Batman: The Killing Joke Movie Review

Article by Gabe Zia

Lazy Film Critic Movie Reviews

Batman: The Killing Joke

Batman: The Killing Joke is the animated adaptation of the widely acclaimed classic graphic novel of the same name. It follows Batman on a manhunt for the Joker after the Joker brutally attacks Jim Gordons daughter and kidnaps him, leading to one of the most personal looks at the character of The Joker and his relationship with Batman. So, does this adaptation live up to the year of hype and the years of admiration for the book its based on?

Before I get into this, I feel like I need to make it clear that I'm not a fan of the Killing Joke, I read it a few weeks ago and I could see why people love it, but it didn't do it for me. However, I'm also not a fan of the Dark Knight Returns graphic novel, but the animated adaptation of it is absolutely fantastic, so I half-expected a similar treatment here. However, while this does make some changes and tries to be a good adaptation, it totally fails and ends up not being very good. Hearing Mark Hamill deliver some of those famous monologues was great, but it's not nearly enough to save this movie.

The animation and voice acting, at their best, are okay. Mark Hamill, Kevin Conroy, and Tara Strong as great as usual, but everyone else seems to be phoning it in a bit. There isn't a lot of emotion in a lot of the delivery of some of the lines, and the cheap animation quality doesn't help. There are moments where the animation looks pretty good, especially early on, but it mostly consists of being bad, cheap, and underwhelming to look at. There isn't a lot of detail, the shadows and lighting aren't there at all, and the movements are really frigid, especially for something done in 2D animation.

The writing is where the movie takes a dive from bad to awful. The monologues are fine, but any other time the story is strange and doesn't work at all. There's a prologue added to the story that feels really out of place for a story that should be Joker-oriented, and the dynamic between Batman and Batgirl is absolutely godawful. The ending doesn't really feel like an ending, the same ending from the book happens, and then it kind of just fades out. In the book, it works because it's open ended and leaves the reader to decide for themself whether not Batman killed The Joker. Here, we're not given that same feeling, and straight up told one version of it definitively. To sum up: It sucks.

Final Rating
Batman: The Killing Joke was one of my most anticipated movies of the year, which is why its such a shame its ended up being one of the worst. From the cheap animation, to the underwhelming voice acting from anyone BUT Mark Hamill, to the horrible writing, this film is a total disaster, and the second worst DC film of the year.