Batman Beyond The Darkest Hero Ever Pitched To Children

Batman Beyond: The Darkest Hero Ever Pitched To Children

Despite its being made for kids, Batman Beyond delivered on the promise of dark vision in a dystopian future where a new hero dons the cowl.

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Batman Beyond The Darkest Hero Ever Pitched To Children

Forging a new take on DC’s fabled Dark Knight is a challenge many writers have tried their hand at, but few with the kind of success as Batman Beyond. When Batman: The Animated Series team members Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Alan Burnett created a new futuristic hero named Terry McGinnis in a decked-out techno-Batsuit in 1999, they had been tasked by Warner Brothers to develop a more kid-friendly program, offering a less obsessed hero than Bruce Wayne and a more youth-oriented high school setting. The result, which has now followed the character from the silver screen into multiple comic series with a rumored live-action film on the horizon, was ironically a far more brutal take on the saga of the Batman than had ever previously been showcased by Warner; a Gotham 50 years in the future crawling with murderous gangs, drug dealers and child traffickers, an aged, vastly weakened Bruce Wayne who has long since given up hope of saving his city, and a single teenaged boy who routinely places his life on the line to protect his young friends from deranged monsters and terrorists. In many ways, Batman Beyond may be the darkest hero ever intended to entertain children on Saturday mornings.

The story begins bleakly enough when Bruce Wayne, now at a highly advanced age, suffers a heart attack during a hostage situation as Batman, and in his desperation threatens a thug with a gun in self-defense. Vowing to never don the suit again, Bruce goes into seclusion until decades later Terry McGinnis steals the suit in order to take down Derek Powers, Bruce’s nominal business partner, who is in the midst of an illegal weapons deal. That’s right, at the beginning of the story, Wayne Enterprises has been taken over by Derek Powers, most likely because Bruce was too busy being Batman to manage the company properly, and is developing chemical weapons to sell on the black market.

Batman Beyond The Darkest Hero Ever Pitched To Children

While Terry arrives in the nick of time to end Powers’s plan, he’s far from the only monster in town. The Gotham that Terry is duty-bound to protect is positively swimming with dangerous psychopaths and not all of them wear a costume. Character designs were contributed by famed horror comics artists Howard Chaykin, Bret Blevins, and Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame, and were often understated and deceptively unthreatening. This quality, along with the oft-muted color palette used for the world, only enhanced how jarring the impact was when the villains, often unexpected, everyday people such as a greedy TV psychologist, a drug-running high school sports coach, or a love-deprived child wearing a Vader-esque cybernetic suit, revealed themselves. Sometimes these nefarious ne’er-do-wells would use social stigma or addiction to hook their victims, such as when disgraced school guidance counselor Spellbinder uses an all-encompassing virtual reality to coerce Terry’s friend and confidant Max Gibson into committing thefts for the sake of sating her addiction, a far cry from the more ghoulish and colorful rogues of the Batman of yesteryear.

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Indeed, Bruce Wayne’s presence as Terry’s guide and mentor is an exceptionally dark aspect of the world, not only because of the shock the audience feels as having some familiarity with the character yet seeing him as an embittered figure but also because of the commentary Bruce’s life as lived delivers on the premise of Batman as a whole. The Bruce of Batman Beyond is essentially the best future for him that could’ve been hoped for given the dangers he faced as Batman. He is alive. His secret identity has never been revealed. He has no family, but, given that he continued being Batman into at least his 50s, it would’ve been ethically questionable for him to subject this hypothetical family to his being Batman if he had continued. Traumatized and isolated though he may be, he has clearly saved Gotham a lot of heartache and agony over the years, and there’s something to be said for that.

But it was not enough. Gotham is still teeming with criminals, including multiple gangs of thugs who dress up as clowns in homage to his most twisted enemy and terrorize people in broad daylight with impunity. Those villains who do remain that we catch glimpses of, such as Bane, never reformed. While the city has not descended into anarchy, costumed maniacs and super-powered mercenaries run amock, sowing mass destruction and beaming life-like hallucinations into peoples’ heads. However well Batman of the past did in fighting crime, it was not enough. And part of the message was it never would’ve been anyway.

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Batman Beyond The Darkest Hero Ever Pitched To Children

Despite this seeming failure and the numerous other failures of Bruce’s past we see illuminated as Batman Beyond has continued, Terry needs Bruce, not only for his gadgets and suit but because Terry isn’t as smart as Bruce and is constantly getting himself into dangerous situations due to his inexperience. This was always a big part of Batman Beyond as well: the brutal violence Terry often suffered as punishment for his own foolhardiness, and how he was forced to learn from his mistakes. Perhaps it is this foundational realism that gave the world of Batman Beyond its “nasty edge” as Timm called it in his DVD audio commentary for the series.

It was the thematic resonance of serious issues that set Batman Beyond apart. Routinely addressing issues such as emotional abandonment, spousal abuse, psychological torture and school-centered terroristic violence, the writers were not afraid to go places that might seem more fitting for adult-oriented entertainment.

Perhaps this is why the character, despite having had a rocky sales-life in recent years, has remained an enduring symbol of the DC Universe and is rumored to be getting a live-action reboot from DC. Even Christopher Nolan may have taken a tip or two from the character treatment, with two plot points from his seminal hit 2008’s The Dark Knight taking influence from the television program: those being the line “let’s put a smile on his face,” as said by a random knife-wielding Jokerz gang member in the animated series pilot, and the episode in which Batman Beyond villain Shriek holds the city hostage unless Terry gives himself up, leading to the public calling for him to do so in a moment similar to the middle of the film.

Regardless of the intent the creators had when marketing the character for kids, Batman Beyond remains a staple of the DC Universe over twenty years after its creation for delivering on the promise of a dark vision in a dystopian future where a new hero dons the cowl.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/batman-beyond-darkest-hero-kids-dc-comics/

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