Pop-Culturalist.com

Everyone’s favorite vigilante swoops in to San Diego Comic Con 2024 with the new animated series, Batman: Caped Crusader. We all know the origin story of Batman: socialite Bruce Wayne becomes the Batman in order to defeat the criminals of Gotham City. He faces off against well-known adversaries like Catwoman, The Penguin, Harley Quinn, and The Joker.

In this Batman: Caped Crusader, Executive Producers J.J. Abrams, Matt Reeves, and Bruce Timm reimagine the world and some of the classic characters. The cast is a star-filled bonanza. Among them is Hamish Linklater as Bruce Wayne/Batman; Jamie Chung as Harley Quinn; Minnie Drive as The Penguin; Haley Joel Osment as Anton Knight; and, Christina Ricci as Catwoman. Linklater, Chung, and Driver came to town to introduce the show to SDCCers.

This new concept really leans into new takes on the characters, making them feel fresh and totally unique to other versions. Linklater found that to be helpful when stepping into Batman’s shoes “because I’m new to the role, too, that’s totally useful. I don’t have to pretend to be a hardened crime fighter vigilant. This is [also] my first couple weeks on the job. [laughs]” Jamie Chung agreed saying, “I love that this Harley Quinn isn’t so tied in so deeply with The Joker….It’s neat to see her origin story be so different. She’s an overachiever; she’s a psychiatrist. She becomes a vigilante in her own way. She’s taking the corrupt most elite people in Gotham, becoming their psychiatrist and then using all that information and turning it against them. I feel like she’s the Robin Hood of Gotham. You know: taking from the rich and giving to….herself [laughs].”

The biggest surprise – and twist on the classic story – that was revealed during SDCC about Batman: Caped Crusader is that The Penguin is voiced by Minnie Driver. “I was so stoked,” she said of being asked to play the iconic villain. “The essence of The Penguin is the essence of The Penguin. It’s outside of male-female-nonbinary. It’s just the essence of The Penguin.” Not only is The Penguin a woman in the series, but she’s also a mother which added another layer of darkness; or as Driver stated, “The fact that they made her a mother is utterly terrifying because she is a psychopath.”

Finding their own voices for Bruce Wayne, Batman, Harley Quinn, and The Penguin was an intriguing part of the creative process for everyone. Linklater shared his discussion with Bruce Timm about what Bruce Wayne should sound like: “Bruce Wayne is the mask, and that was really helpful to me. They’re like, ‘How do you think a cold-blooded vigilante would imagine a happy-go-lucky lothario would sound in the 1940s?’ So, that’s the character we tried to land on. Is it Cary Grant? Is it Humphrey Bogart? What would have been the influences that Batman knew from movies that he would be like, ‘Oh, that’s what the public expects a millionaire to sound like?'”

For Jamie Chung, “it was hard not to be influenced by Arleen Sorkin [the voice of Harley Quinn in the animated series of the 90s]. She’s a legend.” However, this version of Harley Quinn helped her overcome that. She said, “I love that Bruce Timm gave us the liberty to play with this character [and] also flip the script. Instead of Harley Quinn being really unpredicatable and joyful and twisted, he wanted Harleen Quinzel to be bubbly and disarming and then have Harley Quinn be really menacing and using [a] lower chest tone.”

Minnie Driver found The Penguin’s voice a different way. She said, “I looked at a lot of Jimmy Cagney [films], a lot of gangster movies form the 30s and 40s, and then my mother-in-law is actually from the Upper East Side of New York. She has this very clipped beautiful way of speaking. So I was thinking of that really formal American-vintage way of speaking and then made it bigger. The fact that [The Penguin] is a cabaret singer helped with that as well.”

All three actors continuously praised the genius of the creative team. Indeed, Minnie Driver said, “Only J.J., Matt Reeves, and Bruce Timm could have come up with this concept.”

Batman: Caped Crusader is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Check out the official trailer here.