Right, some consider "The Killing Joke", right after "Dark Knight Returns", the most essential Batman (solo) graphic-novel. When I read it as a wee lad, it was a real eye-opener about the figure Batman, which in a way made the character so much more realist. Realistic in a sense: yes, it's not just an unblemished superhero in a bat-costume, but Batman is essentially a lunatic whose lunacy is kept in check by a moral compass (the same way I believe the James Bond is essentially a psychopath with a license to kill, but that's another story). It put it into essence that the Batman and the Joker are really just two sides of the same coin, one on the moral spectrum, one on the chaotic side, which would later be confirmed by Nolan's "The Dark Knight".
To keep it short: I rooted for the movie adaptation and I rooted for Conway and Hamill to reprise their respective roles. But when I was done watching it, I found myself not having liked it. Unfortunately and for various reasons and here are the reasons why: Let's start with the positive: graphics and effects were very nice, so was the soundtrack and the voice-actors are once again beyond the shadow of a doubt. The problem I had was the adaptation factor.
We get about half an hour of a Batgirl history-story that could have been condensed to 10 minutes or less, if it had stuck to the source material. That's about half the film, mind you. A story about the partnership between Batman and Batgirl, implied intimacy, a stalker-Mafiosi, that is dropped right after a doctor confirming that Batgirl (after having been shot by the Joker) will never walk again, add nothing to the general storyline and is abandoned completely. So, here we have half the movie – a whole 30 minutes that felt wasted – and it now continues to be a real "The Killing Joke" adaptation. Why the overlong and pretty pointless Batgirl storyline? We can only speculate, but after having watched the film, I had a look at the Wikipedia page and found an "interesting" addition about the "feminist interpretation" of "The Killing Joke" (as one can imagine, as toxic and useless as an "interpretation of feminists of Moby Dick" – but, considering the feminist-raids on virtually all Wikipedia pages in the "current year", not all to surprising) The scenes (in the comics), where the Joker tortures Commissioner Gordon, was pretty gritty at the time of the release, but here it is presented no more shocking than your average PG-13 cartoon. Including the Joker's song-and-dance-routine, this was embarrassing to watch and made the viewer feel sorry for Hamill. And of course we have the iconic ending, which kept the nerds speculating and discussing it until this day. Has Batman finally snapped at the end? Or did he indeed "snap" The Joker? The way it is shot here is so unspectacular, that it ranges on a sentiment of "why would I care?" Which makes it even more disappointing that director Sam Liu has been involved with many of the better DC-Animated-films but doesn't come anywhere close to the what Jay Oliva has achieved with sitting in the director's chair. What remains is a series of bad decisions in almost all aspects, a pedestrian take on a story with potential and a mediocre 5/10
To keep it short: I rooted for the movie adaptation and I rooted for Conway and Hamill to reprise their respective roles. But when I was done watching it, I found myself not having liked it. Unfortunately and for various reasons and here are the reasons why: Let's start with the positive: graphics and effects were very nice, so was the soundtrack and the voice-actors are once again beyond the shadow of a doubt. The problem I had was the adaptation factor.
We get about half an hour of a Batgirl history-story that could have been condensed to 10 minutes or less, if it had stuck to the source material. That's about half the film, mind you. A story about the partnership between Batman and Batgirl, implied intimacy, a stalker-Mafiosi, that is dropped right after a doctor confirming that Batgirl (after having been shot by the Joker) will never walk again, add nothing to the general storyline and is abandoned completely. So, here we have half the movie – a whole 30 minutes that felt wasted – and it now continues to be a real "The Killing Joke" adaptation. Why the overlong and pretty pointless Batgirl storyline? We can only speculate, but after having watched the film, I had a look at the Wikipedia page and found an "interesting" addition about the "feminist interpretation" of "The Killing Joke" (as one can imagine, as toxic and useless as an "interpretation of feminists of Moby Dick" – but, considering the feminist-raids on virtually all Wikipedia pages in the "current year", not all to surprising) The scenes (in the comics), where the Joker tortures Commissioner Gordon, was pretty gritty at the time of the release, but here it is presented no more shocking than your average PG-13 cartoon. Including the Joker's song-and-dance-routine, this was embarrassing to watch and made the viewer feel sorry for Hamill. And of course we have the iconic ending, which kept the nerds speculating and discussing it until this day. Has Batman finally snapped at the end? Or did he indeed "snap" The Joker? The way it is shot here is so unspectacular, that it ranges on a sentiment of "why would I care?" Which makes it even more disappointing that director Sam Liu has been involved with many of the better DC-Animated-films but doesn't come anywhere close to the what Jay Oliva has achieved with sitting in the director's chair. What remains is a series of bad decisions in almost all aspects, a pedestrian take on a story with potential and a mediocre 5/10