Animated Batman movie Tournament!

[godisawesome]

On our podcast (FranchiseWars) my buddy and I decided to start a kind of monthly episode type building off our name and some of our earlier episodes where we'd pit two movies from the same franchise against each other. We've reformed out technique a bit as we've gone on; for instance, the Good Spider-Man Movie episode in my signature actually has an organization to it, whereas the bad one did not.

Anyways, we're both massive Batman fans, so we're going to actually pair up two Batman cartoon movies against each other every month, judge them on their protagonist-arcs for Batman and his allies, the antagonists and villains, and their value as adapatations or original work.

And we're going to use everyone's votes to try and determine a victor.

Because we wanted to kind of hit the ground running, we're going to do the first round comparing films that have similar themes or elements, even if they're top tier films and should probably take on a lower level film first.

For the first match up, we decided to tackle the idea of an animated Batman Origin story. Soooo....

Round 1

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

VS

Batman: Year One

Vote here: https://www.powr.io/plugins/poll/view/13750038?mode=page

We felt this would be a good kickoff episode, because while both films deal with the idea of Bruce Wayne as a dynamic protagonist who becomes Batman, they're otherwise totally different but still high quality films. Phantasm is a traditional noir story with Bruce as the clear central protagonist and clear anatagonists in Phantasm and Joker, with a fairly focused plotline, and is notable for being an almost entirely original story in a lot of ways. Year One is a very, *very* faithful adapatation that has a more sprawling focus, since not only is Gordon arguably an equal protagonist to Bruce, but so is Gotham as a city, with a wider and less focused Rogues Gallery.

Both are critically acclaimed.

So who's your pick, and why? And what duo would you like to see next?

 

[Herofan]

Mask of the Phantasm by far, excellent adaptation of elements of Year One coupled with a romance that not only fit in but worked well (a lot of pathos), strong action, story and villains in the present (I think the Joker at his best) and good resolutions. Year One as a film felt pretty awkward in focusing so much on Jim Gordon rather than Batman (Batman felt a bit neglected), also the time jumps felt a lot more awkward on screen rather than pages, Selina's story was OK but not real good or essential or contributing a lot.

 

[godisawesome]

Here's our first episode. It's honestly taken over largely by a philosophical debate about who or what Batman should be, and how that impacts my buddy and I's reaction to the films.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/132209/656386-mask-of-the-phantasm-vs-year-one-batman-movie-tournament

In short, he finds Gordon's exclusion from Phantasm to make it significantly worse, whereas I find that Batman's static portrayal and almost secondary status in Year One (both the book and movie) to make it less interesting compared to the very dynamic portrayal of Bruce in Phantasm.

We're still voting until next month in the poll in the first post, and we'd greatly appreciate some listener feedback to read during the second episode. Of course, we'd also like some ideas for what the second episode would be. Right now, we're thinking about doing The Dark Knight Returns two-parter vs Batman Beyond's premier compilation and Return of the Joker, to effect something closer to an equal battle in terms of length.

Any ideas, comments or suggestions?