Batman: The Killing Joke Film Review

            Holy Mother of God people!  I’m honestly not sure where to start with this one.  For the first time since I started this blog, I am at a complete loss as to where I should go with a post.  Such is the magnitude of the failure I have witnessed.  This film version of Batman: The Killing Joke is, to put it simply, an utter catastrophe on nearly every conceivable level and I can honestly say that I would rather do just about anything then having to suffer through it again.  It fails to be a faithful adaptation of the comic.  It fails to be its own thing.  It fails to entertain.  But worst of all, it feels like an overall waste of time that craps all over the legacy of one of the most influential comics in the history of the medium.

            But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The plot of the film of the film is more or less the same as the comic.  The Joker has once again broken out of Arkham Asylum and kidnaps Commissioner Gordon after shooting his daughter and subjects him to extreme physiological torture in order to prove that all it takes is one bad day for someone to become like him as the film flashes back to the events that turned him into The Clown Prince of Crime.  Now before I go any further, you should know that this article will contain significant spoilers for both the film and the comic.  If you haven’t already read the comic, it is one that I would highly recommend, especially if you’re interested in how the modern version of The Joker came to be in our popular culture.  If you’re trying to see the movie without any spoilers, again you should just go and read the comic as it’s an overall better way to spend both your time and money.

            Now that we have that out of the way, there was always going to be three major problems with directly adapting The Killing Joke into a feature film format.  The first is that the influence of the comic can quite literally been seen in everything The Joker has been in and has far overshadowed the comic that it is based on.  You can see a more through breakdown of this in an article that I did at The Nerd Hub, but the basic idea is that, when all is said and done, everyone has already adapted some part of this comic in some way or another.  It can be seen in parts of The Animated Series, the films, the video games and even stretches all the way back to the comics, making a direct adaptation of it feel redundant at best.  The second major problem is the plot itself, as it doesn’t really lead itself well to a feature length format and is surprisingly simple.  The third is the crippling and implied sexual assault of Barbara Gordon which has garnered a lot of controversy in recent years and something that has always been an undeniable flaw with the book.  Now in theory, none of these are insurmountable obstacles and a clever creative team could have found a way to deal with these problems while still staying true to the source material.  Unfortunately, the creative team on hand decided to tackle these problems in the worst possible way.

           

          First, let’s get the Barbara Gordon thing out of the way.  In hindsight, this is easily one of the worst things that Alan Moore has done.  On the whole, the man’s books have a tendency to be some of the most sexually charged in the medium.  In his better works it adds layers of subtext to what is on the page and helps further develop the characters in books like Watchmen and Miracleman.  In other cases, it’s gratuitous and just in place for shock value, most notably in books like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Lost Girls.  Unfortunately, in The Killing Joke it’s clearly a case of the latter.  It’s an unmistakable case of a major female character being victimized and violated for the sake of shock value and to further the storylines of the male characters of the story.  The whole thing is an undeniable flaw in the story and was something that the film was going to have to address and was more than likely going to draw controversy regardless of what direction that it took.  Unfortunately, the way they address it by adding an extended section where Batgirl is the main character that ultimately does nothing to solve the problem or even contribute anything meaningful to the overall plot.

            The section in question is effectively an extended prologue that goes on for about thirty minutes of the film’s ninety-minute runtime that feels more like an episode of the animated series that Bruce Timm couldn’t get green lit in the 90s.  The intent was obviously to flesh out Batgirl so that when the inevitable shooting scene came it would have more of an impact.  Unfortunately, the way they flesh out the character is by her coming to terms with the fact that she is more or less useless as a crime fighter and that she may or may not be involved in this whole thing because she has the hots for Batman.  By the time it ends, it ultimately contributes nothing to the main plot outside of sort of giving an explanation as to why Batman went to visit The Joker at Arkham Asylum in the first place.  What makes it even worse is that by the time the iconic shooting scene comes, none of the problems of the comic are properly addressed or dealt with.  Barbara is still just a plot point in someone else’s story and her injury and implied sexual assault is still just in the story for the sake of shock value.  And quite frankly, it’s 2016 and that way of writing female characters is outdated and just wrong by today’s standards.

            The we have the rooftop sex scene.  Outside of the fact that it’s wrong in about a dozen different ways, like the rest of the Batgirl prologue, it contributes nothing to the rest of the story.  I get that Bruce Timm really wants to ship Batman and Batgirl together for some God unknown reason but if you’re going to do something like this and not piss people off it needs to actually contribute to the story.  After the Batgirl prologue, it’s never mentioned again.  Batman continues to pursue the Joker with the same stoic attitude that he has maintained throughout the entire film and shows no indication that the encounter meant anything to him.   As a result, it just comes off as some misogynist’s idea of what it means to flesh out a female character and it’s just offensive.  

           

           The second problem is the plot.  As mentioned earlier, one of the key problems with adapting The Killing Joke is that the plot itself is surprisingly simple and would be difficult to adapt directly onto film.  To the creative team’s credit, they did try.  For the most part, the film is a page to screen version of the story, as it uses nearly all the dialog and locations from the comic.  It’s just that, when all is said and done, the plot of The Killing Joke isn’t a very elaborate or interesting one.  There aren’t any mass murders or complex obstacles for Batman to overcome.  It doesn’t really dig that deeply into the phycology of the characters and doesn’t say as much about the relationship between the two as other comics have.  As a result, the writer’s slavish adherence to the text of the story becomes the film’s undoing.  As mentioned before, the influence of the comic can quite literally be seen in every story involving The Joker.  We’ve seen the influence in the 1989 Batman film, the 2008 masterpiece, The Dark Knight, a bit in The Animated Series and probably the best version of it in the Arkham Games.  Each one of these shows the influence of the comic but ultimately tells their own and often story and are often more interesting because of it.  Because of this, the plot of the film ends up coming off as a by the numbers Batman Vs Joker story that’s been seen a million time before.

            It’s not at all helped by the fact that while the included all the text of the comic they completely forgot about the book’s visual splendor and the subtler things that left lasting impressions on the people who read the book.  The comic, for example, jumps from the past and the present through images that mirrored one another in each point in time that made the transition smooth.  The film simply lacks these and, as a result, the transitions from the present to the past just feel random.  It’s made all the worse by the fact that the past segments are visually repulsive.  Whereas the comic used beautiful shades of black, white and gray to highlight the difference, the film just desaturates all the color, making the whole thing look lifeless and depressing.  As a result, some of the subtler things were colored in the past segments were lost, such as the colors of red, purple and green being the only colors to pop up in the past.  Because of this, the full impact of the final transformation of The Joker is completely lost.

            Even from a technical side, this film seems inept.  The animation often seemed off, the color pallet for the main plot is bland, and the scenes aren’t as well directed as the could have or should have been.  The biggest example of this is the ending.  At the end of the comic the Joker tells the big Killing Joke at its end; one that final gets Batman to laugh as the rain comes down on the two.  The two continue to cackle as Batman puts his hands on The Joker’s shoulders looking far more sinister and threatening then he had in the rest of the book, the police arrive and the image shifts to where their feet are and finally a puddle, leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not Batman finally snapped and killed The Clown Prince of Crime.  Unfortunately, in the film, it just kind of stops.  It lacks the arrival of the police and the sinister edge to Batman’s design and can’t help but lack the ambiguity of the original comic and feels more like an abrupt ending to the story more than anything else.

            The voice work in the film is also pretty lackluster.  Tera Strong’s Batgirl comes off as whiney and Gordon’s voice is very high pitched and lacks the authority other actors have brought to the role.  Even Kevin Conroy seems like he’s just in the voice booth to collect a paycheck.  Granted he doesn’t have a lot to work with, but it’s pretty clear that the man wasn’t as invested in the material as he usually is.  The only real exception to this is Mark Hamill as The Joker.  As usual, the man’s voice manages to be funny and menacing at the same time, giving the character far more charisma than any other actor has ever managed.  He also does some fantastic voice work as the “before” Joker, giving as a character who is sympathetic but still an utter looser and we could easily see getting into a situation like this.  But even Mark Hamill’s voice work isn’t enough to save this whole thing.

            In the end, The Killing Joke is easily the most disappointing animated film that DC has put out and the second worst comic book film to come out this year.  It doesn’t do the comic justice, utterly fails to address or improve upon the comic’s problems and is just an all-around bore to watch.  Honestly, you would be better off reading the comic or just revisiting the various works that have been inspired by it.  It’s a far better way to spend your time and money.  But this film is one joke that completely missed the punchline.

            So until next time please follow the site, like the Facebook page, and follow me on twitter.  Until then, let’s hope that the Suicide Squad film turns out better than this.

            Oh that’s just great….