The darkest story the DC Animated Universe ever told is on sale for Prime Day
Batman: The Animated Series is rightfully famous for its take on Batman’s villains, which were often so compelling that those versions were rapidly adopted into the comics. So it’s doubly remarkable that when the B:TAS team took a gamble on “What if Batman was a rowdy teenager from the cyber Akira future?” for the series Batman Beyond, they also decided they wouldn’t rehash villains.
Batman Beyond would not dredge up old bad guys from the comics or Batman: The Animated Series unless the story was really, truly, worth it. That alone should be enough to pique your interest in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the feature length Batman Beyond movie, which, conveniently, comes included in the series’ remaster/upconversion set, Batman Beyond: The Complete Series, which is 24% off for Prime Day.
Is Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker a good movie? I… I don’t know about that. But I can tell you this: It’s a movie where the Joker gets an orbital laser cannon.
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The first act of Return of the Joker finds the eponymous clown — who seemingly hasn’t aged a day — taking leadership of the Jokerz — a worshipful gang of biker clowns who often serve as series set dressing. It’s up to a young Batman, Terry McGuiness, and his mentor, a 70-something Bruce Wayne, to oppose him, even as Bruce insists that it is impossible for this to be the same man he battled in his prime. The Joker is dead.
Return of the Joker dangles one question in the air for an enormous chunk of its runtime: Why is Bruce so certain that the Joker is no more? What happened on that night, so many years ago, that neither he nor anyone else who was involved is willing to talk about it?
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The answer is the darkest emotionally devastating twist the DC Animated Universe has ever put on the screen. One that bothered the Broadcast Standards and Practices (BSP) so badly that the whole thing was rewritten and reanimated for the movie’s initial airing and release on VHS (the
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