Review of Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) by Spike V — 22 Jul 2016

The long-awaited adaptation of the celebrated Batman story by Alan Moore & Brian Bolland is more of a dead joke than anything else.

The non-sequitur preface by Brian Azzarello not only kills the tone, mood, characterization... with a misguided attempt to stuff down the viewer's throat with a version of a sassy Batgirl (who acted more like a female Jason Todd, if you ask me) and the worst depiction of Batman of all the DC feature animations. And this is 60% of the film. It's not in the same ballpark as Year one or The Dark Knight Returns.

In the part where the comic book is actually adapted things don't get better; in fact they seem to double down with a musical bit. The animation gets notably bad and the CGI, cut-outs and the cartooning don't really come together.

I just felt it was an uninspired, underwhelming mess and a transparent effort to sell Batgirl as an "edgy & supercool" character to new female fans. It wouls have been better if they focused d in the generic addendum and completely steered away from The Killing Joke.