Based on the #1 Best Selling Graphic Novel by Brian Bolland and Alan Moore
Plot
Batgirl helps Batman track down a mob leader, Paris Franz, after she fails to catch him during a bank robbery. After Batman discovers that he is a dangerous killer, he feels Batgirl shouldn’t find the guy without him. Paris has the hots for Batgirl and has been sending her video messages only to lead her to the dead body of Paris’ uncle who happens to be the biggest mob boss in Gotham. Batman informs Batgirl that she is off the case. Batgirl gets furious at Batman and lets her anger out by fighting him. Then when she has him down on the ground, she looks at him and expresses her feelings for him by kissing him. Barbara wants to know why Batman hasn’t been talking to her after that night.
Batman shows up at a shipping yard and is ambushed by Franz and his men. Batgirl shows up, takes down Paris and beats his face with all her rage. Barbara finally realizes that Batman cares too much for her that he doesn’t want anything bad to happen to her and so she decides retire from being Batgirl.
Batman goes to Arkham Asylum to meet with the Joker. Batman wants answers on people he killed a few years back, but Joker doesn't say a thing. Then Batman discovers it is an imposter which means the real Joker has escaped. Joker buys a freak show carnival. Then he goes over to Barbara’s apartment, shoots her at the waist and kidnaps Jim Gordon. Barbara is found and rushed to the hospital. At the hospital Batman gets the news that Barbara will be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Barbara informs Batman that Joker took her father and she is worried of what he is going to do to him.
Joker has Gordon stripped nude by creepy midgets and has a leash around his neck like a dog. Joker has Gordon suffer on the images he took of Barbara in pain after he shot her. Batman tracks Joker down to the amusement park and finds Gordon in a cage. He puts a blanket on Gordon and informs him that Barbara is alive. Gordon wants Joker brought in by the book. Batman and Joker fight and Joker tells Batman about loss he had from his pregnant wife. He figures that Batman too must of had a tragedy to make him who he is. Joker tries to shoot Batman, but it turns out it is the gun that Batman chooses not to beat the snot out of Joker because he realizes they do have something in common. Batman wants to help Joker by rehabilitating him and feels they can work together. Joker appreciates the offer, but he knows it’s too late for him. Joker tells Batman a funny joke and Batman shares a laugh with him.
Blaine: I have read the graphic novel and I was familiar with some of the scenes that are in the film. The first twenty eight minutes of the film focuses on the relationship between Batman and Batgirl and that is not in the graphic novel and during that time I saw a side to Barbara I’ve never seen before. The animated features DC makes are an hour and ten minutes or more. Without the first half of “The Killing Joke” it would just be a forty something minute long movie. Executive producer, Bruce Timm said they wanted to add a whole other story of Batgirl and Barbara Gordon before “The Killing Joke” happens so that the audience can spend more time with her as a character and understand where she is coming from. In “Batman: The Animated Series” she would have fun at crime fighting because it made her feel so alive. But for Batman it’s always serious because seeing his parents deaths at a very young age killed a piece of him inside. Batman has his ways of being too demanding and getting on his sidekick’s nerves. He did it with Dick Grayson and that caused him to quit being Robin and now I see him doing it with Barbara.
Batgirl has felt romantic feelings for Batman for a while and I didn’t know that until I saw the “Batgirl Returns” episode on “Batman: The Animated Series” a while back. At the beginning of that episode it would show Batgirl saving Batman and then showed them getting ready to kiss, but she dreamed it up. And on “The New Batman Adventures” it would show more of Batman and Batgirl working together more, but nothing romantic. I’ve been wanting to see romance between them ever since then. Batgirl is one of my favorite love interests of Batman's next to Catwoman and Wonder Woman.
Seeing Batgirl kiss Batman was very unexpected for me. Barbara getting it on with Batman was a huge wow because I finally got to see them be more intimate even though it didn’t show them having sex after she took off her top, but still the thought of it. Barbara describes to her library friend that the sex felt fantastic and fireworks went up shows how strong Barbara’s feelings are for Batman. Barbara asks herself if it was too soon to go at it with Batman, but it was definitely was the right time because she won’t feel the pleasure of it later because she becomes paralyzed.
Kevin Conroy and Tara Strong coming back to do the voices of Batman and Batgirl feels like to me in a way it’s continuing from “The New Batman Adventures” only things are getting more serious between the characters. It sucks that they can’t be together and have a life together.
I don’t like that Barbara retired from being Batgirl. It gives me an empty feeling inside because it’s hard to say goodbye to something like that. Another thing I don’t like is that Barbara is in a wheelchair now. It sucks that she is paralyzed and just the thought of being it makes me feel a phobia. At the mid credit ending it shows Barbara entering a secret room with computers in her apartment and a logo shows up on the screen known as Oracle. I looked Oracle up after I watched “The Killing Joke” and found out it is in the comics. What Oracle does is help the Superhero Community by providing information and hacking services. It is nice Barbara is making good use of herself now that she can’t do anything physically anymore. Of course I still don’t like that she is paralyzed from the waist down. But I feel I will see Batgirl again in one of the other DC Animated features in the future.
The rest of the movie after Barbara’s retirement shows the story that is in the graphic novel. It starts off as romance, drama then becomes something like a horror film in my opinion. The rest of the movie is true to the graphic novel. This is the darkest animated feature DC has made by far. The graphic novel is what influenced Tim Burton to make the first Batman” movie in the late 80s and also influenced Christopher Nolan when he made “The Dark Knight”. Tim Burton said it’s the first comic he has ever loved. It flashes back through Joker’s past when he was trying to make a living off of being a stand up comedian, but not succeeding in it especially while he has to provide for his pregnant wife. He then goes through a tragedy of the death of his wife and then got in a accident by falling into some kind of acid and the chemicals Showing Joker’s plan and his origin of how he became the Joker.
I think Joker is the only one of Batman’s villains that who has something in common with him and that is they both have had a terrible lose in their lives before they became what they are now. Batman with his parents and Joker with his wife who was pregnant with his child when she died.
Mark Hamill was ready to retire doing the voice of The Joker unless they did “The Killing Joke”. Four weeks before “The Killing Joke” was released on blu-ray, there was an article saying that Hamill will return to do the Joker’s voice in the future. It would have been nice if he did the voice of the Joker in “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” in the past. There is no other actor who can do as good of a job as what Mark has done through out the years.
I couldn’t remember how “The Killing Joke" ended in the graphic novel. I remember there was an ending where Batman gets shot in the head, but that was something else. I knew something was going to happen that could be extreme and I had a bit of panic inside my chest. Batman isn’t showing hate for Joker and just wants to talk and try to help him now that Joker has revealed that he wasn’t always this sick and twisted. And Joker isn’t trying to kill him because Batman is offering to help him. And after that it shows Batman sharing a laugh with the Joker which is something you don’t usually see or hear. That’s what makes the ending so great because it’s showing something completely different.
My rating on “Batman: The Killing Joke” is five out of five stars.
Parody
“South Park” has done a parody of “The Killing Joke” graphic novel on episode “201” of the fourteenth season.
