Batman: TAS writer's bible
- Thread starter sojourner
- Start date
Nice, but so far I have spotted things in this that were not held to in the series, like:
- They said, no back story on the parents and their murder, including not seeing them leave the theater or anything like that, but then we have Bruce's nightmare in "Dreams of Darkness".
- They said there would be no way to reach Batman, including no Bat-signal, yet we have a Bat-signal in the series, used multiple times.
- Montoya didn't seem to hate Batman in "P.O.V.".
Yeah, and some of those rogue villains never appeared on the show. And some of the episode plot outlines were different, or very different, than from what happened.
And we never met Gordon's wife.
And we never met Gordon's wife.
Yeah, that's how it is when you're beginning to build an ongoing series. You set out thinking one thing, then you find that some of it works and some of it doesn't. It's the actual writing of the thing that lets you discover how best to handle it all.
This is cool. Thanks for posting it!
This is cool. Thanks for posting it!
A series bible is something of a first draft of the show, and ideas always evolve as time goes on. In this case, there are some things it would've been nice to see more of -- like Montoya partnering with Batman more than once*, more development for Summer Gleeson, and Riddler riddles that were actually intelligent and sophisticated (the riddles in his first two episodes were abysmal). And it's too bad that network censorship required them to tone down some of their ideas (the manhunt against Batman in "On Leather Wings" would've made more sense if he'd been suspected of killing as in the story outline rather than just stealing stuff and putting a guard in the hospital). But too many of the villain origins had a certain sameness to them -- Batman was somehow responsible for their deformation/madness and so they were on vendettas against him. I'm glad they went a different direction with Two-Face, having his vendetta be against Thorne, and especially I'm glad that Paul Dini gave us "Heart of Ice" instead of that cookie-cutter version of Mr. Freeze. I'm also glad Bruce ended up being written more sympathetically.
It's interesting to see the original Timm designs for Penguin and Catwoman before they were ordered to change them to be closer to the movie designs. Both would've been considerably better than what we got. They were finally able to restore the classic Penguin look for TNBA, but alas, we never got to see that cute long-haired Catwoman.
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*In fact, they kind of did something like this with Ellen Yin on The Batman.
It's interesting to see the original Timm designs for Penguin and Catwoman before they were ordered to change them to be closer to the movie designs. Both would've been considerably better than what we got. They were finally able to restore the classic Penguin look for TNBA, but alas, we never got to see that cute long-haired Catwoman.
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*In fact, they kind of did something like this with Ellen Yin on The Batman.
Sojourner, thanks for posting that link. I've always thought Batman's greatest potential was in animation and my fave version ( comics, TV, movies ) is Bats: TAS. By 'greatest potential' I mean the kind of guy he is, is best portrayed in animation.
The comics don't move, they can only try to capture the action via still images. Live action... well, Batman isn't the sort of guy who can be totally potrayed by an actor ( I do like Michael Keaton as Batman and Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne ).
I'm really going to enjoy reading the Writer's Guide.
The comics don't move, they can only try to capture the action via still images. Live action... well, Batman isn't the sort of guy who can be totally potrayed by an actor ( I do like Michael Keaton as Batman and Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne ).
I'm really going to enjoy reading the Writer's Guide.
It's a shame the writer's own take on the Penguin never surfaced - not referring to his physical appearance, but his background and character. I think he could have done with a reinvention, as the writers had successfully done with Mr Freeze and the Mad Hatter. But thanks to Warners, it was not to be.
^Well, a lot of that version of the Penguin did show up in the series. His airs to high society were the focus of "Birds of a Feather," and the idea of him as a man with his fingers in every aspect of organized crime was featured in the New Batman Adventures series, when he ran the Iceberg Lounge as a legitimate front for his criminal activities. The main thing they didn't use was the whole momma's-boy thing, where he dotes on his mother and doesn't want her finding out he's a criminal. I'm not sure that really would've worked well. Might've been cute, might've been lame.
Besides, the Penguin is already burdened with mismatched gimmicks. I mean, what have umbrellas got to do with birds? It's pretty random. The last thing he needed was to have yet another unrelated obsession tacked onto his character.
Besides, the Penguin is already burdened with mismatched gimmicks. I mean, what have umbrellas got to do with birds? It's pretty random. The last thing he needed was to have yet another unrelated obsession tacked onto his character.
^Except the original conception of the character was independent of movie influence, and was then required to be changed to resemble the movie version.
It would probably be just as much of a reach to assume it was influenced by Penguin's line (or Burgess Meredith's ad-lib, I suspect) in the '66 movie: "Careful, careful -- every one of 'em has a mother."
It would probably be just as much of a reach to assume it was influenced by Penguin's line (or Burgess Meredith's ad-lib, I suspect) in the '66 movie: "Careful, careful -- every one of 'em has a mother."
