‘Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker’ is the Best Animated Batman Film 20 Years Running

Like millions of other people around the world right now, I’ve been stuck in the house for the past few weeks with way too much time on my hands. To keep my mind from turning into complete sludge, I’ve watched everything from a tv show about a racist zookeeper in Oklahoma who ran for president and another show about people getting blindly engaged after talking to each other through a wall for a week. I clearly needed to up my viewing standards a bit. Fortunately, iTunes was running a deal where the digital versions of classic films that came out every five years were only five dollars. After some light browsing, my eyes immediately locked onto a cinematic masterpiece that was a huge part of my upbringing 20 years ago when I was just a baby black nerd. If you somehow skipped the headline, I’m talking about none other than Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. [20 years really fly by, huh?] Get yourself something nice For five dollars—a fin, a fiver, half a sawbuck!—I was going to revisit an incredible film that I hadn’t watched in at least a decade. As I sat down to watch the movie I was amazed at how much I’d forgotten. And not simply because it’s been a long time since my last viewing, but because the film has so much depth to it. The backstory, plot twists and top-tier fight scenes made me feel like I was watching it for the first time all over again. By the end, I could only draw one logical conclusion, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker is the best animated Batman film of a…