The first R-rated Batman movie (director's cut of Batman vs. Superman doesn't count) is in theaters for two nights only. As a retelling of one of the most famous graphic novels of all time, it's sure to be a blast.

Apparently Batman fucks Batgirl on a rooftop, lol. Better not show Gordon those photos or he might really go crazy.

And yeah there's a bunch of controversy about Barbara just being a sex object but...in the original comic she's literally a plot device. At least this movie apparently shows her doing things (like being nailed by a 40 year old guy in a cape) apart from being shot. But yeah, reeeally weird choice with the rooftop sex.

I can't make any judgements yet though. Seeing it at 10pm tonight, I'll let you guys know whether or not all the combined efforts of feminism are instantly crushed by one scene of bat boning.

watched it last night, it was pretty good
my friend said he thought it was pretty accurate to the comic

This post was last modified: Feb 10, 2017 at 7:02 AM by Mario. Edit Reason: deleted

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Is this worth seeing? Tonight is the last night it's playing in theaters here. Dunno if GF and I should see this or something else.

This post was last modified: Jul 26, 2016 at 7:24 PM by Spritanium.

OK my review needs to be prefaced by complaining about the hilarious fathom events intro thing.

Thought movies started with previews? Think again. When we arrived in the theater we were greeted with a blank screen, but when the clock finally struck ten, an extravagant intro played telling us to "get ready for the fathom events countdown!" (paraphrasing)

Apparently the fathom events countdown is a 30 minute timer that stays in the lower right of the screen while a 30 second loop of noiseless after effects text tells us to pick up our trash, don't smoke, and "it doesn't get better than this". Over and over and over. Periodically, this fucking douchebag will pop up on the screen and be all "Hey! Enjoying the show?!" Like fuck you dude, there is literally no show happening.

After the 30 mins were up lo and behold the fucking douchebag pops up on the screen again, and with his shit eating grin says "Let's face it, we're all here for one reason. We love Fathom Events!" I shit you not. The amount of laughter in the theater was unprecedented. The jokes practically write themselves.

Spoilers ahead:

On to the movie, the first half that they added to pad the length demonstrate Batgirl's character was kind of pointless. Batman and Batgirl fucking was weird, especially since this guy who is the hero of the story is an asshole about it and refuses to contact her for days after the fact. You can tell that Batman regrets it immediately, which is a little better since I thought it was a regular thing in the context of the movie. Meanwhile Barbara mopes around about things with her stereotypically gay male friend (the line "and they say the gay scene is complicated" got a laugh out of the theater but I thought it was pretty cringey) oh and yeah she also commits assault on a random stranger who did nothing but get in an argument with his girlfriend.

If the point of this first part was to demonstrate that by this point Barbara was doing a totally shitty job at being Batgirl, leading up to her being fired, then I guess I understand; it's just that the entire first half could've been removed and the second half would still function on its own. When I heard they were padding the length with new content, I was hoping they'd try to expand the comic's story to make it work better as a movie - there would've been plenty of ways to make Batgirl a bigger part of the story without adding a prologue that sets up literally nothing apart from "this is who Barbara is and why it sucks that she gets paralyzed"

In the second half of the movie (the part based on the comic, go figure) things pick up immediately, thankfully. The first part is borderline unwatchable just because it's weird and completely separated (and I mean that, they make literally no attempt to connect the two stories apart from some clumsy narration from Barbara, which I also thought was unnecessary since the events onscreen kind of spoke for themselves)

The rest of the movie is a faithful (read: nearly shot for shot) adaptation of the comic book. I'll take this opportunity to talk about the animation and art direction - it's really not that good. If you read about the film online you'll see that apart from the batsex, this is the #1 complaint about the movie. The animation is choppy, the colors are dull, and it doesn't do the wacky, surreal look of the comic properly at all. As someone with somewhat of a background in animation, some parts are excruciating to watch just because they're clearly animating on 4's (at least). The main characters are all shaded, but background characters you're not supposed to be looking staight at are left entirely flat. It actually kind of reminds me of watching the Hey Arnold movie, where they made it for TV and all of a sudden OH SHIT we have to make this look good for theaters. And that's the thing; if you compared Killing Joke to any regular episode of the Batman TV series, the animation isn't bad. You've got some good fight sequences, and everything else is pretty serviceable. It's just that this is a theatrical release people have been waiting for for over 20 years. I'm guessing they ran into budget issues due to the R rating, which is why they so clearly outsourced the animation (keep an eye out for a block of 500 korean names in the "animation" portion of the credits). That's a shame because I would've honestly preferred a simmered-down PG-13 release with a higher budget for animation - especially since the only thing they do with the R rating is show some people get shot in the face, totally unnecessary.

Another animation thing that bothered me: if you've read the comic, you'll know that it switches between the present day, and a flashback detailing the Joker's origin pretty frequently. In the movie they just take cues from the comic and cut straight back and forth between these two time periods - and I mean LITERALLY cutting. They could be bothered to do a fade one or two times, but many times it just jarringly throws you into a different time with no explanation or setup. This is what's so uninspired about the art direction - there's a million and one ways they could've visually transitioned between these stories. Actually, better yet, they should've axed the Barbara prologue, and instead moved all the Joker flashback scenes into a prologue of its own. The back-and-forth stuff works great in the comic but I can't say it translates to a movie very well.

So yeah, the animation is kind of bad. Thankfully I have some good things to say too. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill obviously do a great job as Batman and Joker - I feel like they were maybe trying to take it a little too seriously, though? Hamill, at least. The Joker doesn't have a lot of outrageous mannerisms or pitch variations in this version of the character, which I guess makes sense considering the origin story. Speaking of which, Hamill's interpretation of Joker before he goes crazy is absolutely perfect. He has some toned-down Joker mannerisms already, sometimes you can hear his voice start to go up there, it's just a perfect in-between. Batman's delivery of "I've heard it before, and it wasn't funny the first time" was about 500% less badass than it should've been. Joker's delivery of the final joke was flawless though - in fact that whole end sequence was easily the best part of the movie. Unfortunately, in their quest to apparently recreate the comic book with 100% accuracy, the movie ends extremely awkwardly. Again, if you've read the comic you know how it ends - Joker tells an extremely relevant joke, Batman finds it funny, and the two share a surreal out-of-character laughing fit. And that's...how the movie ends. They're just laughing in the rain and it fades away. I guess I can't really complain, but it's another thing that I thought worked incredibly better in the comic. It's such a different storytelling format, not all the same things work. I would've actually liked to see a short epilogue or something - there's an after-credits scene showing that Barbara is Oracle now, but that's the beginning and end of what it shows. They could've done a little 10-minute story at the end to at least attempt to call back to all the shit that happened in the prologue (instead none of it is ever mentioned again). What did Batman do after his confrontation with Joker? How and when did Barbara decide to become Oracle? They could've covered all this stuff and it would've made incredibly more sense than the way it actually ended.

Oh and the music is actually pretty great. They had a whole string section come in and record it, which is interesting considering the cheapy animation.

Overall it's not bad, if you're going to the movies anyway you might as well check it out. Definitely wouldn't hurt to wait for the blu-ray though. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly disappointed, but at least it wasn't terrible. I just wish it was able to blow me away like the comic was.

I'll give it a 7/10 as long as we can all agree to pretend that the prologue didn't happen. The difference in quality between the two parts is night and day.

This post was last modified: Jul 26, 2016 at 7:23 PM by Spritanium.

Oh another thing: does it seem weird to anyone that I'm supposed to believe Batman and Joker had this friendly moment mere hours after Joker paralyzed Batman's bat bootycall and nearly drove his good friend to madness? And let's not forget that he'd recently killed Jason Todd as well. I guess that's more a problem with the comic itself.

Thanks for the in depth review. There are some things that I think I'm going to be pretty annoyed with but I might still see it if we do nothing else

No worries. I definitely don't regret seeing it and I'll definitely see it again, I just know they could've done better

This post was last modified: Feb 10, 2017 at 7:06 AM by Mario. Edit Reason: deleted

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Wow I forgot what good animation looked like