Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 3 is the last time fans get to hear Kevin Conroy as Batman. But the initial version had one big problem. His archnemesis, the Joker, didn’t sound like Mark Hamill, the Star Wars actor who made the character his own in Batman: The Animated Series. Warner Bros. has now quietly stepped in to fix the issue, but not in time for those who bought physical versions of the movie at launch.
Ever since Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 3 came out last month, fans have been arguing about whether the Joker in it actually sounded like Hamill or not. Despite his name in the credits and Warner Bros. promising that he was coming out of Joker retirement to reprise the role for one last posthumous duet with Conroy, diehards knew it definitely did not actually sound like the animated Joker they fell in love with in the ‘90s.
A new update from Warner Bros. finally confirmed that those fans were not losing their minds. “Due to a manufacturing issue, a temporary voice over was inadvertently left in the final version of Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three, affecting the character of the Joker,” the company told io9 in a statement. “Digital versions of the film have been proactively corrected and have replaced the incorrect version of the film in users’ accounts.”
You can here the differences below:
Fans who are watching a digital version of the movie don’t have to do anything, but those with physical copies on Blu-ray will need to contact Warner Bros. to get them replaced with the correct versions. Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part Three itself is not very good, and definitely not as good as the recent Caped Crusader show on Amazon, which included the talents of Bruce Timm and is a much more direct analogue to the original animated show.
But the recent movie was important for containing the last words spoken by Conroy’s stern yet comforting rendition of Batman. Many fans will want a copy for no other reason than that, and while it’s mindboggling that Warner Bros. botched the late addition of Hamill in the process, at least now there’s a remedy in place.
Sorry if I came across as defensive here!” wrote Reddit user ZenaKeefe, who originally waged a mini-truther campaign around Hamill’s voice. “Several people were very heated about this. About a week ago someone called me ‘an ungrateful, paranoid ass’ because I…heard that a voice was wrong in a cartoon?” Another user responded, “Yeah, the original version was obviously not Mark, don’t get why people argued with you about it.”