These are our five thoughts on Batman: The Animated Series‘ Heart of Ice, but real talk, if you haven’t seen it yourself you need to go do that right now. This episode won an Emmy.
1. Mr. Freeze
Let’s address the frozen elephant in the room with this episode. Yes this is the episode that recreated Mr. Freeze from a character on the level of Egghead, to a character on the level of Two-Face. The entirety of our modern conception of the character is generally devised from this episode, and before you ask; yes, it is that good. The simple conception of character whose villainy isn’t mean or violent, but is simply cold towards the man who hurt him is brilliant and infinitely relatable. The story-telling techniques used here, such as opening the episode with Mr. Freeze’s cold narration, elevate the material, much in the same way that Michael Ansara’s performance as Mr. Freeze does. Ansara brings a cold, calm to a character that has to be emotional, restrained, determined, moved, and in love, all while coming across as formidable while making Schwarzenegger sized ice puns.
2. Mark Hamill isn’t Playing the Joker
Mark Hamill plays a character named Ferris Boyle, who is a smarmy executive that causes the accident that turns Mr. Freeze. Hamill is fantastic as the kind of wretched human being who would cut the cord on his employee’s wife’s life support and turn around saying it was for humanitarian reasons. He’s so easy to hate, and Hamill transforms his voice to the point that you don’t even know it’s him who you’re hating. His role is also very important in the story because if the villain is going to be sympathetic then there has to be a source of actual evil in the story and Hamill’s Boyle serves that purpose.
3. Detective Work
It’s quite enjoyable to see Batman investigating and learning. This allows you to go on a journey with Batman in which you learn about Mr. Freeze to the point that your mind changes about him, the same way Batman’s does. “Superman: American Alien” writer Max Landis once said something to the effect of, “Changing an audience’s perspective on a character can do the same work as character progression.” This is perfectly exemplified here as Mr. Freeze goes from a cold hearted killer to a damaged individual whom you can not help but pity all over the course of Batman’s investigation.
4. Bruce Wayne Put to Use
With stories centered around Batman’s encounters with super villains it can be very easy to leave Bruce Wayne out and generally even when he is included he isn’t given much to do that serves the story. This episode does good to give Bruce a role that informs the plot and progresses the story.
5. The Logistics of Ice
I’m not really sure what is supposed to happen when something is frozen by ice. There are several times when objects are frozen and then they just get broken. This never happens to people, which is understandable because it’s a children’s shows and people don’t need to lose limbs. The problem is that there isn’t consistency in what happens to people. Batman is able to just break himself out by his own strength while another man needs a chemical bath to get the ice off of his body.
