‘Batman vs. Two-Face’ Delivers A More Serious Take on the 1960’s Era Batman and Robin

Holy sequel, Batman! On Sunday, October 8, 2017, at New York Comic Con, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation premiered the animated movie Batman vs. Two-Face, the sequel to last year’s Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, which had its premiere at last year’s New York Comic Con. Inspired by the 1960s Batman TV series, Batman vs. Two-Face, like its prequel, also features the voice talents of the original dynamic duo, Adam West (in one of his last roles before his death this year) and Burt Ward, as well as Julie Newmar as Catwoman and William Shatner as Harvey Dent/Two-Face. Batman vs. Two-Face opens with the two heroes and District Attorney Harvey Dent attending a demonstration of a machine built by Dr. Hugo Strange—an “Evil Extractor” that will rid Gotham’s criminals of their evil impulses. However, when Strange uses a handful of Gotham’s vilest villains as test subjects, the amount of evil they emit overloads the machine, causing an explosion that scars half of Dent’s face and infects him with the same evil they had aimed to eliminate. When Bruce Wayne pays for Dent’s cosmetic surgery, hoping to steer his friend away from his alternative life as Two-Face, all seems well until Batman and Robin discover links in recent cases that all seem to point to Two-Face’s return.

Like Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, Batman vs. Two-Face takes its cues from the campy humor of the 1960s TV series, with all the comic-book-fight sound effects (“fwok,” kerplow,” and “plutz” be…