At 48 pages, Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke — often hailed as the definitive Batman/Joker story — is slim by graphic novel standards. It’s also long been criticized for not allowing its main female character, Batgirl, to function as anything more than a MacGuffin to motivate Batman’s quest. DC’s new film version of The Killing Joke attempts to rectify these problems, but it ends up only making more of a mess out of a comic that’s arguably unsuitable for the feature-film format.
The biggest break from the comic is the addition of a lengthy prologue explaining the relationship between Batgirl and Batman. It’s ostensibly an attempt to flesh out Batgirl’s character, but she comes across as a daft newbie primarily motivated by sex. Her crush on the mafioso she’s supposed to be trying to take down gets her in enough trouble that Batman smartly takes her off the case. “You haven’t been to the abyss,” Batman says. She finds it soon enough; after beating her beloved mobster half to death, she hangs up her cape, traumatized.
This seems like an interesting character development. But when the actual graphic novel part of the movie starts, she’s wiped off the map entirely. The Joker shoots her, she collapses, he kidnaps her. She barely has enough time to speak, let alone reflect on the abyss.
If they really wanted to flesh out Batgirl, why not show her ordeal at the hands of the Joker? This would have solved one of the major problems with the material, which is that Batgirl’s pain ultimately matters less than her father’s. Let me explain: the Joker is trying to prove that “one bad day” could drive even the most upstanding citizen insane. That citizen is Batgirl’s father, Jim Gordon, who’s forced to view pictures of his bound and mutilated daughter. We’re meant to feel less bad for Batgirl (who’s clearly had unspeakable things done to her) than for her dad, who’s shown traumatized but ultimately comes out of the ordeal better than the now-paraplegic Batgirl.
More Batgirl material also would have provided some much-needed extra padding. After the prologue is over, not much happens in The Killing Joke. Batman finds the Joker more or less instantly. There are some played-out creepy-carnival aesthetics. There’s one fight scene. They share some expository dialogue. Then it ends before you feel like you’ve even seen a movie.
In parts, the movie goes to great lengths to replicate the comic. There are some shots that are identical to certain panels, including the first appearance of the Joker. It seems director Sam Liu wanted to stay as true to the comic as possible while adding only what he deemed necessary. It’s too bad he didn’t add what he needed to make this mess into a good movie.
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