Legacies must rise to unearthly challenges as the children of Batman and Superman are charged with saving their famous fathers… And the world – in Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons. Warner Bros. Animation’s first-ever all-CG animated, feature-length film is available from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray, and Digital Download right now. To celebrate it’s release, we had the absolute priviledge of talking to legendary voice actor Troy Baker who voices Batman… Saying we spoke to Batman and Joel from The Last of Us is still somewhat dissorientating. We discussed DC, voice acting, Troy’s career, his excitement for this particular project, and lots more. It truly was a gift and we’re so excited to share this with you. Thank you to Troy Baker for taking the time to talk to us, it really was something special.
T: I’m having so much fun talking about this movie and I hope you had fun watching it… You’ve seen it, right?
J: Yeah! I watched it a few days ago and it was so, so cool! What I really loved about it was the animation.
T: I was just talking to someone before this and I remember watching Mask of the Phantasm which came out like… 30 years ago and here we are. Yeah that was the first movie, first animated movie to ever do and use CG, and here we are! This is the first all CG movie. But man, there are a lot of movies that I can point to where the animation style looks like this… But what a beautiful art style! The animators, I want to go to DC Studios and I want to personally shake the hand of everybody that works in the animation department because everybody was firing on all cylinders. They absolutely crushed this, and it looks… It makes me sad that I wasn’t able to attend New York Comic Con and everyone there got to see this on the big screen and I want to see this on a big screen because it’s worthy of that, you know? It’s beautiful and fans who have seen other iterations of this before are going to love this.
I’ve told this to everybody and it’s definitely worth repeating to you, both of the Jacks- Jack Dylan and Jack Griffo- do an incredible job playing our sons, Superboy and Damian Wayne. They really do it justice and all the heavy lifting is on them and they stepped up to the plate and they knocked it out of the park. Travis Willingham to me… And this is a bold statement, but to me he is to Superman what Kevin Conroy is to Batman. It is just such a good fit, not only as the man in the cape but also as Clark Kent and I’m just so proud, he’s my best friend but I’m proud of what he did and what he brought to this role. There are some heartfelt moments in this that got me especially as a dad! They really got to me hard and I’m not sure if you know this but this is first thing… Travis and I, we had just become dads when we were brought in to do this, so these characters and this story took on a very very real meaning to us who, since we were kids, have either put on a cowl or put on a cape and pretended to be these characters, but this is a whole new level of this story and these characters for us and it became very personal.
J: You beat me to it, I was literally going to ask, that was one of the things I wanted to touch on was… We’ve seen Batman do so much throughout his history and it is so refreshing, especially in animated form, to see Batman take on a paternal role. So what was that like to… Not deviate, but to step back away from being the World’s Greatest Detective and the Caped Crusader and be that father figure for Damian?
T: Look, man… So much of this- first of all, we have an incredibly rich history to pull from, right? All you have to do is plumb the depths of it and most of these have been tackled in one way or another, or in one form or another, and so what I love is that both DC and Warner have… [laughs] It feels like every one of these that we make is being made fully by fans who are just like “I can’t believe someone gave me the chance to do this” and it’s just a total fangasm, and it’s then being able to exploit their favourite thing about this character and put it on the screen. And so that specifically, the notion of- I love the Damian Wayne arc and the fact that we get to bring in… We don’t necessarily talk about how Damian is the son of Batman, but we do obviously bring in Ra’s al Ghul and find out that he was brought up under their tutelage and now we have Batman trying to raise him not as their son but as his son. They have this troubled relationship, but then you get to explore the opposite of that with Jonathan and Clark and how quickly they did that with just a beautiful montage. It’s such a wonderful tribute to Siegel and everything he’s brought to this character and that beautiful kind of retro comic book style. What comic books do is tell that one story in a single panel. It’s incredible. For me as Batman, I feel like each movie we do is somehow trying to step back from the character and look at it from a different perspective and present it to the audience in a different way, otherwise we’ll just be making the same movie over and over again, and that’s not what we want to do! We wanna tell a different story and that goes across the board!
I keep telling people, one of my favourite lines comes from Damian where he goes “alright Justice dweebs, my friend’s just about to kick your ass” that’s an amazing line! Stuff like that is just an example of how the text is doing what the animation and the performance and the storytelling is doing which is pushing the boundaries of this medium. We realised that we are being exposed to an entirely new generation of people who have never read the graphic novels that I have. My hope is that they watch this and, maybe this is their first introduction to Batman and Superman and they go back and they get to explore, just like our artists, animators and actors did! What else is back here? What else have I been missing? And they go back to like the 80s and 90s and they watch the Batman animated series, they get to Death in the Family and they find out what happened to Batman after the original Robin died… To find out that Damian isn’t even the original Robin! That’s what I hope all of these movies do, is that they not just entertain an audience but they inspire a fan! That’s what I want.
J: I think it’ll definitely do it because like you said it’s such a good introduction to these characters, even if you are an established fan it does a great job of laying everything down on the table. What I loved, and you touched up on it, is this oppositional way in which we see Jonathan and Damian’s situation… Their family dynamic is so different in terms of what they’re dealing with at home and it was so nice to see these characters start off as rivals but then this lovely friendship begins to flourish from that animosity. It was great to have Batman and Super take that step back and let the kids handle it all.
T: Absolutely, man! One of my favourite moments is when he and Superman pop up out of the capsule the boys put them in and you see this earnest moment of… fear which you don’t get to see a lot in Batman! There’s this moment where normally he is, like you said, the detective and he is the one who always has a plan. Again, this is a credit to the writing- how do we sell the fact that Batman doesn’t have a plan for this? And he’s looking at Superman for the answer, and they’re both coming up empty. We do it in a single line! That to me is when we go “alright, we did something different”, we moved the needle a little bit more… And then honestly, Super Boy and Damian have to do the rest of the heavy lifting, we get to sit back with starfish on our faces for most of the movie and enjoy being a part of the story.
J: It was so much fun to watch! You know, you’ve been such a big part of the DC Universe and just voice acting in general from Soul Eater , Shadow of Mordor, Last of us, and all these other big shows and games out there! It must be so cool to be able to proudly say that you have embodied- even the Joker as well! You have embodied two of the biggest characters in popular culture and have brought them to new audiences.
T: I was walking today and there are a couple of times where it just hits me and I watched this at the first opportunity and I stopped walking, I’m not sure if you’ve ever been in a situation like this before where… I just kinda stopped and I was able to examine where I’m at and I’m incredibly grateful that I’ve been able to be a part of the things that I’ve been able to be a part of. I’m a nerd that grew up playing games, watching cartoons and reading comic books. The fact that you and I can sit here and talk about those things and I’m a part of it as opposed to just being a fan of it… I never thought that would be my path, man. But I’m grateful for every step that I’ve taken to get me here.
J: It’s interesting that you mention that because literally before jumping into this call I sat back and I was like… “I’m just about to talk to Troy Baker” and yesterday I spoke to Laura Bailey! it’s moments like that where you can step back and say “I’ve made it.”
T: I will happily be a part of and be complicit in your making it if that’s what it takes [laughs]. I’m happy to be a part of that. You in the same way are that to me! Because you took the time today to talk about me and my role in this movie and that made my day, so thank you!
Jack Dylan Glazer (Shazam!, Luca, It) and Jack Griffo (The Thundermans) lead the voice cast as Jonathan Kent and Damian Wayne, respectively. The supporting cast features Troy Baker (The Last of Us, Batman: The Long Halloween) as Batman/Bruce Wayne, Travis Willingham (Critical Role, Sofia The First) as Superman/Clark Kent, Laura Bailey (The Legend of Vox Machina, Naruto: Shippûden) as Lois Lane, Darin De Paul (Overwatch, Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge) as Lex Luthor & Starro, Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants) as Green Arrow & Penguin, Zeno Robinson (Big City Greens, Pokémon) as Jimmy Olsen & Melvin Masters, Nolan North (Uncharted video game franchise, Young Justice, Pretty Little Liars) as Jor-El, and Myrna Velasco (DC Super Hero Girls, Star Wars Resistance) as Wonder Girl & Lara.
Matt Peters (Justice League Dark: Apokolips War) directs Batman and Superman: Battle of the Super Sons from a script penned by Jeremy Adams (Mortal Kombat Legends franchise). Producer is Jim Krieg (Batman: Gotham By Gaslight) and Supervising Producer is Rick Morales (Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders). Executive Producer is Michael Uslan. Sam Register is Executive Producer.
