Scooby Doo and Batman The Brave And The Bold

A Dog Out On A Dark Knight

Scooby Doo and Batman
The Brave And The Bold
USA 2018 Directed by Jake Castorena
Warner Brothers DVD Region 2

Warning: Slight spoilers.

The Brave And The Bold was a comic book series which ran from 1955 to somewhere in the 1980s. It was originally an adventure story orientated comic book but, after a few transformations, got injected with some of the superheroes that DC had in their catalogue and became something more like their World’s Finest comic book (which basically teamed up DC’s two biggest A list characters, Superman and Batman, on a regular basis). The Brave And The Bold, before long, became a revolving team up anthology which would feature The Batman plus any one DC hero or group of collective heroes within the pages. The series has been revived a number of times since the 1980s and is currently, I believe, a regular series once again.

This new animation, Scooby-Doo And Batman - The Brave And The Bold, teams up (for the third time, for the record) Batman and the Scooby Doo gang. This one being made some 47 years after the last two shorter episodes of The New Scooby Doo Movies TV series which also featured the dynamic duo. Although this feature length production from last year was apparently inspired by those earlier team ups, this is a fairly different kind of beast with a much more self aware attitude to the main, stylistic components of its own DNA. And it’s actually quite good, if a little more juvenile in places than I had expected... mainly with the treatment of Aquaman who looks more like the 1970s incarnation of Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow) and seems to shout “Outrageous!” whenever he gets the chance to say much of anything.

The plot starts off with Mystery Incorporated... that’s Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby Doo, to the uninitiated... as they finish up an adventure. However, when the spooky foes are unmasked it turns out to be Jon Jonz (aka Martian Manhunter) and a talking ape wearing a Sherlock Holmes style deerstalker called Detective Chimp (I really have no idea who this is and would just like to blot him out from my memory as quickly as possible, to be honest). It turns out Batman has cast this mystery as a test to see if Mystery Incorporated are worthy to join what is, more or less, a lightweight version of the Justice League of America (as it was always known when I was a kid) called Mystery Analysts of Gotham. The group comprises Batman, Martian Manhunter, Detective Chimp, The Question (a hero who has no face), Plastic Man (one of my favourite super heroes, although his sidekick Woozy Winks is nowhere to be seen) and Black Canary.

So the plot thickens when, while Scooby and the gang are helping these heroes solve an old crime, it dovetails into Batman’s one unsolved, old cold case where he failed to save the day and this new adventure sees his past coming back to haunt him. Just as bad, both Batman and Mystery Inc are framed for a crime and so are trying to finish the case while also evading both the police and the other superheroes... not to mention the lethal villain of the piece.

So, yeah, this is a nice enough, if quite childishly written (in places) caper and it makes for a diverting enough animation. There’s some nice dialogue in here too... for instance when Fred makes a device for trapping life-sized puppets, really consisting of just a net, he calls it a ‘mario-net’. Another great moment is when one of the other characters makes a terrible joke and The Question, who is featureless, says... “Just so you know, I’m rolling my eyes.”

Another nice thing about this movie is that the Batman character, while a bit angularly designed and looking like he has half of his face missing at some angles, is quite obviously an homage to the old Batman TV show in design (if not manner) and I can’t help but think that if Adam West himself had lived for just a few more years then he would have been providing the voice for this movie. As it is though, the costume with its  pale eyebrows and yellow ellipse around the bat symbol on his chest (something which actually didn’t start in the comics until the TV series first aired in the 1960s) disappear when the character flashes back to his previous, historically unsolved case in the nicest way. For this sequence the suit is replaced with the old style costume from his earliest comic book issues, with the extra long ears and the black bat symbol directly drawn onto the chest. This was a great little touch for longtime followers of the character and I really appreciate stuff like this. Also, the Batmobile in this section is one of those old, closed top versions with the big fin on the roof. Whereas in the main body of the film it’s the sixties one and it has the moving sign entry approach to the Bat Cave which people will remember from the old TV show.

Another nice stylistic touch is the little ‘highlight’ sections which pull out one of the characters such as Batman in mid punch to give a slow moving, not quite static splash page effect of the violent moments with a big musical sting behind each which is, almost, reminiscent of the old TV show and I’m pretty sure this is why this was done. The visuals aren’t quite the same but the stylistic punctuation of the fight scenes serves exactly the same effect. Also, the first time in the movie we see this done is when Shaggy and Scooby have to ‘eat their way out’ of a room full of super-villains such as Harley Quin and Poison Ivy in Arkham Asylum... with little staged moments of them chowing down on food as they evade the bad guys running. It’s nicely done, chum.

There are some problems too... like I implied, there’s no real ‘adult level’ to the scripting here and that’s a problem when it runs for an hour and a quarter. But my real problem was with Black Canary. Now, I love Black Canary but she always, almost without fail, wears fishnet stockings and that pretty much helps define her look as much as Superman’s red cloak or Green Lantern’s power ring. However, here there are no fishnets to be seen and I almost didn’t recognise her. She has pale, grey, lifeless stockings and... I’m sorry, that’s just not Black Canary. Heck, even the Lego version of her character has the iconic fishnets. Secondly... she has a super power of some kind of canary voice. What? Since when? Well, I think since sometime in only the last 30 years or so which, frankly, is a bizarre gimmick and certainly the Black Canary I know, from the 1970s (and earlier) never had any kind of canary howl. This is a pretty lame addition.

All in all though, it’s not a bad movie and the kids among you should definitely like it.

There are a couple of extra movies on the disc too, those being the two original episodes of The New Scooby-Doo Movies which featured Batman and Robin from 1972. Now, I tried to watch these on DVD a few years ago and was disgusted because, not only were they both ‘top and tailed’, as in the opening and closing credits were not present... they also had a dire, canned laughter track which made them pretty unwatchable. Indeed, the last time I tried to watch these I had to give up after about three minutes because I just can’t stand laughter tracks. Their treatment on this disc is a little bit better but it really is a mixed bag...

On the plus side, both cartoons have had their opening and end credits restored so... that’s pretty good. Also and, quite surprisingly, the first of the two episodes, The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair, has had it’s laughter track completely removed. Yes! High five to Warners for being able to get hold of the isolated elements and wipe the horrible laughter track from this one. Hoyt Curtin’s musical shenanigans certainly benefit from it. Alas, for the second of the two shows, The Caped Crusader Caper, it seems they’ve been unable to do this but I suspect there’s a lot less than there was on there originally and it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a sweetener laughter track which intruded onto the sound effects tape and they were just left with that one when they stripped it off. It certainly doesn’t seem as distracting as it could have done though so, I definitely think some work has been done on it. That being said, the visual quality isn’t great and these two look a little pixilated, to be honest. Although, I guess they always would seem like that when you compare them to the modern main feature on here.

Okay so... the content of these two films are... terrible. In both cases we have The Joker and The Penguin teaming up and acting completely out of character to have fun scaring those ‘meddling kids’. The 1960s Batman vibe is still definitely something which certain elements have been borrowed from though... like the same approach to the Bat Cave that the modern cartoon used and also the speech patterns of The Penguin being very much in the style of Burgess Meredith’s outstanding performance of him in the sixties. The Joker’s voice though... the less said about it the better, believe me. There is the odd good pun though, such as when the fiendish villains drop Batman and Robin into an inescapable pit in the ground. “Our pit is full... how pitiful!” quips The Joker and I have to say this high quality punning surprised me at this point compared to much of the rest on offer in these cartoons. I still haven’t figured out, though, how Batman can look through his binoculars and see the same footage we saw earlier, from different angles into the shot even, though Batman is still observing from the same viewpoint. What the heck?

Ultimately, Scooby-Doo And Batman - The Brave And The Bold is a fairly fun time and with all three crossovers to date of the title characters included, this DVD (and also Blu Ray in the US, apparently) is a nice little package. It’s a shame there weren’t any documentary extras on here too as I was curious about the history of this team up and the decisions that brought the original TV productions to life but, alas, the two episodes are the only bonus features present. Still, if you are on the lookout for unusual team ups then this one definitely fits the bill and the main movie, at least, should give you something interesting to look at. More ‘Zoinks!’ and ‘Jinkies!’ than you can shake a stick at in this one.