“That was Alan Burnett’s idea”: Superman: The Animated Series Producer Bruce Timm Didn’t Want to Take Credit for Drastically Changing an Iconic DC Villain
Superman: The Animated Series dates back to the mid-90s. The American television series is based on the DC’s Kryptonian superhero. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, the series premiered in 1996 on The WB. After completing a run of 54 episodes, Superman: The Animated Series came to a halt in 2000.
During an interview with a media outlet, visionary animator and producer Bruce Timm spoke about the transformation of the biggest DC supervillain Brainiac in Superman: The Animated Series.
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Bruce Timm Did Not Take Credit For The Transformation Of Brainiac
Superman: The Animated Series was launched after the successful run of Batman: The Animated Series from the DC Animated Universe. Amongst all the characters in the animated version of the Superman series, supervillain Brainiac went through a remarkable transformation. As reported by Cinemablend in 2021, Superman: The Animated Series producer Bruce Timm spoke about what led to the alteration of Brainiac in the series. He even revealed that reputed TV writer and producer Alan Burnett was the brain behind the origin story of the DC’s supervillain. He said-
“That was Alan Burnett’s idea, and at first, I was against it because I’m a purist [laughs]. I’m one of those nerds that goes, ‘Oh, that’s not like the comics! That’s terrible!’ But it didn’t take much to talk me into it. Once I got used to the idea, it was like, ‘Well, why can’t he be from Krypton?’ And the idea that he was basically the Siri for the whole planet Krypton.”
He further continued to say-
“He was like their robot slave, their robot AI, and yet he had sinister motives of his own and was aware that Jor-El was telling the truth, and that Krypton was gonna explode, and he was already making his own getaway plan. I think it was brilliant. Once Alan outlined the whole thing for me, I was like, ‘Ok, that totally works. It’s great. That was pretty much an easy sell.”
The comics’ version of Brainiac came from the planet of Colu, whereas the writers decided to transform the supervillain’s origin by making him an artificial intelligence-based supercomputer from Kryptonian planet.
Bruce Timm Talks About The Character Development Of Superman
During the 25th anniversary of Superman: The Animated Series, producer Bruce Timm appeared for an interview with CBR in October 2021. While talking about the animated series, Timm was asked about why the origin story of Superman was shown over the course of three episodes, whereas Batman’s origin was implied, but never shown properly in the animated series. Bruce Timm clarified-
As far as I know, I don’t remember that there was any pushback. The people that we worked with at Kids’ WB at the time were very easygoing, much more so than Fox Kids. Fox Kids was a little more uptight about things, particularly of the Standards and Practices nature whereas we couldn’t believe our luck when working at Kids’ WB that first season. These guys were letting us do whatever we wanted, which was great. On the one hand, Superman’s origin story has been told so many times but he has the best origin story. The thing about Batman’s origin story is it’s an incident.
While comparing Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series, Timm further mentioned-
It’s something that happened. It’s not a whole episode, it’s six minutes of screen time. Superman’s is epic. It’s got all kinds of biblical stuff in it and a huge scale. We knew it was a great way to say, right out of the gate, this is not B: TAS again, this is something really different.We’re going to spend the entire first episode on another fricking planet. I just couldn’t resist it. I love the origin story and getting to design Krypton from the ground up into something that didn’t look like the Christopher Reeve movie or specifically like anything from the comics, was a super fun blast.
The widespread popularity of Batman: The Animated Series paved the path for Superman: The Animated Series. Actor Tim Daly was the voice behind the Kryptonian superhero. Superman: The Animated Series went on to win two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Special Class Animated Program and Outstanding Sound Mixing – Special Class.
