Blog #3: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (Recommendation)

Hey guys, okay so for this week’s post, I wanted to make a sort of pitch or recommendation to you about a fantastic animated movie called Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm (1993).  Mask of the Phantasm comes out of the Emmy Award winning Batman: The Animated Series tv show which ran from 1992-1995, and was created by Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm, both of whom wrote and directed the movie as well (Batman). The main plot of the movie, Mask of the Phantasm, revolves around Batman being wrongly implicated in a series of murders of mob bosses which are actually being done by a new vigilante assassin (Phantasm).  So, for this post, I’m going to explain one of the aspects that drew me to it and why I recommend  the movie to you guys.

 (MaskOfThePhantasm)

Mask of the Phantasm, to sum it all up, really captures the essence of, first, the Batman universe, and secondly it captures what and who Batman/Bruce Wayne is.  In other words, Mask of the Phantasm, along with Batman: The Animated Series, captures the dark mood and serious tone that one would expect from a Batman story.  Furthermore, the characters are each great to watch and the voice actors do an amzaing job playing them and giving them life, especially Mark Hamill who voices the Joker, and even more especially Kevin Conroy who voices Batman/Bruce Wayne.  Conroy most of all jumps out by way of his portrayal of Bruce Wayne who, in Mask of the Phantasm, is having flashbacks of how he came to be the Dark Knight, which is a sideplot to the overall plot described earlier in this post.  The creators and writers, and especially Conroy, did an excellent job in carrying out this highly emotional subplot because they were able to really hammer home how much of a big decision Bruce Wayne had before him, for on one hand he had the choice of getting married and starting a family and living a happy life, thus throwing aside his desire to avenge his parent’s death by fighting crime, whereas on the other hand, he could choose to embrace the immense task of fighting crime and injustice in Gotham City in order to protect the innocent, which would, in his mind, negate the prior choice.  Watching Bruce go through the emotional turmoil that he did was quite amazing to watch as it captured the sheer immensity and difficulty of the choices he had before him, and it was also thought-provoking as well because, while watching this sequence, it raised the question of: If faced with a hard, life-changing choice, as Bruce Wayne was, what would I, or any of us, do?

Also, since in class today, we talked about how modern animators have involve various story and plot device, such as emotional appeal, I thought that recommending Batman; Mask of the Phantasm to you guys would be a very appropriate piece of animation to check out, largely because of strong emotions that this movie features, in additon to the great characterizations, performances, music, etc.

Here are just two clips that I thought would be good at showing the amazing and emotional performance displayed in the movie:

Phantasm Clip #1

Phantasm Clip #2

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