A clever reinvention of the costumed crimefighter for the Defund the Police era
If you loved Bruce Timm's legendary Batman: The Animated Series (and since you're human and alive, you definitely did), his new show Batman: Caped Crusader scratches the persistent itch you've carried all these years. The series adopts a retro look similar to the earlier one, although sometimes it looks too clean in digital animation compared to the grainy, almost tactile surfaces that could be achieved by drawing by hand. What does remain unchanged from the original show is the grounded, human-sized evil that Batman fights every night (while occasionally venturing into the occult). Far from the intergalactic conquerors and alien/mutant/robot/demigods that are the staple of Justice League plots, Caped Crusader explores instead the thorny struggle to redeem the soul of Gotham City while the powers that rule it and are supposed to protect it become hard to distinguish from its colorful gallery of rogues.
The terms of Batman's relationship with the Gotham City Police Department are remarkably variable across incarnations. From a chummy partnership in the Adam West era to bloody hostility in the Ben Affleck one, this element of Batman's mythology has served, whether intentionally or not, as indirect commentary on the assumed effectiveness and desirability of a police force. In the 2016 animated film Return of the Caped Crusaders, the dynamic of the 1966 live action TV show is deconstructed to hilarious effect as it lampshades the fact that Adam West's Bruce Wayne exists in a Gotham City where the police is mind-bogglingly inept. At the other end of the scale of cynicism, Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne becomes a vigilante in part because the criminal justice system is no longer trustworthy. In this kind of story, e.g. the Nolanverse or the Gotham show, Jim Gordon is typically singled out as the only honorable cop in a corrupt institution. This "good apple in a spoiled barrel" approach has the advantage of being a tiny bit more believable than the standard bad apples in a good barrel. But sometimes the intended message gets muddled: Jim Gordon is fundamentally decent, but the police department is fundamentally rotten, but the people of Gotham City are fundamentally decent, but the streets of Gotham City tend to make you rotten. In a way, the Dark Knight trilogy is about whether Gothamites are even worthy of being saved. The question sounds scandalous, but the thing with the Batman franchise is that its moral stance hasn't been able to escape the shadow of The Killing Joke and its thesis that every decent person hides a barely contained sinister side.
Which leads us to the character of Harvey Dent and the interesting twist on his villain origin story in Batman: Caped Crusader. In several versions of Dent's arc, it's been a common trope that the trauma of his disfigurement was what gave rise to his split personality. Caped Crusader proposes something less sensationalist: he's always had a sinister side. His all too flexible morals have led him to become a two-faced hypocrite for whom disfigurement is merely incidental; it only makes evident a duplicity that was already there. To reinforce this point, Caped Crusader has him suffer his accident on the right side of his face, whereas the standard versions of Dent have traditionally been scarred on the left side. By subtle use of camera angles, the show implies that the left, intact side is the evil one, and the right, scarred one is his true self.
Cape Crusader's choice to make Dent's pretty face be the false one provides a useful mirror (heh) of Bruce Wayne's situation. A running subplot has him attending court-mandated therapy sessions with Dr. Harleen Quinzel, who is quick to notice the flimsy façade that hides Wayne's unprocessed pain. Their scenes together are fascinating to watch: two characters pretending to seek total openness while guarding the most important truth about themselves.
With so much focus on Batman's psyche and the moral stakes involved in saving Gotham, it's a welcome surprise that the show doesn't avoid the issue of how Bruce Wayne's immense economic privilege is a sign of what's wrong with the city. In one episode, the ritual that exorcizes an undead landlord requires performing a sacrifice of aristocratic blood and burning the original deed to his property; in another, corrupt policemen let a pyromaniac loose in a poor neighborhood as expendable bait to capture Batman. In a later episode, a planned snoburb being built by Wayne Enterprises becomes the literal battleground for control of the city.
You'd think it would be self-defeating for a Batman story to address the frequent criticism that Batman spends his time kicking working-class henchmen instead of challenging robber barons, but somehow Caped Crusader succeeds at it. Underneath that discussion is the unstated question: What would you have Batman do? Terrorize the rich into giving away their fortune? Because that's what this version of Dr. Quinzel does in her spare time, dressed up as the jester who mocks kings, and her brutal methods don't bring Gotham any closer to justice. Sorry, Joker movie, but breaking things is a terrible way to fix things.
Still, Caped Crusader is honest about the complicity of law enforcement. The mayor of Gotham wants to Serve and Protect only himself, and even in this retro setting without online media, public perception overrules reality. On top of keeping tabs on mob bosses, child kidnappers and hired assassins, Batman also has to fight police brutality, extrajudicial punishment and institutional decay. But he especially has to fight the darkness within himself, the insatiable rage that keeps his inner child from maturing. It's the same darkness that he perceives in Harvey Dent after his accident, and his failure to save Dent from succumbing to his demons is the turning point in the show's emotional journey. There's no inherent heroic destiny in Bruce Wayne; with his horrific origin story, he could easily have become another one of Gotham City's murderous madmen. What makes him heroic is that he wakes up every morning night and chooses not to.
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
