Review of Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) by Joe H — 27 Jul 2016

The second half of the movie is a perfect representation of the comic book which is only enhanced by incredible performances by Conroy and Hamill they're still pulling off after all these years. There were a couple small additions to make the movie a little more entertaining, but everything worked out well.

But before that, you must sit through a painful introduction to Barbara Gordon, that is cheap and generally phoned in. I get why they needed to do that, the general audiences might not be familiar with the character, and by that they tried to make the later part seem more relatable but it's not interwoven with the whole narrative, it just seems like completely different episode of some animated show. And the way it ends was just so freaking ackward and doesn't fit the cahracters.. All around a waste.

Oh and the whole R rating they were trying to promote the movie with is completely unjustified. The amount of gore is standard for an animated DC movie, hell Under the Red Hood was more bloody in my opinion. There's no cursing, and it's instead replaced by phrases like: 'freak the eff out', 'BS' or 'bull'. I mean... Why would you do that in an R rated movie? There's absolutely zero nudity and the sex scene is PG-13 so why would you push the R rating and use it as some kind of an enhancer?

Overall I loved the movie from the point where Joker showed up on, but the rest is not worth it. I still enjoyed it, but only because I'm a Batman fan.