The biggest problem with Batman: The Killing Joke is that it cannot be forgotten. The same can’t be said for Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel of the same name, which chilled me so much as a teenager that I started reading Nietzsche.
The plot, recreated in the second half of the 2016 animated film, follows the popular Joker origin story: a failed comedian falls into a pit of acid, which burns him into a white-faced Joker. In the present, the Joker paralyzes Barbara Gordon by shooting her in the stomach, and then kidnaps her father, Commissioner Gordon, torturing him and driving him insane.
However, the first half of the 2016 film is devoted to what ultimately appears to be a ancillary story of Barbara as Batgirl, horny and violent, subject to her overwhelming emotions as a woman. On the other hand, even with Mark Hamill’s legendary voice, the film’s more faithful second half fails to capture the insidiousness that artist Brian Bolland manages to convey through the stationary comic book page.
