Batman: The Killing Joke - In theaters July 25th one night only

@PoopaPapaPalps Yeah my knowledge of WB animation at the time is kind of heresay. I met a guy in the 90's who did a talk at my highschool and I talked his ear off. His name was Keith Baxter and he pretty much gave me the final push to film school. He was the character designer/boards/animator on a lot of those WB toons (Tiny Toons, Animaniacs etc... I think he even developed Tazmania?) Anyway, I asked him about the quality issues and he said they did most of the first seasons in house, then sent them to their B teams overseas after and moved onto the new property. in all likelihood he was simplifying for a 17 year old... also it was 23 years ago... so yeah, I'm sure you're right... brain aint what it used to be!

I gotta say though, as much as I hate the look of flash, I definitely prefer it to crazy crappy overseas traditional - though I just edited a show where everything flash from overseas came back looking like garbage as well... and that was pretty much entirely timed out in layout.

Good things CAN be done with flash, but you need the budget...

btw... a bunch of Ren and Stimpy got outsourced up here to Canada... I think it was Carbunkle. I had friends who HATED John K after that...

I gotta say, Rick and Morty is pretty well animated... the show doesn't call for much, but the humor notes are definitely hit.

Sundowner said:

I know this is nitpicking but Batman's cowl ears really bothered me. They looked wonky and just kinda weird at times.

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Don't the buildings in Gotham have bat ears in this movie?

Jeyl said:

Don't the buildings in Gotham have bat ears in this movie?

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I have to be honest with you, I messed up and had front row seats so there was a lot of area to cover so I may have missed those

I bought it and the cast was great. The animation especially joker changed all the time. His model was all over the place in appearance. The back story could have been callbacks to joker stories with Barbara. Give us some fan service. Also I know it followed the comic but the ending always sucked.

Deric said:

I bought it and the cast was great. The animation especially joker changed all the time. His model was all over the place in appearance. The back story could have been callbacks to joker stories with Barbara. Give us some fan service. Also I know it followed the comic but the ending always sucked.

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ever er heard the theory that batman kills joker in the end? Or was that implied in the flick as well?

I believe Allan moore denies it now, but the people think that's cuz DC shot it down.

I watched the first 10 minutes and turned it off. Not for me...

Deric said:

I... Also I know it followed the comic but the ending always sucked.

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I feel the same way but, upon reflecting on it now, I can't help but think the comic wasn't all that great to begin with anyway because the film really brought to light the foibles of the whole piece. I'm beginning to feel that the story was really a product of its time. Sure, it has the crippling of Batgirl and at the time, Batman was really moving away from the camp stuff for the first time, but it's handled all so "on the nose", if that makes sense. The characters literally speak to their archetypes and the events that occur really just exist to justify their personalities. I suppose it lacks subtlety but, on the other hand, it can't help but feel that's just a trademark of Alan Moore's.

Here's an article about Grant Morrison's theory on the ending... would be much better if true...

http://screenrant.com/the-killing-joke-batman-killed-joker-grant-morrison/

That book was instrumental to convert the image of hokey Biff! Bam! Pow! holy crap Batman into... My God that was awesome!
The giggle factor died after reading that book.

If there's a singular lesson to be learned from the performance of BvS it's that it's not sufficient to just do treatments of iconic comic stories. You need to do stories that are written well for the screen regardless of whether they're close to the source material or if they deviate from the source material. Marvel's Civil War succeeded not because it was an adaptation of Civil War but because it was simply a well crafted story and movie that didn't betray the relationships and characters. BvS tried to cram too much fan service into one film without considering what actually gave The Death of Superman and The Dark Knight Returns any dramatic weight. Now we're treated to this film which tries to ape the original comic and then pad it with an ill-conceived prologue that seems ignorant of the characters' relationship established in comics in an attempt to raise the dramatic stakes in the cheapest and most clichéd way possible. I'm sure they thought fans would feel that it enhanced the original work but we're not that gullible.

I really wanted to love this movie. I was looking forward to this one even more so then BvS.

The voice cast was great with ofc the 2 legends being kevin and mark which was great to see them both on screen again. However the first 25 min of the movie felt like a waste for me and i just dint enjoy that part. I mean some parts were ok but i dint need a batgirl origin/explanation story let alone what eventally happened between the 2 bats This would have actually been better suited as an extra short movie which they sometimes do. for example when they released the superman/shazam animated along with several others. This might have been purely for having a certain attachment towards the character for when later on the scene with joker and barbara shows up. But by that time my enthusiasm wasnt that high. The final part of the movie tho was good but overall def not what i hoped this movie would bring. Hoping for something along the level of the red hood animated but was far from it unfortenatly...

I went into the film pretty blind. I'd read the comic years ago, and remembered most of it's beats. About 10 minutes into the movie I thought 2 things.

1. Why is this focusing on batgirl?

2. Why does this look worse than the animation from the old TV show?

Part of me really wishes they had gone much darker visually. Because Brian Bolland's art in the comic book is one of the reasons the volume is iconic. Heavy blacks, hard shadows, lots of crosshatching and stylized line work. He created something special. I think the film lacked a great deal of punch because it looked so much like a child's cartoon, and felt so much like the old animated TV series. This story needed to be visually different. Separate.

A few years back I watched an animated film called Redline, which stands as one of my favorites now simply because it looks like a comic book moving around. They did such a tremendous job with blacks, and shadows, and line work.

The addition of a Batgirl story to open this film was a mistake. It lightened the tone too much, and just didn't work as a seamless narrative, at all.

I understand that you might have to add in new elements and characters to an adaptation. But The Killing Joke needed something more abstract, harder edged, and just dangerous feeling if you're going to lead into the twisted content of the comic. Not some kind of suedo romantic superhero soap opera style drama.

I think a simple step they could have taken was to make it a double feature so to speak.
Split the two stories up and then you can let the Batgirl story compliment TKJ storyline or you can choose
to ignore it.