by Albertine Feurer-Young, Reporter
Batman and Harley Quinn, the latest Warner Bros animated film, is the twenty-ninth movie in the DC Universe Animated Movies series and was released for one night only on 08.14.17 in participating movie theaters after its San Diego 2017 Comic-Con premier.
The film was written by Jim Krieg and Bruce Timm, directed by Sam Liu, and the cast includes the famed Kevin Conroy as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Melissa Rauch of Big Bang Theory as Harley Quinn/Dr. Harleen Quinzel, Loren Lester as Nightwing/Dick Grayson, Paget Brewster of Criminal Minds as Poison Ivy/Pamela Isley, and Kevin Michael Richardson as Floronic Man/Jason Woodtrue. The plot pairs up Batman and Nightwing with Harley Quinn to stop Poison Ivy and Floronic Man’s nefarious plans to transform humanity into plants.
We sat down with Kevin Conroy, Loren Lester, Paget Brewster, Kevin Michael Richardson, Bruce Timm, and Jim Krieg at SDCC to talk about this new film.
Loren Lester (Nightwing / Dick Grayson) played Robin for 40-50 episodes before becoming Nightwing. When Loren made the transition, he had to think about how to portray the new character best: “Robin was very much an excitable … ‘What are we going to do, Batman?’… he is a sidekick, wanting to be in charge but not really in charge… so I thought, now that he is Nightwing, he is probably cooler, his voice is lower, he is more like what Kevin does with the Batman character so I fashioned my voice more like that.’
His daughters did not watch the show growing up because they were girls and back then, it seems girls preferred girly shows. They were more into Broadway musicals: “If Batman and Robin were singing and dancing with top hats and canes, they would have been watching it.”
And yes, Loren would absolutely be game for a musical version of Nightwing, but when I asked him what his dream character would be, he had something else in mind:: “They did the transaction of Robin into Nightwing. I would love to see them do the transition from Nightwing to Batman. So a storyline like Nightfall would be wonderful…I would love to do that and play Batman… I would like to see them put the stories together so that Bruce Wayne is still around so that there would be two Batman. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
Near the end of the interview, Loren slipped into character and said, “Batman. It isn’t a joke; it’s a riddle. We’re not looking for the Joker; we’re looking for the Riddler!”
Kevin Conroy (Batman/Bruce Wayne)is a great guy – he is warm and friendly and loves to share stories about his 25 years of doing Batman in DCAU animated series and movies. “I am Vengeance! I am the Night! I am Batman!!” resounded and I suddenly realized that yes, I was in the presence of the great Kevin Conroy who just regaled us by bellowing his thunderous cry. We sat around the table covered in goosebumps and feeling like kids in awe of a fantastic being.
25 years is a long time and Kevin has faced one main challenge: “The challenge for me for twenty five years has been to keep him [Batman] consistent and not let him get stale… You can hear a lie a lot faster than you can see a lie. You can tell when someone is lying by the tone of their voice and I know the audience would know if I was faking it or if I was not genuinely inhabiting the character… because for me the voice… it’s never been about putting on the husky voice. That voice came out of everything that happened to him as a child. That dark pain of his childhood that he never was able to escape. And when you go back to that [moment] watching his parents get murdered in front of him in that alley in Gotham… that just puts you in that place and then the voice comes out of that. If you’re there emotionally when you create the voice, it’s consistent.”
This is the moment Kevin goes back to slip into character, even when playing in a comedy. And yes, comedy is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Batman, especially after the Killing Joke, but Batman and Harley Quinn is funny, “Going to that humour and keeping him [Batman] rooted in the character that you have known for twenty five years, that was the challenge for me. And when you’re playing comedy… the secret to playing comedy is not playing comedy. You’re always playing the truth of the moment. The humour is your straight reaction to it. You know what I mean? If you start playing to the comedy, it’s not funny anymore. So, I was just the straight man through the whole thing.”
Jim Krieg, who co-wrote the film with Bruce Timm, is modest. He was quick to let us know the Floronic Man was all Bruce; indeed, according to him, all he got was “some storyboards and some written material so a lot of it was already set when I came on board and when I got to the Floronic Man part, instead of saying, “Oh, it’s the Floronic Man!”, I went to google an found the DC wiki and said, “Oh, he is real!”.
According to Jim, the most challenging part of this project was to be able to remain respectful of the story and universe while writing the plot as a comedy “The challenge was to not be offensive to the original audience, but still make a funny movie and I’ll find out in about two hours if we pulled that off.”
As far as whether Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were more than friends, he hesitated and said, “”You know what? I think that’s open to interpretation. There is nothing obvious in this movie about what that aspect of their relationship would entail, but in some ways I would say it does not matter. I think whether they were just friends or more than friends, there is a betrayal between them that stings either way.” And despite our probing, he remained very VERY tightlipped about Swamp Thing.
Bruce Timm (writer and Harley Quinn’s co-creator) wanted to do this story because there was nothing deep about it: “It’s just a weird romp… An excuse to do something with Batman and Harley in a classic style… It was nothing more than I just wanted to have fun… to make a movie that was off kilter and weird and… [with] very little angst …super huge world shattering consequences… You know… Just fun.” As to how he came up with the story line, he brought up an old episode called Harlequinade (episode 72 of Batman the Animated Series where Batman enlists Harley to help him against the Joker.
And this Harley also looks a lot like Harlequinade’s Harley, even wearing the same outfit. For those who wondered why Harley had next to no costume changes in the film, Bruce shared with us that it was because keeping track of them was “a real pain in the ass to do… in the middle of the movie, ‘which costume is she wearing in this scene?’… I gave up on that one pretty early on.”
I had to ask him how he felt about Harley as every time he discussed her, his voice warmed noticeably. “I love her. She is like my daughter who doesn’t listen to me… I’m proud and embarrassed by her, you know? Because she is naughty and like I said, she doesn’t do the right thing all the time.”and as to Harley’s popularity, which seems to have risen after Harley’s bout in the video games, Timm was thrilled: “You know, it’s nothing but exciting and gratifying to see how popular she has become. We certainly never expected it, but yeah, she is just immensely popular.”
Paget Brewster (Poison Ivy / Pamela Isley) played Lana Lang in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns animated film as well as Lois Lane in Justice League; Gods and Monsters. Let me preface this by saying she is absolutely lovely and very funny and that it was rather thrilling to be sitting across my favorite Criminal Mind agent. To be honest, I was very curious as to how Paget made the move from TV’s most chilling serial killer show to playing Poison Ivy in an animated film, but after hearing several voices she did, I completely understood.
So we dove right in and asked her directly if Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn were lovers and she too left us hanging: “It’s up tothe audience to see and hear what they see and hear, believe what they believe, and no one is wrong. So, are they a couple? Are they not a couple? Is there history? That’s up to each individual fan. I think there are hints that there is a possibility, but there is nothing concrete either way.”
As she has played both good and evil, we wondered if she preferred the good girl roles – Lois Lane – or the bad girls – Poison Ivy: “It is exciting playing evil, but I don’t consider Poison Ivy evil. I understand she wants to destroy all humans, but she has a point… She doesn’t want to kill Harley Quinn. She just believes in her mission… The humans have destroyed the earth and let’s face it, to some extent, we have… We are the most damaging species on the planet.” We ended the interview on this note from Paget: “I love two strong women disagreeing and not giving up what they believe in and not giving up who they are. That’s really attractive to me.”
Kevin Michael Richardson (Floronic Man / Jason Woodrue) is no stranger to the Batman universe being the first African American to have voiced the Joker in The Batman, the WB animated series for kids: “Well, the Joker was nuts. He was crazy and also somewhat intelligent, which was interesting. You didn’t know what this guy was going to do. Very unstable.” Of his new role, Floronic Man / Jason Woodrue, Kevin had this to say: “He is from another dimension. He is a plant-based giant behemoth of a creature who is hell bent on, of course, not just teaming up with Poison Ivy, but they have this goal of wanting to destroy all of humanity.”
Two of his prior roles were of unhinged characters, Joker and the Mutant leader in the Dark Knight Returns episode of the New Batman Adventures; Floronic Man is different: “He is killing dudes left and right, but he is very intelligent at the same time… which I believe makes him more deadly.”
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