Spoilers Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders: '66-style animated movie featuring West, Ward, Newman

There is one guy out there that unlocked a ton of hidden recorded audio out of the games and came up with a really ingenious system of creating new audio clips and phrases using word fragments in the actor's own voices. He claims he could create any dialouge needed, if someone was animating, if I recall correctly.

 

Harlan Ellison's story never even got to script, so it's unlikely that William Dozier even thought about possible actors for Two-Face. As Christopher said, the comics adaptation wasn't especially in the vein of the television series; had Dozier been able to buy the story (ABC wouldn't let Dozier hire Ellison due to Ellison being Ellison), the story would have needed a lot of work to fit the series' tone and budget.

 

I bought the digital download. I love all the nods to other batman incarnations

-In the Batcave there is an easter egg of the 1940's comic suit

-West Batman gets angry and starts quoting "Batman 89"

"Let's get nuts!"

and "The Dark Knight Returns"

"I'm the Surgeon"

I also love the poke at Batman's super clean image. Batman chastises the Commissioner for watching TV on the job

Batman and Robin avoid jay walking


"ABANDONED FROZEN FOOD FACTORY"

It's really fun to watch

 

it was a lot of fun. loved the three Catwomen bit. when Batman takes over as O'Hara he simply says 'Blimey'. i cracked up. all the villain cameos were nice.

 

It most definitely is.

There was a bit of a nod/diss to the ending of the Nolan trilogy, too.

I laughed so hard when he pulled the classic Batman dissappearing act. Where's Batman? Where'd he go? Batman? lol. For awhile I actually thought they were going to narratively explain how cheesy Batman becomes dark Batman for a few minutes, to be honest.

This movie also led me to the 2003 "Return to the Batcave - The Misadventures of Adam West and Burt Ward" movie, which was just as hilarious in its own right.

 

The interesting thing there for me was seeing perennial voice actor Jason Marsden playing Burt Ward -- and proving to be a better Robin than Ward was. As it happens, Marsden later played "Scooby-Doo Robin" in an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold that recreated the old '70s Batman/Scooby crossovers. He's also done the voice of young Clark Kent in Superman: TAS and the voice of young Bruce Wayne in Beware the Batman, making him, as far as I know, the only person to have played all three of those characters. (Along with numerous other DC characters -- Snapper Carr, Firefly, Atom, Impulse, Richie on Static Shock, etc.)

 

And the absurd way Batman drew to conclusions from "Nothing" to Lunar eclipses

and the long winded deduction from "Tin Foil"



And then Gotham City going to hell after Batman is gone for five minutes

"Truancy goes up!"

Lots to chew on. Going to watch it again

 

So Star Trek TAS the Movie?

 

Yup, but with way better animation. Its a damn shame something wasn't done a couple years ago, in preparation for the 50th. It would have been so awesome to get one last Shatner/Nimoy TOS outing together. As it is, we can still get 4/7, which is good enough with some creative casting and/or plot armour. Minimize the character's who can't be there, and send the other 4 on a new adventure, or set it in a time period, say, pre WOK when Spock can be on the Enterprise, and Shatner can be on an adventure someplace else with his more junior staff. I'm more then okay with Chris doing his father's role in animation as well. Just sucks for the Triad. Don't let Quinto anywhere near it, though....

 

I know you said not Quinto, but I have the opposite reaction, I would love to see them do something like that as a mashup of the two-casts. They could use the surviving TOS cast members, and replace those who've died with their Kelvinverse cast counterparts.

Oh, I didn't realize it never made it to a script, I just remember that was how they described the comic when they announced it.

 

I think I would prefer voice actors that sounded similar to the originals, considering that the "look" of the voice actor doesn't matter. If it was some type of live action / time travel story, I would be more inclined to accept the Kelvinverse cast mixing in.

 

Believe me, you're not the only one. DC left a mistaken impression about where the Two-Face special came from. More egregious, in my view, is that they didn't acknowledge Bill Finger's contribution; Ellison's plot drew quite a bit on Finger's original Two-Face story from the 1940s. Then you'd have ended up with a weird credit like "Script by Len Wein, Outline by Harlan Ellison, Inspired by 'The Crimes of Two-Face' by Bill Finger," but it would have been more accurate.

 

Well, it's not like there's anything new about that, unfortunately. At least he's finally got a co-creator credit these days, even if it's just a "With."

 

The passing of original cast members should not be a motive for producing a TOS animated film. As you know, unlike Dozier's Batman, TOS already had its turn in animation--a full series that is still well regarded more than 4 decades later. Further, the Filmation series actually had most of the 1966-69 cast voicing their parts, along with notable guest stars such as Mark Lenard, Roger C. Carmel and Stanley Adams. That is as perfect as one can get for TOS in animated form.

A new animated film would only face unfortunate comparisons to TAS--lacking that series advantages not just in TOS actors, but BTS talents' contribution as well.

Nimoy's passed on; getting a replacement to work alongside "the other half" only invites negative reactions, and a reminder that the series truly ended with "all hands on deck" in The Undiscovered Country.

 

DC Fontana is still alive and has been active in Trek recently, so she would probably be willing to come back.
The Filmation series did a good job with the resources at their disposal at the time, but a new animated film with a modern animation and a bigger budget could do a lot that even TAS couldn't.

I can understand that, but technically the Kelvinverse cast are supposed to and sound the same as the TOS cast members, so from a purely in universe there's not reason not to use them. From a creative standpoint it could also be a way to draw in some of the movie only fans, and just the gimmick of the mash up would be a good way to bring attention to the project.

 

It's unlikely to ever happen. This tribute to the 66 show was possible because Warner Bros has its own animation division. Which has been making new animated versions of Batman almost continually since the 1990s. So the infrastructure to make this already existed.

Who would make an animated Star Trek now? Paramount and CBS are very focused on their future film sequel and new tv series.

 

I was thinking they could just license it out to one of the animation studios, but now that I look on Wikipedia, it turns out all of the big ones that come to mind are owned by other studios.
I know it's probably never going to happen, but that doesn't mean it isn't interesting to think about.