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Hey everyone. This is SofiaBlythe2014. For this comparison, I'm comparing the movies "Batman And Harley Quinn" and "Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold". They're both movies that revive cancelled Batman series, those being Batman: The Animated Series for the former and Batman: The Brave And The Bold for the latter. While I don't hate the former movie, it's very lacking compared to the latter. To show why the Scooby-Batman movie did better, we look at a few factors: The Story, Dynamic Explored, Continuity, Villains, Target Audience And Crew Attached, Casting, and Ending. I know that there's been a bit of a debate about whether the former movie should be canon to the DCAU or not, but since Bruce Timm considers part of the DCAU, I will talk about it as such. I may sound like I'm whining, but I'm actually fairly calm when talking about this. Let's begin.

The Story:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The story here involves Poison Ivy and the Floronic Man (Jason Woodrue) teaming up to recreate an experiment that could turn humans into plant people. Batman and Nightwing don't know where they are, so they ask Harley Quinn to help them out. However, working with her isn't easy.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The story here involves Mystery Incorporated being invited by Batman to join the Mystery Analysts Of Gotham, a mystery solving organization, due to their skills. However, a ghost called the Crimson Cloak comes to Gotham City to take it over. Now they must work together on this investigation, but Batman seems to be hiding something.

The former is essentially a stretched out version of the main series episode "Harlequinade", where she temporarily teams up with Batman to find Joker, and it shows. A lot of scenes are either dragged out (like the fart joke, or the back to back to songs) or move way too fast (the Bobby Liebowitz scene), making the whole thing feel very wonky. In contrast, the latter actually feels like a movie. We've seen the Scooby gang team up with Batman before, specifically in the show's April Fools episode, and a few times in The New Scooby Doo Movies. This feels like a legitimate movie structure wise due to how the movie takes its time to enhance and establish their dynamic and increases the scale to outside of Gotham even when only staying in it, as opposed to the former movie just brushing it over.

Dynamic Explored:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The movie tries to show Harley's dynamic with Batman and Nightwing, and doesn't show it too well. The latter two don't really show any signs of development until the last few minutes of the movie. Nightwing occasionally plays the straight man, but only a little. As for Harley, the movie tries to portray her as a kooky, broken bird with hidden depths. It doesn't work well given the weird flip flop in her behavior. For example, she occasionally talks to herself like that of a crazy person, use her sexuality to entice people to do what she wants, and yet she can also be quite insightful of other people's behavior. Yes, she may have psychology skills, but she feels too unstable and not naive enough for us to feel for he, nor do they Dwell a lot on her backstory. The biggest missed opportunity is with the Joker given that he's only mentioned and never appears. I'm not against trying to make her stand on her own, but if it's supposed to be set in the BTAS world, then it should've been a major plot point within the movie, and not in its tie in comics mentioned below.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The dynamic explored is between Batman and the Scooby Doo gang, and it's handled quite well. For one thing, we can actually feel for Batman here. Back when he just started, as shown in a flashback, he was trying to stop a dangerous portal that scientist Milo Scarlett invented, only for one of the two assistants, Leo Scarlett, to get sucked in. The other assistant would go on to become the Riddler. The father, Sam Scarlett, was mad at him for what happened, and broke ties with him. He seemingly lost an innocent life while also accidentally creating one of his deadly foes. This helps fuel Batman's arc for the movie, helped by how he's not condescending. Everyone in the Scooby gang also goes through an arc. Specifically, they want to be taken more seriously as mystery solvers. It works due to how we see both of their flaws and strengths. For example, they accidentally caused the riot at Arkham Asylum, barely caught the puppet ghost at the start, and had villains chase them from the villain bar. At the same time, we also see things like Shaggy and Scooby outsmarting Bane, Daphne solving various riddles, and Fred using expert planning when they don bat suits. This works since they have both youthful inexperience in a strange world, and a good sense of perception once they do get caught up.

Continuity:

Batman And Harley Quinn: This is probably one of the most controversial aspects. When does this movie take place? Before Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker? During Cadmus? During Static Shock time skips? What makes this especially pronounced is that, this movie is part of a franchise that's run for roughly 15 years, making continuity much more of an issue. Not helping things is how Bruce Timm didn't check to see if anything lined up. There are tie in comics that go a bit more in depth, but they don't give a clearer answer, and the fact that it's required to buy the comics to see crucial story elements almost feels like taking advantage of your audience when done poorly. If we're just meant to not try to fit this into a timeline, or see this as its own story, it doesn't work since it doesn't set up a base guideline to make us properly care about the characters.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: Regarding Scooby Doo, the concept of the franchise is simple enough that it can be written during pretty much any time period. As for the main Batman series, the continuity is a bit looser. Sure, there is continuity like the Equinox story, but it's played loosely enough that it's easy to jump into it and just be an adaptation, while still watching the characters and writing develop. Even putting that aside, the show is not connected to any other show's continuity, and ran for only three years, so the chances of it adhering to continuity are much greater.

Villains:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The main villains of the movie are Poison Ivy and the Fluronic Man (Jason Woodrue), who aren't the best here. Regarding the former, they try to portray her as more of a well intentioned extremist than an outright villain, but it doesn't work given that she neither has enough interaction with Harley until over halfway through the movie nor does she think about her more. The movie just expects you to know about her relationship with Harley. Regarding Jason, outside of being a bit more abrasive, he's literally just Ivy's clone with little to stand out from her. They're just blank slates.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: Let me spoil the twist from my review. The Crimson Cloak turns out to be Clayface, who in turn is revealed to be working with the Riddler. The Riddler actually has a genius plan, what with knocking out Question and posing as him, escaping the asylum during the power outage, and manipulating Clayface since the accident, making him both crafty and fun to watch. As for Clayface, you can actually buy the tragic villain act with him since he just wanted fame and recognition, and was willing to act with grace when caught.

Target Audience And Crew Attached:

Batman And Harley Quinn: This movie is aiming to appeal to the viewers who grew up watching the main series, what with a PG-13 rating and all, and adding in some raunchier material. It also has only Bruce Timm attached to it, which is a problem. While Bruce helped make the show as great as it is, there are others that made it great, mainly Paul Dini, and they both created her character, and he kept Bruce in check. Paul has also written Harley well in other shows like The Batman and Justice League Action. He also wrote DC Showcase: Catwoman, which made its title character sexier while still making her an actual character. You'd think for a project honoring a character they both created that Paul would also be brought in to write the movie. The movie both overestimates and underestimates its audience, making the raunchy, comedic, and heartwarming moments mesh poorly. It tries to act grown up, but winds up acting immature. Bruce still has talent, but he should've learned to realize that part of why the show was great is how it works around standards and uses them to their advantage. He also should've given Jim Krieg more input on the project.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: One thing that helps this movie out is that it brought back both of its creators, Michael Jelenic and James Tucker, to be producers for this movie, even with the former's work on Teen Titans Go. Michael has also worked as a producer on Be Cool Scooby Doo, while James was a producer for the Mask Of The Blue Falcon movie, so they both have good Scooby Doo experience. They're also responsible for writing and producing the two animated movies based on the 1966 Adam West Batman series, both of which were praised for honoring the show and giving it the right modern touches. There's also their work on Legion Of Superheroes. As such, the comedy, seriousness, and heartwarming moments all mesh together well and appeal to a family audience like the original show did.

Casting:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The movie brought back Kevin Conroy to voice Batman and Loren Lester to voice Batman, and while they have age in their voices, they still sound fine. It's with Harley, Ivy, and Jason that we have problems. Naturally, it would be hard to get back Arleen Sorkin and Diane Pershing to voice the former two given that they retired from acting years ago. They're instead voiced by Melissa Rauch and Paget Brewster. Melissa is a mixed bag. Sometimes, she sounds fine, mostly in scenes where she's more low key, like the fight at the lab. Other times, she either sounds too whiny (like in her breakdown) or she gets a bit too hyper (particularly in fast talking scenes). Paget's take on Ivy sounds like a mix between her Lois Lane and Elise Pearson voices, if they were incredibly bored. Her sexy voice is more leaking instead of oozing due to poor voice direction. Kevin Michael Richardson uses his standard deep villain voice for Jason. While he's used that voice before, it's usually not distracting, unlike here. He sounds more wooden than an actual block of wood. The voice casting is fairly weak here.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The movie brings in the current Scooby Doo voice actors (Frank Welker as Scooby and Fred, Grey DeLisle Griffin as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, and Kate Micucci as Velma) and their performances are as sharp as ever due to experience, yet there's still that youthful vibe. As for the main series, we get many of the original voices to reprise their roles, including Diedrich Bader as Batman, Grey as Black Canary too, Jeff Bennett as the Joker, John DiMaggio as Aquaman, and more. John is also quite menacing as Crimson Cloak, especially in the shadows. There are some voice switches though. For example, Nicolas Guest does not return as Question despite reprising Martian Manhunter, with the role instead being done by his Justice League Unlimited voice actor, Jeffrey Combs. It's slightly odd, but I don't think anyone would mind given that he's reprising the role from a good show. Tom Kenny voices Penguin here rather than Stephen Root, but since it was only in one scene, and he has a prominent role as Plastic Man, that can be slid under the rug. Harley and Ivy also appear in this movie, but only in one scene. It's because of this that, instead of Meghan Strange voicing the former and either Jennifer Hale or Vanessa Marshall voicing the latter, Tara Strong voices both of them, again due to convenience. Fred Tarasciore voices Harvey Bullock here, and captures the gruffness and softer moments really well, kind of like with his Hulk. They all sound as if they've been doing it for a long time, allowing all kinds of performances to shine through.

Ending:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The ending is fairly problematic. Jason is defeated by literally lighting him on fire with a match, and we don't see if Ivy turned a new leaf or chose only to stop the scheme but not her villainous ways. We also don't see how Harley decided to start a game show to help others be recommended for therapy, or even how she put her life back on track. It's very anticlimactic due to how it wants to act grown up, yet also fails to realize that the original series knew how to give characters actual endings.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The ending is all kinds of awesome. Everyone manages to shut down The Riddler's portal, and save the Scarlett family from staying torn apart. Batman and Mystery Inc have more respect for each other, closing the arcs successfully, yet leaving it open enough to tell more stories. This is definitely satisfying.

Winner: Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold

Here are the writers for the movies.

Batman And Harley Quinn: Jim Krieg & Bruce Timm

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: Paul Giacoppo & James Tucker

Thanks for reading. Have a good day.

comicbook.com/dc/2017/07/30/ba…

mobile.twitter.com/jim_krieg/s…

m.youtube.com/watch?v=DytWZlOr… (Go to 8:43)

Description
Hey everyone. This is SofiaBlythe2014. For this comparison, I'm comparing the movies "Batman And Harley Quinn" and "Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold". They're both movies that revive cancelled Batman series, those being Batman: The Animated Series for the former and Batman: The Brave And The Bold for the latter. While I don't hate the former movie, it's very lacking compared to the latter. To show why the Scooby-Batman movie did better, we look at a few factors: The Story, Dynamic Explored, Continuity, Villains, Target Audience And Crew Attached, Casting, and Ending. I know that there's been a bit of a debate about whether the former movie should be canon to the DCAU or not, but since Bruce Timm considers part of the DCAU, I will talk about it as such. I may sound like I'm whining, but I'm actually fairly calm when talking about this. Let's begin.

The Story:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The story here involves Poison Ivy and the Floronic Man (Jason Woodrue) teaming up to recreate an experiment that could turn humans into plant people. Batman and Nightwing don't know where they are, so they ask Harley Quinn to help them out. However, working with her isn't easy.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The story here involves Mystery Incorporated being invited by Batman to join the Mystery Analysts Of Gotham, a mystery solving organization, due to their skills. However, a ghost called the Crimson Cloak comes to Gotham City to take it over. Now they must work together on this investigation, but Batman seems to be hiding something.

The former is essentially a stretched out version of the main series episode "Harlequinade", where she temporarily teams up with Batman to find Joker, and it shows. A lot of scenes are either dragged out (like the fart joke, or the back to back to songs) or move way too fast (the Bobby Liebowitz scene), making the whole thing feel very wonky. In contrast, the latter actually feels like a movie. We've seen the Scooby gang team up with Batman before, specifically in the show's April Fools episode, and a few times in The New Scooby Doo Movies. This feels like a legitimate movie structure wise due to how the movie takes its time to enhance and establish their dynamic and increases the scale to outside of Gotham even when only staying in it, as opposed to the former movie just brushing it over.

Dynamic Explored:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The movie tries to show Harley's dynamic with Batman and Nightwing, and doesn't show it too well. The latter two don't really show any signs of development until the last few minutes of the movie. Nightwing occasionally plays the straight man, but only a little. As for Harley, the movie tries to portray her as a kooky, broken bird with hidden depths. It doesn't work well given the weird flip flop in her behavior. For example, she occasionally talks to herself like that of a crazy person, use her sexuality to entice people to do what she wants, and yet she can also be quite insightful of other people's behavior. Yes, she may have psychology skills, but she feels too unstable and not naive enough for us to feel for he, nor do they Dwell a lot on her backstory. The biggest missed opportunity is with the Joker given that he's only mentioned and never appears. I'm not against trying to make her stand on her own, but if it's supposed to be set in the BTAS world, then it should've been a major plot point within the movie, and not in its tie in comics mentioned below.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The dynamic explored is between Batman and the Scooby Doo gang, and it's handled quite well. For one thing, we can actually feel for Batman here. Back when he just started, as shown in a flashback, he was trying to stop a dangerous portal that scientist Milo Scarlett invented, only for one of the two assistants, Leo Scarlett, to get sucked in. The other assistant would go on to become the Riddler. The father, Sam Scarlett, was mad at him for what happened, and broke ties with him. He seemingly lost an innocent life while also accidentally creating one of his deadly foes. This helps fuel Batman's arc for the movie, helped by how he's not condescending. Everyone in the Scooby gang also goes through an arc. Specifically, they want to be taken more seriously as mystery solvers. It works due to how we see both of their flaws and strengths. For example, they accidentally caused the riot at Arkham Asylum, barely caught the puppet ghost at the start, and had villains chase them from the villain bar. At the same time, we also see things like Shaggy and Scooby outsmarting Bane, Daphne solving various riddles, and Fred using expert planning when they don bat suits. This works since they have both youthful inexperience in a strange world, and a good sense of perception once they do get caught up.

Continuity:

Batman And Harley Quinn: This is probably one of the most controversial aspects. When does this movie take place? Before Batman Beyond: Return Of The Joker? During Cadmus? During Static Shock time skips? What makes this especially pronounced is that, this movie is part of a franchise that's run for roughly 15 years, making continuity much more of an issue. Not helping things is how Bruce Timm didn't check to see if anything lined up. There are tie in comics that go a bit more in depth, but they don't give a clearer answer, and the fact that it's required to buy the comics to see crucial story elements almost feels like taking advantage of your audience when done poorly. If we're just meant to not try to fit this into a timeline, or see this as its own story, it doesn't work since it doesn't set up a base guideline to make us properly care about the characters.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: Regarding Scooby Doo, the concept of the franchise is simple enough that it can be written during pretty much any time period. As for the main Batman series, the continuity is a bit looser. Sure, there is continuity like the Equinox story, but it's played loosely enough that it's easy to jump into it and just be an adaptation, while still watching the characters and writing develop. Even putting that aside, the show is not connected to any other show's continuity, and ran for only three years, so the chances of it adhering to continuity are much greater.

Villains:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The main villains of the movie are Poison Ivy and the Fluronic Man (Jason Woodrue), who aren't the best here. Regarding the former, they try to portray her as more of a well intentioned extremist than an outright villain, but it doesn't work given that she neither has enough interaction with Harley until over halfway through the movie nor does she think about her more. The movie just expects you to know about her relationship with Harley. Regarding Jason, outside of being a bit more abrasive, he's literally just Ivy's clone with little to stand out from her. They're just blank slates.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: Let me spoil the twist from my review. The Crimson Cloak turns out to be Clayface, who in turn is revealed to be working with the Riddler. The Riddler actually has a genius plan, what with knocking out Question and posing as him, escaping the asylum during the power outage, and manipulating Clayface since the accident, making him both crafty and fun to watch. As for Clayface, you can actually buy the tragic villain act with him since he just wanted fame and recognition, and was willing to act with grace when caught.

Target Audience And Crew Attached:

Batman And Harley Quinn: This movie is aiming to appeal to the viewers who grew up watching the main series, what with a PG-13 rating and all, and adding in some raunchier material. It also has only Bruce Timm attached to it, which is a problem. While Bruce helped make the show as great as it is, there are others that made it great, mainly Paul Dini, and they both created her character, and he kept Bruce in check. Paul has also written Harley well in other shows like The Batman and Justice League Action. He also wrote DC Showcase: Catwoman, which made its title character sexier while still making her an actual character. You'd think for a project honoring a character they both created that Paul would also be brought in to write the movie. The movie both overestimates and underestimates its audience, making the raunchy, comedic, and heartwarming moments mesh poorly. It tries to act grown up, but winds up acting immature. Bruce still has talent, but he should've learned to realize that part of why the show was great is how it works around standards and uses them to their advantage. He also should've given Jim Krieg more input on the project.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: One thing that helps this movie out is that it brought back both of its creators, Michael Jelenic and James Tucker, to be producers for this movie, even with the former's work on Teen Titans Go. Michael has also worked as a producer on Be Cool Scooby Doo, while James was a producer for the Mask Of The Blue Falcon movie, so they both have good Scooby Doo experience. They're also responsible for writing and producing the two animated movies based on the 1966 Adam West Batman series, both of which were praised for honoring the show and giving it the right modern touches. There's also their work on Legion Of Superheroes. As such, the comedy, seriousness, and heartwarming moments all mesh together well and appeal to a family audience like the original show did.

Casting:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The movie brought back Kevin Conroy to voice Batman and Loren Lester to voice Batman, and while they have age in their voices, they still sound fine. It's with Harley, Ivy, and Jason that we have problems. Naturally, it would be hard to get back Arleen Sorkin and Diane Pershing to voice the former two given that they retired from acting years ago. They're instead voiced by Melissa Rauch and Paget Brewster. Melissa is a mixed bag. Sometimes, she sounds fine, mostly in scenes where she's more low key, like the fight at the lab. Other times, she either sounds too whiny (like in her breakdown) or she gets a bit too hyper (particularly in fast talking scenes). Paget's take on Ivy sounds like a mix between her Lois Lane and Elise Pearson voices, if they were incredibly bored. Her sexy voice is more leaking instead of oozing due to poor voice direction. Kevin Michael Richardson uses his standard deep villain voice for Jason. While he's used that voice before, it's usually not distracting, unlike here. He sounds more wooden than an actual block of wood. The voice casting is fairly weak here.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The movie brings in the current Scooby Doo voice actors (Frank Welker as Scooby and Fred, Grey DeLisle Griffin as Daphne, Matthew Lillard as Shaggy, and Kate Micucci as Velma) and their performances are as sharp as ever due to experience, yet there's still that youthful vibe. As for the main series, we get many of the original voices to reprise their roles, including Diedrich Bader as Batman, Grey as Black Canary too, Jeff Bennett as the Joker, John DiMaggio as Aquaman, and more. John is also quite menacing as Crimson Cloak, especially in the shadows. There are some voice switches though. For example, Nicolas Guest does not return as Question despite reprising Martian Manhunter, with the role instead being done by his Justice League Unlimited voice actor, Jeffrey Combs. It's slightly odd, but I don't think anyone would mind given that he's reprising the role from a good show. Tom Kenny voices Penguin here rather than Stephen Root, but since it was only in one scene, and he has a prominent role as Plastic Man, that can be slid under the rug. Harley and Ivy also appear in this movie, but only in one scene. It's because of this that, instead of Meghan Strange voicing the former and either Jennifer Hale or Vanessa Marshall voicing the latter, Tara Strong voices both of them, again due to convenience. Fred Tarasciore voices Harvey Bullock here, and captures the gruffness and softer moments really well, kind of like with his Hulk. They all sound as if they've been doing it for a long time, allowing all kinds of performances to shine through.

Ending:

Batman And Harley Quinn: The ending is fairly problematic. Jason is defeated by literally lighting him on fire with a match, and we don't see if Ivy turned a new leaf or chose only to stop the scheme but not her villainous ways. We also don't see how Harley decided to start a game show to help others be recommended for therapy, or even how she put her life back on track. It's very anticlimactic due to how it wants to act grown up, yet also fails to realize that the original series knew how to give characters actual endings.

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: The ending is all kinds of awesome. Everyone manages to shut down The Riddler's portal, and save the Scarlett family from staying torn apart. Batman and Mystery Inc have more respect for each other, closing the arcs successfully, yet leaving it open enough to tell more stories. This is definitely satisfying.

Winner: Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold

Here are the writers for the movies.

Batman And Harley Quinn: Jim Krieg & Bruce Timm

Scooby Doo And Batman: The Brave And The Bold: Paul Giacoppo & James Tucker

Thanks for reading. Have a good day.

comicbook.com/dc/2017/07/30/ba…

mobile.twitter.com/jim_krieg/s…

m.youtube.com/watch?v=DytWZlOr… (Go to 8:43)