Review of Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) by Ronald E — 27 Jul 2016

"Batman: The Killing Joke" is a tale of 2 parts. The first part is a vapid waste of time. It is supposed to be a back-story meant to round out the Batgirl character. Imagine watching a Batman story as told from the point of view of a female character as written by the CW network...A male writer with no idea what feminine empowerment looks like. While trying to stoke up some kind of sympathy and understanding for the character, the writers did just the opposite. Her character was so poorly written, and the "relationship" between her and the Batman was so ridiculous, it was beyond laughable. I just kept thinking...this writer must have the emotional maturity of a 13 year old boy...a boy whose understanding of human sexuality is limited to the one time he stumbled into his mom's stash of 50 Shades of Grey novels.

The writers could have gone all Peter Jackson with the film to develop the story from the actual graphic novel. Instead, while true to the original content, the story seems a bit rushed. You can't really find sympathy for any of the characters. The scenes that describe the Joker origin story do little to really help you understand his motivations or to help you sympathize with him, because they blew by way too quickly.

For those that haven't read the comic, the ending was a pretty satisfying twist...depending on your interpretation, I suppose. There was much debate going on with the viewers when I walked out of the theater. So...I guess the last 2 minutes of the movie were what made this movie better than a 1 star rating.

Last note...Kevin Conroy is normally on point when it comes to the Batman portrayals. This is by far the worst portrayal of Batman I have seen since George Clooney. There was nothing at all compelling about him.