Initially drawn-up as a direct-to-video feature, Warner Bros. decided to give Phantasm a theatrical release, rushing directors Timm and Eric Radomski with an eight-month production schedule. Released on Christmas Day 1993, the film ended up bombing in theaters due to an unsuccessful marketing campaign. Yet, despite its ultimate theatrical failure the film has grown more and more popular over the years. Now it’s seen as the ultimate burst of creativity from the series’ twin showrunners, an hour and a half thematic and formal exploration of the Batman character’s mythos and psychological state. Released in a largely dormant decade for superhero cinema, where the majority of the comic book movies of the time aimed just to entertain, Mask of the Phantasm aimed to stun.

One of the film's smartest creative decisions is the choice to strip away the vast majority of Batman’s rogues gallery, instead focusing on a mobster-led crime story. The lack of flamboyant, colorful villains allows for a structured, nuanced portrayal of several sections of Bruce Wayne’s life - his early days as a vigilante, a romance which almost steered him down a different path, and his eventual adoption of the cowl. Opening with Batman interrupting and subduing a meeting full of gangsters, he fails to capture mobster Chuckie Sol, who flees the scene. Escaping to a parking garage, the gangster is Interrupted by a cloud of smoke and a haunting, ethereal voice - the Phantasm, a hooded, masked figure with a clawed hand, emerges, slaying him. Due to their similar appearance and mannerisms, Batman is blamed for Sol’s murder by the Gotham City police, and declared a public menace. Simultaneously, Bruce Wayne is dealing with the return of lost love Andrea Beaumont, having not seen her in over ten years.