Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
Last week, I posted a review on the ‘Scooby-Doo Meets Batman’ DVD to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Scooby-Doo. In a way, I’m glad I did that since I reviewed the two cartoon films from the DVD release. But as they’re also included in the ‘Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ DVD, should I have bothered? For all I know, I might give the ‘Scooby-Doo Meets Batman’ DVD away.
But anyway: ‘Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold’. I had a fun time watching this cartoon movie! Yeah, it doesn’t connect to the two ‘Scooby-Doo Meets Batman’ cartoon films in terms of continuity, but it was inspired by those cartoon films. A pity Robin didn’t make an appearance in this.
‘Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ was released in 2018, direct-to-DVD by Warner Bros. Animation. As many cartoon films tend to be released nowadays with limited releases at cinemas in the US, the movie features the unusual crossover of the Caped Crusader and Mystery Inc.
Now I must admit, I was confused by this version of Batman, since he’s dressed up like the Adam West Batman yet has the gravelly voice of modern versions of Batman. But I later discovered that the Batman in this is based on the ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ TV series which I haven’t seen.
There are also elements from ‘The Brave and the Bold’ series that I wouldn’t have recognised from watching the film. But that doesn’t matter so much as I knew how Batman worked as well as how Scooby-Doo and Mystery Inc. worked. So it was a relatively easy animated film to get into while watching it.
In this film, Scooby-Doo and his friends Shaggy, Fred, Daphne and Velma meet up with Batman who they eventually team-up with and other DC Comics superheroes in order to solve mysteries and defeat villains. Some of the DC Comics superheroes in this film are quite unfamiliar to me as I saw it.
The main villain of the movie comes from an unsolved case from Batman’s past. The villain is the mysterious Crimson Cloak that threatens to take over Gotham City. Can the Mystery Inc. gang assist Batman with solving the case whilst everyone seems to be against them once they’ve been framed?
The cast includes Scooby-Doo and Fred Jones, voiced by Frank Welker (who I’ve heard in the ‘Transformers’ cartoons as well as the ‘Scooby-Doo’ cartoons). There’s also Batman, voiced by Deidrich Bader. Strangely, Batman’s alter ego Bruce Wayne never appears in the ‘Scooby-Doo’ films.
There’s also Shaggy Rogers, voiced by Matthew Lillard (who has played Shaggy in the two live-action ‘Scooby-Doo’ films from 2002 and 2004). There’s Daphne Blake, voiced by Grey Griffin and Velma Dinkley, voiced by Kate Micucci. Everyone sounded as I expected from the ‘Scooby-Doo’ cartoons.
The other DC Comics superheros include Aquaman, voiced by John DiMaggio (who looks very different from the Jason Momoa Aquaman in the ‘DC Extended Universe’ film – then again, I haven’t seen ‘Justice League’ for a while and haven’t seen the ‘Aquaman’ film yet) and Question, voiced by Jeffrey Combs (who’s well-known for playing Brunt the Ferengi and Weyoun the Vorta in ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’). There’s Black Canary, voiced by Grey Giffin; Martian Manhunter, voiced by Nicholas Guest; Plastic Man, voiced by Ton Kenny and Detective Chimp, voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson. I’m disappointed that superheroes like Superman and Wonder Woman didn’t appear.
The main villain, Crimson Cloak, is voiced by John DiMaggio. The other Batman villains in this film include the Riddler, voiced by John Michael Higgins; the Joker, voiced by Jeff Bennett; the Penguin, voiced by Tom Kenny; Catwoman (who looks very different in this film from the other versions I’ve seen), voiced by Nika Futterman; Mr. Freeze, voiced by John DiMaggio; and Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, voiced by Tara Strong. I found it easy to recognise the Batman villains in this Scooby-Doo movie.
I must admit, I was thrilled to see the Mystery Inc gang donning the Batman costumes to help Batman in a crisis with Crimson Cloak. It was fun to see Scooby-Doo in a ‘Batdog’-like outfit as well as seeing Velma in a Robin suit. That was so cute. This was all to help them avoid getting recognised by the police.
I was slightly disappointed that the reveal of Crimson Cloak didn’t turn out to be who I was expecting. But aside from that, the reveal of who was really plotting the crime made up for that disappointment. You would have to see the film to understand what I mean and perhaps see it more than once on DVD. 🙂
‘Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ has been an enjoyably fun film to watch. I’m disappointed Robin didn’t make an appearance and that this wasn’t a continuation from the ‘Scooby-Doo Meets Batman’ cartoon films. But at least those cartoons inspired this film to be made. It was also great to see Batman and the Mystery Inc. gang working together to solve a mystery here.
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim. 🙂
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