My Review of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker · 3:10am Jun 2nd, 2020

That’s not funny. That’s not—(dies)

BEST. DEATH. SCENE. OF JOKER. EVER. Enough said!!

Rating Scale
12/10—a complete
masterpiece; flawless and outstanding
11/10—Excellent, near-perfect film
10/10—the standard rating; awesome with a couple of flaws
9/10—a wonderful film with several flaws
8/10–a great film with numerous flaws but not enough to ruin it
7/10—a fun and entertaining movie; not great but still enjoyable
6/10—a slightly above average film; might not watch it again but still happy I watched it for the first time
5/10—mediocre movie; not awful but not great either
4/10—a below average film; it could have been much better
3/10—a bad film; poorly written and poorly executed
2/10—a very bad movie; the few good things in the movie overshadowed by the bad things
1/10—a terrible movie; a total waste of time
0/10—a worthless piece of abomination; should have never been made

**********

Hey there, kids! The Joker here with my third Batman review. This is about Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker! I have been so excited to share this with you all as I really enjoyed this movie. In fact, this is my favorite animated Batman film out of them all! There is so much I want to share with you as to what I really enjoyed in this movie.

Let’s start with Batman himself—Terry McGinnis. Now, after watching the entire series of Batman Beyond, I started to have a strong liking for this character. Terry may not be Bruce Wayne, but he is actually a well-written character who went through a lot of troubles in his childhood. He broke laws, got into trouble, and had some bad times with his family when he was younger, and so forth. After his father was murdered by Derek Powers, Terry went through the stage of anger, sadness, and pain that quickly developed into vengeance and desire for justice. As the series went on, he grew into a caring, protective, smart, and watchful hero for Gotham. He is truly Batman Beyond. Bruce was not fond of him at first, but eventually accepted Terry as his protégé—the new Batman.

I actually like his witty humor, sarcastic personality, and his Batman voice. I recently discovered that he was voiced by Will Friedle, the same guy who voiced Bumblebee in Transformers: Robots in Disguise and Ron Stoppable of Kim Possible. I was like, “No wonder their voices are so similar!”

Anyway, the action scenes were really well done and fantastic. Kevin Conroy again wins as Bruce Wayne—the original TRUE Batman! I love how Bruce was shocked and terrified of seeing his worse archenemy return after all these years. He never thought that he would come back after his death years ago. If only he knew who he really saw before him...

Next, the Jokerz in the film were really good secondary villains.
1). Chucko was a decent second-in-command of his fellow gang members.

2). Woof was quite acrobatic in his combat against opponents. I’ll give that hyena boy that. Shame he couldn’t talk. Probably the splicing.

3). The Dee Dee sisters were good fighters while so cute and adorable... and—(sees the FBI glaring at me)—(nervously clears throat) and interesting characters! Right? (Sheepishly smiles) (FBI walks away) Phew...

4). Ghoul was good, and I liked his Scarecrow costume. He would do great as a trick-or-treater.

5). Bonk was an impulsive idiot who disrespected me. That fool got what he deserved.

Now, the titular villain himself... ME again! Speaking in third person, The Joker (voiced by Mark Hamill) was exceptionally phenomenal as the villain as usual. I actually like him more here than in Mask of the Phantasm. Especially during the flashback scene, he did the most wicked crime against Batman—torturing Robin/Tim Drake as his “little J.J.” for a son. At least that was something agreeable he and Harley (voiced by Arleen Sorkin) had together considering their abusive relationship (Hey, Arleen sounds like “Harleen”, her character’s full name. *mindblown*).

Man, that whole scene was amazing, emotional, and extremely dark. That was the best scene of the whole movie. Unforgettable and memorable. I felt really bad for Tim after he broke down like that. Especially since, he later in life turned into The Joker since he had a microchip on him that contained his DNA and memories ever since he captured him in the first place. What a great twist in the story.

Lastly, I want to address the versions of this film. There is the original uncut version and the edited version. After the makers of the movie made the original version, they encountered a backlash against violence in movies and video games that followed a mass shooting in the Columbine High School where two men shot and killed 12 students and 1 teacher before they committed suicide on April 20, 1999. Therefore, they had to re-edit the whole movie before they released that version on December 12, 2000 to tone down the violence. Eventually, they released the uncensored original version on April 23, 2002.
That’s why you notice some lines of dialogue are altered in the edited version, and some violent scenes are omitted as well. For example:

•Bonk gets killed by taking a flagpole to the chest by Joker in the first version. He gets sprayed by Joker gas in the edited version.

•Joker is killed by Tim directly with the flagpole gun in the original version. In the edited version, he gets fatally electrocuted Disney-style off-screen.

•We see Robin get tortured by Joker in the uncensored version. We don’t see that at all in the edited version. “I’ll start with how I peeled back the layers of the boy’s mind.” “I’ll begin with how I affected young Robin’s makeover.” The list goes on.

So yeah, this film is my absolute favorite one out of them all. I’ll give it a 12/10. A great masterpiece. Frankly, I prefer the original version. It’s much more darker and raw. Any thoughts, fellas?

Peace.