Warner Bros. Studio Notes Nearly Ruined One Of The Greatest Batman Movies Of All Time

"Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" tells two intertwined stories out of chronological order. In the present, Batman (Kevin Conroy) is on the trail of the Phantasm (Stacy Keach), a Grim Reaper-themed murderer picking off Gotham's gangsters. Bruce Wayne's old flame Andrea Beaumont (Dana Delany) is also back in town. Bruce's memories of how he almost chose a future with Andrea over one being Batman form the second storyline.

"Mask of the Phantasm" was made by the same team that produced the groundbreaking cartoon "Batman: The Animated Series." If you were to include "Phantasm" among the episodes of that show, it would absolutely rank among the best. Warner Bros. was so confident in the movie that it decided to bump it up from a home video release to a theatrical one — much to its creators' displeasure.

In Vulture's oral history of "Batman: The Animated Series," co-creators Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski (who co-directed "Phantasm" together) explained why this last second change was a pain. The movie had been made for home viewing, and releasing it for theatrical distribution meant introducing "a whole host of problems in terms of technical and quality," as Radomski put it.

They also had to let many more cooks from Warner Bros. into the kitchen. One executive had the bright idea to recut the movie in chronological order, since the flashbacks were "confusing."

"We were like, 'You've gotta be kidding me. That's going to kill the movie! That means Batman won't show up until a half hour into the movie!'" Timm recalled to Vulture. Once the movie was cut and screened with that structure, it was obvious WB had broken something that didn't need to be fixed. Instead, "Mask of the Phantasm" was released as intended and, though not a box office success, became an enduring classic.

The live-action Batman movie that's structured most like "Mask of the Phantasm" is "Batman Begins." That movie features an adult Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) training to be a vigilante, intercut with flashbacks of how his parents' deaths led him to this point. Bruce doesn't appear as Batman until an hour into "Begins," the exact fear that Timm and Radomski had about the re-edited "Mask of the Phantasm."

The whole pitch of "Batman Begins," though, is finding out how Bruce Wayne became Batman, so that pacing made sense. Director Christopher Nolan and co. were confident audiences would accept Batman showing up late if they told a good story.

If "Mask of the Phantasm" had been told chronologically, audiences who expected a Batman cartoon would've been dropped into a romantic drama. The movie is called "Mask of the Phantasm," but the audience wouldn't learn who or what the Phantasm is until well into its runtime.

Let's look at the actual opening scene of "Phantasm." After a title sequence of the camera sweeping through Gotham skyscrapers, the story begins with Batman attacking a group of gangsters. Their boss, Chuckie Sol (Dick Miller), runs, but the Phantasm ambushes him. This immediately introduces the driving conflict of the movie, earning the audience's trust.

Moreover, the flashbacks aren't unmotivated, they flow together with key transitions from present to past. An early scene of Bruce at a party with women flocking around him establishes he's a heartbreaking bachelor, which leads into the first flashback showing how he met Andrea years ago. The moment where Bruce cries before his parents' grave, asking their forgiveness for if he chooses happiness over fighting crime, ends by cutting to the present as tear-like rain drops flow down Batman's mask.

A chronological "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" loses this narrative flow and dilutes the movie's contrasting of past and present. The greatest contrast turns out to be not Bruce, but Andrea. She's the Phantasm, out to kill the gangsters who murdered her indebted father Carl.

Bruce and Andrea once completed each other's now broken hearts; both lost their parents and then became a dark avenger of the night. The Phantasm's black costume and cape are obviously meant to resemble Batman's. The police mistake the Phantasm for Batman, because they look and act so similar from a distance. 

While vengeance always tempts Batman, his true goal is justice. His tribute to his parents' memory isn't getting revenge on their specific killer, it's fighting every night to ensure no one else has to suffer the pain that an orphaned little boy once did. Andrea, however, is only out for personal satisfaction and has no problem committing murder to get it. Once she represented Bruce's hope for a brighter future, and now she's a dark reflection of what his future became.  

"Batman: The Animated Series" takes a lot of its style from film noir. Many noirs have non-chronological storytelling (e.g. "Double Indemnity," "Out of the Past"), so "Mask of the Phantasm" fits in that tradition. Andrea, too, is something of an unconventional femme fatale.

Humphrey Bogart's romantic noir "In A Lonely Place" features a man destroying his relationship with his girlfriend (Gloria Grahame) through a short temper and paranoia. The movie ends with three lines that summarize their romance, and I think, too, Bruce and Andrea's: "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me."