Want to hear the best Batman read one of the very best Batman speeches? The people over at Nerdist have made it happen, bringing together Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy and the iconic speech at the end of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
Popular culture might think of Adam West or Christian Bale when we think about the most iconic Batman actor, but for a whole generation of geeks, they don’t even register on the scale. For us, Kevin Conroy is the only Batman. Since Batman: The Animated Series premiered back in the 1990s, Conroy has given life to many of the character’s best incarnations, from the animated series itself to the recent string of Batman: Arkham games. He’s portrayed just about every dimension of the character – detective, fighter, orphan, father figure, and more.
While Christian Bale and director Nolan did an admirable job of bringing the caped crusader to life, people often had one complaint about him – that goofy voice. As much as Bale had the looks and charm to play Bruce Wayne and the physicality to play Batman, he never quite got the voice right.
He is the Batman
Kevin Conroy has been getting it right for decades now, so it’s a blast to hear him read the speech from the end of the second Nolan movie. The guy voicing Commissioner Gordon is Rob Paulsen – Yakko from Animaniacs, Pinky from Pinky & The Brain, and dozens of other iconic animated roles.
Conroy’s table read of the speech is just one of a whole bunch of voice actor table reads as part of their Talkin’ Toons series, which includes the Ninja Turtles voice actors doing Seinfeld‘s “master of my domain” conversation and Billy West of Futurama reading for Back to the Future‘s Doc and Marty (not Rick and Morty).
