Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

The New Adventures of Batman: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Mite makes right.

Reviewed by Randy Miller III June 30, 2024

If insanity is "doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results" (as attributed to Albert Einstein), consider Filmation Studios insane: not only was the production house committed to its mission statement of churning out homogenized kid-friendly limited animation in the good old USA, their one-season series The New Adventures of Batman wasn't even the first time they tackled the Caped Crusader and company. (More on that soon enough.) Yet you might forget that this franchise was mostly stagnant during the 1970s: our hero appeared in Super Friends, of course, but was otherwise out of the public eye at this point. Even so, The Dark Knight Returns and Tim Burton's iconic take were still roughly a decade away... so for a very specific age group, this was basically Batman.

With the audio muted, it might be tough to differentiate The New Adventures of Batman with its previous Filmation counterpart: the appropriately-named Adventures of Batman, which aired almost a full decade earlier. Both were like-minded, light-hearted productions that shared obvious ties to the 1966 live-action TV show with campy atmospheres, kid-friendly jokes, a colorful roster of Rogues Gallery villains, and even a few new faces and places along the way. The two biggest differences offered by The New Adventures are its slightly longer episode format (~23 minutes apiece) and, of course, the lead voice actors: with no disrespect to Olan Soule and Casey Kasem, bringing back Adam West and Burt Ward to reprise their iconic takes on Batman and Robin gave this newer show an obvious fun factor edge.

Then there's that third difference: the infamous Bat-Mite (voiced by Lou Scheimer), who's not as bad as Scrappy-Doo but runs a pretty close second. This mischievous imp is Batman's biggest fan, understandably has a crush on Batgirl / Barbara Gordon (Melendy Britt, who also voices Catwoman in four episodes), and basically gets in the way more often than not. It's almost inevitable that any kid-friendly TV series will have this kind of character show up at some point (see also: Orbitty and The Great Gazoo) and usually it's for the worst, but here he's at least somewhat bearable once you learn to go with the flow. Of course, I'm perhaps a little more tolerant due to The New Adventures' closer ties to the 1966 show, and its longer but still simplistic stories give more characters longer times in the spotlight.

Even so, as evidenced by my fairly modest rating, I don't consider The New Adventures of Batman to be anywhere near the Caped Crusader's finest hour -- it's fine for what it is and/or in small doses, but you'll have to have strong nostalgic ties to this one to get through all 16 episodes in fewer than three or four sittings. (Full disclosure: I never watched it growing up, although I do have very early core memories of Filmation's later series, The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show. But even die-hard disciples of The New Adventures of Batman are bound to be at least slightly disappointed by Warner Bros.' new Blu-ray collection: although it's a minor miracle it exists at all, there obviously wasn't a great deal of care put into this one-disc set. (Yes, there's more than six hours of content crammed onto a single BD-50.)

Episode List:
"The Pest", "The Moonman", "Trouble Identity", "A Sweet Joke On Gotham City", "The Bermuda Rectangle", "Bite-Sized", "Reading, Writing & Wronging", "The Chameleon", "He Who Laughs Last", "The Deep Freeze", "Dead Ringers", "Curses! Oiled Again!", "Birds Of A Feather Fool Around Together", "Have An Evil Day (Part 1)", "Have An Evil Day (Part 2)", and "This Looks Like A Job For Bat-Mite!".

The New Adventures of Batman: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Cramming over six hours of content onto a single dual-layered disc is never a good idea, as it often results in obvious compression artifacts and other anomalies that stick out like sore thumbs. But while posterization and macro blocking are clearly visible in more than a few sequences, I was actually surprised that these issues weren't more frequent or distracting. That doesn't give these 1.37:1 transfers a free pass, however: it's obvious that strong amounts of digital noise reduction were applied here and, as such, no real film grain is present anywhere. Image detail likewise runs fairly soft and the linework occasionally suffers, although to be fair the colors are bold and bright without noticeable bleeding and only trace amounts of dirt and debris could be spotted along the way. While there's certainly room for improvement here, most fans will be approaching this release with nostalgic memories of snowy rabbit-ear TV broadcasts and even further compressed DVDs, so things could definitely be a lot worse. (Here's looking at you, Scooby-Doo.)

The New Adventures of Batman: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The audio aims even lower but hits its target more squarely, with Warner Bros.' similarly restored DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio (split mono) mix offering a perfectly clean and serviceable presentation of its very basic late '70s source material. The New Adventures of Batman's action scenes obviously doesn't have much punch or pizazz, but everything from the voice work to the music cues sounds relatively crisp and damage-free. No real complaints here, aside from the main menu whose music is not only mixed too loudly but doesn't match the tone of the series at all.

Optional English (SDH) subtitles are offered during all 16 episodes and the bonus featurette below.

The New Adventures of Batman: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This one-disc release ships in a keepcase with kind of misleading cover artwork and no inserts of any kind. Bonus features are minimal and include one featurette ported over from WB's 2007 DVD set.

• The Dark Knight Revisited (18:47) - This decently put-together DVD-era featurette (which, like the actual show, suffers from a few compression-related issues) includes short interview clips with Batman vets including Dennis O'Neil, Paul Dini, Mark Hamill, and others. For the most part they all share fond memories of this specific era of superhero-themed entertainment and the pros and cons of adapting the franchise's darker roots for the Saturday morning crowd using roots laid by the live-action 1960s series and Filmation's earlier Adventures of Batman animated series. It's nothing Earth-shattering, but certainly worth a run-through.

The New Adventures of Batman: The Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The New Adventures of Batman was Filmation's second attempt to bring a kid-friendly Batman to the lucrative Saturday morning crowd (no doubt due to the ongoing popularity of Super Friends, produced by rival Hanna-Barbera); it clearly has its limitations, but the fun "Class of 1966 reunion" lead voice work by Adam West and Burt Ward helps out a little. Otherwise, this is pretty paint-by-numbers stuff, even if it holds a very nostalgic place in the hearts of earlier Gen-X viewers. Either way, WB's frankly kind of lazy Blu-ray treatment spoils the party somewhat: their decent remastering effort is slightly overshadowed by penny-pinching, and the only extra is a recycled DVD-era featurette. It's at least priced accordingly, though, so I'd imagine most established fans will be picking this up no matter what.