as Bruce Wayne's bodyguard and the underlying truth that nobody on the planet needs a bodyguard less -- yet practically nobody puts himself more constantly in danger. So that puts Alfred in a frustrating position, because he feels a duty to protect someone who's beyond his ability to protect. Good drama comes from the conflict between a character's goals and their circumstances. That's why I think that what Watson and Murakami are going for here is an examination of Alfred's struggle to define his role in Bruce's life -- paralleling their exploration of Bruce's own struggle with his dual identity.
I would call attention to the character of Diggle on
Arrow -- nominally Oliver Queen's bodyguard, but ending up being the Arrow's sidekick, and having to balance his duty to serve the Arrow's mission with his duty and friendship toward Oliver. It works there, and it can work here.
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.
This show's big problem is that it seems like they just dislike normal batman stuff, so they'll do anything but normal Batman things.
That's nonsense. As I've told you, Glen Murakami has been working on DC/Warner Bros.' Batman productions for two decades now, since he was a storyboard artist on B:TAS. And the show's executive producer Sam Register has been the executive in charge of nearly every Batman-related WB production since
The Batman. So they have plenty of experience working with what you'd call "normal Batman things." It's absurd to think they'd dislike them.
But that's just it. Those things have been done, and done well. Why compete with those past successes by trying to do the same things over again? It's not that they dislike those things, it's that they're satisfied with what's been done with them in the past, and rather than just imitate them, they're trying to do something new that hopefully will be just as good.
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.
Besides, what defines "normal" for you? What's been on TV or film before? A lot of the villains we'll be seeing have been major recurring foes in the comics over the course of years; they just haven't been picked up by any screen adaptation yet, and many of them are arguably overdue for an appearance. Pyg and Toad are among the most prominent, defining villains of Grant Morrison's lengthy tenure on Batman. Anyone who's been reading Batman comics over the past 5-6 years would consider them an entirely "normal" presence in a Batman story.
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.
I have to admit at first I was closer to how Kirk55555 felt about the villains & sidekick on this, but after talking about it here, and thinking about it more, I've become a lot more excited about getting to see new characters. We've already gotten plenty of shows/games/movies/novels with Robin, Joker, Two-Face, Penguin, Riddler, Batgirl, ect. I think it's about time we let some new characters get some time in the spotlight.
And it's also worth pointing out that in a lot of the interviews, they've said they're starting with these lesser known characters, I don't think they've ruled out the more familiar characters appearing later.
And besides, if they did do the more familiar characters, they'll probably put they're own spin on them that Kirk55555 and people like him will still hate. At least with them doing the new characters, people aren't as likely to be upset about them getting the character "wrong".
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.
