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Liverpool makes for an unconvincing Gotham City in this effectively gross but otherwise middling attempt to milk money from a lesser-known Batman villain A sense of desperation is understandably in the air over at DC, the company, like Marvel, slowly realising that the mass superhero fever has finally broken. There’s still interest there, of course (this summer’s Spider-Man is now the biggest film of all time in the US after all), but it’s no longer good enough to leave a high-speed conveyor belt unmanned, purpose and quality control be damned. 2019 saw a staggering 10 superhero films released in cinemas, and the inevitable exhaustion that followed, also fueled by Covid, led to a gradual winding down, monster hits turning into minor ones and sure bets often becoming expensive flops. As Peter Parker winged his way to box office records this summer, DC’s Supergirl bombed so hard that experts believe it might have cost Warners upwards of $200m in losses. It was just the latest disappointment for the brand after Black Adam, Joker: Folie à Deux, Blue Beetle and The Flash all underperformed while even last year’s much-heralded Superman reboot only grossed a solid $618m, a far cry from the $1bn heyday of the genre (things got so bad that even a fully filmed Batgirl adventure was deleted for the tax break ). Notably, the last DC film to swoop past that magic figure was Joker in 2019, a darker, lower-budget attempt to spotlight a villain rather than a hero, a big swing with relatively low stakes. Todd Phillips’s film might be best known by some for being brave enough to ask the question, “What if Taxi Driver sucked?” but for all of its many issues, it brought buzz and prestige and, shockingly, Oscars, to an easily ridiculed universe. It was also, crucially, something rare in that world: a close-to-good idea. Continue reading...