Batman Beyond: The Complete Series Deluxe Limited Edition Blu-ray review

Dec 02, 2019- Permalink

Batman Beyond takes place in a four decade span after the events of Batman: The Animated Series. Bruce Wayne is getting old but still fighting crime though his heart is literally not up for the fight anymore. Though he uses a special Batsuit to help him defend Gotham, he takes on a protégé, reluctantly at first, whose life’s pain parallels his own. The voice cast of this animated series features Kevin Conroy as the Caped Crusader and Will Friedle as Terry McGinnis, the young man who Wayne trains to succeed him. Other voice cast includes Teri Garr, Cree Summer and Stockard Channing. We had a chance to review the Batman Beyond: The Complete Series Deluxe Limited Edition set, which also includes the direct-to-video movie Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker, some lencitular collector cards and a Funko Pop! Silver Batman figure. Though Warner Bros Home Entertainment provided us with this item for review purposes, the opinions expressed below are mine alone.

The 1080p AVC-encoded transfers are presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Forty-one of the fifty-two episodes were remastered from the original 35mm negatives, while the other eleven had issues with the source material and were upscaled from a standard definition source. The remastered episodes look great despite some digital noise reduction being applied to mask imperfections in the source negatives. The colours look great, the black levels are nice and deep and the line art of the animation is crisp. It looks really good. There is a notable difference in video quality in the eleven episodes that were upscaled, but despite not having the original negatives to scan, they don’t look awful. The Return of the Joker also has vivid colours, great black levels and crystal clear line art.

On the audio side, the Batman Beyond series comes with an English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack and a French Dolby Digital 2.0 track with subtitles for English SDH and French. The Return of the Joker has an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack and Spanish and French Dolby Digital 2.0 tracks with subtitles in English SDH, French and Spanish. Obviously the 2.0 track of the series provides no surround activity, but the dialogue is clear, the effects still have weight and the score is crisp and dynamic. The Joker feature’s surround track is very clear and has a good amount of surround activity.

As for extras, besides the aforementioned figurine and lencitular collector cards, there is a digital copy code and a bunch of bonus featurettes that take us behind the scenes. They are spread across the episode discs and also on a bonus disc. Some of them are quite lengthy, including a fifty-three minute roundtable with cast and production staff and a ninety minute documentary.

Great visuals, solid sound and a plethora of extras make Batman Beyond: The Complete Series a worthy addition to any DC fan’s collection.