Out of all the Batman films so far, including all of the live action films & the newest instalments to the franchise – Batman Begins & The Dark Knight, this version is still the only one in my opinion to really explore the character of Bruce Wayne/Batman and it examines what really drove him in to becoming the Dark Knight himself.
Batman: Mask of The Phantasm has a great story that flashes back to the events just leading up before Bruce Wayne took up the mantle of the bat and the woman he was involved with at the time. It then later skips forward to a mysterious assassin that is going around killing Gotham City's mobsters, and we later find out how the two stories relate. The writing is top-notch, and in no-way predictable. The voice acting by Kevin Conroy as the Batman and Mark Hamill as the Joker are truly amazing, also not to forget the Phantasm himself are also bone-chillingly scary.
The only complaint from me about Mask of The Phantasm would be that there could possibly have been too many flashbacks for some viewers. There were in some parts of the film, flashbacks in flashbacks which some people may find a little hard to follow. But apart from that this is an excellent film that explores the dark past of the Batman and IÂ would no doubt highly recommend this to anyone that is a fan of the Dark Knight.