Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

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Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Screenplay by
Story byAlan Burnett
Based on
Produced by
Starring
Edited byAl Breitenbach
Music byShirley Walker
Production
companies
Distributed byWarner Bros.[1]
Release date
  • December 25, 1993 (1993-12-25)
Running time
78 minutes
CountryUnited States[1]
LanguageEnglish
Budget$6 million
Box office$5.6 million[2]

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (also known as Batman: The Animated Movie – Mask of the Phantasm) is a 1993 American

Warner Bros. Feature Animation division for theatrical productions afterwards. Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Bob Hastings and Robert Costanzo reprise their voice roles from Batman: The Animated Series, joined by Dana Delany, Hart Bochner, Stacy Keach Jr., Abe Vigoda, Dick Miller and John P. Ryan
.

Produced between the

second seasons of the series, the film follows Batman as he reconciles with a former lover, Andrea Beaumont, and faces a mysterious vigilante who is murdering Gotham City's crime bosses. The situation becomes more complicated when the Joker enters the picture. The plot partly mirrors Mike W. Barr's Batman: Year Two comic book story arc, but features an original antagonist, the Phantasm, in place of the Reaper, while also borrowing elements from the Batman: Year One
graphic novel, recounting how Bruce Wayne became Batman and his first attempts to fight crime.

Originally planned for a direct-to-video release, Warner Bros. gave Mask of the Phantasm a theatrical release, condensing its production into a strenuous eight-month schedule. The film was the first theatrical feature film produced by Warner Bros. Animation, and was released through the studio's Family Entertainment[1] division on December 25, 1993, to generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the stylized animation, voice performances, story, and music.

Due to the decision to release it in theaters on short notice, Mask of the Phantasm failed at the box office. After its release on home media, it became financially successful. Until the limited release of Batman: The Killing Joke in 2016, Mask of the Phantasm was the only animated Batman film to be given a theatrical release, as well as the only one to receive a full theatrical release until The Lego Batman Movie in 2017.

Plot

Bruce Wayne and Andrea Beaumont begin a relationship after meeting while Bruce visits his parents' grave and Andrea visits her mother's. During this time, Bruce makes his first attempts at crime-fighting. He foils a truck hijacking but is disappointed that the criminals were not scared of him. Bruce becomes conflicted about how to honor his parents; whether to defend Gotham City to avenge their deaths, or to settle down and marry like they wished. Bruce proposes marriage to Andrea, who accepts. However, she abruptly leaves Gotham with her father, businessman Carl Beaumont, ending the engagement in a Dear John letter. Heartbroken, Bruce assumes the mantle of Batman.

Ten years later, Chuckie Sol proposes flooding Gotham with counterfeit money, but is thwarted by Batman. When Sol tries to escape in his car, the Phantasm, a masked vigilante resembling the Grim Reaper, attacks him. Sol attempts to kill the assailant with his car, but the Phantasm dodges it and Sol careens to his death. Witnesses see Batman at the scene and believe him to have killed Sol. City councilman Arthur Reeves, once a lawyer for Carl Beaumont, vows to have Batman arrested.

The Phantasm murders another gangster, Buzz Bronski, in the Gotham Cemetery. Bronski's bodyguards mistakenly believe the Phantasm to be Batman. Batman investigates the scene of Bronski's death and encounters Andrea, inadvertently revealing his identity to her. Batman finds evidence linking Carl Beaumont with Sol, Bronski, and a third gangster, Salvatore Valestra, later finding a photograph of the four together in Valestra's home. Paranoid that Batman will come for him next, the now-elderly Valestra asks Reeves for help but is refused. In doing so, Valestra reveals he illegally aided Reeves in his political career. In desperation, Valestra turns to the Joker.

The Phantasm goes to kill Valestra at his penthouse, only to find Valestra already killed by Joker venom. Joker booby-trapped the place expecting to kill Batman with a bomb, but sees through a camera that Batman is not the killer. The Phantasm escapes the blast and is pursued by Batman but disappears. The police attempt to ambush Batman, but he is saved by Andrea. Andrea later explains to Bruce that her father embezzled money from Valestra and was forced to flee to Europe to find a way to repay it. What Andrea later realized is that Valestra wanted "payment in blood". While Bruce considers resuming his relationship with Andrea, he concludes that Carl Beaumont is the Phantasm. However, Bruce takes another look at the photo. He recognizes Valestra's unnamed enforcer as the Joker prior to his transformation.

The Joker reveals to Reeves that Batman did not commit the murders, and accuses Reeves of targeting him to erase his mob connections. Reeves is exposed to Joker venom; albeit a weakened dose as Joker was interrupted. Later hospitalized, Reeves struggles with hysteria. Batman interrogates Reeves, and he confesses that while previously working as Carl's lawyer, he helped the Beaumonts escape. When he ran out of money during his first run for office, he sold out their location to Valestra. Reeves failed to realize that Valestra wanted Beaumont dead. Both Batman and the Joker deduce that the Phantasm is Andrea, and that her final target is the Joker.

Andrea tracks down the Joker to his hideout in Gotham's abandoned World's Fair. They fight but are interrupted by Batman. Batman pleads with her to stop, to no avail. The Joker prepares to destroy the fair but is seized by Andrea, who bids Bruce goodbye as the explosives detonate. Bruce survives the blast but finds no trace of either Andrea or the Joker.

Alfred later consoles Bruce in the Batcave, assuring him that Andrea could not have been helped, before finding Andrea's locket containing a picture of them together. A sorrowful Andrea departs Gotham and a saddened Batman, cleared of accusations against him, resumes crimefighting.

Voice cast

Production

Impressed by the success of the first season of

rogues gallery. Burnett also cited he "wanted to do a love story with Bruce because no one had really done it on the TV show. I wanted a story that got into his head."[4] Members of the creative team have claimed that they did not intend for the Joker to appear in the film; Paul Dini has contradicted this, stating that the Joker's role was always part of the story from the beginning of the film's production.[5] The writers were highly cautious of placing the Joker in the film, as they did not want any connection to Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman, but writer Michael Reaves said, "We then realized that we could make his appearance serve the story in a way that we never could in live-action."[6] In order to keep the Joker as a solo threat, Bruce Timm and Burnett convinced frequent Animated Series writer Dini to not use Harley Quinn in the film for that reason (although Arleen Sorkin did a bit part in the film voicing a minor character). The same technique was previously used in the episodes "The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne" and "Joker's Wild".[7]
Conversely, the episode "Harley's Holiday" was done with Harley Quinn and did not feature the Joker.

Aiding Burnett in writing the script were

Academy Award-winning actress Shirley Booth), The Saturday Evening Post protagonist of cartoonist Ted Key's TV series Hazel.[10] On the other hand, the design of the Phantasm went into 20 different versions until one was found which convinced the film's crew. According to Burnett, the Phantasm was like the Grim Reaper with a cape, although the idea was to make her resemble the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come of Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol,[11]
something that even the Joker mentions in the finished version of the film.

Early in production, Warner Bros. decided to release Phantasm theatrically, rather than straight to video. That left less than a year for production time (most animated features take well over two years from finished story to final release). Due to this decision, the animators went over the scenes in order to accommodate the widescreen theatrical aspect ratio.[13] The studio cooperated well, granting the filmmakers a large amount of creative control.[14]

Warner Bros. also increased the production budget to $6 million,[12] which gave the filmmakers opportunities for more elaborate set pieces. The opening title sequence featured a flight through an entirely computer-generated Gotham City.[4] As a visual joke, sequence director Kevin Altieri set the climax of the film inside a miniature automated model of Gotham City, where Batman and the Joker are giants. This was an homage to a mainstay of Batman comic books of the Dick Sprang era, often featuring the hero fighting against a backdrop of gigantic props (they would later do another homage to Sprang's works in The New Batman Adventures episode "Legends of the Dark Knight").[13] From start to finish, the film was completed within eight months.[12] The film's animation was provided for by regular Batman: The Animated Series overseas studios; Dong Yang Animation in South Korea and Spectrum Animation in Japan. While most of the animation was done by Dong Yang, Spectrum handled the layout work.

The film's plot bears heavy resemblance to the 1987 miniseries Batman: Year Two, written by Mike W. Barr and illustrated by Alan Davis, Paul Neary, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Farmer and Todd McFarlane.[15] While Bruce Timm called Year Two an "accidental inspiration" when designing the Phantasm, stating that he did not consciously base the Phantasm's look on the visually and thematically-similar Year Two villain the Reaper, with Alan Burnett saying he modeled Phantasm's modus operandi after the Spider-Man villain Mysterio, ni "the idea of someone who could disappear into smoke."[16] in May 2017, Barr confirmed that Mask of the Phantasm's similarities with Year Two were intentional, with him only having realised when "I dropped by the offices of the BTAS staff twice [and] each time I dropped by I saw a guy—a different guy each time—industriously typing away, with a copy of Batman: Year Two open beside him. That was when I first became aware of their use of Year Two [for the film]", with the early designs of the Phantasm in particular convincing him to bring up the matter of financial compensation to Paul Levitz at DC Comics. After telling Levitz, "I really want to keep this in the family," Barr had been given a portion of the film's earnings, as well as money for the creation of the Phantasm herself, DC acknowledging Year Two as the basis for the film.[7]

Themes

Paul Dini intended each of the flashbacks into Batman's love life to "have a tendency to get worse, when you hope things will get better." Bruce's relationship with Andrea, which at first shows promise, eventually turns into turmoil.[17] At first, Bruce and Andrea are set for marriage, but then Bruce is given a farewell note from Andrea cutting off their relationship. This eventually leads into Bruce's decision to become Batman.[17] Richard Corliss of Time felt this scene paralleled Andrea's decision to avenge her own parents and reject love when she finds her own father murdered. Both events transform the two people (Bruce becomes Batman, Andrea becomes the Phantasm).[18] One scene depicts Bruce Wayne at his parents' tombstone saying, "I didn't count on being happy." According to Reaves, this scene was to be a pivotal moment in Bruce's tragic life, as he denies himself the opportunity to live a normal life.[6] Reaves also stated: "When Bruce puts on the mask for the first time, [after Andrea breaks their engagement], and Alfred says 'My God!' he's reacting in horror, because he's watching this man he's helped raise from childhood, this man who has let the desire for vengeance and retribution consume his life, at last embrace the unspeakable."[6]

Music