Film review: The Killing Joke

Okay, it’s not really a movie, but it’s based on a classic piece of comicdom, so in my book that means it’s worth a look.

If you’re even just an occasional reader of Batman comics, then the chances are you’ve heard of the Killing Joke. When it was released in 1988, comics stopped being comics; they became graphic novels. Up until then, Batman was a fairly nice guy; a bit like the fella in the sixties series staring Adam West. Hell, he even smiled. But the Killing Joke introduced a different caped crusader: obsessed, brutal and brooding, and this was a different kind of comi—sorry—graphic novel: gothic, violent and raw. It turns out that Batman is as much of a whack-job as the Joker, but I think we all kind of suspected that.

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Fans loved it, and the new Batman stuck.

So of course, the Killing Joke needs to be a movie, or at the very least, a cartoon. The only thing I don’t get is why it took so long. It’s not as if Mark Hamill is that busy.

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Film Review: Suicide Squad

Well, it’s here: the most hyped superhero movie of the past decade. Having faced critical drubbings for its last few outings, DC had to make Suicide Squad work. The premise was slightly different from the usual superhero flicks (or so we were told): the squad is made up of criminals and sociopaths brought together to form an expendable, deniable team designed to fight ‘metahuman’ threats in return for money and/or time off their multiple life sentences.What can possibly go wrong?

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Well, let’s start with the script…

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