Last Gang in Town: Volume 1
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Forget what you know of England, of the "Land of Hope and Glory." Instead, try damp and depressing,...
Clean Room: Vol. 1
Gail Simone and Jon Davis-Hunt
8.0
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Fan-favorite Gail Simone's (BATGIRL, WONDER WOMAN) debut Vertigo series begins here! Journalist...
Black Canary, Volume 1: Kicking and Screaming
5.0
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Dinah Lance hits the road! After years as a soldier and vigilante, the last place Dinah saw herself...
The Flash, Vol. 9: Reckoning of the Forces
6.0
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On your mark, get set and go for Grips of Strength! Barry Allen races to the House of Heroes at the...
Supernatural: The Dogs of Edinburgh
8.0
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Dean and Sam Winchester were raised as Hunters by their widowed father, seeking vengeance on the...
Wonder Woman, Volume 5: Flesh
6.0
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Wonder Woman’s life is changed forever when she is called on to take the place of War on Olympus!...
Dean (6926 KP) rated Black Adam (2022) in Movies
Nov 1, 2022
There is a ton of action scenes and plenty of carnage in a fairly straightforward of good vs evil but this time with a God like character who will use violence against the enemy.
It's a very enjoyable film overall if not anything ground breaking in the superhero collection.
Task force Z #2
8.0
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After Task Force Z’s first bloodbath—err, sorry, first mission—goes awry, Red Hood must...
The League of Regrettable Superheroes: Half-Baked Heroes from Comic Book History
8.0
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A fun, funny, and affectionate look at the strangest superheroes to ever appear in comics, some so...
Jesters_folly (230 KP) rated Joker (2019) in Movies
Oct 21, 2019
Joker is not a superhero film, there are no super powers, no gimmick arrows, no trained fighters like Black Widow and, most defiantly NO batman. Arthur is a normal, if somewhat strange man who is slowly pushed to breaking point by the world around him. He doesn’t even fall into a vat of acid ala Jack Nicholson or Jared Leto’s characters. There is little to link this film to anything DC when it starts except the fact that it is set in Gotham as the film focus mainly on Arthur, the troubles he has working as a clown and the society around him. As the film continues we hear that Thomas Wayne (Bruce’s dad) is running for mayor and we do meet Bruce which helps the viewer know when the film is set although it does cause a slight problem in that the Joker would be around 60+ when he finally fights Batman (Something that doesn’t happen in this film) but the problem may be sorted depending on how you translate the final scene, but that’s something I’ll get to later.
The tone of Joker is dark, probably darker than the latest Batman/Superman films due to the fact that is a lot more ‘real’. As I said there is no ‘falling in acid’ or any other type of super villain/hero origin, just the tale of a man pushed over the edge. The film is, in style part ‘Falling Down’, part ‘Taxi Driver’ and part ‘V for Vendetta’ with a bit of DC (comics) law sprinkled on top and you can see why Jared Leto’s Joker was not used. I have nothing against the Jared Joker, I think It fit the feel ‘Suicide Squad’ but it was cartoony for this gritty version that was based more in reality, this Joker would have fit better as a villain in one of the earlier films like Batman v Superman.
There are Major Spoilers from this point on
There are a couple of odd things in this film, one is who is Arthur’s dad, the film could have worked without this storyline but I think it was added for two reasons; 1 to help tie the movie into the DC universe and 2 to keep a bit of mystery about the Jokers origin.
I have already mentioned that the Jokers age doesn’t seem to fit with the traditional Batman story but the film gives us two ways this could be handled. DC comics have (sometimes) said that there is more than one Joker, this is a way of the comics explaining the number of different origin stories, time lines and other contradiction caused by over 60 years of comics and this could also happen in this movies universe, many citizens of Gotham are seen in clown makeup so it’s would be easy for other people to take on the mantel.
The other solution ties into the last odd thing about the film. The last scene has the Joker in Arkham Hospital (probably Arkham Asylum in the comics), we don’t know how he got there and he is being interviewed by a nurse, he smiles and when asked what’s funny he replies ‘I just thought of a joke’. The nurse asks him tell her the joke and he replies ‘You wouldn’t get it’. I’ve read a lot of people say that this shows that the whole film is just happening in Arthur's imagination but I feel that it’s more likely to be him remembering what happened especially as it’s shown over the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne. This means that the events of the film are what led up to the shooting in the ally (not by Arthur), so, if the film is just in Jokers imagination then the shooting wouldn’t have happened so there would be no Batman and we have to remember that this is a DC movie.