The biggest problem with Batman: The Killing Joke is that it’s unmemorable. The same cannot be said about Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel of the same name, which chilled me so viciously as a teen, I started reading Nietzsche.
Its plot, which is recreated in the second half of the 2016 animated movie, provides a popular origin story for the Joker: a failed comedian falls into an acid pit, which burns him into the white-faced Joker. In the present, Joker paralyzes Barbara Gordon by shooting her through the stomach, then he kidnaps her father, Commissioner Gordon, torturing and goading him into going insane.
But the first half of the 2016 movie is dedicated to what ultimately feels like an auxiliary story about Barbara, as Batgirl, being horny and violent, subject to her overwhelming emotions as a woman. Then, even with Mark Hamill’s legendary voice acting, the more faithful second half of the movie can’t capture the insidiousness that artist Brian Bolland manages to transmit with the stationary comic book page.
