Writers: Alan Burnett, Paul Dini, Martin Pasko, Michael Reaves
Producers: Alan Burnett, Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm
Directors: Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm
Batman: Batman, erm, I mean, Kevin Conroy
Time indexes from the widescreen edition 1999 Region 1 DVD.
00:00:11 -- The Warner Bros "Family Entertainment" logo, with Bugs, reminds us this is an animated feature. Warner Bros., of course, has a long and distinguished history in animation, and in the early 1990s was going through something of a renaissance of its animation department, led by the efforts of twin shows TINY TOONS and ANIMANIACS, as well as the vastly different but no less successful BATMAN.
00:00:22 -- Here we see a CGI version of Gotham City, the only CGI in the entire film, the rest being traditionally animated. Early on in production of the BATMAN animated series, there was a thought of producing a CGI version of Gotham for consistent backgrounds, but the animation team never managed to make it look good enough for producer's satisfaction (thank Zod!) Meanwhile, the team behind the 1994 SPIDER-MAN animated series actually did this, and it looked terrible.
00:00:32 -- Any discussion of MASK OF THE PHANTASM must first address the 1992 BATMAN animated series. Debuting after the release of BATMAN RETURNS, the series was entirely possible because of the success of the Tim Burton movies, which developers Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski used to prove to the studio that a "dark" take on Batman would be successful. The resulting series was a mishmash of influences -- a timeless, 1940s-and-yet-today setting and Dark Deco design inspired by Burton's first film, an animation style inspired by the 1940s Max Fleischer SUPERMAN animated shorts, stories primarily inspired by the Bronze Age of Batman comics (1970-1986), and an adult storytelling sensibility reminiscent of Warner Bros. crime dramas of the 1940s -- the series nonetheless worked like gangbusters. It was the only superhero cartoon of its time to depict realistic firearms, realistic fighting, violence, crime, psychology and other mature (for the genre) storylines. With topnotch voice acting, topnotch writing, and topnotch animation, the series was, and is, for many fans, THE Batman. Critically acclaimed and a ratings smash, the series has had its influence on almost all subsequent depictions of the Dark Knight in some way. Having produced 65 phenomenally successful episodes in its first year of production, Warner Bros. asked for a feature version of the series for a direct-to-video release. Freed of the constraints of the network's broadcast standards and practices, the show's writers and producers reached for an even darker, more psychological, more gothic tone than what they had already achieved on the series. Work on PHANTASM greatly impressed Warners, who ordered that the feature be retooled and enhanced for theatrical release in December -- about eight months away. The end result was a critically acclaimed film that many preferred to the live action releases.
00:00:49 -- All the writers on PHANTASM were established staff writers from the series. Burnett and Dini in particular were greatly responsible for some of the series biggest successes.
00:01:20 -- This awesome music you're listening to is a choral version of Shirley Walker's Batman theme. Walker composed the music for both this film and the series, scoring and recording a unique score for every single episode as if it were a movie -- an extremely rare process for an animated series, which normally reuse the same six-eight tracks of music for its entire run. Walker had conducted the orchestras which had recorded Danny Elfman's scores for Burton's films. While the intro sequence to the series used Elfman's music, within the episodes themselves Batman was accompanied by Walker's own theme music, heard here in a grand, dramatic arrangement.
00:01:25 -- In animated features, a sequence director may handle one specific, particularly complex, setpiece, say a large fight, chase or other complicated sequence, even while the overall film is supervised by a single director. All the names here are experienced episode directors from the series.
00:01:44 -- Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm developed the BATMAN series, and Timm went on to expand its success into SUPERMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN BEYOND and a host of direct-to-video features. Often the animated DC universe he forged is referred to as the "Timmverse".
00:01:50 -- Here, as on the show, the sky of Gotham is blood red and hazy. It doesn't make sense, but it feels right, somehow. Radomski, before production began on the show, gave marching orders to the animation studios that the backgrounds be drawn on black paper, as opposed to white, which right away started giving the show it's distinctive "dark" look. The show, and this film, were traditionally animated using cels, and the dark backdrop often meant that dust caught between layers and scratches on the cels showed up far more prominently than in most other cartoons, but the producers decided they liked it, as it gave the show a weathered "old" look even when it was brand new.
00:02:24 -- The character designs are based on Bruce Timm's artstyle, and his look for Batman comes from a few sources, including Dick Sprang, Neal Adams, Frank Miller and Bob Kane. The combination produced a look that ends up being basically "classic Batman".
00:02:32 -- Animated series on TV, for children, were not allowed to show realistic guns at the time BATMAN was made. This is why the NYPD in the 1994 SPIDER-MAN show used laser guns. Timm and Radomski fought and won this point however, simply saying "can you picture Batman fighting mobsters with laser guns?"
00:03:10 -- The titular Phantasm character. The word "Phantasm" is actually never said in the movie, which renders the title a little odd, but luckily plenty of Phantasm toys and mechandise were there so smooth over any confusion. The character is original to the movie, but loosely based on "The Reaper" created by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis from the 1987 BATMAN: YEAR TWO storyline, which MASK OF THE PHANTASM takes some inspiration from. In the comics, The Reaper was a death-dealing vigilante who had murdered Gotham crime bosses twenty years before the Batman, and who returned to fight the Dark Knight in his second year of crimefighting. His identity ultimately turned out to be Judson Caspian, the father of Bruce Wayne's then-current love interest Rachel Caspian. The Phantasm here is loosely based on these ideas, but plays with them and turns them on their head, as we'll see.
00:03:58 -- The slightly "irised in" edge of the frame here, where the upper left curve of the screen is black, was a unique feature of the show's film noir inspired look.
00:04:18 -- This sequence of Chucky Sol trying to run down the Phantasm, right down to the mobster's dialogue, is very similar to a sequence in an episode of the series, "Robin's Reckoning, Part I", where mobster Tony Zucco tries to run down the Batman.
00:04:36 -- One of the greater freedoms doing the feature gave the writers was the ability to kill characters onscreen. While BATMAN often got away with things other shows couldn't (most kids shows weren't even allowed to use the words "death" or "kill" in any variation, or have a character die at all), it still couldn't have onscreen death. So the writers get a little bloodthirsty in this flick.
00:05:07 -- City councilman Arthur Reeves first appeared in Detective Comics #399 (May, 1970), created by Dennis O'Neil and Bob Brown. Many elements of the television series were inspired by the 1970s comic stories of O'Neil and Steve Englehart, but Reeves, a recurring character in the comics who spoke out against Batman in the political arena, only appeared in animation in this feature.
00:05:11 -- The animated version of Gordon is an amalgam of the 1970s O'Neil and Englehart older version with the more take-charge 1980s revision from Frank Miller, voiced to perfection by Bob Hastings. Gung-ho, intelligent, loyal and one of the few city officials who openly trusts Batman in this version of the story, this Gordon is a sharp contrast to the Pat Hingle depiction appearing in the live action films.
00:05:17 -- Also seen in the wide shot here are Detective Harvey Bullock, on the far left, and news anchorwoman Summer Gleason on the far right. Bullock first appeared in Detective Comics #441, by Archie Goodwin and Howard Chaykin, and was a recurring character on the show -- a tough, no-nonsense MCU detective with a penchant for donuts and overeating and a hatred of Batman, but fiercely loyal to his partner Renee Montoya and his commander, Gordon, who he calls "the Commish." Gleason was an original creation of the show, but loosely based on Vicki Vale -- an investigative reporter for Gotham TV news.
00:05:39 -- The animated Alfred, voiced by Efrem Zimbalist Jr., was very much inspired by the dry wit of Frank Miller's depiction, often chiding and supporting Bruce in a single jab.
00:05:41 -- Bruce Wayne/Batman, voiced by Kevin Conroy, who managed to turn the role into a career, voicing the character through the BATMAN series and its feature spin-offs, THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES, JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN BEYOND and several video games and other direct-to-video projects. Conroy followed the lead of previous superhero voice actors like Bud Collyer by choosing to pitch the voices of Batman and Bruce Wayne lower and higher respectively, but used the Batman variation as Bruce's "real voice", such as when he is speaking casually to Alfred, using the higher tone only as a "public" Bruce Wayne. His Batman voice is unique in that while it is deep, authoritative, and utterly fits the character, it doesn't attempt any kind've Clint Eastwood growl or rasp, and thus sounds much more natural. PHANTASM features many flashbacks to Bruce's youth, where we'll hear Conroy use an even lighter pitch for young Bruce. In a superbly subtle move, Conroy gradually pitched Batman's voice lower and lower as he worked on the character, simulating Bruce's fall into darkness vocally, until finally the old, bitter man of BATMAN BEYOND sounds completely different from the Bruce we hear here. To this day, many Batman fans cite Conroy's voice as the one they hear when reading the comics, and make similar comments about his animated co-stars.
00:06:07 -- Andrea Beaumont, voiced by Dana Delany. Delany's performance here so impressed the producers that it won her the role of Lois Lane when they produced the SUPERMAN animated series in 1996.
00:07:27 -- Bruce as a dashing, layabout playboy. This is, of course, a cover persona designed to draw suspicion away from the idea that he and the Batman are one and the same. The idea that Bruce is a somewhat lazy, good for nothing socialite with a penchant for dating and dropping high society women dates to the earliest Bob Kane/Bill Finger comics. Burton preferred to characterize Bruce as a mysterious, socially awkward loner in order to emphasize his outsider nature -- which, y'know, would make him obviously Batman.
00:08:11 -- This film is going to deal very heavily with Bruce's past (failed) love life, so I'll give some words to the past (failed) attempts at giving him a love interest in the comics. Early on, he had a fianceé named Julie Madison, but Bruce never took the relationship seriously and the character was mainly used as a damsel in distress type and soon discarded. After that there was Linda Page, a WWII era Nurse who loved Bruce but wished did more with his life to help people, like the Batman. She was used onscreen for the 1943 serial. After her came Vicki Vale, a Lois Lane rip-off who appeared in the 1949 serial and of course the 1989 flick. In the late fifties and early sixties there was Kathy Kane, aka Batwoman, a character created as a love interest in a desperate attempt to quell accusations that Batman was gay. She dropped out of the comics in 1964 only to reappear in 2006, completely revamped and retooled, ironically as a lesbian character. Regular romance eluded Batman until the 1977/78 STRANGE APPARITIONS storyline which introduced Silver St. Cloud, but she left Bruce after figuring out his identity. The most regular romantic entanglements Batman has had have in fact been with his enemies: Catwoman, since 1940, a kind've eternal will-they-won't-they and Talia al Ghul, since 1971 a character who ended up becoming technically married to Bruce and fathering a child of his without consent (it's a long story). Of note to this film is the BATMAN: YEAR TWO storyline, where Bruce falls in love with Rachel Caspian and fantasizes about a future with her after Gotham no longer needs Batman, but of course, circumstance pulls them apart. Elements of this character are remixed for Andrea Beaumont here, and much later in the character of Rachel Dawes in Christopher Nolan's films.
00:08:35 -- Here's our first flashback. This movie has a dense flashback structure for a kid's animated flick, in large part due to the film noir influences upon it. In fact, the overall genre of the film really does fit the classic noir structure, for all you cinemaphiles out there.
00:09:50 -- "I made a vow," In the original comics, the night after his parents are murdered, young Bruce Wayne made a vow to "avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals". That short bit of business goes a long way to explaining Batman to me: namely, that the concept is the concept of a child, but a child's dream that the adult never let go of. Most people grow out of their childhood fantasies when the adult world presents them with the real challenges of life and love, and in some ways PHANTASM is about seeing this struggle in Bruce, and the consequences of the childhood dream come reality (Bruce) or the dream destroyed (Andrea).
00:11:04 -- The notion of Bruce going out to fight crime pre-Batman, and being a complete failure because the criminals aren't afraid of him, inspiring the notion that he has to strike terror into their hearts, is taken from Frank Miller's BATMAN: YEAR ONE, specifically Batman #404 (February, 1987). Of course, in that version Bruce was fighting pimps and hookers instead of robbers, but that's a little too mature. The balaclava seen here would end up getting referenced in BATMAN BEGINS' own version of Bruce's first failed night out.
00:12:21 -- Check out young, Patrolman Bullock.
00:14:04 -- Good freeze frame gag, the smaller headline reads: Radomski to Press, "I'm Innocent!"
00:20:03 -- Commissioner Gordon to Tim Burton, "The Batman does NOT kill! Period!"
00:21:31 -- That's what you get when you stand dramatically in front of your parents graves dressed as Batman, Bruce. People tend to start putting two and two together.
00:22:46 -- The "Gotham World's Fair" seen here is largely based on the 1939 New York World's Fair. The design sensibility's of that expo's "World of Tomorrow" theme was a big influence on the design sensibilities of the BATMAN producers, who imagined their show set in a world where the Art Deco movement never ended and the 1939 World of Tomorrow had become the World of Today. This film literalizes the influence, showing how the Gotham World's Fair has influenced modern Gotham in some ways, while also reinforcing the film's themes of lost dreams in others.
00:23:03 -- The World of the Future ride seen here is inspired by the "Futurama" exhibit GM displayed at the 1939 World's Fair.
00:23:45 -- Gee, the Automobile of the Future sure looks like something familiar doesn't it? Bruce Timm's design for the series Batmobile was relatively unique, resembling past designs enough to be recognizable but mostly coming from his own sensibilities. The gag here that it was a concept car Bruce bought or remade in some way is a reference to the famous 1966 television Batmobile, which was based off a 1957 Lincoln Futura concept car.
00:24:47 -- Carl Beaumont is voiced by Stacy Keach, who also voices the Phantasm. Mystery solved, right?
00:25:58 -- Sal Valestra, the mobster we saw earlier in the flick as a wheezing old man, is voiced by Abe Vigoda, who played Sal Tessio in THE GODFATHER.
00:28:19 -- Bruce trying to figure out his superhero persona on a dark and stormy night in Wayne Manor. If this were Detective Comics #33, Bruce's musings about how to scare criminals would be interrupted by a bat flying through the window, and voilá! But PHANTASM has a different scenario to play out.
00:28:36 -- There goes that bat. But the window is closed and Bruce doesn't see it. He has Andrea on his mind. Unlike Nolan's Batfilms, where the love of a woman tempts Bruce away from the war on crime after it has already begun, here we have the interesting scenario of Bruce being tempted away at a more vunerable point -- before Batman has ever really had a chance to begin.
00:29:33 -- "I don't wanna let you down, honest, but, it just doesn't hurt so bad anymore! You can understand that can't you? Look, I can give money to the city, they can hire more cops, let someone else take the risk but it's different now! Please! I need it to be different now! I know I made a promise, but I didn't see this coming. I didn't count on being happy. Please, tell me that it's okay." Bruce's desperate plea to his dead parents to let him out of his vow, as the rain pours down and the lightning flashes, is probably my all time favourite scene in any Batman media. One of the more extreme notions of Batman is that this man has kept alive the pain of his parents deaths and continues to do so in order to motivate his war. But for most of us, that kind've pain heals, and it heals when we find someone else in our lives, like Bruce has here. It's the classic "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". Or to use another quote "You wanted certain things, but stuff is different now." It's a powerful notion that the one thing that might've defeated Batman, before he even started, was the love of a woman. But this is a noir, so it's not gonna be that simple.
00:31:45 -- O'Neil Funding Corp. and Adams Tool and Dye is a reference to Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams, the writer/artist team largely credited with returning Batman to his darker roots in 1970 after the reign of the campy Adam West Batman, initiating the Bronze Age of Batman comics that the animated series took much inspiration from.
00:35:00 -- Bruce's dialogue implies that he didn't know the batcaves where beneath Wayne Manor, which implies that he didn't fall down into them as a child, a secondary part of the Batman origin that wasn't established until sometime in the seventies or eighties. While most famously used in Dennis O'Neil's THE MAN WHO FALLS (1989), this element was already present in Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS (1986), but even there if feels like a reference to already established lore. Unfortunately, my usual encyclopedic knowledge of Batman fails me, as the earliest reference to it I know of is in Miller.
00:34:04 -- It's hard to tell, as it's all in shadows, but the Batman costume Bruce is donning for the first time features gloves without the "fins" and a utility belt of pouches instead of capsules, both elements of the early Bob Kane Batman costume and "Year One" look as illustrated by David Mazzuchelli.
00:37:17 -- Oh snap, Joker's in this movie?! The animated Joker was and is considered a definitive take on the character by many, combining both the silly clown and deadly serial killer into one unpredictable package, a characterization that in many ways comes from Dennis O'Neil's version in Batman #251 (September, 1973) and Steve Englehart's version in Detective Comics #475 (February, 1978). The character evolved throughout the series, becoming darker and darker in nature, and PHANTASM was a chance for the writers to really showcase this darker Joker for the first time in many ways. Oh, and he's voiced by Mark Hamill, better known as Luke Skywalker, who is completely unrecognizable in the role. His unique shifts in vocal pitch and his take on Joker's laugh have become iconic. Like Conroy, Hamill's voice has become almost synonymous with the role among fans, and he's lasted just as long as the character, finally retiring after voicing the Clown Prince of Crime in the video game ARKHAM CITY. Writer Alan Burnett had originally intended PHANTASM to avoid using any members of Batman's traditional rogues gallery, wanting specifically to tell a story he couldn't on the regular show. The producers were also cautious about using Joker, not wanting to invite any association with Tim Burton's BATMAN. But when the writers realized they could use Joker in a different and darker fashion than they had on the series, they relented.
00:43:13 -- The animated version of the Batplane is very much based on the one from the first Tim Burton film. The producers often shied away from using it, as they felt giving Batman a big UFO plane to fly around Gotham was almost too much.
00:44:57 -- This entire sequence of the police SWAT teams pursuing Batman into the construction site, which later explodes, and failing to capture him is in large part inspired by the similar sequence of Batman fighting the GCPD in an abandoned tenement building in BATMAN: YEAR ONE, specificaly Batman #406 (April, 1987). Construction sites have been popular locales for fight scenes in Batman since 1939, including several previous instances on the animated series, including its first episode "On Leather Wings", which also features Batman being hunted by a SWAT team.
00:46:25 -- Okay, as cool as this all is, this thing with the sawhorse makes no sense. To the audience it works, but internally, what the hell just happened? Batman was in the direct line of the helicopter's floodlights, he fires the grapple at the helicopter, is pulled toward it, but when they fire it's just his cape and cowl covering a sawhorse. When did Batman fall away? Where did he get the sawhorse? How did he have time to rig it to the grapple line and the cape? How did he do all of this without anyone seeing, when he was in full direct view of everyone? He's the Batman, I guess.
00:52:32 -- Debuting soon after the Burton films, the animated series used the film's origin for the Joker by implication. Here we have confirmation that the animated Joker was a mafia hitman before the showdown at the Chemical plant, similar to his background in Burton's movie.
01:00:16 -- The face behind the mask of the Phantasm is, of course, the film's big mystery and here's the big reveal. Unfortunately it's a reveal that was spoiled ahead of time for anyone collecting the film's toyline. The Phantasm action figure was packaged with the mask off and to the side, with Andrea Beaumont's face in full view for all to see.
01:02:26 -- The Batcycle, a vehicle which got a fair amount of use in the animated series, first appeared on the 1966 series in the first season. It has since appeared in the comics and other media. On the cartoon, Batman always wore a cowl-shaped helmet over his regular mask when riding the motorcycle, presumably so kids wouldn't think it was okay to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. However the helmet is absent here.
01:05:02 -- The fight between Batman and Joker in the model of Gotham City references a few ideas. First, and most obviously, it's a gag on Godzilla fighting his adversaries in cities that are merely models. Second, the producers wanted to emphasize the larger than life and titanic nature. Finally, it is a reference to the tendency of old 1950s Bll Finger/Dick Sprang Batman comics to feature fights in and around gigantic over-sized props.
01:12:15 -- Well, I think that beats the ending of Burton's movie for dramatic awesomeness, yeah? MASK OF THE PHANTASM premiered in theatres on Christmas Day, 1993 -- only eight months after the decision had been made to promote it from a direct-to-video to a theatrical feature. The film was a box office bomb, largely because there was little time to properly promote it or build up any hype. However, it was critically acclaimed, with many prominant critics such as Siskel & Ebert praising it over the live action efforts of the time. Eventually, the movie was a success on video and DVD, eventually recouping its budget and becoming enough of a hit to warrant the production of future, direct-to-video, animated Batman features. It remains, however, the only animated Batman to be released theatrically.
01:13:04 -- This ending song, "I Never Even Told You", is sung by Tia Carrere of WAYNE'S WORLD and RELIC HUNTER fame. It's great, stfu.
Producers: Alan Burnett, Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm
Directors: Eric Radomski, Bruce Timm
Batman: Batman, erm, I mean, Kevin Conroy
Time indexes from the widescreen edition 1999 Region 1 DVD.
00:00:11 -- The Warner Bros "Family Entertainment" logo, with Bugs, reminds us this is an animated feature. Warner Bros., of course, has a long and distinguished history in animation, and in the early 1990s was going through something of a renaissance of its animation department, led by the efforts of twin shows TINY TOONS and ANIMANIACS, as well as the vastly different but no less successful BATMAN.
00:00:22 -- Here we see a CGI version of Gotham City, the only CGI in the entire film, the rest being traditionally animated. Early on in production of the BATMAN animated series, there was a thought of producing a CGI version of Gotham for consistent backgrounds, but the animation team never managed to make it look good enough for producer's satisfaction (thank Zod!) Meanwhile, the team behind the 1994 SPIDER-MAN animated series actually did this, and it looked terrible.
00:00:32 -- Any discussion of MASK OF THE PHANTASM must first address the 1992 BATMAN animated series. Debuting after the release of BATMAN RETURNS, the series was entirely possible because of the success of the Tim Burton movies, which developers Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski used to prove to the studio that a "dark" take on Batman would be successful. The resulting series was a mishmash of influences -- a timeless, 1940s-and-yet-today setting and Dark Deco design inspired by Burton's first film, an animation style inspired by the 1940s Max Fleischer SUPERMAN animated shorts, stories primarily inspired by the Bronze Age of Batman comics (1970-1986), and an adult storytelling sensibility reminiscent of Warner Bros. crime dramas of the 1940s -- the series nonetheless worked like gangbusters. It was the only superhero cartoon of its time to depict realistic firearms, realistic fighting, violence, crime, psychology and other mature (for the genre) storylines. With topnotch voice acting, topnotch writing, and topnotch animation, the series was, and is, for many fans, THE Batman. Critically acclaimed and a ratings smash, the series has had its influence on almost all subsequent depictions of the Dark Knight in some way. Having produced 65 phenomenally successful episodes in its first year of production, Warner Bros. asked for a feature version of the series for a direct-to-video release. Freed of the constraints of the network's broadcast standards and practices, the show's writers and producers reached for an even darker, more psychological, more gothic tone than what they had already achieved on the series. Work on PHANTASM greatly impressed Warners, who ordered that the feature be retooled and enhanced for theatrical release in December -- about eight months away. The end result was a critically acclaimed film that many preferred to the live action releases.
00:00:49 -- All the writers on PHANTASM were established staff writers from the series. Burnett and Dini in particular were greatly responsible for some of the series biggest successes.
00:01:20 -- This awesome music you're listening to is a choral version of Shirley Walker's Batman theme. Walker composed the music for both this film and the series, scoring and recording a unique score for every single episode as if it were a movie -- an extremely rare process for an animated series, which normally reuse the same six-eight tracks of music for its entire run. Walker had conducted the orchestras which had recorded Danny Elfman's scores for Burton's films. While the intro sequence to the series used Elfman's music, within the episodes themselves Batman was accompanied by Walker's own theme music, heard here in a grand, dramatic arrangement.
00:01:25 -- In animated features, a sequence director may handle one specific, particularly complex, setpiece, say a large fight, chase or other complicated sequence, even while the overall film is supervised by a single director. All the names here are experienced episode directors from the series.
00:01:44 -- Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm developed the BATMAN series, and Timm went on to expand its success into SUPERMAN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN BEYOND and a host of direct-to-video features. Often the animated DC universe he forged is referred to as the "Timmverse".
00:01:50 -- Here, as on the show, the sky of Gotham is blood red and hazy. It doesn't make sense, but it feels right, somehow. Radomski, before production began on the show, gave marching orders to the animation studios that the backgrounds be drawn on black paper, as opposed to white, which right away started giving the show it's distinctive "dark" look. The show, and this film, were traditionally animated using cels, and the dark backdrop often meant that dust caught between layers and scratches on the cels showed up far more prominently than in most other cartoons, but the producers decided they liked it, as it gave the show a weathered "old" look even when it was brand new.
00:02:24 -- The character designs are based on Bruce Timm's artstyle, and his look for Batman comes from a few sources, including Dick Sprang, Neal Adams, Frank Miller and Bob Kane. The combination produced a look that ends up being basically "classic Batman".
00:02:32 -- Animated series on TV, for children, were not allowed to show realistic guns at the time BATMAN was made. This is why the NYPD in the 1994 SPIDER-MAN show used laser guns. Timm and Radomski fought and won this point however, simply saying "can you picture Batman fighting mobsters with laser guns?"
00:03:10 -- The titular Phantasm character. The word "Phantasm" is actually never said in the movie, which renders the title a little odd, but luckily plenty of Phantasm toys and mechandise were there so smooth over any confusion. The character is original to the movie, but loosely based on "The Reaper" created by Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis from the 1987 BATMAN: YEAR TWO storyline, which MASK OF THE PHANTASM takes some inspiration from. In the comics, The Reaper was a death-dealing vigilante who had murdered Gotham crime bosses twenty years before the Batman, and who returned to fight the Dark Knight in his second year of crimefighting. His identity ultimately turned out to be Judson Caspian, the father of Bruce Wayne's then-current love interest Rachel Caspian. The Phantasm here is loosely based on these ideas, but plays with them and turns them on their head, as we'll see.
00:03:58 -- The slightly "irised in" edge of the frame here, where the upper left curve of the screen is black, was a unique feature of the show's film noir inspired look.
00:04:18 -- This sequence of Chucky Sol trying to run down the Phantasm, right down to the mobster's dialogue, is very similar to a sequence in an episode of the series, "Robin's Reckoning, Part I", where mobster Tony Zucco tries to run down the Batman.
00:04:36 -- One of the greater freedoms doing the feature gave the writers was the ability to kill characters onscreen. While BATMAN often got away with things other shows couldn't (most kids shows weren't even allowed to use the words "death" or "kill" in any variation, or have a character die at all), it still couldn't have onscreen death. So the writers get a little bloodthirsty in this flick.
00:05:07 -- City councilman Arthur Reeves first appeared in Detective Comics #399 (May, 1970), created by Dennis O'Neil and Bob Brown. Many elements of the television series were inspired by the 1970s comic stories of O'Neil and Steve Englehart, but Reeves, a recurring character in the comics who spoke out against Batman in the political arena, only appeared in animation in this feature.
00:05:11 -- The animated version of Gordon is an amalgam of the 1970s O'Neil and Englehart older version with the more take-charge 1980s revision from Frank Miller, voiced to perfection by Bob Hastings. Gung-ho, intelligent, loyal and one of the few city officials who openly trusts Batman in this version of the story, this Gordon is a sharp contrast to the Pat Hingle depiction appearing in the live action films.
00:05:17 -- Also seen in the wide shot here are Detective Harvey Bullock, on the far left, and news anchorwoman Summer Gleason on the far right. Bullock first appeared in Detective Comics #441, by Archie Goodwin and Howard Chaykin, and was a recurring character on the show -- a tough, no-nonsense MCU detective with a penchant for donuts and overeating and a hatred of Batman, but fiercely loyal to his partner Renee Montoya and his commander, Gordon, who he calls "the Commish." Gleason was an original creation of the show, but loosely based on Vicki Vale -- an investigative reporter for Gotham TV news.
00:05:39 -- The animated Alfred, voiced by Efrem Zimbalist Jr., was very much inspired by the dry wit of Frank Miller's depiction, often chiding and supporting Bruce in a single jab.
00:05:41 -- Bruce Wayne/Batman, voiced by Kevin Conroy, who managed to turn the role into a career, voicing the character through the BATMAN series and its feature spin-offs, THE NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES, JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN BEYOND and several video games and other direct-to-video projects. Conroy followed the lead of previous superhero voice actors like Bud Collyer by choosing to pitch the voices of Batman and Bruce Wayne lower and higher respectively, but used the Batman variation as Bruce's "real voice", such as when he is speaking casually to Alfred, using the higher tone only as a "public" Bruce Wayne. His Batman voice is unique in that while it is deep, authoritative, and utterly fits the character, it doesn't attempt any kind've Clint Eastwood growl or rasp, and thus sounds much more natural. PHANTASM features many flashbacks to Bruce's youth, where we'll hear Conroy use an even lighter pitch for young Bruce. In a superbly subtle move, Conroy gradually pitched Batman's voice lower and lower as he worked on the character, simulating Bruce's fall into darkness vocally, until finally the old, bitter man of BATMAN BEYOND sounds completely different from the Bruce we hear here. To this day, many Batman fans cite Conroy's voice as the one they hear when reading the comics, and make similar comments about his animated co-stars.
00:06:07 -- Andrea Beaumont, voiced by Dana Delany. Delany's performance here so impressed the producers that it won her the role of Lois Lane when they produced the SUPERMAN animated series in 1996.
00:07:27 -- Bruce as a dashing, layabout playboy. This is, of course, a cover persona designed to draw suspicion away from the idea that he and the Batman are one and the same. The idea that Bruce is a somewhat lazy, good for nothing socialite with a penchant for dating and dropping high society women dates to the earliest Bob Kane/Bill Finger comics. Burton preferred to characterize Bruce as a mysterious, socially awkward loner in order to emphasize his outsider nature -- which, y'know, would make him obviously Batman.
00:08:11 -- This film is going to deal very heavily with Bruce's past (failed) love life, so I'll give some words to the past (failed) attempts at giving him a love interest in the comics. Early on, he had a fianceé named Julie Madison, but Bruce never took the relationship seriously and the character was mainly used as a damsel in distress type and soon discarded. After that there was Linda Page, a WWII era Nurse who loved Bruce but wished did more with his life to help people, like the Batman. She was used onscreen for the 1943 serial. After her came Vicki Vale, a Lois Lane rip-off who appeared in the 1949 serial and of course the 1989 flick. In the late fifties and early sixties there was Kathy Kane, aka Batwoman, a character created as a love interest in a desperate attempt to quell accusations that Batman was gay. She dropped out of the comics in 1964 only to reappear in 2006, completely revamped and retooled, ironically as a lesbian character. Regular romance eluded Batman until the 1977/78 STRANGE APPARITIONS storyline which introduced Silver St. Cloud, but she left Bruce after figuring out his identity. The most regular romantic entanglements Batman has had have in fact been with his enemies: Catwoman, since 1940, a kind've eternal will-they-won't-they and Talia al Ghul, since 1971 a character who ended up becoming technically married to Bruce and fathering a child of his without consent (it's a long story). Of note to this film is the BATMAN: YEAR TWO storyline, where Bruce falls in love with Rachel Caspian and fantasizes about a future with her after Gotham no longer needs Batman, but of course, circumstance pulls them apart. Elements of this character are remixed for Andrea Beaumont here, and much later in the character of Rachel Dawes in Christopher Nolan's films.
00:08:35 -- Here's our first flashback. This movie has a dense flashback structure for a kid's animated flick, in large part due to the film noir influences upon it. In fact, the overall genre of the film really does fit the classic noir structure, for all you cinemaphiles out there.
00:09:50 -- "I made a vow," In the original comics, the night after his parents are murdered, young Bruce Wayne made a vow to "avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals". That short bit of business goes a long way to explaining Batman to me: namely, that the concept is the concept of a child, but a child's dream that the adult never let go of. Most people grow out of their childhood fantasies when the adult world presents them with the real challenges of life and love, and in some ways PHANTASM is about seeing this struggle in Bruce, and the consequences of the childhood dream come reality (Bruce) or the dream destroyed (Andrea).
00:11:04 -- The notion of Bruce going out to fight crime pre-Batman, and being a complete failure because the criminals aren't afraid of him, inspiring the notion that he has to strike terror into their hearts, is taken from Frank Miller's BATMAN: YEAR ONE, specifically Batman #404 (February, 1987). Of course, in that version Bruce was fighting pimps and hookers instead of robbers, but that's a little too mature. The balaclava seen here would end up getting referenced in BATMAN BEGINS' own version of Bruce's first failed night out.
00:12:21 -- Check out young, Patrolman Bullock.
00:14:04 -- Good freeze frame gag, the smaller headline reads: Radomski to Press, "I'm Innocent!"
00:20:03 -- Commissioner Gordon to Tim Burton, "The Batman does NOT kill! Period!"
00:21:31 -- That's what you get when you stand dramatically in front of your parents graves dressed as Batman, Bruce. People tend to start putting two and two together.
00:22:46 -- The "Gotham World's Fair" seen here is largely based on the 1939 New York World's Fair. The design sensibility's of that expo's "World of Tomorrow" theme was a big influence on the design sensibilities of the BATMAN producers, who imagined their show set in a world where the Art Deco movement never ended and the 1939 World of Tomorrow had become the World of Today. This film literalizes the influence, showing how the Gotham World's Fair has influenced modern Gotham in some ways, while also reinforcing the film's themes of lost dreams in others.
00:23:03 -- The World of the Future ride seen here is inspired by the "Futurama" exhibit GM displayed at the 1939 World's Fair.
00:23:45 -- Gee, the Automobile of the Future sure looks like something familiar doesn't it? Bruce Timm's design for the series Batmobile was relatively unique, resembling past designs enough to be recognizable but mostly coming from his own sensibilities. The gag here that it was a concept car Bruce bought or remade in some way is a reference to the famous 1966 television Batmobile, which was based off a 1957 Lincoln Futura concept car.
00:24:47 -- Carl Beaumont is voiced by Stacy Keach, who also voices the Phantasm. Mystery solved, right?
00:25:58 -- Sal Valestra, the mobster we saw earlier in the flick as a wheezing old man, is voiced by Abe Vigoda, who played Sal Tessio in THE GODFATHER.
00:28:19 -- Bruce trying to figure out his superhero persona on a dark and stormy night in Wayne Manor. If this were Detective Comics #33, Bruce's musings about how to scare criminals would be interrupted by a bat flying through the window, and voilá! But PHANTASM has a different scenario to play out.
00:28:36 -- There goes that bat. But the window is closed and Bruce doesn't see it. He has Andrea on his mind. Unlike Nolan's Batfilms, where the love of a woman tempts Bruce away from the war on crime after it has already begun, here we have the interesting scenario of Bruce being tempted away at a more vunerable point -- before Batman has ever really had a chance to begin.
00:29:33 -- "I don't wanna let you down, honest, but, it just doesn't hurt so bad anymore! You can understand that can't you? Look, I can give money to the city, they can hire more cops, let someone else take the risk but it's different now! Please! I need it to be different now! I know I made a promise, but I didn't see this coming. I didn't count on being happy. Please, tell me that it's okay." Bruce's desperate plea to his dead parents to let him out of his vow, as the rain pours down and the lightning flashes, is probably my all time favourite scene in any Batman media. One of the more extreme notions of Batman is that this man has kept alive the pain of his parents deaths and continues to do so in order to motivate his war. But for most of us, that kind've pain heals, and it heals when we find someone else in our lives, like Bruce has here. It's the classic "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". Or to use another quote "You wanted certain things, but stuff is different now." It's a powerful notion that the one thing that might've defeated Batman, before he even started, was the love of a woman. But this is a noir, so it's not gonna be that simple.
00:31:45 -- O'Neil Funding Corp. and Adams Tool and Dye is a reference to Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams, the writer/artist team largely credited with returning Batman to his darker roots in 1970 after the reign of the campy Adam West Batman, initiating the Bronze Age of Batman comics that the animated series took much inspiration from.
00:35:00 -- Bruce's dialogue implies that he didn't know the batcaves where beneath Wayne Manor, which implies that he didn't fall down into them as a child, a secondary part of the Batman origin that wasn't established until sometime in the seventies or eighties. While most famously used in Dennis O'Neil's THE MAN WHO FALLS (1989), this element was already present in Frank Miller's THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS (1986), but even there if feels like a reference to already established lore. Unfortunately, my usual encyclopedic knowledge of Batman fails me, as the earliest reference to it I know of is in Miller.
00:34:04 -- It's hard to tell, as it's all in shadows, but the Batman costume Bruce is donning for the first time features gloves without the "fins" and a utility belt of pouches instead of capsules, both elements of the early Bob Kane Batman costume and "Year One" look as illustrated by David Mazzuchelli.
00:37:17 -- Oh snap, Joker's in this movie?! The animated Joker was and is considered a definitive take on the character by many, combining both the silly clown and deadly serial killer into one unpredictable package, a characterization that in many ways comes from Dennis O'Neil's version in Batman #251 (September, 1973) and Steve Englehart's version in Detective Comics #475 (February, 1978). The character evolved throughout the series, becoming darker and darker in nature, and PHANTASM was a chance for the writers to really showcase this darker Joker for the first time in many ways. Oh, and he's voiced by Mark Hamill, better known as Luke Skywalker, who is completely unrecognizable in the role. His unique shifts in vocal pitch and his take on Joker's laugh have become iconic. Like Conroy, Hamill's voice has become almost synonymous with the role among fans, and he's lasted just as long as the character, finally retiring after voicing the Clown Prince of Crime in the video game ARKHAM CITY. Writer Alan Burnett had originally intended PHANTASM to avoid using any members of Batman's traditional rogues gallery, wanting specifically to tell a story he couldn't on the regular show. The producers were also cautious about using Joker, not wanting to invite any association with Tim Burton's BATMAN. But when the writers realized they could use Joker in a different and darker fashion than they had on the series, they relented.
00:43:13 -- The animated version of the Batplane is very much based on the one from the first Tim Burton film. The producers often shied away from using it, as they felt giving Batman a big UFO plane to fly around Gotham was almost too much.
00:44:57 -- This entire sequence of the police SWAT teams pursuing Batman into the construction site, which later explodes, and failing to capture him is in large part inspired by the similar sequence of Batman fighting the GCPD in an abandoned tenement building in BATMAN: YEAR ONE, specificaly Batman #406 (April, 1987). Construction sites have been popular locales for fight scenes in Batman since 1939, including several previous instances on the animated series, including its first episode "On Leather Wings", which also features Batman being hunted by a SWAT team.
00:46:25 -- Okay, as cool as this all is, this thing with the sawhorse makes no sense. To the audience it works, but internally, what the hell just happened? Batman was in the direct line of the helicopter's floodlights, he fires the grapple at the helicopter, is pulled toward it, but when they fire it's just his cape and cowl covering a sawhorse. When did Batman fall away? Where did he get the sawhorse? How did he have time to rig it to the grapple line and the cape? How did he do all of this without anyone seeing, when he was in full direct view of everyone? He's the Batman, I guess.
00:52:32 -- Debuting soon after the Burton films, the animated series used the film's origin for the Joker by implication. Here we have confirmation that the animated Joker was a mafia hitman before the showdown at the Chemical plant, similar to his background in Burton's movie.
01:00:16 -- The face behind the mask of the Phantasm is, of course, the film's big mystery and here's the big reveal. Unfortunately it's a reveal that was spoiled ahead of time for anyone collecting the film's toyline. The Phantasm action figure was packaged with the mask off and to the side, with Andrea Beaumont's face in full view for all to see.
01:02:26 -- The Batcycle, a vehicle which got a fair amount of use in the animated series, first appeared on the 1966 series in the first season. It has since appeared in the comics and other media. On the cartoon, Batman always wore a cowl-shaped helmet over his regular mask when riding the motorcycle, presumably so kids wouldn't think it was okay to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. However the helmet is absent here.
01:05:02 -- The fight between Batman and Joker in the model of Gotham City references a few ideas. First, and most obviously, it's a gag on Godzilla fighting his adversaries in cities that are merely models. Second, the producers wanted to emphasize the larger than life and titanic nature. Finally, it is a reference to the tendency of old 1950s Bll Finger/Dick Sprang Batman comics to feature fights in and around gigantic over-sized props.
01:12:15 -- Well, I think that beats the ending of Burton's movie for dramatic awesomeness, yeah? MASK OF THE PHANTASM premiered in theatres on Christmas Day, 1993 -- only eight months after the decision had been made to promote it from a direct-to-video to a theatrical feature. The film was a box office bomb, largely because there was little time to properly promote it or build up any hype. However, it was critically acclaimed, with many prominant critics such as Siskel & Ebert praising it over the live action efforts of the time. Eventually, the movie was a success on video and DVD, eventually recouping its budget and becoming enough of a hit to warrant the production of future, direct-to-video, animated Batman features. It remains, however, the only animated Batman to be released theatrically.
01:13:04 -- This ending song, "I Never Even Told You", is sung by Tia Carrere of WAYNE'S WORLD and RELIC HUNTER fame. It's great, stfu.
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