Tons of Batmans have shown off their geniuses and strength to audiences over the course of time, but not every single one of them managed to leave their mark on the viewers’ minds. While some of the projects’ failure was understandable, some others were truly done injustice to — like the one film from the DC Animated Universe that Mark Hamill will always hold close to his heart.
This one film is none other than the animated masterpiece cum box office disaster from 1993, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. And even though Hamill has lent his voice to multiple other blockbuster masterworks featuring the Joker including Batman: The Animated Series, this one particular box office bomb still continues to rule his heart for reasons all too valid.
Mark Hamill Hails Mask of the Phantasm as “One of the best Batman movies ever”
Released on Christmas of 1993, Mask of the Phantasm was a brilliant piece of true masterwork, and the star-studded ratings and reviews it garnered over the years only further scream its perfection. With Kevin Conroy as the Dark Knight and Hamill as his sworn nemesis Joker, this project from the DCAU was the epitome of corruption and doomed romance for Batman’s story.
Over three decades later, the Star Wars alum is still in love with the film as much as he was when it first came out. As he shared in an interview with Inverse:
“I loved it. I thought it was probably the best Batman script I’ve ever read, and I’d put that script up against the feature films any day. I think it’s one of the best Batman movies ever made.”
The reason behind his love for such a piece of work was the fact that they could do much more with the movie than they could do with a TV project — the prospect of which seemed more than just appealing to Mark Hamill and the rest of the voice acting crew.
As Hamill himself admitted about the masterpiece from the DC Animated Universe — which was also notably the first animated film ever released by Warner Bros. — during his interview with Inverse:
“[The film] was exciting to us because obviously you could do a longer story and it wouldn’t be controlled by the TV censors’ standards and practices. So the film could be darker and there could even be deaths, which ups the ante in a way the television version couldn’t.”
And that particular thing most certainly turned out to be incredibly profitable for Warner Bros. when it comes to the tremendous reviews the film received (which includes an 83% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes, for the record). However, despite such excellence, the DCAU movie turned out to be a box office bomb, and Hamill just may have shared the reason why.
The Reason Why Mask of the Phantasm Failed at the Box Office
Made on a budget of $6 million, the animated film couldn’t reel in more than $5.6 million from its run domestically (as per Box Office Mojo), resulting in a box office failure for that part. One of the reasons behind this could have been that the film was made as direct-to-video but was instead first put out in the theatres after a change of plans.
According to what Mark Hamill shared in the interview:
“I only wish that they had had the confidence to make it a theatrical film from the start, because it would’ve progressed organically rather than starting out as a direct-to-video TV production that was expanded into a feature.”
Moreover, considering how Mask of the Phantasm was indeed a major hit among audiences after it was released on DVDs and videotapes, this reasoning of Hamill’s seems only valid.
Nonetheless, despite such a disaster at the box office, the “damn good movie from top to bottom” still managed to leave an indelible mark on its audiences that could, perhaps, never be erased.
You can stream Batman: Mask of the Phantasm on Prime Video.
