Review of Killing Salazar (2017) by Outatime — 25 Jul 2016

The Barbra/ Batgirl opening is cliche and generic. A simple tale we've heard before, loaded with sloppy dialog and awful exposition as well as laughably handled 'mature content'. It speaks to how poorly executed it was that the audience was laughing in the more serious scenes. There was no point in adding something this generic to the story. It feels tacked on and unessential as a result. They have also made Barbra a weak, male-made, stereotypical, male-reliant, 'pining over the father figure' student, but insist this addition makes her a stronger character?

Further more, it damages the pace of the story, making Batgirl/ Barbra the main character for the first third of the movie. The great tale of Batman and the Joker got gate crashed, leaving Batman to feel like the third wheel. It honestly felt like he got the least screen time out of the three.

When you get past the intro into the actual adaptation, you find a passable but far from impressive translation. What made it into the movie unchanged works, when not poorly executed, but most additional lines are amateur, poorly written, exposition ladened, lip service. (Which don't roll off the tongue).

Much of the comics themes and subtext go missed as well, leaving the feeling that the writers thought very lowly of the audiences intelligence, stopping constantly to explain the simplest of things as if the 'R-rated' movie (rating not deserved BTW) was made with children in mind. I wonder if perhaps the writers didn't grasp the central theme of the comic, or the meaningful subtext on the pages, or if they just lacked the skill to transition it to screen.

Not wanting to spoil things, the movie also fails to uphold the comics ambiguous ending, again I say: possibly because they lacked the skills to pull it off, or perhaps it went over their heads with the rest of the subtext!

The acting is great, but you'd expect it to be from this cast. The animation leaves something to be desired, but the modern DC movies haven't been what they once were for a while. The score was OK, but I feel it could have been dialed back in some scenes for a better build.