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The Crow: Wicked Prayer

by Count Zero

I had actually never watched this move until just recently, despite having been a big fan of Batman Beyond when it was on the air. The movie had something of an interesting production history; it came out when people were still in an uproar about violence in the media in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings, and so there wound up being two versions released – the first came out in 2000, and featured some fairly heavy editing; there’s a scene about halfway through where Terry McGinnis (the future’s Batman; voiced by Will Friedle) goes down to the ransacked Batcave and sees “HA! HA! HA!” spraypainted over everything. In the censored version, the graffiti was changed from red to purple so that it wouldn’t look like blood.

There were also numerous small cuts made during the fight scenes, usually reducing the number of blows Batman delivers to his opponents down to one. My favorite edit, though, is that Bruce and Terry had seatbelts drawn onto them in a driving scene – because after all, we wouldn’t want kids to stop wearing their seatbelts after they see that Batman doesn’t wear one.

The second version came out in 2001, and was uncensored; this is the version being reviewed here. And in fact, I originally lost interest in seeing the movie after hearing that it was going to be censored. Recently, however, something reminded me of the show, and I began watching old episodes via YouTube, and finally got around to renting the movie.

Wow, was I not disappointed.

As I said before, I was a big fan of the cartoon, and I even think I like the futuristic Terry McGinnis Batman just as much as I like Bruce – maybe even more, because Terry is portrayed as being an actual, relatable human being, as opposed to Bruce, whom we almost never see out of costume anymore and is usually just really pissy and dour all the time (although to be fair, that’s more in the comics than the cartoons; on the Animated Series, Bruce does crack a smile every so often).

Good guys wear black.  Never trust anyone in clown makeup.

As a fan, then, this movie was a real treat. Most of the show’s voice cast returns (save for Stockard Channing as Commissioner Barbara Gordon, who was unavailable, and is replaced by Angie Harmon) and does their usual great job; especially Kevin Conroy as Bruce (Conroy is the actor that many fans see as defining Batman, and he certainly does for me) and Mark Hamill as the Joker (who, like Conroy with Batman, has come to be seen as defining the Joker). Everyone involved, however, is quite good; Will Friedle handles Terry admirably, and I even liked Melissa Joan Hart (whose not really high on my “favorite actors” list – hell, she’s not even on my “favorite actors” list) in her performance as a pair of identical twin Jokerz (a street gang based on the Joker) who dress like hippy versions of Raggedy Ann, have a really weird fighting style, and complete each other’s sentences.

What really stands out about the movie, though, is its script. The production team made the best choice possible on how to handle this movie, and that is to treat it like a movie. The fights are bigger and more intricate, the scale has been expanded to include all of Gotham City, the tone is darker, and the characters are more fleshed out – in other words, it’s everything you could want from an animated Batman movie.

While the movie features loads of action (it is, after all, a superhero movie ostensibly aimed at kids), Dini does manage to slip in some very nice character moments, like the scene after the new Joker makes his first appearance and Bruce tries to make Terry give back the Batman suit. This scene not only gives us some friction between the characters (which was essential to their relationship even on the show), but also shows that Bruce is truly concerned about Terry’s safety, and gives us some motivation for why Terry opted to keep on being Batman after he avenged his father’s death in the pilot episode (“I used to be a bad kid, Bruce… Putting on that suit makes me feel like a worthwhile human being again.”)

Batman, more than just a costume.

But the best part about the script is its handling of the Joker. He was great on the cartoon, but he was never truly frightening; we never really got the sense that he was a mass murderer (probably because he was never allowed to kill anyone on-screen, but that’s neither here nor there). In this movie, though, the Joker is much sleeker, and Hamill has toned down his performance (apparently at Geda’s request), and thus made the character far more menacing.

On top of that, this movie is the first time – probably in the entire history of the DC Comics animated universe – that we truly get to see the Joker as he is in the comics. Here, he’s not a kind-of funny loon with a bunch of crazy plans; he is a monster. What really illustrates this best is the flashback sequence where we find out what happened to the original Batman team; the Joker in that scene is truly disturbing, and what he does to Robin is very creepy. He comes off more like he did in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke than he ever did on the cartoon. And that’s a good thing, even if it does perhaps make parts of the movie a bit too intense for kids.

In conclusion, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker is a very cool little movie that, through a combination of a standout script, great cast, and perfect tone manages to be perhaps the best animated Batman movie thus far, possibly even edging out the first one, Mask of the Phantasm. The movie serves as simultaneously a fitting continuation of Batman Beyond and a great conclusion to Batman: The Animated Series.

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