Review of Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) by Jay M — 10 Aug 2016

This isn't as bad as everyone says. I think everyone had extremely high expectations, and rightfully so. The killing joke graphic novel is a classic, but really short. So on to the elephant in the room, the batgirl story addition.

I will be the first to say it wasn't very good, and both batman and batgirl seemed to act out of character, in kind of sexist ways. But the whole batgirl batman relationship has been touched on before, it isn't like they just made this up.

It's mentioned in the batman beyond series where Barbara is the commissioner. She seemed to reflect on it like it was a mistake, and the movie shows it in this light. That being said the additional story does seem out of place and going to the actual killing joke part is kind of jarring since they are so different.

If they had just made the batgirl part a featurette so those that wanted more batgirl could see more, and those that just wanted to see the original killing joke could just watch that it would be fine, and people would still feel like they are getting there money's worth since the source material is so short.

The killing joke part itself was well done, stuck completely to the source material. Overall this was a good film. For me it's still beat by under the red hood and the mask of phantasm.