The Batman: The Complete Series [Blu-Ray]

Cast: Rino Romano, Alastair Duncan, Kevin Michael Richardson (VOICES)

Release Date: March 1, 2022

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 7.5/10

Synopsis:

The Batman: The Complete Series follows 20-something-year-old Bruce Wayne’s early adventures as he balances his daytime persona as a bachelor billionaire with his nighttime guise as a caped crimefighter. Along the way, Batman is joined by allies Robin and Batgirl as they combat Gotham City’s Rogues’ Gallery, including updated versions of his familiar foes as well as a bevy of rarely seen villains like Killer Moth and The Everywhere Man. Join one of the most complex and intriguing character in comic book history for action-packed super heroic adventures that test the limits of this legendary character’s extraordinary physical prowess and super-sleuthing skills.

Please Note: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

The animated series ‘The Batman’ follows Bruce Wayne in his younger years, still new to his crime fighting days as the Dark Knight and struggling to balance his life between the two personas. Featuring a revamped animation style and a fresh voice cast, the animated series accompanies the caped crusader as he makes alliances with local police and even a few young apprentices down the road while facing off with many of his notable foes including everyone from The Joker, Penguin and The Riddler to Firefly, Scarface and Bane along with many more. So gather up the DC fans young and old and get ready to revisit all five seasons of this animated Batman series, now available on Blu-ray for the first time!

‘The Batman: The Complete Series’ brings all 65 episodes from the animated show’s five-season run home on Blu-ray for the first time, and with every episode in its original widescreen format as it was initially created prior to being cropped to 4×3 for its television broadcasts as well as the season releases on DVD, and with highly capable DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks that together may not be entirely flawless but certainly look and sound far better than the series ever has prior.

This altogether enjoyable animated series that debuted a few years after ‘Batman Beyond’ concluded may not hold a candle to the phenomenal ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ but certainly still makes for a quite solid animated Batman series that does a decent job of finding a middle ground in tone to appease kids and adults. It keeps things a bit less dramatic and dark and the animation style is wildly different and not only flashier but often a bit lazy, particularly with the background animation (or lack thereof). Fortunately, some clever new takes on fan-favorite villains, a solid voice cast led by Rino Romano as Batman/Bruce Wayne and a number of other positive elements all add up to a show that is an awful lot of fun and quite faithful to the DC hero in its own right. I would recommend giving the show a whirl if you’re a fan of Batman but haven’t had the pleasure of this animated series because you might just be pleasantly surprised with how enjoyable and solid it actually is.

Overall, ‘The Batman: The Complete Series’ swoops onto Blu-ray for the first time ever with all five seasons sporting their original widescreen presentations as originally created prior to being cropped for television airings and subsequent DVD releases. Featuring all 65 episodes of the series (only the straight to DVD film ‘The Batman vs. Dracula’ which isn’t an actual episode is absent from the set) split between 6 discs and featuring fairly decent, although somewhat imperfect high definition video presentations for each, paired with solid DTS-HD MA soundtracks and a handful of extras new and old. Even if there are some minor issues with the video presentations, it still looks and sounds far superior to any previous release of the show and diehard Bat-fans as well as fans of this cartoon series in particular will probably want to consider picking it up. If you’re already considering a purchase, it’s definitely recommended.

VIDEO:

The Blu-ray release of ‘The Batman: The Complete Series’ features a full 1080p High Definition presentation on every episode of the animated series, fully remastered and for the first time with the show’s original 1.78:1 Widescreen Aspect Ratio in which the series was originally created prior to being cropped to 4×3 for broadcast as well as DVD. These newly remastered video presentations look great in many ways and deliver sharp detail and vibrant colors, with few issues present on the characters front and center, although it does suffer from an excessive amount of banding primarily noticeable on the bland animated backgrounds which can be somewhat distracting throughout. Fortunately the episodes deliver quite capably otherwise aside from a few minor occurrences of video noise and the like and they still look significantly better than ever before, as well as finally providing us the full picture on the left and right as intended. Overall, these are fairly solid high definition video presentations that have some minor issues but still look quite great altogether and should largely please the fans.

AUDIO:

The Blu-ray release includes a 2.0 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on all 65 episodes of the animated series. These lossless two channel soundtracks offer crisp, clean and well balanced audio presentations on each episode without any problems or inconsistencies to be uncovered along the way. They capably balance all of the audio content within, keeping the action sequences and explosions sharp and fittingly aggressive at times, while also making certain that all dialogue and other audio elements remain clean and fully audible throughout, especially when occurring simultaneously. Overall, these are great 2.0 DTS-HD MA soundtracks that do their job well without any issues and should more than satisfy fans.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The Blu-ray release of ‘The Batman: The Complete Series’ includes some entertaining bonus content including the brand new Featurette ‘The Dark Dynasty Continues’ (running approximately 16 minutes in length). The release also includes a handful of previously released Featurettes, Games, Quizzes for kids and other fun videos including ‘The Batman: Season 3 Unmasked’ (running approximately 8 minutes), ‘Joining Forces: The Batman’s Legendary Team-ups’ (approximately 25 minutes), ‘The Batman: Season 4 Unmasked’ (9 minutes), ‘The Batman Junior Detective Challenge’ (5 minutes), ‘The Batman Junior Detective Challenge Level 2’ (5 minutes), along with ‘Building The Batman’ (7 minutes), ‘Gotham PD Case Files’ (6 minutes) and ‘New Look, New Direction, New Knight’ (6 minutes).

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Blu-Ray and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this Blu-Ray release are the property of their respective owners.

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Disc Rating: 7.5/10

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‘The Batman: The Complete Series’ is Now Available to Own in High Definition on Blu-ray from DC & Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

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