Batman Beyond

Batman Beyond (known as Batman of the Future in Europe, Latin America, Australia and India) is an American animated television series created by Warner Bros. Animation in collaboration with DC Comics as a continuation of the Batman legacy. Depicting teenager Terry McGinnis as a new Batman in a futuristic Gotham City under the tutelage of an elderly Bruce Wayne, the series began airing on January 10, 1999, and ended its run on December 18, 2001. After 52 episodes spanning three seasons and one direct-to-video film, the series was put on hold for the Justice League animated series, despite the network having announced plans for a fourth season.

Batman Beyond is set in the chronological future of the DC animated universe (despite being released before Static Shock, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited).

Batman Beyond is said to explore the darker side of many Batman projects, playing on key elements such as emotions, personal relations, fear of the unknown, to cyberpunk and sci-fi themed elements such as issues and dilemmas of innovation and technological and scientific progress affecting society, and to the disturbing psychological elements of the character of Bruce Wayne. As such, it was considerably darker than most other children's programs at the time, although producer Bruce Timm recalls it was conceived as a kid-friendly Batman cartoon. It is also the first Batman series to portray the hero as a teenager. IGN named the show 40th on their list of "Top 100 Animated TV Series." The premise of Batman Beyond has been used in various comic book stories published by DC Comics, including an ongoing series beginning in 2011.

Story
The pilot episode, titled "Rebirth," initially begins in the year 2019, 20 years after The New Batman Adventures. An aging Bruce Wayne continues his role as Batman in a high-tech Batsuit, having severed his ties with those of his former allies (such as his former sidekicks, the officers and detectives of the Gotham City Police Department, and the Justice League) and enemies who are still alive. In the rescue of a kidnapped heiress, Batman suffers a mild heart attack and, at risk of being beaten to death by one of the kidnappers, is forced to betray a lifelong principle by threatening to use a gun. Ultimately, Bruce reluctantly decides that his time as Batman is over and vows "never again" as he shuts down the Batcave.

The story fast-forwards to 2039 in Neo-Gotham, a futuristic megalopolis featuring staggering high rises and flying vehicles. Bruce is now a recluse living in bitter isolation in Wayne Manor, with no companion but his guard dog Ace. Terry McGinnis is an athletic 17-year-old high school student and reformed troublemaker with a deeply ingrained sense of personal justice. Living on poor terms with his father Warren, Terry disobeys his curfew one night to meet up with his girlfriend Dana Tan, only to incur the wrath of a group of the Jokerz gang harassing them. A high-speed motorcycle chase between Terry and the Jokerz leads them to the grounds of Wayne Manor, where they run into the elderly Bruce Wayne. Bruce and Terry fend off the Jokerz side-by-side, but the exertion aggravates Bruce's heart condition. Terry helps Bruce back to the manor and, while exploring the mansion, stumbles upon the entrance to the Batcave, only to be chased out by a recovered and angered Bruce.

Terry returns home to discover that his father has been murdered, apparently by the vengeful Jokerz. Soon after, though, he discovers that his father had stumbled onto information about the production of illegal chemical weapons by the merged Wayne-Powers (Wayne's former company, bought out and run by CEO Derek Powers) and that the man actually responsible for his father's murder is Mr. Fixx, Power's bodyguard. Terry goes to Bruce for help, but Bruce refuses, feeling he is too old and too weak to be of any use. Terry then "borrows" the Batsuit, intending to bring Powers to justice. Bruce initially opposes all of Terry's efforts and vehemently demands he return the suit (at one point even paralyzing the suit while Terry is wearing it in the midst of a fight), but Terry convinces Bruce to let him take on the Batman mantle, partially by drawing on the fact they both lost a parent to criminals, and subsequently defeats Mr. Fixx. Realizing that crime and corruption are running rampant in Gotham without Batman's presence, Bruce offers Terry the chance to assume the role of Batman.

Terry's Batman soon develops his own rogues gallery, with both new villains (Powers' irradiated alter-ego, Blight; seductive shape-shifter Inque; hypnotist Spellbinder; sound weaponizer Shriek; deadly assassin Curare; insane terrorist Mad Stan; cybernetically-enhanced African big game hunter Stalker; nerdy psychokinetic Willie Watt; a new version of the Royal Flush Gang) as well as some of his mentor's old foes (a rejuvenated Mr. Freeze; Bane's strength-enhancing Venom substance reborn as slap-on patches; the longevous Ra's al Ghul; and, almost inevitably, the Joker himself).

Terry also makes allies in Neo-Gotham, such as the 17-year-old computer genius Maxine "Max" Gibson, who discovers Batman's secret identity and helps Terry with everything from computer hacking to babysitting, and police commissioner Barbara Gordon, the former Batgirl who is unhappy about another person following in Bruce's dark and dangerous steps (though she admits the city needs Batman and that Terry could not be deterred from being Batman any more than she could have been from being Batgirl).

Crossovers
In the third season of Batman Beyond, a two-part story entitled "The Call" featured (for the first time) the futuristic Justice League, a springboard for Bruce Timm's next series Justice League. The setting and characters of Batman Beyond were also briefly revived in 2004 for an episode of Static Shock in which Static is accidentally transported 40 years into the future.

Justice League Unlimited revisited the world of Batman Beyond twice in 2005, first in the first season finale, which featured Batman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern being transported 50 years into the future to stop a time-travelling villain with the help of the future Justice League (Terry as Batman, a future Static and Warhawk). The second time occurred during the second season finale, where Terry McGinnis's true origin is learned in a story meant to be the de facto series finale for Batman Beyond.

Series finale
The Justice League Unlimited episode "Epilogue", the unofficial series finale, reveals that Bruce Wayne is actually Terry's biological father. The story, set fifteen years after Terry became the new Batman, grows out of Bruce's kidneys failing and doctors needing a tissue donor to clone him new ones. When Terry shows a perfect histocompatible match with Bruce, he becomes suspicious and has a DNA test run on himself, which shows half of his DNA is from Bruce. Terry confronts Bruce and accuses him of orchestrating the whole thing, possibly using old Cadmus nanotechnology to rewrite his genes to match Bruce's, similar to what the Joker did to Tim Drake. Terry tracks down government agent Amanda Waller, who reveals his origins to him.

She explains through flashbacks that, even though she trusted and respected Batman, she was aware of him growing older and slower. Finding the idea of a world without Batman unacceptable, Walker used her Cadmus connections to gather the technology for "Project Batman Beyond", whose goal was to literally create a new Batman, starting with a collected sample of Bruce's DNA. After finding a young Neo-Gotham couple, the McGinnis', with psychological profiles nearly identical to those of Bruce's parents, a nanotech solution was injected into Warren McGinnis to rewrite his reproductive material into an exact copy of Bruce's. The result was, a little over a year later, Mary McGinnis giving birth to Terry, a child biologically the son of his mother and Bruce.

When Terry was 8 years old, Waller employed an elderly Andrea Beaumont (the enigmatic killer from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Bruce's first love) as an assassin to kill Terry's family, hoping the trauma would put him on the path to becoming Batman. However, Beaumont could not commit the act, arguing that Batman would never resort to murder to achieve his goals. Waller eventually conceded that Beaumont had been right and made no further attempts to push Terry into becoming Batman. Waller reminds Terry that he is Bruce's son, not his clone, and that despite his genetics, he still has free will and makes his own choice in becoming Batman.

Whether Bruce was the genetic father of Terry's younger brother Matt as well was not clearly established in-story, as nothing was stated as to the longevity of the alterations made to Warren McGinnis; however, the series' creators have said that this is the case.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold
Terry McGinnis's first animated appearance outside the DCAU is a cameo in the last scene of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Night of the Batmen!" when Batmen from other universes appear to help Batman.

Lexicon
To help carry off the feel of a world at least 40 years in the future, Batman Beyond employed a group of slang terms either specifically invented or with altered usage:
 * Schway
 * An adjective generally synonymous with "cool."


 * Rips
 * A verb generally synonymous with the colloquial meaning of "rules" or "kicks ass".


 * Slag
 * General purpose expletive used as both noun and verb. Incidentally the word is in usage in British slang, where it refers to a promiscuous woman. The closest slang word to slag in American English would be the word slut.


 * Dreg
 * Generally meaning "lowlife" or "loser."


 * Slapper
 * A futuristic form of steroids, administered by a transdermal patch that is "slapped" onto the skin. It is later revealed that the drug is derived from Venom, the same poison that gave Bane strength. (episode: "The Winning Edge") The term is also used in British slang as an alternative for slag. (See Slag above)


 * Twip
 * Generally meaning "twerp" or "twit".


 * Fiz
 * A soda or beverage.


 * Credits (or creds)
 * The general currency is referred to as "credits," and are carried on plastic cards.


 * Atrac
 * A parallel of Amtrak, it appears to be a monorail-like railway service which travels nationally.


 * Splicing
 * A futuristic form of body modification which involves genetically splicing animal DNA with human DNA.

Spinoff
Batman Beyond spun off an animated series called The Zeta Project, featuring a revamped version of the synthoid Zeta from the Batman Beyond episode "Zeta." Batman would guest-star in the episode "Shadows." The supervillain Stalker was to have appeared in The Zeta Project episode "Taffy Time," but did not make it. The second season episode "Ro's Gift" has an appearance made by the Brain Trust from the Batman Beyond episode "Mind Games." Terry McGinnis/Batman was originally slated to appear in this episode as well, but was cut since Bruce Timm and company were working on Justice League.

Soundtrack
Released on August 31, 1999, the soundtrack to Batman Beyond features many of the same composers who worked on the previous animated Batman shows. The music style is more industrial, to tie in with the show's futuristic cyberpunk style genre.

Toys
In 2000, Burger King had Batman Beyond toys in their kids' meals.

Video game
Terry McGinnis's first appearance in a video game is in the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Game Boy Color video game Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

Terry McGinnis's advanced batsuit appears as an alternate costume in Justice League Heroes (as the "Infiltration Suit") and as downloadable content in Batman: Arkham City, Injustice: Gods Among Us, and Batman: Arkham Origins.

Films
A direct-to-video feature film, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, was released on December 12, 2000. The original release was censored for elements of violence and death, though a second, uncensored version was later released.

Among the live-action films proposed between the critical failure of Batman & Robin and the reboot of the Batman franchise was a live-action Batman Beyond feature, to be written by Paul Dini. In August 2000, Warner Bros. announced that it was developing a live action film adaptation of the TV series Batman Beyond with Boaz Yakin attached to co-write and direct. The TV series' creators, Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, were hired to write a screenplay for the feature film, with author Neal Stephenson consulting the duo. By July 2001, a first draft was turned in to the studio, and the writers were waiting to see if a rewrite would be needed. The studio, also exploring other takes of Batman in development, eventually placed Batman Beyond on hold in August 2001. On July 18, 2013, according to Warner Bros. the new Batman movie (reboot which is coming after 2015) might be the Batman Beyond live action movie. According to another source, it says that Justice League may come for a 2015 release along with the Batman reboot (which may be Batman Beyond).

DC Nation
According to the World's Finest website, Bruce Timm and Darwyn Cooke are bringing Batman Beyond back as part of the DC Nation Shorts which will set to debut in 2014 during the 75th anniversary celebration for Batman.

Individual releases

 * Note: The audio commentaries for both the edited and uncut versions of Return of the Joker were provided by the same contributors, however both versions are slightly different from each other.

Reception
While the idea of Batman Beyond seemed as if it was "not a proper continuation of the legacy of the Dark Knight", it gathered acclaim after its release. The show was nominated for four Daytime Emmy Awards, two of which it won in 2001 for Outstanding Special Class Animated Program and Outstanding Music Direction and Composition. In addition, the show was nominated for five Annie Awards and won two of those nominations in 1999 and 2001.

In 2009, IGN.com named Batman Beyond the 40th best animated television series of all time.