...Yeah, pretty much.
Is the animation quality better than what I\'ve seen in the trailers? It all looks very shoddy.
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I didn\'t have much of a problem with the animation, but I\'m no connoisseur. The style is a bit of a weird blend between the usual Bruce Timm style and a more realistic one closer to Young Justice or the current Batman/Justice League animated movies. I thought Batman\'s design was not great, but it didn\'t get in the way of the story for me. The Joker looks fantastic.
I gotta say I didn\'t get the point of the Batsex at all. Wasn\'t there already enough reason for Batman to be pissed at the Joker for what he did to Babs? I mean the original story wasn\'t a saint, the way it had Barbara get screwed over like that but there Batman was more angry on Jim\'s behalf and all that but here because of the Batsex it just devolves into \"JOKER DONE CRIPPLED MY GIRL GRRRR\" and almost seems like it fridged Babs even MORE than the original.
I'm quite confident in my shitposting you know
I\'m glad someone spelled this one out, though the portrayal of Batgirl in the first half is really disgusting. She\'s younger than Batman, right?
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Two stories that didn't need to go together
Batman: The Killing Joke isn't one story, but two. The second half is a faithful, tastefully done adaptation of the Killing Joke that features excellent voice work by Mark Hamil. It's shocking, disturbing, and intense, just as the story calls for, but perfectly balanced, showing exactly the amount of graphic material called for and not a smidge more.
The first half is basically an episode of Bt AS if Bruce Timm got to ignore censors and write completely for adults, without worrying about the kids in the room. It's a story about Batgirl, but it's not a very flattering story. Batgirl fails to intimidate criminals (and gets hit on by them instead). Batgirl and Batman clash over crimefighting techniques, Batman gets heavyhanded, Batgirl rebels and gets in over her head, and of course, most controversially, Batgirl has a big crush on Batman, which she eventually acts on by having sex on a rooftop with him. The thing is, none of this is new to the way Bruce Timm writes the character. It's more explicit, sure, but the story elements have all been introduced in the DCAU. Even Barbara as a second-rate crime fighter because she hasn't had the kind of motivating tragedy Bruce and Dick experienced has been done before. It's not an interpretation of Barbara that everyone likes, but this is how he's always written her—just without the kid-friendly filters.
The trouble isn't that the first half is a bad story or a misogynistic story. It's neither. Had it been part of a series like Bt AS, with lots of other stories, some more flattering to Barbara, some focused on other characters, no one would be up in arms, unless they were super-bothered by the whole Bruce-Babs thing (which, to be fair, even in the DCAU, many are). The problem is the entire POINT of having a 30 minute story about Barbara before the Killing Joke material was to lessen the "women in refrigerators" aspect of the story, to make Barbara important and likable in her own right. While it succeeds in contextualizing who she is and why we should care what happens to her, (beyond not wanting such terrible things to happen to anyone), it doesn't do anything to empower Barbara as a character. It doesn't restore any of her agency. It doesn't even make her particularly likable.
The other problem is that the Killing Joke isn't about Barbara. It's not supposed to be. Yes, that makes what happens to her problematic, but adding an unrelated story in front of it doesn't actually change that. Instead, there's an awkward shift when the first half of the movie focuses on Batgirl/Batman's mentor/romance dynamic, and then suddenly transitions to the dark, twisted Joker/Batman relationship. It's disorienting, and the tonal mismatch between the eye-rolling sexist thugs and rom-com quips from Babs' sassy gay friend to Joker's chilling schemes is extremely jarring. Separately, both stories work, although the first is merely average, while the second one is great. Together, both suffer.