Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)

Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)

Dir. Sam Liu

An animated adaptation of Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's celebrated Batman one-shot.

Personally, I enjoy Moore's comic work more often than not, but any filmed versions of his books that I've seen previously have been mostly awful, so I wasn't keen to see it. I prefer original stories written specially for the screen, over adaptations. As it turns out, the film contains both of those things.

It's a short book, just 46 pages long, so some padding was needed to turn it into a 77 mins feature-length film. The extra content is an extended 28 mins prologue featuring Batgirl that greatly upset some members of the fandom. I've written about it elsewhere, so won't go over it again now. [1]

For those that don't already know the story, it's a not-for-children tale in which Batman tries to prevent the Joker from doing irreparable damage to the psyche of his friend Jim Gordon. Intercut within that struggle is a possible origin story for the Joker that may or may not be true.

As far as the actual adaptation portion of the movie goes, it's very faithful to the text, but lacks the nuances and pace of the written word. It was great to hear Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill again together in an actual story that wasn't a video game, but some of the dialogue they were asked to say felt forced and unnatural, when compared to their many previous pairings.

Somehow, the change in medium also compromised some of the important symbolism that was present in the book, which robs the telling of some valuable subtext. Also, the violence in the comic was shocking, but onscreen it can feel crude and offensive. Ultimately, The Killing Joke's story was written for a comic book format and it works best that way.

[1] For a more in-depth look at the thorny portrayal of Batgirl in the animated movie version, see the Batgirl in The Killing Joke page. It's a lengthy post and has opinions that may differ from your own, so is recommenced only for folks that are comfortable with that.

I made a page about the original comic book, too. It's a personal response, not intended to be read as the kind of normal 'book critique' that you might get elsewhere. For anyone who may be interested: Batman: The Killing Joke (1988 / 2008).

NOTE: because they're standalone pages, both links are set to open in a new tab.