My third film ended up being a second Batman rogues fan film. I had another idea for an original screenplay, but my team wanted to do a sequel, and somewhere deep down I did too. So I started to write an idea for a sequel to 'How I Killed The Batman' and ultimately came up with 'Task Force Arkham' which we began in November of 2015, and had released in February of 2016. This film, without a doubt, is the worst of the three, and I feel will probably remain the worst film I'll probably ever make.

Dressing up and acting as our favourite characters is fun once. That was the first problem. I mean, we still enjoyed doing it a second time round, but not as much. And thats due to a lot of internal problems, but we'll get into that. I for one, would love to make a proper Batman movie, but I can see why so many directors wouldn't want to make more than one. The effect really does wear off after the first time. Now, I still enjoyed writing and making this one really, so its not all bad. Its just the disasters that came in its wake.

So this one was based around the Suicide Squad, a DC comic series I really really enjoyed reading at the time I was making 'How I Killed The Batman,' so I really wanted to make a film on them, the idea wow'd me. A group of super criminals forced against their will to work for the government to partake in top secret missions? Awesome. Of course DC made their own film adaptation on this later in 2016 which, if you've read my assignment review on it, you'll know my feelings on that case. Anyhow, this picks up a few months or so after the first film, where it is revealed in the last scenes of the last film that the Joker (Kristian Bradley) had actually captured Batman and made it look like he had died, and was in face part of a bigger plan. Unfortunately, Joker's plan goes pair-shaped, and Batman is actually killed for real this time. Joker, dwelling on his failure, goes into hiding. With this, Amanda Waller (Cari Hughes) sends a team of criminals lead by Lucy Flag (Kiera Brookes) including the Riddler (myself) Harley Quinn (Lauren Curry) the Scarecrow (Dan Nickson) Mad Hatter (Edward Appleby) Gorilla Grodd (Jacob Appleby) and the one hero Batgirl (Gemma-Louise Keane) to find the Joker and bring him in.


Batgirl was the hero of this one, and we see her dealing with her mentors death and struggling to work with criminals in order to save her friends from the sinister Amanda Waller. I met Gemma through Kristian, and she's become a dear friend since, one thing that I came out well with from this film. Of course I came back too, as the Riddler, who was given a drug by the Scarecrow that was controlling his mind via fear, and in that we got to see a lot more of the Riddler I wrote. Amanda Waller was also a big player in this, played by my brother's friend Cari, who's character is one of my favourites from the DC universe. Liam Mook came back to play the part of Mr Freeze, and my friend Will Fade played the small fodder role of Calendar Man. Now, I know I said this is the worst of the three, but right now I'm writing this thinking to myself... ''actually, I made some big improvements with this one.'' I did do.

My good friend Max Burke made a score for my film, which had a real superhero vibe to it, and was marvellous. Do check out Max's Facebook page which I'll link down below. As well as that, my buddy Sam Lloyd created my Mr Freeze special effects, the ice rays and such, which everyone adored, as did I. I also made my first stop motion short with Lego which was included in the film as part of the Riddler and Harley's hallucinations. It wasn't great, but for a first time thing I really liked what I made. We also did more on location filming, heading to Scarborough to film the bulk of the scenes for when the Squad were brought to Grinland. So yeah, I made some vast improvements with the help of others which I think save the film in some aspect for me. But if you've got this far I'm sure you want to know what makes this film a train wreck.


The thing that really destroyed this film was relationships of the cast, and I mean in all kind of ways. Its probably why you shouldn't mix business with relationships I suppose you could say, and I won't name names, but a lot of the cast didn't get on, and it was impossible to film. Ok, that's an exaggeration, I mean it wasn't impossible obviously, but more of a nightmare. Some were petty and some just didn't get on, and a lot of that was my fault and I should have handled it well. And I should have replaced Cari with a different person as soon as we realised we really needed to, as Cari was probably the worst part of the film, and that could be blamed due to my direction, but relations between her and my family became sour, and as a result, we couldn't reshoot any of her terrible scenes, which we really wish we could have done. As a result of all this, you can see the effect it has on the film. Weather and location issues also knock this film phenomenally. I guess it's an idea in the future not to ask friends and people I know to help me make my films, but without them I probably wouldn't have made my first film, so even though this one didn't turn out as good as I hoped, I value their help and hard work.

So with that I planned a third film... which had so many rewrites, until I cancelled it and started work on my cancelled project 'Heart Drift.' Maybe another might crop up at some point, we'll have to see. All I know that is, for now, my days of Batman fan films are over. For now. As always thanks for reading, and if you want to watch my film, please check out the links to it and Max's page below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4KRiquQCWQ&t=961s
https://www.facebook.com/MaxBurkeMusic/?fref=ts