‘Batman: Caped Crusader’ Goes Full Noir in Its Opening Credits
There was almost a version of “Batman: Caped Crusader” without any opening credits, just a title card.
“I really didn’t have any idea of what we were going to do for the main titles,” executive producer and co-showrunner Bruce Timm told IndieWire. “It was something that we kept kicking down the road because making the show itself was a 40-hour-a-week job, plus eating up all my mental bandwidth. Our executive in charge of production, Peter Girardi, kept saying, ‘We got to get started on the main titles.’ And at one point, I was so busy with the show I said, ‘Do we even have to have a main title?’ And he said, ‘Technically no; on streaming, some shows just have a card.’ I was like, ‘Let’s just do that.'”
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Thank god Girardi pressed the issue, because the noir-tinged, Deco-charged black and white opening credits are a stark reminder that this animated Gotham is a decidedly more adult one than Timm’s previous outing, “Batman: The Animated Series.” “Caped Crusader” offers a fresh new take on Bruce Wayne (Hamish Linklater) and the heroes and villains of Gotham, from a gender-swapped Penguin (voiced by Minnie Driver, no less!) to a wild riff on Harley Quinn. From the haunting theme to the fresh looks of the characters, “Batman: Caped Crusader” promises something darker and weirder, a little more in line with Matt Reeves’ recent “The Batman.” (Reeves is an executive producer on “Caped Crusader.”)
“[The credits] remind me a little bit of the black and white short that we did 10 years ago, ‘Strange Days,” Timm said. “Which was like a little miniature pilot for what we ended up making with the show.”
As it happens, Matt Girardi, art director at Warner Bros. Animation Creative Services (and Peter’s brother), worked on that short as well, adding grain to the images and working on the fog effects. So when the credit sequence treatment assignment got kicked over to him, he had a general sense of what was needed.
“It’s of the show, but it’s like a degree or an evolution beyond what’s happening inside of the show,” Girardi said of the simple sequence, which is half animation and half motion graphics. “It was a lot of fun, and yes, we did pull a lot of inspiration from that ‘Strange Days’ short.”
Girardi looked at photography from the era that utilized the silver gelatin print process, which gives images what he called “that silvery sort of film emulation feel.” Likewise, Frederik Wiedmann’s score was a massive influence on what Girardi created.
“I hardly ever get the score first,” he said. “Once we got a creative brief down and understood exactly what the assignment was and heard the score, it like, ‘Yep, got it, aloof, semi weird.'” The score ultimately helped Girardi string together the mini-scenes that comprise the credits. “We’re getting glimpses of the city here and there in these vignettes,” he said. “It’s almost like every scene stands on its own.”
And the credits also hearken back to Timm’s initial pitch for the show to J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves. “I pitched that the thing that would separate this show from ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ was that I didn’t want it to be just retro-ish, but actually more of a period piece as if it was something from the late 1930s or early ’40s,” he said. “And I said, ‘If I could make this show in black and white, I totally would.’ And both Matt and JJ were like, ‘Oh man, that would be awesome. But even we don’t have enough juice to get that show made.'”
That said, the online response to the title sequence has been so overwhelmingly enthusiastic that Timm is pondering something. “People are saying, ‘Oh my God, I wish the whole show looked like this,'” he said. “Which is what I didn’t want to happen, but at the same time, it’s yeah, it’d be cool if we could do a special edition, maybe if it ever shows up on Blu-ray or something.”
All 10 episodes of “Batman: Caped Crusader” are available to stream on Prime Video.
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