By Though dubbed a spiritual successor to “Batman: The Animated Series,” Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming “Batman: Caped Crusader” show is making one quite key change from that series.
The 1990s original show was an anachronistic blend of advanced technology like supercomputers, functional robots and mind control tech with design elements like clothes, cars and buildings out of the 1930s & 1940s.
Bruce Timm, who co-created the original and the new show, spoke with EW alongside character designer James Tucker about ‘Caped Crusader’ and says they wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a repeat of what came before.
To do that, they have made the new show a full 1940s-set period piece:
“James and I are both really big fans of movies from that era, so we decided to really lean into that in terms of the clothes, the cars, the architecture, and the level of technology. Early on, we decided there would be no computers and no cell phones. That changed everything.”
Another big change is Harley Quinn who is Asian American here and who is very separate from The Joker. Timm says:
“I co-created the character, so I have a lot of love and affection for her, but I thought there might be something interesting about bringing her on the show, just not as Joker’s girlfriend.
So how do we do that? A big part was just doing a basic flip. The original Dr. Quinzel was a little bit more serious, and then when she became Harley, she got really goofy and weird. So we thought, what if we reverse that? When she’s Dr. Quinzel, she’s a little bit more whimsical and fun, and then when she’s Harley Quinn, she’s scary.
That includes Harley remaining as a psychologist and using psychiatry as a weapon as part of her day job which isn’t treating residents of Arkham Asylum but as just a normal Gotham City psychiatrist treating people – including Bruce Wayne.
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