September 22, 2010
Batman Beyond
Review By: Intel (Reviewer forum)
Year: Jan 10, 1999 - Dec 18, 2001
Produced By: WB Television Network and DC Comics
Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: Very High
Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: High
Key Cast Members:
Another gem from the forums. I actually watched the series when it first came out on TV. Never really thought of it to be cyberpunk, but Intel not only believes it to be, but also thought it to be very good as well, and responders agree with him. I’m going to see if I can acquire the series, so let’s see what intel Intel has…
List of some cyberpunk themes:
Story: 20 years after the last batman episode, Batman now has an advanced exoskeleton-type suit, but is suffering from age. While fighting a group of kidnappers, he has a heart attack and is forced to use a gun to fend of the criminals. He then give up his batman identity and the story jumps ahead 20 more years to year 2039.
Now we shift over to Terry McGinnis, an athletic 16-year-old high school student and ex-troublemaker with a sense of justice. In the pilot episode, Terry saves a fellow passenger on a commuter rail from a member of the Jokerz gang, and then takes on an entire gang of Jokerz to defend his girlfriend, resulting in a high-speed motorcycle chase. The chase ends on the grounds of Wayne Manor, where Terry runs into the elderly Bruce Wayne. Bruce and Terry fend off the Jokerz together, but the fight causes Wayne’s heart condition to act up. Terry helps Bruce back to the manor and, while staying there, he discovers the entrance to the Batcave. Chased out by Bruce, Terry comes home to discover that his father had been murdered by the vengeful Jokerz, and later returns to “borrow” the Batsuit to avenge the death of his father. As crime and corruption are beginning once again to rear their ugly heads in Gotham, Bruce ultimately allows Terry to assume the mantle of Batman.
Overview: We now find gotham to be a huge, sprawling metropolis of skyscrapers, metro-rails, and hover-cars. the wealthy live in the penthouses and crime a poor are left to the ancient alleyways. criminals are now high-tech assasins, genetically-engineered low lifes, CEO’s of megacorporations, and even a few rampant AI.
Visuals: the show is full of grungy buildings, neon signs, and power cables. It also has an interesting mix of japanese and english written on many of the signs. The hover cars and metro rails add a nice touch to the scenes. The show usually takes place at night, adding to the mood, and shows lots of scenes of batman soaring through the skyline with his new flight capabilities.
Conclusion: It is by far one of the darkest shows to ever run on a daytime children’s cartoon channel,
and had surprisingly complex themes for its young viewers. If you’ve never heard of it, just watch the opening video here to see what I mean:
Postscript from Mr. Roboto. A couple of things to watch for while watching this series. First off, some of the old enemies reappear in some form, either as “aged” forms or as “trophies” Bruce keeps.
Second, there’s a season two episode called “Project: Zeta” which lead to a spin-off series, The Zeta Project. It’s about a killer robot who chooses not to kill and runs away with a girl who teaches it how to be human. This series I have got to acquire to review… unless I see it in our reviewer forum first…
Comments
September 22, 2010
turn.self.off said:
This is indeed a impressive show, but then the batman series that it spun of from (it even gets mentions later on in the justice league series that followed up on the batman and superman series) was also quite a impressive creation.
SSJKamui said:
Thanks for uploading another user Review. I am glad to see that you continued it. Thanks.
The photos you chose are pretty good to show the Cyberpunk style of the series.:thumb: (Because for a long time, you stopped uploading user reviews, I though maybe you have decided to cease it completely, but I am glad to see you didn’t.)
zenneeker said:
Phantom 2040 did this concept five years before Batman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_2040
SSJKamui said:
Thanks for the info about Phantom 2040. I never heard about that. Perhaps, this would be qualify for review, too.
September 23, 2010
Nell Kusanagi said:
Great to see a review of the Batman Beyond series, could have taken the detail up a notch. Haha, when i was 12, he was the guy i most wanted to be! Awesome batsuit, (batrophones in his fingertips, stealth batouflage, jet-batoboots, batwings), a sweet bat plane and a hot girlfriend. All in a cyberpunk future where you drove hovercars to batschool…i mean highschool.
I never figured out why he was such an angst ridden teen who’d rather hang at the mall and techno raves (he was 16, right?) than fly around, messing with bat-gadgets and whooping ass.
deneneneh BATMAN!
Hammerjack said:
Don’t bother with Zeta Project. It took a character from this dark cyberpunk batman storyline and threw him into the daylight. There is nothing cyberpunk about it. While Zeta is a robot, he spends most of the series using the same human form so as not to confuse any children watching.
September 26, 2010
turn.self.off said:
Not sure phantom 2040 is worth the watch, the artwork is basically weird. Much prefer the batman beyond art.
zenneeker said:
Nothing wrong with Phantom 2040’s look. It was drawn by the same guy who did the designs for Aeon Flux, and it shows.
September 27, 2010
Leo said:
I hate it when the hero is a young teenager. Why do all heroes are teenagers nowadays?. Haven’t seen the series but letme guess… the kid goes to school, ans is considered a freak, (he gets beat up by bullies) he is in love with the cheerleader, who is engaged with the quarterback. Then the kid somehow gets the power and saves the girl and kicks the boyfriend ass. Then the girl falls in love with him, never knowing his real identity. Ah, he solves crimes or fights injustice while in free time.
Please tellme I am wrong! why do all american series/movies fall in this refried plot? (transformers, spiderman movie, dragonball evolution, etc, etc)
turn.self.off said:
nope he is actually a successful member of the school wrestling team, and have a girlfriend. Part of show comes with balancing that with his crime fighting.
And i think they go with the teen angle because the series are broadcast towards kids (dark theme and all), and having a character closer to their own age may work better (or so at least marketing probably reasons).
Anonymous said:
Wow.The Review was uploaded last week and has already got 10 comments.
September 30, 2010
Marc McKenzie said:
A fantastic series, one that was pretty dark for American animation. I am surprised that most people do not view it as cyberpunk, since it covers a lot of themes normally associated with cyberpunk.
October 2, 2010
Drraagh said:
Why Batman would take on “such an angst ridden teen who’d rather hang at the mall and techno raves (he was 16, right?) than fly around, messing with bat-gadgets and whooping ass”, check out the Justice League Unlimited episode “Epilogue”.
October 4, 2010
Skrýmir said:
I’m sorry to say that while i see how it is cyberpunk, I can’t relate to the 9 stars rating. Maybe as a Batman fan i can’t get around Terry as a Character. But i’d have given it 6 or 7. The main draw to Batman for me anyway is Bruce Wayne, not the Costume or the gadgets, it’s Bruce Wayne’s well developed character, one of the only believable comic book heroes personality wise, this was too much Gadgets and Nostalgic “When i was in that situation…” Moments. Let’s face it, we had New Bane, a new Joker Crew, a horrible return of the original Joker, Mr. Freeze was the only interesting return. There were some good epsidoes in the series, namely the first 2, some of the ones about Splicing, and the others about the Teenage Rehab Camp that was very Orwellian. There were some cool new villains, one that used sound, and MAD STAN! The other ones were just shallow interpretations of old Batman Villains If i were to rate it on some of those episodes I’d say an 9 was reasonable, but if you watched the whole series, there weren’t enough of those episodes.
The Zeta Project unfortuantely never realized it’s potential it got cnacelled durrin gthe big WB Saturday morning fallout after the Original Batman Animated series was over. It went down with some of the other strong starters, and second season half assers like Static Shock. Good luck finding it, and if you do let us know, it was pretty good, on par with Batman Beyond. There was a fallowup episode to the first Zeta episode that took place within the Zeta Series timeline with Mad Stan in it.
As for Drraagh’s question. Batman took in Jason Todd didn’t he.
October 6, 2010
Nell Kusanagi said:
My bad, Terry’s 17, and to anyone dismayed from watching because of the young age of the protaganist, he’s quite mature as he takes care of his Mom and lil Bro since his Dad died.
He did some time in juvenile prison (he actually steals the batsuit), he’s got a steady girlfriend (though he does occasionally cheat), plays a couple team sports, gets average grades and mostly hangs out with nerds and his gf’s friends. The maturity keeps in line with that of ‘Batman: the animated series”.
ALSO a live action movie was planned with NEAL STEPHENSON as a consultant writer, but Warner Bros went with Nolan’s Batman Begins instead. Can you imagine:
Batman(Nolan)+Cyberpunk (Stephenson)= so SCHWAY!
October 13, 2010
James said:
Very awesome show. The Hub started airing it yesterday with the episode “Rebirth,” which brought back memories. Channel numbers can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hub_(TV_network)
October 19, 2010
Anonymous said:
thank you so much, I just discovered this show, and it’s all I ever wanted. It’s just perfect
October 28, 2010
Sunolet said:
i remember watching this when i was a kid (came on right after another futuristic/cyberpunk show that depicted sherlock holmes waking up in the future and doing futuristic reboots of his cases) always loved that show, unfortunately some “concerned parents” (crazy religious nutjobs) wrote in to the station and told them that the show was inherently evil or some bollocks like that, and they kept on doing this until eventually the show was pulled off the air
The Korho said:
I remember that Sherlock Holmes show too
Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_in_the_22nd_Century
Has some vague cyberpunk interest, maybe CPR could review it?
The Korho said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nkn8n18yS7A
November 16, 2010
turn.self.off said:
Static shock can be found in the one place where anything can be found
March 14, 2011
RajahBrooke said:
Phantom 2040 is amazing, if you can get your hands on it. It was drawn by Peter Chung - so if you like the look of Aeon Flux, you’ll probably love it. In fact, the only reason not to watch it is if you don’t like his artwork (admittedly, it’s not for everyone) The animation isn’t the best (pretty standard 90s fare), but the characters are crisp and distinctive. Also, the show is considerably more serialised than Batman Beyond, and has an amazing voice cast: Mark Hamil and Ron Perlman, among others. It’s also, in my opinion, much more cyberpunk than Batman Beyond, both in aesthetics and themes - it has futuristic versions of hackers (called sliders - who essentially live online through avatars) a version of the world wide web called ICE (one character says “in my day we called it cyberspace […] the 90s were a simpler time”). Also, the big bad is a corporation called Maximum Inc. led by a power crazed, elitist mother and son, with a super-computer containing the consciousness of its founder. It has lots of stuff about individuality and ecology thrown in for good measure. To be honest, if you liked Batman Beyond, you should absolutely adore Phantom 2040.