5 stars for anything Batman TAS.
The opening theme song by Shirley Walker sounds like the choir is singing latin hymns..they are apparently singing staff names spelled backwards.
From where I'm sitting, Mark Hamill is _the_ Joker. I wish there was a way to overdub The Dark Knight with Kevin Conroy and Hamill reprising their roles.
There hasn't been a bad Joker IMO. They're all different and they're all good. Hamill's seems to pay tribute to Romero's in terms of flamboyance but is smarter and more in control.
I wonder how Keaton would have done as Joker? He was Beetlejuice, after all.
I definitely place this one above Burton's. Live action superhero movies just age really badly for whatever reason.
My local paper dismissed Mask of the Phantasm with a two-sentence blurb amounting to "we didn't bother to review this. It's probably just a long action figure commercial anyway."
It seems this happened with a lot of papers: WB gave it next to no advertising, it was not screened for critics, and opened on Christmas Day, when no one was in the mood for a dark noir epic. All of which gave the impression that the studio was trying to bury a clunker.
Word is that the exact opposite was true: Warner didn't expect it to be so damn good, and gave it the shit treatment because they were afraid it would make their live action Batfilms look bad in comparison.
I saw it opening/Christmas day with my mom, dad and sister. I'm pretty sure I never had a better Christmas in my life, and I'm not sure why I don't put it in every Christmas, since everything else I've done since has left me alone, in my room, in tears, and alienated from my family.
That production team had a better understanding of all the characters than many of the people who write the comics. Their "World's Finest" crossover was shit-hot.