Batman The Animated Series: The Legend Begins contains the first 5 episodes of the animated Batman series produced and directed by Bruce Timm. I don't really know much about Batman apart from the films, of which I think Tim Burton's were the best, so I'm not looking at this DVD from the point of view of a real fan. (I sort of remember seeing some of these cartoons when I was a kid but nothing in detail.)
The general idea is of course that millionaire playboy by day Bruce Wayne is crime-fighting hero Batman by night, aided occasionally by youthful sidekick Robin and long-suffering butler Alfred. Not popular with the many super-villains that inhabit Gotham City, nor with one of the police detectives who's always trying to implicate him in the crimes he actually solves.
The animation isn't that great but is is very stylised, which works well, and it also utilises some very striking cinematic techniques so it's not all bad news by any means. The voice acting is pretty good, though the dialogue itself can be cringe-worthy - bad jokes and terrible lines abound, but it's all part of the fun really. The action sequences are particularly well
done, and the music suits the mysterious mood of the series very well. Alfred (the Butler) was frequently funny and certain things are at times hilarious, though I'm not altogether sure they were meant to be!
The five episodes in this collection are:
"On Leather Wings" - there seems to be a fake batman going around stealing chemicals, but who is it and why are they doing it?
"Christmas with The Joker" - The Joker is out of prison and running his own TV show, in which he promises to do away with his newly "acquired" (kidnapped) family unless Batman can rescue them before midnight on December 24th… meanwhile, all Robin really wants to do is watch "It's A Wonderful Life" - again!
"Nothing to Fear" - a psychiatrist gone bananas (hey I've worked with psychologists - most of them are bananas!) who specialises in fear and phobias has inevitably become a Gotham Super-Villain. He's after revenge on the University who threw him out for going too far in conducting his studies about fear on people…
"The Last Laugh" - that pesky Joker is at it again, turning everyone into a laughing maniac - things really get bad when Alfred goes berserk, and even Batman himself cracks a few jokes.
"Pretty Poison" - new District Attorney, Harvey Dent, finds himself in trouble when his new fiancé turns out to be more than meets the eye… one of Batman's most interesting enemies here in the form of Poison Ivy.
There are a couple of extras, namely a "How to Draw Batman" feature which just shows someone drawing Batman (speeded up) - er, exciting and useful? Well, maybe not. More interesting are the short (about 4 minutes) interviews with Director / Producer Bruce Timm - one for each episode. He briefly describes the development of the series and the episode, but more interestingly how the characters were developed. He talks with a refreshing candour and freely admits the things he wasn't good at and had to get help with (particularly the creation of the female characters), and the things in the series that didn't work very well. Timm's view is that some of the characters, especially The Joker and The Scarecrow, didn't really develop into their true forms until later on, and I think I'd have to agree with him. The Batman presented here was to be unique, drawing on the previous films and animated versions but with its own singular style focusing mainly on the mysterious side of Batman. I think this was partly successful, though the episode "The Last Laugh" really reminded me of the old Adam West film. Then again it would be too much to expect the style to be fully fledged this early on in the new series, where Timm and his team were still learning about the process of drawing and writing for this medium.
Overall Batman The Animated Series: The Legend Begins is mainly going to appeal to true Batman fans, but I found it quite entertaining, and feel inclined to watch later cartoons in the series to see how they develop. I marginally went against recommending this DVD generally - more episodes might have helped. It's not bad, but probably the first few episodes were the weakest - if I ever get round to watching later episodes so I can verify this, I'll let you know in the review!
Rating: PG for mild action, violence and peril - though people may drop from a high height they always seem to manage to land on something soft, and I don't think anyone actually gets killed in any episode.
(The DVD has an approximate runtime of 106 minutes and has the following language options:
Spoken language: English, French, Italian For the hearing impaired: English, Italian Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Dutch, Romanian, Arabic.
For some reason I'm unsure about the DVD I borrowed, despite saying it had Italian in the above formats, didn't seem to have it in any language!)
It retails at £13.99 which is very steep for only the 5 episodes but Amazon have it new for £4.97 which isn't too bad, especially if you're a batfan.
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