★★☆
Everything that can be said about Alan Moore’s Batman opus The Killing Joke has already been said. Its better lines made it into Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, and its verdict on the Joker’s origins is considered definitive. Whilst DC putting its own spin on the adaptation is laudable, something is lost in translation, with nothing added to explore the tale’s dire consequences.
The Joker (Mark Hamill) is out of Arkham Asylum again, but this time he’s not up to his usual nasty tricks. He’s planning something much worse: a malicious scheme to prove a point to Batman (Kevin Conroy) using both Commissioner Gordon (Ray Wise) and his daughter Barbara (Tara Strong) as pawns.
As The Killing Jokeis seen as the most insightful exploration of the bond between Batman and the Joker, it’s natural that DC would eventually adapt it to the screen, despite its objections to its extremity. And it is extreme – what Joker puts the Gordons through (particularly Barbara) is harrowing to the point that even Moore regrets some of his choices.
Getting Bruce Timm – the creator of the hugely acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series – to adapt it is simultaneously foreseeable and baffling. Determined to put their own mark on the classic, Timm, co-director Sam Liu and writer Brian Azzarello have added a 15-minute prologue sequence that attempts to give Barbara Gordon greater agency and gravitas, but instead drives her even deeper into the trope of refrigerated woman.
The tone set by Liu and Timm seems weirdly out of sync with the content – they’re known for the marriage of Batman’s inherent darkness with comic book camp, but here the darkness renders its partner mute. Evocations of both sex and sexual violence don’t fit this vision of the DC Universe. Juxtapositions designed to highlight Joker’s insanity – chiefly a crudely inserted song-and-dance number – that do a disservice to the talents of all involved. The song is a wasted moment for Hamill’s magnificent, malevolent Joker.
The well-crafted humour of the first half falls away as the film dives headlong into Moore’s territory, and setting up then cutting down Barbara as a central figure leaves us with an uninteresting Batman, reliant on his own aura and mythos rather than anything brought to the screen here. His own emotional journey is left unresolved, as the film fails to pull off Moore’s stunningly ambiguous ending and follows it with reassurances, not consequence.
Fans of the novel will inevitably be disappointed, while fans of the animated series may find something new and refreshing here, darker and meatier than Mask Of The Phantasm. But The Killing Joke is robbed of its punchline and thereby its impact; besides, it’s a joke we’ve heard before.
The Killing Joke is screening in cinemas on Sunday July 24, and available on digital, Blu-ray and DVD from Wednesday July 27.
