This controversial Batman animated film launched a new era for DC

The graphic novel by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland in 1988 “Batman: The Killing Joke” is a legendary entry into the Batman canon which influenced countless interpretations of the Dark Knight. Not only has he added major elements to Batman Lore, including the filming of Barbara Gordon and what is now widely accepted as the origin of the Joker, but he influenced even more popular representations of Batman’s mythos. Director Tim Burton quoted “The Killing Joke” as a great inspiration for “Batman” from 1989, even going so far as to say that Moore’s graphic novel was the first comic strip he really liked. Later, Christopher Nolan borrowed major elements in the story of “The Dark Knight”, in particular the misty and unreliable narrative of Joker, which never really knew if the villain tells his story of origin with precision or not.

This says nothing about the way “The Killing Joke”, alongside seminal works such as “The Dark Knight Returns” by Frank Miller, helped restore Batman as “strange figure of darkness” that the original creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane had intentional. Add to the fact that Moore has helped present the now popular idea that Batman and Joker are mirror images of each other, and you have one of the most influential and most important Batman stories ever written.

In this spirit, you can imagine that producer Bruce Timm was more than a little hesitant to make an animated adaptation of “The Killing Joke”. After all, doing such work work, justice was always going to be difficult. But Timm had received a lot of creative control over his projects since he and the co-creator Eric Radomski directed the legendary “Batman: The Animated Series”. “The Killing Joke” was no different in this direction. In fact, the Warner Bros. animation. was willing to let Timm go as dark as he needed it to make a worthy adaptation of Moore’s story. The resulting film represented the very first Batman classified R and the very first animated film Warner Bros. Lamingly, it was also controversial and did not succeed too well with the critics.

“Batman: The Killing Joke” looked perfect on paper. Not only was Bruce Timm produced, but Kevin Conroy, Batman’s final voice, was on board to express the black knight again, having established as the biggest to do it with “Batman: The Animated Series”. In addition, Mark Hamill, who transformed what was originally supposed to be a small “BTAS” cameo in a career by playing the Joker, had also signed. Alongside Tara Strong as Barbara Gordon / Batgirl and Ray Wise as commissioner Gordon, the cast could not have been better (although Conroy remembers recording sessions being absolute madness).

Meanwhile, Warners was clearly willing to give Timm and his team the creative freedom they needed. As the Weekly entertainment reported it at the time, “The Killing Joke” received his note R and the studio argued that the film was as mature as necessary to do justice to the original story. Sam Register, president of the Warner Bros. series. Animation & Warner Digital, was quoted in a statement by saying at the time: “From the start of the production, we encouraged producer Bruce Timm and our team at Warner Bros. Animation to remain faithful to the original history – whatever the MPAA rating.” Obviously, the studio was impatient to produce an animated film which was authentically “the original story of Alan Moore. While the maturity of the graphic novel certainly did not miss the finished film, if Timm and his team succeeded in” representing authentically “that the original story remains to be discussed, because” the joke of murder “turned out to be controversial during its beginnings – and not because of its beginnings.

Released in 2016, “Batman: The Killing Joke” was not only the first film of Batman classified R (unless you counted the prolonged version of the House Void of “Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice”), it was the first animated film DC to receive such a note – which is surprising since it was the 27th animated film of DC Animated Film. In this sense, he started a new era for DC animated films, with 14 other listed projects R after his traces (12 if you do not include animated films “Watchmen”). Of course, we would also see several DC films live live arriving in the following years, from “The Suicide Squad” by James Gunn to “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” and “Joker”. But “The Killing Joke” was the first. Unfortunately, that’s about everything he can claim in terms of recommendation.

Directed by Sam Liu and written by Brian Azzarello, “Batman: The Killing Joke” was created in San Diego Comic-Con in 2016 before a brief theatrical race which saw him report 4.3 million dollars to the box office. This made it the Batman’s only animated film to get a theatrical release since “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm” (a film that contains the biggest moment of Batman by Kevin Conroy). But according to criticism, it was perhaps not very worthy of such an honor.

In question, the modifications made to the original script, which, as Bruce Timm highlighted before the film’s release, simply was not long enough to adapt to a feature film film. As such, he and the writers introduced new elements, including a relationship between Batman and Barbara Gordon who proved to be a divisor to say the least. As Ben Travers d’Indiewire wrote it in his criticism,

“Fill [Barbara’s] The role could have created a direct attachment between Barbara and Batman, but instead of humanizing it, he transforms Barbara / Batgirl with a comic strip: the female character who pretended complexity, but, when it is given an enlarged role, is only seen by a sexual lens. “”

Other criticisms estimated that the first extensive half was too disconnected from the rest of the film, and some even criticized the animation for having failed to be up to the famous artistic style of Brian Bolland of the original graphic novel, which all gave rise to a score of 35% of rotten tomatoes based on 36 critics. This is not exactly what you hoped, since it was the first time that the animators of Batman have given the freedom to go as dark as it is necessary. It seems to be something that could have been particularly precious for a Batman film. Alas, “The Killing Joke” has proven that Darker does not necessarily mean always better with regard to the black knight.