Batman The Killing Joke: A Short Review

I am a huge Batman fan. And as far as the joker goes, I believe he is the purest evil ever introduced into the DC universe. A man without beginnings or ends, a psychopath hell bent on reducing the Batman into a copy of himself.. Yet the killing joke comic was a great favourite of mine when it came to comics, making a much more human joker, a man that was destroyed by just one bad day. But then DC decided to create an animated film, one where the great stars like Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy would reprise their roles. It almost seemed we were taken back into our childhoods, with a return to the voice actors of the animated series. And yet, when I saw the movie, I was bitterly disappointed. Here I give my reasons. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

First off let's begin with the fact that there is literally only 30 minutes of footage taken from the actual comic in a runtime of 1hr and 16min. The rest? Garbage. We open with an intro by the famous Batgirl. Amazing character, backed up by years of comic book lore, talking about how things were before it all went bad. Still going good. But then we cut to a chase of Paris Franz, a new character who basically develops a weird sort of attraction to batgirl and starts messaging her, like all weird creepy stalker criminal types do. Franz then manipulates the Batgirl into finding his uncle's(big crime lord that threatened him) body. Bats is worried about the objectivity of Batgirl, resulting in verbal and physical attacks from said batgirl, and later crazy masochist sex.

Let's just stop right here. Does this sound anything like the killing joke? Of course not because nothing like this is in the comic. There is no emo batgirl scenes. She is like one step away from a damsel in distress the entire movie. I've read many batgirl comics and she is a damn good superhero and doesn't use bad sex to get what she wants. Ever. As one of the prolific batgirl series' writers Gail Simone stated that the character is "one of the smartest and toughest women in comics." Plus later she beats the said Paris Franz to a pulp because she can't have self control anymore and gives up crime-fighting after realising her mistake. Wrong again. She's a smart girl that has intellect to rival Batman when she becomes Oracle and even before she isn't some dumb teenager with daddy issues. She becomes the next comissioner gordon for Christ's sake! I'm not a feminist but reducing iconic characters to this is just plain wrong. Plus she resigned because she had PTSD and a spinal injury, not because she couldn't control her emotions.

From there on the movie gets considerably better. Batman meets up with Joker(supposedly in Arkham) and then the whole I've been thinking about us speech continues. The movie then follows the source material to the book and the last 30 minutes, like I said, plus the flashbacks from the Red Hood making roughly 40 minutes give or take are the exact replicas from the comics and could, on their own, make for a great movie. I loved the carnival scene, the midgets, the breaking of Gordon. Although they could have made the whole showing the pictures of Barbara bit more darker for Gordon but still pretty good. Conroy and Hamill nail their performances. Batman is a bit less important in this movie though, perhaps due to the lack of screen time we get with him. We never really see the way him and Joker are mirror reflections of each other, the pure darkness and light fighting as we see in Endgame, for example. Something that should have been added. Plus, Bats fighting skills seemed rather less too. Joker is good though, Hamill once again proves that the Clown Prince of Crime still has a great voice in him, the whole questions he puts as to why Batman is why he is creates a chill down our spines.

I believe that the main reason they added the whole batgirl bit was to make the emotional entanglement of Batman and his reaction all the more real, plus add minutes. I believe adding things from Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth, and the Man who Laughs would have explained the Joker mythos better and added more to the movie than this crap. Alas, the batgirl story here is an unfortunate addition, showing creativity is best left to the creators of comics. We're sorry Alan Moore, we failed you...