Review: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

The Angel of Death comes for the wicked of Gotham.

Looking through my old post I realized that I’ve never done Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, and that feels like a major oversight to me. An oversight I shall now correct.

 

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is a 1993 animated film set in the same universe as Batman: The Animated Series. The film is essentially the animated series take on Batman: Year One, covering the first year that Bruce returned to Gotham and began cobbling together his Batman identity. Well, the movie is half that, half Batman in the present dealing with a new original villain, The Phantasm, going around and murdering members of Gotham’s organized Crime families. The two plots are intertwined in many ways.  It stars the late, great Kevin Conroy (1955-2022) as Batman, Mark Hamill as the Joker, Stacy Keach as the Phantasm, Abe Vigoda (1921-2016) as Salvatore Valestra, and Dana Delany as Audrey Beuamont, a woman from Bruce’s past. Fun fact about her, she must have impressed someone in the casting department as she’d go onto play Lois Lane in Superman: The Animated Series three years later. Enough behind the scenes stuff, let’s get to it.

 

The film opens with a 3d render of the Gotham City skyline with I believe opera music played behind it. We then shift to the Shady Lady Casino where a group of mobsters are discussing counterfeit bills. The mobster in charge, Chuckie Sol, claims his bills are so good you need a neutron microscope to spot the difference. Their meeting is interrupted by Batman, who, ya know, beats the crap out of them.  While the goons fight, Chuckie grabs the case and runs. Batman knocks out the last goon and gives chase. They end up in a car parking lot. When alone, Chuckie is confronted by the Phantasm, a masked figure that appears in clouds of mist and has a large hook for their right hand. The Phantasm claims they’re there for Chuckie. Chuckie shoots the Phantasm several times but they don’t move until they get close and cut Chuckie’s hand with said hook. They almost cut Chuckie down, but a car distracts them and Chuckie gets in his own car to try to run. The Phantasm leaps onto the hood of Chuckie’s car, shattering the windshield and cutting him, but Chuckie knocks him off. Chuckie, being a vindictive SOB, turns around to run the Phantasm over, but the Phantasm disappears in a cloud of smoke. The smoke and no windshield distract Chuckie long enough for him to misjudge how far away the end of the parking ramp is and he crashes through it and into the next building. Batman, who was weirdly slow catching up, comes out in time to see the damage… and be blamed for the murder by bystanders. Batman looks around the crime scene and sees someone walking away. He chases after them but only sees a trail of smoke.

 

Later, we see a press conference by City Councilmen Arthur Reeves along with Commissioner Jim Gordon and Detective Harvey Bullock. Reeves is pushing hard to get the police department to punish Batman for his vigilantism. Gordon pushes for Batman, saying he had nothing to do with Chuckie Sol’s death. Reeves insists Batman is unstable, pointing to Bullock and saying that members of the police department agree with him. We switch to a video of the speech that Alfred turns off, saying that his master Bruce is the picture of mental health… before adding that he pressed his tights and put his exploding gas balls away. Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (1918-2014) probably isn’t high on most people’s “best Alfred list” but the man had a talent for dry wit. Bruce, meanwhile, is examining a polymer that was on the windshield of Sol’s car.

 

Meanwhile, a woman on a plane is talking to Reeves, saying she’ll touch down soon and that it’ll be good to see him again. He claims that he’s going to help her clean up some family finance issues. She muses that it’s been ten years since she’d been to Gotham and Reeves asks if she’s going to look up old friends. I wonder if he knew she was looking at the Fortune magazine with Bruce’s face on it or just sensed it. She says he’s ancient history, and Reeves says that’s encouraging.

 

We shift to a party at Wayne Manor. Feels weird to me how often Bruce invites people over to his house when it’s where he hides all his Bat toys, but whatever. Three women flirt with Bruce and ask if he’s ever thought about getting married. A fourth joins them, and warns the others that Bruce will wine them, dine them, and make them feel like the only woman in the world for him, and then he’ll ‘forget’ their phone number. She throws a drink in Bruce’s face for good measure.  Bruce, my man, why invite exes to you parties? He excuses himself to get cleaned up. Reeves cuts him off and offers him a handkerchief to clean up. He comments that Bruce has lousy taste in women and seems to always pick the ones there’s no future with, except for that one gal from a while back, he feints not knowing her name for a minute before dropping it, Andrea Beaumont. Bruce brushes him off and heads to his study to collect his thoughts. He wonders over to a picture of his parents and stares at it until he has a flashback.

 

Twenty-something Bruce Wayne lays flowers at his parent’s headstone when he spies a woman talking to her mother’s grave marker, saying that her father is so overprotective theses days he’s liable to build a moat around her room. This is Andrea Beaumont, obviously. They have a little snafu where Bruce isn’t sure if she’s talking to him or not, Andrea explaining that she speaks to her mom’s grave out loud as it helps her imagine what her replies would be like. Bruce says that he made a vow to his parents, a secret one, that he’s trying to keep. They introduce themselves formally before Andrea drives off. Bruce smiles to himself as he hears a thunderclap, and the sky darkens. Later that night, he dresses in black and attempts to stop a robbery.  Bruce drops the guys as they finish loading their truck. He tells them to get on the ground, but weirdly the six-and-a-half-foot tall man backflipping over their truck and yelling at them to drop is just not as impressive without the cape and pointy ears. A fight breaks out, Bruce using his non-themed ninja tools to his advantage but still gets beaten up pretty bad before knocking most of them out. A fial goon shoots at him with a shotgun, forcing Bruce to fall back as he tries to drive off with the goods. Bruce chases him down and leaps onto the back of the truck. As he clings to the truck, he passes a police car with Officer Harvey Bullock inside who starts giving chase. Bullock and his partner Jonesy pull ahead and try to make the guy stop, but he rams their car and causes it to flip. Bruce, meanwhile, climbs over to the cam and starts smashing the windshield with a hammer. He’s nearly knocked from the truck, but drops some spiked balls to pop the tires, crashing the vehicle. He stays just long enough to confirm the driver is alive before climbing a building and running off. The next morning, Alfred tells Bruce that he just finished reading about his exploits in the paper and asks if he’s sure he won’t reconsider rugby instead. Bruce, who is practicing marital arts with a head and right arm bandage on is pretty sure. He claims that he had the edge, that he had the goons outclassed but they just weren’t afraid of him. He knows he needs to strike fear in them from the start. Alfred tells him to cut the shop talk as Andrea has arrived. She says they met three days ago and hadn’t gotten a phone call so is here checking to make sure he isn’t dead. They flirt fight a little before fight flirting once Andrea reveals she’s got some martial arts training as well. Once he has her pined, Andrea compliments his foot work, asks if he can dance too and they make out, much to Alfred’s surprise when he brings out lemonade.

 

In the present, Alfred comes in to tell Bruce one of his lady friends is dancing on the piano. Meanwhile, a black car drives out to Gotham Cemetery. Inside is Buzz Bronski, an associate of Sol’s who’s come to pay his respects after hours. He brings a wreath and flashlight, telling his men to wait here. When alone, Bronski tells Chuckie he always was a loser before the Phantasm calls out to him, saying his angel of death awaits. The Phantasm chases him through the graveyard, Bronski tripping over a wheelbarrow and grabbing a Pick that fell from it he attacks the Phantasm with it, but they slice the head off the pick. Bronski throws the sharpened edge of the pick at the Phantasm, but it passes through them when they call up the mist. Bronski screams for his men as he runs from the Phantasm.  They hear and run towards him. Bronski falls into an open grave. The Phantasm calls him a loser and then vanishes, but then drops the angel at the head of the grave on him. The goons find what’s of their boss and the Phantasm retreating, and again, they naturally assume it’s Batman doing this.

 

We shift to the morning where an old man named Salvatore Valestra is having his morning coffee when he reads that Bronski was killed and they assume the bat did it. He has a some kind of attack that requires him to get lung full of oxygen from the tank behind his chair.

 

At the police station, Reeves is demanding that Gordon go after Batman, but Gordon still isn’t moving on his stance Batman is innocent. He insists that Batman doesn’t kill, and if they want him, they can get it and storms out. The remaining cops, including Bullock, are down. Batman heard all of this as he hung out the ledge. The cops try to trick Batman into coming to the Bat Signal, but he’s too clever for that. He’s racing away from the city towards the cemetery. He finds the pickax head and more chemical traces that look like the stuff on Chuckie’s car. He makes note of it on a tape recorder before stopping at his parent’s grave. He hears and then sees Andrea weeding her mother’s grave.  He runs off, and after Andrea sees the Wayne headstone, she makes a logical leap.

 

Later, Andrea is having dinner with Reeves who is talking about getting her money into a higher yield account. She’s clearly not listening as she fiddles with a necklace. Outside, in the rain, Bruce is totally not being a weird stalker ex-boyfriend spying on Andrea in his Bat costume. Totally. Totally-totally-totally. Andrea mentions when prompted that she, Reeves and her father used to come to this restaurant a lot when she was in Gotham. He asks about her father, Andrea saying their still close but he couldn’t make it into town. Reeves makes an obvious pass at Andrea, saying he’s always wanted to spend more time with her.

 

Batman, outside, in the rain, watches Reeves caress Andrea’s hand and has a flashback. He and Andrea visited Gotham’s world’s fair. You know, one of those attractions that the forties loved picturing what the city of the future would be like. They go through the ride and are clearly very happy together. After, Andrea asks if they’ll really see anything like this in their lifetime.  Bruce is distracted by a big car in the center of the display. It looks suspiciously like a big black number that hurtles through Gotham in a few years. Bruce tells Andrea that he was distracted thinking about the future, she asks if he means a specific future or the generic kind. She says her dad wants to meet Bruce and tricks him into agreeing. Bruce talks to Alfred as she makes the call, saying that this is definitely not part of the plan, that he must be going nuts. Alfred suggests that maybe it’s the exact opposite. We shift over to Mr. Carl Beaumont’s office where Reeves is working for him. Andrea and Bruce arrive, and they greet each other. Bruce also meets Reeves before he heads out. The trio chat for a bit, Carl clearly doing that businessman thing where he’s getting to know Bruce but also angling to make him a client, talking about the accounts he handles and how important financial planning is. They’re interrupted by Mr. Valestra arriving. It’s clear from moment one that Valestra is one of those clients that Carl can’t say no to and he is very much not happy about that, making a fist as Valestra comes in. He lights a cigar and blows it in Bruce’s face. Bruce and Andrea leave the office, Valestra’s driver making a note of them. Dude seems weirdly familiar…

 

Bruce and Andrea come across some gangsters threatening street vender. Bruce insists he needs to stop this. He fights the three men, kicking their asses but he gets hit by a bat, ironic, when he’s distracted by Andrea getting too close. The goons grab the box of money and drive off. Bruce is clearly frustrated by them getting away and storms off when Andrea tries to look him over. That night, he’s doing sketches of costumes but isn’t making progress. He burns the sketch and asks why he’s still doing this. Bruce realizes that he can’t have it both ways, if he wants to go out and fight the corruption in Gotham, he can’t do it with someone waiting at home for him. Alfred comes in and tells him Andrea is holding on line one for him and she might like to hear that. Bruce says he can’t talk to her right now and storms off. He goes to his parents’ grave; he tells them that he still cares and still wants to do right for them, but with Andrea it just doesn’t hurt like it used to. He says he’ll give money to the city, do anything else to help, he just wants a sign that this is what they want. Andrea arrives and says that maybe they already have and maybe they sent her. They hug in the rain. In the present, Batman barely dodges a copter spotting him.

 

The next day, Reeves is almost run over by a car. It’s Mr. Valestra’s car, he orders Reeves to get in. Once inside he asks if it’s true that the Batman is killing their guys. Valestra is frustrated by this, wondering why Batman is leaning on them now. Reeves suggests getting police protection, but Valestra says a freakshow like Batman will crucify him before he needs another hit on his oxygen tank. Reeves gets out, saying it’s not very healthy in there.

 

Batman, meanwhile, is on his computer. He’s connected Chuckie Sol and Buzz Bronski to Valestra and several dummy corporations that were set up about a decade ago. Batman says that Sal’s having company tonight and tells Alfred not to wait up. Alfred suggests that after Valestra he’s going to see her. Bruce angrily says that Alfred thinks he knows everything about him, to which Alfred counters that he powdered his bottom, so he’d bloody well ought to. Batman drives off in a huff.

 

Batman breaks into Valestra’s house and sees some documents and photos.  One photo in particular caught his eye, which features Valestra, Carl Beaumont, Sol and Bronski from about a decade ago. Also, Valestra’s driver. Weird that man seems so familiar. This triggers another flashback. In it, Andrea tells Bruce that her father is insisting on taking her with him on a trip to Europe and that she’s not sure when she’s coming back. Bruce asks to try to talk her out of it, but then decides to say screw it and ends up just proposing to her. She accepts, saying that she never thought this would happen as she always felt like she wasn’t part of his ‘plan.’ He says he changed the plan. They kiss but are interrupted by a hoard of bats flying up from somewhere. That night, Bruce and Andrea arrive at her home and find Beaumont has guests. She says that it’s weird, as her father usually doesn’t have clients over at the house at this time of night. She suggests not telling her father the good news until later. She heads inside, Valestra’s guard growls at her as she walks in. He flicks his cigarette at Bruce as he drives by. The next day, Bruce is spelunking in the cave, saying that the cavern beneath the house might be as big as Wayne Manor. Alfred, unfortunately, gives him a note and box from Andrea. She says she can’t marry him, saying she’s too young and needs time, and returned the ring. Bruce, heartbroken, throws himself into his work and finishes his first Batman costume. The visual difference when he first dons the cowl even makes Alfred step back in shock. In the present, Batman steals the photo.

 

Valestra drives out to the ruined Gotham World’s Fair. Inside, he’s startled by someone shooting the singing robots at the front. It’s revealed to be none other than Joker. The Joker seems weirdly entertained by the arrival of Old Sallie The Wheezer Valestra. He welcomes Valestra and wants to know why he’s here. Valestra says business, so Joker takes him inside to the house of the future where he’s set up shop. Valestra tells Joker that Batman has snapped and started going after his old partners and he assumes he’s next. Joker is obviously giddy at the thought of Batman going batty. Valestra offers Joker 5 million up front to kill Batman plus however much he wants after the job is done. Joker isn’t super interested, but Valestra says that if he’s taken out, the Joker is next and that his hands are even dirtier than Valestra. Joker agrees to help, saying no one I going to hurt his old pal, Sal. When Valestra starts smiling, Joker ominously says that’s all he wanted to see, a nice big smile.

 

Later, Andrea returns to her hotel room to find the balcony door ajar. Reeves tries to invite himself in, but Andrea says she’s got a killer day tomorrow and kisses him good night. She turns on the light and isn’t shocked at all to see Batman standing there. She says she likes the cape but not the cowl. Batman shows her the photo and asks if she’d seen it. She says she hadn’t, and that she hasn’t seen her father in ages when he presses her. Batman says that’s not what she told Reeves. She tells him to get out. He asks her if she still follows her dad’s orders, and she rather accurately says the only one still controlled by their parents is him.  Once alone she drops her drink and starts sobbing uncontrollably.

 

Later, the Phantasm goes to Valestra’s house. They find him in his office, newspaper covering his face. The Phantasm rips it away, to find Valestra dead, his face contorted into a Joker Gas smile and a camera and bomb in his lap. The Joker, who is on the other end, says he’s disappointed that they’re not Batman. The Phantasm runs, just barely escaping the bomb from going off. Batman arrives in the Batwing and starts chasing the Phantasm over the rooftops. He sets the jet to auto pilot before leaping at the Phantasm. They tell Batman to stay out of this before disappearing in smoke, right before the cops arrive to try to arrest Batman. Batman runs, losing the cops across the rooftops. He’s chased to a construction site. Batman gets with tear gas, but the real trouble hits when a trigger-happy cop blows some gas canisters. Batman is down at this point and bleeding. Batman grappling hooks a copter, and seemingly launches himself at it, but it’s revealed to just be his cowl on a sawhorse. Batman, maskless, runs. He almost is caught but Andrea meets him in her car, and they drive off.

 

At the mansion, Alfred patches Bruce up before giving him and Andrea a chance to talk. He thanks her for her help but still needs to know what happened to her father. She gives him the photo back and explains, saying that his partners met him at the house to squeeze him for money that he owes them. Andrea tries to interrupt but is grabbed by Bronski. Carl begs for more time, swearing that he’ll wire the amount he owes Valestra into his account as soon as the European banks open tomorrow. The mobsters agree, Valestra giving him exactly 24 hours. He either has the money or Carl’s heart in his hand. Andrea goes to her father, and he tells her to pack a suitcase, now. She asks why, as he said he has the money, but Carl says it’ll actually take weeks to get the money out of the investments their tied-up in. Code, “I don’t have the money and I can’t guarantee I can burn other accounts to get it.” Andrea says that she can’t go, she’s going to marry Bruce, but Carl is sure he used up the last of Valestra’s pity tonight and he will kill them. He promises to make it right someday. Andrea says they were on the run in Europe for a while before setting up in the Mediterranean. Her father eventually got the money together, but the mobsters wanted interest in blood. Bruce takes that to mean that the Phantasm is Carl Beaumont and Andrea says that he did swear to get those guys somehow. She says she came back to Gotham after hearing about Chuckie Sol and wants to stop him. She apologizes for coming into his life again and screwing it up. Bruce grabs her as she tries to walk away and they start making out, Alfred again walking in at an awkward moment.

 

The next morning after spending the night together Andrea asks if they can make it work this time and Bruce wants to say yes. He says it is going to come down between him and her dad, and she says her dad doesn’t matter anymore. She heads out, saying she’ll see him tonight. Alfred says it’s good to see them together again and asks what this means for Batman. Bruce isn’t sure, saying a lot has changed, but Alfred correctly points out that they still love each other. He thinks that maybe after this is settled. He looks at a photo of him and Andrea and then his parents, Alfred saying that they’d want him to be happy. Bruce looks at the photo of Carl and his crew, focusing on Valestra’s guard for the first time. He grabs a red pencil and adds the iconic grin, realizing the guard was a pre-acid Joker. Probably went by something like Jack Napier.

 

Meanwhile, Reeves is shrieking at Bullock for losing Batman despite having three precincts on the case. He hangs up just before the Joker comes in. Joker talks to Reeves like they’re old friends and suggests if he calls the cops and the press he’ll say as much. Reeves insists that he worked for Beaumont and never the others, but Joker counters that he used the Beaumont connection for his gain in the end. Reeves asks what he wants, and Joker angrily says he wants to know who iced the old gang. He tells Reeves that it isn’t the Bat, but someone who looks like the ghost of Christmas Future. Joker threatens to reveal Reeves secrets unless he agrees to help. Andrea calls, Joker motioning Reeves to play along. She cancel’s their lunch date but says she’ll see him for dinner that night. Joker attacks Reeves, saying that the coincidence of talking about Carl only for his daughter to call just makes a man want to laugh.

 

Reeves is sent to the hospital, being overcome with Joker’s laughing gas. They hit him with a relaxant, but he’s still laughing so hard he’s crying. The doctors tell him to stay calm. Once alone, Batman stops by. He demands to know why Joker met with him. Through his pained laughter, Reeves reveals that he kept in touch with Carl after he and Andrea went on the run and handled the books for them. He last spoke with Carl years ago during his first City Council campaign when he ran out of money and needed Beaumont’s help. He said no, so Reeves sold him out. Reeves said they said they only wanted their money back. Batman runs off, leaving Reeves to his laughter.

 

Batman heads to Andrea’s hotel room and looks for clues. He finds the necklace she’d been wearing before that had a picture of them in it. Her phone rings and Batman answers. It’s Joker, saying that he’s sending ‘the plane of the future to make you history.” He sends the plane in and Batman is knocked back by the blast.

 

At the Gotham of the Future Exhibit, Andrea arrives and has a flashback. She remembers returning home to the villa to see Jack Napier inside. She drops her groceries, saying that her dad paid them before running inside. Jack grabs an apple from the fallen groceries and eats it as Andrea runs inside and screams at what she saw. In the present, Andrea dries her tears and heads inside.

 

The Phantasm arrives to kill the Joker. Joker comments that she’s harder to kill than a cockroach. The Phantasm takes off their hood, since he figured it out, confirming they are Andrea Beaumont. Joker says the costume is a bit theatrical but he’s not one to judge. He takes a swing at her, Andrea unleashing a smoke blasts to distract him. He fires acid from his flower to melt her hook. They grapple on the ground, Joker saying that she could teach Batman a few tricks. She knees him in the groin and then points out that he’s not laughing, which is odd since he loves laughing at death. Joker says she won’t hear a peep out of him and sicks the robot wife of the future on her. Andrea smashes it and the two fight some more. Joker makes a run for it after hitting her with a novelty sized bologna and escaping into the park. Andrea follows him and is lured to a giant fan that takes away her smoke. She gets sucked into the turbine, but Batman arrives to save her. He throws the Batcycle into the turbine to shut it down and the two drop. Batman confronts her about her father being dead and that she arrived early to kill Chuckie and to shift blame to her dad if she had to. Andrea says that they took everything from her, from them, and that she wants payback. Vengeance is all she has left, so he can help or get out of the way. Bruce asks her what Vengeance will solve, and she counters by saying he should know the answer to that. She disappears in smoke, and he goes after the Joker.

 

He follows Joker into a scale model of Gotham of the future. Joker tries to impale him on a tower, but Batman kicks him in the face, knocking out a tooth. Joker attacks him with tiny helicopters as he rides the train to the port and then starts the timer on some bombs. Batman breaks the copters and Joker tells him in five minutes the whole place is going up thanks to the tunnels packed with explosives. Batman chases him anyway and finds Joker trying to escape with a jetpack. He rushes Joker and hops on the Jetpack. They struggle and ultimately crash. Andrea arrives and grabs him. Joker surrenders and then tells Batman to tell her that means it’s over. Batman warns her this place is about to go up, but she refuses to run, saying this ends tonight. She says goodbye to her love just as the bombs go off. She and Joker disappear in smoke as the park burns, Joker cackling madly. The ground beneath Batman breaks and he falls into the sewars beneath the park and washes out in the pier. At the cave, Bruce laments not being able to save Andrea. Alfred says that she probably didn’t want to be saved. He says that vengeance blackens the soul and that for years he feared that Bruce would become what he’s been fighting against. But he hasn’t fallen into that pit, and he thanks heaven for that. He says Andrea did fall, years ago, and not even he could pull her back. Bruce sees a glittering nearby, runs up and finds Andrea’s locket hanging. We cut to a cruise ship out in Gotham Bay. A drunk guy tries to hit on Andrea who is standing at the bow, he asks if she wants to be alone and she says that she is. The movie ends on Batman on a roof top, the Bat signal in the sky. He leaps into the air and fires his grappling hook to investigate.

 

I should note that this ending has led some to question the canonicity of this movie, as the Joker would continue to menace Batman in future seasons of the show, and Andrea is never seen or heard from again. An episode of Justice League: Unlimited episode entitled “Epilogue” would eventually confirm everything to be canon. In the far future of Batman: Beyond, its revealed that Andrea went on as a hired assassin in her Phantasm guise, eventually being hired to kill Mary and Warren McGinnis, the parents of Terry McGinnis. Why? It was part of a plan to recreate Batman hatched by DC government big wig Amanda Waller. She’d attempted to engineer a Batman by targeting a couple that had a psychological match to Thomas and Martha Wayne, rewrote Warren’s DNA so his children were biologically Bruce Waynes, and then tried to have the parents killed ala Joe Chill in crime alley. But Andrea ultimately refused, deciding you couldn’t MAKE a Batman like that. Flash forward ten years and Terry’s dad is killed and sets him down the path of his Father to. So I guess Joker either escaped her immediately or she decided to let that last bit of vengeance go for some reason. Tis an odd timeline, the Bruce Timm universe.

 

I first saw this movie in probably 1998 or 99, and yes, it’s bugged me for nearly 30 years that we never learned how Andrea was seemingly teleporting in those fogbanks. Like… how? But that’s my one major gripe, no explanation on the smoke teleporting and the polymer clue never really going anywhere. Cast? Perfect, ten out of ten. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill never gave less than a 11/10 performance as Batman and the Joker. Dana Delaney was great as Andrea, as she played both the cold hearted killer and the heartbroken young women extremely well. I 100% get hiring her to be Lois Lane for the Superman animated series, you see little sparks of Lois’ snark in Andrea that she got to play with later. The plot, solid. Granted, I was a child when I watched this the first time, but I was legitimately shocked when it was revealed that Andrea Beaumont had been the Phantasm all along. And as an adult I can very much respect the tragedy at play here, with it seemingly like fate itself conspired to force Bruce into the mantel of Batman. Then there’s the whole bit about how Carl Beaumont set this all in motion. He was a man that seemed to honestly just want to provide for his child but got in over his head with people you absolutely don’t want to be over your head with. I wonder if at any point they considered asking Andrea’s extremely wealthy fiancé for help, or if the money he owed was a big number even for Bruce Wayne. A YouTube channel I follow, Totally Sarcastic Productions, has a video essay on Batman and how at least the animated Batman specifically views his position of Batman as a curse he can’t escape from. It’s a very well-done video that highlights this movie and how it really does seem to push this idea that Bruce was bound to be the Dark Knight whether he liked it or not. And I love the general vibe of the Bruce Timm Batman, with its odd mix of forties and nineties tech, although it is weird to think that this Batman who has a black and white TV set would go on to join the Justice League in the 2000s. I love the design of the Phantasm, that cloak and mask like a hockey goalie work well to create this ominous figure with their clawed right hand. And I like the overall message here, that Andrea reflects Bruce, that she’s the version of him that let the pain win and decide that she needed to punish the wicked more than protect the innocent. Alfred’s assessment that Vengeance blackens the soul, but Bruce is somehow able to fight it off is very well put. So yeah, an amazing Batman movie that you should really watch if you haven’t seen it before or it’s been a while. Have a good night. 

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