I have to admit, I was a little disappointed in this one. Which is frustrating, because as a whole it was actually pretty good, but there were some problems that really should not have been there. The Killing Joke is my all-time favorite graphic novel. I have read and re-read it dozens of times, so when I heard DC was making a Killing Joke movie, I was ecstatic. When I heard they got Kevin Conroy (the one true Batman) and Mark Hamill (the best Joker ever) for it? I literally ran around squeeing with joy-- and I'm a grown man. When I caught wind of the special, one-night-only event to see it in theaters? I pulled out my wallet and got tickets, because my favorite Batman thing ever was going to be a movie. It's never fair to expect perfection of a movie adaptation, so I let myself go along for the ride as it started with a Batgirl story. I nodded, thinking "Cool, this'll set up the Killing Joke stuff that happens with her to have more emotional weight." And it should have, but then it went in a direction I still feel very uncomfortable with every time I think about it-- spoiler: Batman and Batgirl have sex. Okaaaaayyyy.... Yeah, no, that should only happen in the context of Dick Grayson being Batman when Bruce has disappeared. There is an uncomfortably large age gap, it's not true to the characters, and it's just weird. Even though the story keeps showing us Barbara wanting it, it's still not right because of everything about who they are as characters. Then, after that... interesting... encounter, we move into the actual Killing Joke turf. I will say that section was well-adapted and definitely worth watching. But another complaint about this movie is that the art quality was very inconsistent, and often was downright bad. Did I expect it to look exactly like the graphic novel? No. But did I want it to be at least on the higher-quality end of the scale for DC animated movies? Of course I did, and it was probably the worst looking one to date.
Review of Batman: The Killing Joke
