Batman: The Killing Joke - Review Thread

Batgirl is raped? Good god, someone is trying waaaay too hard to be edgy.

Batman getting pussy ain't nothing to get mad about.

Yeah, but she becomes Oracle at the end.

I don't see the issue to be honest. She was young & dumb, came to her senses, and then found new purpose after overcoming a tragedy.

Hyperbole

Wasn't All-Star Superman like 20 minutes long and padded with a bunch of other short films?

I'd give A.S.S. a 3 or 4. It truly is garbage, but Killing Joke was awful. And, given that it came from such iconic source material? Made it all the worse.

Batman: The Killing Joke opens with Barbara Gordon's narration, claiming she knows this isn't the intro we expected. Yeah, no shit.

This should have been an easy win for DC animated. The Killing Joke is one of the greatest Batman comics every written and it's tight storytelling lends itself perfectly to the 70 minute runtimes these films typically have. Add to that the iconic voices of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill as Batman and The Joker and you're set. You could literally lift the comic pages directly to screen and have yourself a perfect little movie. What could go wrong?

I'll tell you what could go wrong. The filmmakers could add some stupid fucking prologue that takes up almost half of the running time while adding nothing at all to the story. Adding anything to The Killing Joke is basically pointless. The original story is self-contained and taut; anything else will feel like excess. An excess that is magnified infinitely by the fact that this prologue runs for 28 whole minutes. Really? Does the prologue really need to be longer than the average episode of Batman: The Animated Series? However even when viewed separately from The Killing Joke, this prologue is still...problematic. The filmmakers have said the idea was to flesh out Barbara Gordon more as a character, but it actually serves to dilute her. Turning one of the most kick-ass superheroines into someone constantly obsessing over what a man thinks of her and acting out insanely over relationship problems is offensive and stupid. Moreover, the way the film tries to force her transition into Oracle (during a post-credits sequence no less) is also a waste. The story of Barbara overcoming her attack and becoming even stronger than before is awesome and worth telling, but this isn't that story. You can't just tack something like that on during the credits and expect it to still resonate.

Even looking past the big picture elements of the prologue, the little picture has all sorts of problems here too. The whole storyline with Paris Franz is dull and Franz himself is one of the lamest villains I've ever seen in a Batman story. There's also some terrible writing, particularly a stereotypical gay supporting character and some really cringey dialogue. Barbara describing sex with Batman as being like, "Fireworks"? Give me a break. It's a far cry from the elegant Alan Moore writing that takes over in the second half. The animation isn't really the best in this section either. These movies have always had lower budgets and I've never expected Miyazaki quality from them, but even by those standards this seems weak.

When all the prologue shit is abandoned and the story can get going proper, things improve substantially. Conroy and Hamill, to the surprise of no one, absolutely kill it in their iconic rules. It was a real thrill to finally hear Hamill deliver some of the monologues from the book and the filmmakers capture the bleakness of Moore and Brian Bolland's book. The story itself remains a provocative exploration of Batman and Joker's characters and their relationships with each other, while The Joker's "one bad day" theory remains compelling as ever. And then there's the ending, which remains one of my favourite things ever. It's so simple, but so perfectly written, captures the crazy loop Batman and Joker are in, and ends on a wholly unexpected but totally appropriate note. I love it.

So on the whole, I'm really torn on this. Everything great about this is taken from the source material, while everything the filmmakers brought to the table is basically dogshit apart from the performances. And yet, I love the second half so much I still can't completely dismiss this. In fact, I'll probably be revisiting Batman: The Killing Joke more than once, but I might be skipping over the first 28 minutes.

C

Meh, that whole section is just crap. Had the prologue been good it might have been different.