Leighton Martin

Batman Beyond's spin-off movie is now widely called the darkest Batman story ever animated. Its creator never wanted to make any of it. In 1998, Warner Bros. ordered him to put Bruce Wayne in high school to sell action figures to teenagers. He thought he was dreaming. Bruce Timm had spent seven years running Batman: The Animated Series and its sequels, still considered the gold standard. The order from Warner Bros. would erase all of that. The new show was supposed to slot in next to teen-drama hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek, with a high-school-aged Bruce Wayne going to class and fighting crime. Timm called it "surreal, disappointing, shocking, dream-like." He found a way to give the network its teen Batman without burning seven years of work. His pitch: jump 40 years into the future. Bruce Wayne is now old and retired. A new kid named Terry McGinnis stumbles on the Batcave, takes the suit, and becomes Batman. Old Bruce mentors him over a radio earpiece. The team had only months to build the world from scratch, and they studied Blade Runner for the look of the future city. The street gangs came straight out of the Japanese animated film Akira. Terry's life was modeled on Spider-Man, where the hero juggles school, a girlfriend, and crime-fighting all at once. The pilot aired on January 10, 1999. Hasbro, the toy company that pushed for this show, missed the point. The figures they shipped were goofy variants like a Batman on a skateboard and one in neon camouflage. The actual villains and supporting cast, like the Joker and the elderly Bruce Wayne, almost never got made. Then came the movie. Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker came out in 2000. Warner Bros. ordered huge chunks cut after the Columbine school shooting the year before. In the original ending, the Joker brainwashes young Robin into a mini-Joker and orders him to kill Batman. Robin turns the gun on the Joker instead. He pulls the trigger. A little flag pops out reading "BANG" and stabs the Joker through the chest. The Joker dies on screen. The censored version replaced it with the Joker getting shoved into electrical wires. The full uncut version came out on DVD in 2002 and holds a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. The show won two Daytime Emmys, two Annie Awards (the Oscars of animation), ran for 52 episodes, and set up Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, the cartoons that defined DC animation for the next five years. What started as an order to sell action figures turned into one of the most respected superhero stories ever put on screen.

@TrevorDame Wasn’t this VKM’s approach post-The Rock pissing off to Hollywood?

And TKO will lean on the big stars too, try to make cuts there as well, but in the end, they will pay what they have to to retain the people who are irreplaceable. They just want as few people to have that level of status as is absolutely required.

TKO will push the WWE further down the UFC path, where the gap between the tip-top stars and everyone else gets bigger. A few difference makers on top and then an ever-changing large blob of names below them that are seen to be (And booked as) easily replaceable. 99 vs 1%

@neilbelieves The Interpreter

Any good THRILLER from the 2000s that you'd recommend?

Few people have ever gone out and bombed more fearlessly in a room with A+ material than Norm Macdonald did in 1997. The only White House Correspondents Dinner that ever mattered: youtube.com/watch?v=3U7AZI…

@philmcraig @portraitinflesh We’ll have no Andrew Keegan slander here! 😂

Having recently re-watched both - and loved them - we had this exact same conversation last night in Craig Towers and came to the same conclusion! Close but Clueless for the win, partly because 10 things has some weaker minor actors (eg: the supposedly 'hot' Jock!) but mostly because of the sheer joy and endless sass of Amy Heckerling's script.

Probably the best of the wave of Shakespeare "reimaginings" that came out during that period. Ledger and Stiles make a charming couple, and the basic plot of Taming of the Shrew - though not its notorious conclusion - works curiously well in a modern American high school setting.

@bill_mcconkey Sausage an fried egg. White bap, salty butter, runny yolk.

Okay folks, what's your breakfast sandwich of choice? I'll go first, super simple: bacon & sausage.. That on a soft roll, with real salted butter.. with brown sauce I don't eat eggs (can't even stand the smell) so none of that.. Occasionally I add a hash brown for texture.

@Bounce_BackLoan @FranticFern74 @bigfrankbutch12 She’s an absolute camp icon

@FranticFern74 @bigfrankbutch12 She has her moments!

Much like Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry is having an absolute ball winding Keir Starmer the fuck up.

I'll always respect Jimmy Bullard for this.

I think if I was a writer/producer on The White Lotus looking for a new Jennifer Coolidge-type character I’d be calling @EmilyThornberry and just letting her rip. How she isn’t the number one camp icon in this country I’ll never know. Perfection.

Fifty years later it's still a classic🎵 The way she reaches those high notes so effortlessly is amazing, what a talent.

Quantos anos você tinha quando descobriu que "Ray of Light" da Madonna é uma música dos anos 1970?

The original Cloverfield (2008) trailer dropped before Transformers with no title, just chaos and a date, kicking off months of people dissecting every frame and chasing clues across a full-blown viral campaign.

The greatest trailers are the ones that trick you in the best way.

Rewatching this trailer reminds us when teasers could truly misdirect an audience. The sheer surprise of that SPIDER-MAN reveal is an experience modern marketing can’t replicate.

One of the greatest misdirection trailers ever is Naked Gun 33⅓. It opens like a dead-serious action blockbuster, then flips into full chaos once the joke lands. Perfect reminder of how a trailer can fool you and still hype you.

May I remind you The Simpsons movie did a simliar thing of tricking you thinking you're seeing a trailer to some random kids movie until the title shows up #TheSimpsons #TheSimpsonsmovie

imagine signing a young singer to your record label and she goes on to write a tiny little musical called hadestown, makes you the voice of persephone in the concept album, then 14 years later you're on broadway reprising that role.. god bless ani difranco

Amanda Holden truly has an amazing voice. I love watching him in Amanda and Alan; his smile always makes me sad, but I didn't expect him to have such a beautiful voice. A great song, well done.🫰🫰🫰