{"id":44332,"date":"2017-01-04T21:15:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T01:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44332"},"modified":"2020-07-29T21:15:22","modified_gmt":"2020-07-30T01:15:22","slug":"attempting-to-kill-the-killing-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=44332","title":{"rendered":"Attempting to kill The Killing Joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Over the holidays, I took a little bit of time to watch the animated rendition of Batman: The Killing Joke<\/em>, widely regarded as one of the most memorable Batman comics ever made.\u00a0 Despite curmudgeon Alan Moore\u2019s best attempts to discount its merit, there\u2019s no denying that it\u2019s a genuine classic that puts an exclamation point on the dark undertones of the series, and shows a very serious and vicious rendition of The Joker and a storyline that distances it miles away from the safeness of The Animated Series and the campiness of the 60\u2019s Adam West show.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the film debuted over the summer during Comic-Con, there was a lot of buzz in the negative sense about its execution; something about an artificially added storyline, damaging of female empowerment, and a very non-canonical relationship.\u00a0 In other words, typical nerd outrage over something that a lot of people didn\u2019t agree with.\u00a0 Although the details of these particular elements did sound a little suspect, I didn\u2019t really want to come to any conclusions without seeing it myself; after all, with the return of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy to reprise their TAS roles, maybe this could be an epic retelling of an epic comic story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, after watching The Killing Joke, put me in the camp of comic nerds who believes it was overall crap<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert, but just about every criticism said about The Killing Joke was entirely warranted in my opinion, and my general mood after watching it was that I kind of felt like I had wasted my time.<\/span><\/p>\n

The artificially inserted storyline involving Paris Franz<\/em> (c\u2019mon now) as an upstart gangster who develops a low-key obsession with Batgirl was one that was just that; artificially inserted.\u00a0 It felt like The Killing Joke was animated and produced, but critics and\/or test audiences were dissatisfied with a 40 minute stand-alone special, so the creators pseudo-went back to the drawing board and whipped up the Paris Franz substory to shoe-horn into the film in order to fill time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It accomplishes nothing in general Batman storylines and is completely non-cohesive to the primary storyline of The Killing Joke.\u00a0 Worse yet, it deconstructs the general fabric of the Batman universe by forcing the completely uncharacteristic and unnecessary Batgirl x Batman unrequited love storyline where they actually have sex before devolving into an uncomfortable and awkward change in relationship where Batman basically tries to ghost Batgirl.\u00a0 In the process, Barbara Gordon\/Batgirl is deconstructed into a clingy stereotype of a jilted ex-girlfriend who acts out erratically, violently and defiantly.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Killing Joke animated movie was the worst thing to happen to Batgirl since Yvonne Craig<\/a> passed away.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s even before she has her fateful encounter with The Joker.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the rest of the movie, y\u2019know, the actual<\/em> The Killing Joke storyline, it\u2019s hard to say it\u2019s not because it was preemptively tainted by the shitty Paris Franz artificial storyline, but it\u2019s pretty bland.\u00a0 There was clearly a lot of attention paid to the original comic for how certain shots were laid out, but I would venture to say a little too much<\/em> attention.\u00a0 Because at times, it literally felt like the comic was being read to me what with how they managed to verbatim portray just about every single iconic frame in the comic in the show, and since it was going from still comic to animated screen, it wasn\u2019t like a revolutionary translation like The Walking Dead<\/em> does it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess what I\u2019m trying to say is that there was nothing creative or groundbreaking by taking The Killing Joke comic book and making it into an animated movie.\u00a0 If anything at all, it was a paycheck for Mark Hamill, Kevin Conroy, Tara Strong and other voice talents, but it was definitely a case of mindlessly reading existing scripts as opposed to breathing life into characters and creating new and exciting content.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only difference was that after reading the comic, I was awestruck by a great storyline, but after watching the film, I was kind of left feeling a little put off and that I had wasted some time.\u00a0 Would not recommend, would not eBay, F minus-minus-minus.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the holidays, I took a little bit of time to watch the animated rendition of Batman: The Killing Joke, widely regarded as one of the most memorable Batman comics ever made.\u00a0 Despite curmudgeon Alan Moore\u2019s best attempts to discount its merit, there\u2019s no denying that it\u2019s a genuine classic that puts an exclamation point … Continue reading Attempting to kill The Killing Joke<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[140,45,76,41,105],"class_list":["post-44332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-comics","tag-fail","tag-geeks","tag-movies","tag-rage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44335,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44332\/revisions\/44335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}