BATMAN BEYOND - SEASON TWO (DC COMICS CLASSIC COLLECTION) (1999)

Batman Beyond - Season Two (DC Comics Classic Collection) (1999)

Actors: Jane Alan, Rachael Leigh Cook, Yvette Lowenthal, Frank Welker

Format: Animated, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Subtitled, NTSC
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Number of discs: 4
Run Time: 544 minutes

Movie: * * *
Disc: * * ½

In this now sadly defunct 1999 animated TV series it is forty or so years in the future and Bruce Wayne (the original Batman) is simply too old to continue as the Dark Knight. However, when a high school teenager named Terry McGinnis discovers Wayne’s secret, he takes over as the “new” Batman, courtesy of a high-tech Bat suit and some fancy futuristic gizmos.

This highly imaginative show drops the whole Batman mythos off into a wildly futuristic cityscape that seems to owe more to Buck Rogers than it does to the original gloomy Gotham of the Tim Burton Batman movies. You’d expect the series to steal more from Frank Miller’s iconic Dark Knight Returns graphic novel than it ultimately does, but the truth is that Batman Beyond is still a kiddies show, albeit a rather dark one.

THE DISCS: Not much in the line of extras. Two audio commentaries and one panel discussion with the show’s producers.

WORTH IT? At times the futuristic setting seems just too futuristic – just how much will things have changed in forty years? But this is a minor kibble: the animation is good, the storylines original, the episodes kinetic enough to never lose one’s interest and the voice talent well-chosen.

RECOMMENDATION: What easily could have become “the new adventures of Robin” thankfully underplays any camp and avoids any lame one-liners. Batman Beyond will be appreciated by adult as well as younger comic book fans. Buy it today if you enjoyed the original animated Batman show of the early 1990s.

Here is a list of the episodes featured in Batman Beyond: Season Two.

1. Splicers
2. Earth Mover
3. Joyride
4. Lost Soul
5. Hidden Agenda
6. Bloodsport
7. Once Burned
8. Hooked Up
9. Rats
10. Mind Games
11. Revenant
12. Babel
13. Terry's Friend Dates a Robot
14. Eyewitness
15. Final Cut
16. The Last Resort
17. Armory
18. Sneak Peek
19. The Eggbaby
20. Zeta
21. Plague
22. April Moon
23. Sentries of the Last Cosmos
24. Payback
25. Where's Terry?
26. Ace in the Hole