Killing Joke Film Controversy SPOILERS

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Never take comics seriously palbert. They're usually the bottom rung of writers crafting whatever melodrama they need make to sell copies, regardless of canon or character continuity. That's why every 5 years they do a complete reboot of everything and start fresh with a whole new slate of terrible ideas.
Wouldn't be surprised if there's a comic where Dick gets Bruce pregnant and Barbara beats him up over it.

 

[Asita]

Also, what is this about Barbara and Bruce dating in the animated series? Dear god, I feel like my childhood just got kicked in the nads.

Nothing happened on screen. A conversation between Terry and Commissioner Gordon in Batman Beyond suggested that she and Bruce might have a thing going on at some point, but pretty much left it at that, and with that knowledge, a conversation in the Mystery of Batwoman (or more specifically the way it was delivered) seems to corroborate the idea. Mind you, I do think that was a bad call to make, but that's likely what inspired the decision.

Yeah, but apparently there's a comic that continues after Batman Beyond ends. In the comic, the relationship between Barbara and Bruce is all too real and she's cheating and Dick. Bruce gets her pregnant and he decides to tell Dick about the relationship and the pregnancy. Dick gets pissed off, obviously, and proceeds to beat on Bruce. Meanwhile, the ever heroic Barbara runs off to stop a mugging and apparently suffers a miscarriage. So yeah, TAS Bruce is a jackass... Is what I would say if comics were canon, but clearly they aren't. HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaha... haha... ha...


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Spoiler: Barbara telling Bruce

Spoiler: Bruce telling Dick

Spoiler: And they all lived happily ever after

Spoiler: *Ahem*

Honestly, I could stand Beyond's suggestion of it, because it dove just enough into it to touch on how dysfunctional the Bat-Family became over the years before it ultimately fell apart (somewhat of a recurring theme in the series) while leaving it mostly out of sight...but that? Waaaay more detail than that idea ever needed.

 

[Erttheking]

So their idea to make Batgirl more of an entity where her main purpose was to get shot to make other people feel bad...is to give her a creepy, possibly statutory rape depending on the state borderline incestuous relationship with Batman? So in other words, her purpose is still to get shot so that other people feel bad, but with the added purpose of emasculating Batman. You know, as opposed to doing something interesting like having Batman be brutalized and depowered. But when will that ever happen? What's that? Court of Owls? PFFFFFT!

Christ, no wonder Alan Moore doesn't like this comic anymore.

 

[DefunctTheory]

SNIP

Never take comics seriously palbert. They're usually the bottom rung of writers crafting whatever melodrama they need make to sell copies, regardless of canon or character continuity. That's why every 5 years they do a complete reboot of everything and start fresh with a whole new slate of terrible ideas.
Wouldn't be surprised if there's a comic where Dick gets Bruce pregnant and Barbara beats him up over it.

I know all that, but just... still...

It's a new low for me, comics wise. I suppose that's my fault, with my emotional investment in the DCAU.

 

[Zhukov]

Huh.

I've read The Killing Joke. Quite recently. Wasn't too impressed.

I do not recall that being in there.

 

[mecegirl]

Huh.

I've read The Killing Joke. Quite recently. Wasn't too impressed.

I do not recall that being in there.

That's cuz it wasn't. This is something special they added to pad out the movie based on the comic. It was never even hinted at in the comic itself. Its simply not canon to the comic at all.

 

[Leg End]

It's stupid it was added but it's not like this hasn't been done before in Batman comics. Specifically, a c-

Yeah, but apparently there's a comic that continues after Batman Beyond ends. In the comic, the relationship between Barbara and Bruce is all too real and she's cheating and Dick. Bruce gets her pregnant and he decides to tell Dick about the relationship and the pregnancy. Dick gets pissed off, obviously, and proceeds to beat on Bruce. Meanwhile, the ever heroic Barbara runs off to stop a mugging and apparently suffers a miscarriage. So yeah, TAS Bruce is a jackass... Is what I would say if comics were canon, but clearly they aren't. HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaha... haha... ha...


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Spoiler: Barbara telling Bruce

Spoiler: Bruce telling Dick

Spoiler: And they all lived happily ever after

You saved me a lot of digging you did. I just wish I could find the "my dick" edit of the first.

all I can say is...

Spoiler

You get ninja bonus points.
But would you believe that out of all of the loss edits in the world, I don't think there is a single one of Barbara?

So yeah, none of this shocks me and now it reminds me that I need to actually see TKJ and measure how much I need to shit on DC.
The answer is always "an assload".

 

[BrawlMan]

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/batman-killing-joke-batgirl-sex-913904

Damn, whats with Bruce Timm and the Batman/Batgirl ship? It was creepy as fuck in the DCAU and I assume it will be creepy here too. As if this story wasn't controversial enough....

I have no idea why. It wasn't a good romance plot that was implied in Batman Beyond, and it sure was horrifying when I heard about them adding further development in Batman Beyond 2.0. It's like Bruce Timm and everyone on his team have turned into or were taken over by bad fan-fic writers who focus on shipping that makes no sense. I've already saw the movie, and recommend whoever watches to just skip the first half hour.

Nothing explicit happens in the sex scene, but after some belligerent sexual tension on a rooftop, Barbara takes top, Bruce grabs her ass, and as soon she's takes the top of her costume off, the camera pans away. I hate this since I had respect for the guy, but Bruce Timm, can you and your writers go fuck yourselves?! You did not need to add an unnecessary element no one asked for! I would have preferred had the film just been 45-50 minutes.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

I can think of 3 reason why this prologue was made .

1.They wanted an R but the content of the movie isn't that fuck up by today's standards. (They're so many violent and sex fuel comics out there. Not so may are as mature or sophisticated but the ratings board looks for the former.)

2.To increase the run time.(I would done a double feature, like with a hero who isn't batman but this is dc after all)

3. To help with The Fridge part of the story and give her more involvement which ironically just made things worse for a lot of people.

 

[SweetShark]

So the most fans hate the movie because they had sex?
The real fans should had asked why Barbara get shot so easily in the first place.

 

[SweetShark]

Sidenote: I don't get where everyone is getting this Father/Daughter relationship from her and Bats. How? Gordon was totally already a good father figure in her life, it's not like she ever needed a surrogate.

I think it has less to do with any specific emotional surrogacy, and more to do with the idea that Bruce/Bats acts/looks like a father figure to the entire bat family

and even if she was 'in college' at that time. bruce is a grown ass man

Yes, because apparently a bat can only f*ck a cat...
But another bat? HERESY!!!
Maybe a bat can f*ck a bird in a future remake when our world become more Cyberpunk.

 

[Scarim Coral]

You know, it's a complete shame that Joker is unaware of this. He would had made alot of good puns and jokes toward Batman!

OT- While I do feel negative toward this revelation (seen out of characters for both of them and it seen irrelevent and pointless to the actual graphic novel) and yes it kinda a reference to that TAS comic but still, I intend to watched it.

 

[JimB]

So the fans hate the movie because they had sex?

The real fans should have asked why Barbara get shot so easily in the first place.

The Killing Joke's mishandling of Barbara Gordon's character and falling into lazy, sexist tropes of making women into helpless victims has been well-explored (though to be fair, surprise is a thing that happens, and I think it would be unreasonable to expect Barbara to be in Batgirl mode when she's relaxed and expecting a fun night out with a friend). We can rehash that if you want, but it's old news. It is more interesting and possibly more useful to discuss the new material in this movie; specifically, how Batgirl is made even more of a victim, how her character seems to have no arc for favor of just wanting Batcock in her Batvaj, and what an utter betrayal it is for the man upon whom she depends not just for the training to succeed at her calling but also the skills and tools to survive dangerous combat situations to not recognize how inherently unequal their relationship is for the sake of nutting inside her and then to abandon her while she's emotionally vulnerable when he's supposed to be protecting and providing for her as his mentor/leader role demands. Batgirl remains an object, and Batman crosses the line from emotionally damaged to selfish creep.

I expected no different from Brian "Wonder Woman makes more sense as a character if the Amazons are ritual rapists and serial murderers" Azzarello, but it's a damn shame to see anyway.

 

[shrekfan246]

So the reason they decided to add the whole relationship/sex thing in is, if what people have written is true, because the original story could only fill about 45 minutes of screentime without padding, so they decided to do some prologue thing to give Barbara an actual existence beyond being a resident of the fridge. And not only did they decide that her pining after Batman (I've read that they apparently have her only become the Batgirl to get his attention) would be the best way to do this, but that after the creepy sex it devolves into her just waiting around being jilted because Batman won't call her.

And then The Killing Joke actually starts and she gets to go back to being a complete nonentity that only exists to be victimized and cause Batman and Gordon manpain.

Oh, and apparently Brian Azzarello actually asked someone (Jeremy Konrad) if they "Wanna say that again, pussy?" during the Q&A when they criticized the panelists explanations of how they were making Barbara a strong character by noting that it seemed to revolve around pining after and having sex with Batman.

So, y'know, all within expectations for a company that employs and defends someone who needed to be separated from all female employees to stop him from harassing them.

Eugh. That's... kinda disgusting.

Fuck's sake, DC, first you treat The Killing Joke like Barb's "death of my parents" moment, never letting her get away from it in any form of media she's ever been in (except, ironically, the DCAU), and now you're going to add in even more creepy sexual undertones to the whole thing in, what, some cheap attempt to make people want to care about a female character without actually making a good female character?

I had tentative levels of excitement for the thing, and I imagine it won't suck because most of DC's other animated films have been pretty legit, but ugh. This is decidedly a step backwards overall.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Sidenote: I don't get where everyone is getting this Father/Daughter relationship from her and Bats. How? Gordon was totally already a good father figure in her life, it's not like she ever needed a surrogate.

I think it has less to do with any specific emotional surrogacy, and more to do with the idea that Bruce/Bats acts/looks like a father figure to the entire bat family

and even if she was 'in college' at that time. bruce is a grown ass man

1. Yeah physically. Mentally and Emotionally he's still a child. A healthy adult doesn't go out on a revenge crime spree every fucking night, risking his own life, because he can't get over his parents deaths.


2. I have to disagree again. How is he acting like a father figure when he literally can not be emotionally there for any of them? He can mentor them on how to fight crime, but when it comes with deal with actual people and relationships Bruce is pretty much lost.

And whenever a member of his Bat family is going through shit, when somethings bothering them, it's usually Alfred who notices and goes to Bruce and is like "Buddy, your kids in trouble"... not that Alfred is great with handling peoples emotions either, he's probably one of the DC Universe's biggest enablers, but he can see when someones going through shit better than Bruce can.

maybe no one else sees that, but I never look at the Batfamily as something Bruce has because he wants to be a mentor or wants to be a father or whatever. They may look up to him for that, but really he needs them because he's a incedibly damaged loner and they're the only people truly keeping him killing himself or going murderous. By the time he's of age Nightwing can teach Bruce a helluva lot more, because Nightwing is able to do everything Bats can and have life outside of it. A girlfriend. He can smile.

and about the age thing, my own parents are like 20 years apart which is roughly what Barbra and Bruce would be so it's not like unheard of or that fucked up.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Also, what is this about Barbara and Bruce dating in the animated series? Dear god, I feel like my childhood just got kicked in the nads.

Nothing happened on screen. A conversation between Terry and Commissioner Gordon in Batman Beyond suggested that she and Bruce might have a thing going on at some point, but pretty much left it at that, and with that knowledge, a conversation in the Mystery of Batwoman (or more specifically the way it was delivered) seems to corroborate the idea. Mind you, I do think that was a bad call to make, but that's likely what inspired the decision.

Yeah, but apparently there's a comic that continues after Batman Beyond ends. In the comic, the relationship between Barbara and Bruce is all too real and she's cheating and Dick. Bruce gets her pregnant and he decides to tell Dick about the relationship and the pregnancy. Dick gets pissed off, obviously, and proceeds to beat on Bruce. Meanwhile, the ever heroic Barbara runs off to stop a mugging and apparently suffers a miscarriage. So yeah, TAS Bruce is a jackass... Is what I would say if comics were canon, but clearly they aren't. HAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahaha... haha... ha...


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Spoiler: Barbara telling Bruce

Spoiler: Bruce telling Dick

Spoiler: And they all lived happily ever after

That's actually pretty brilliant... It never did make much sense to me that it was just the Tim Drake/Joker thing that cause Batman to go recluse. It makes so much more sense that he would end up destroying his adopted family, cause that is like...

Like theres two conclusion to Batman's story:

Happy Ending- He gets over his parents death, stops being Batman, finally finds a way to be happy.

or

Tragic Ending- Everything he cares about starts crumbling around, cause he can't keep going at the rate he has forever. Something has to give. He gets older. Maybe a criminal gets a lucky shot in. Maybe he starts having heart issues. But The Batman dies, and he never gets over his core character conflict.

 

[shrekfan246]

I don't have a problem with it. I grew up with the DCAU.

Plus considering the very nature of Batman why WOULDN'T his relationship with Barbra get to that point? He's a damaged loner, shes a young girl that idolizes him. It's fucked up, but it's a fucked up world. I don't see how anyone can point a finger and say this is somehow not okay to do thematically but... say, adopting orphan boys and allow them to put their lives in danger fighting mobs and pyschopathic clowns is okay. Like I love Batman, but part of his deal that he is fucked in the head and his relationships beyond alfred aren't really healthy.

Because for all of his problems, Bruce Wayne is not a sexual deviant.

Like, there's a reason that his long-standing relationships are with Selina Kyle and Talia Al'Ghul, and most everyone else who's tried to work her way into his life has ended up either dead, used in a trap, or just left when she discovered how distant and detached he is.

He's incredibly protective of his charges, to the point where I highly doubt he'd ever see any of them as any sort of sexual being, which is certainly saying something considering how much Dick Grayson has been turned into one. Christ, even Frank Miller hasn't made him sleep with anyone he's actually close to. Batman, at least under most halfway-decent writers, isn't the type of person to just take advantage of a young girl who's pining after him and then drop her like a hot potato after he gets what he wanted.

And furthermore, this was never gonna be a feminist vehicle away. She's little more than a prop in this story, so may as well just get most out of it. Gives Batman more motivation and creates conflict between Batman and Gordon. Some might say thats a problem to correct, I don't though. I don't think everything needs to get the SJ-Filter treatment, sometimes it is nice just to watch something problematic. Like I can acknowledge Frank Millar can't write women well at all, but also still enjoy watching Sin City.

m8, while the issues with the original story have been endlessly debated since it came out, it's entirely different for them to take something that already treated its only woman as nothing more than an object and then objectify her even more. Barbara Gordon as plot device to get shot is one thing, Barbara Gordon as sex toy and plot device is entirely another. You don't have to take issue with it, but at least acknowledge that it's fucking gross.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

And furthermore, this was never gonna be a feminist vehicle away. She's little more than a prop in this story, so may as well just get most out of it. Gives Batman more motivation and creates conflict between Batman and Gordon. Some might say thats a problem to correct, I don't though. I don't think everything needs to get the SJ-Filter treatment, sometimes it is nice just to watch something problematic. Like I can acknowledge Frank Millar can't write women well at all, but also still enjoy watching Sin City.

m8, while the issues with the original story have been endlessly debated since it came out, it's entirely different for them to take something that already treated its only woman as nothing more than an object and then objectify her even more. Barbara Gordon as plot device to get shot is one thing, Barbara Gordon as sex toy and plot device is entirely another. You don't have to take issue with it, but at least acknowledge that it's fucking gross.

I can acknowledge that it's blatantly offensive and horrible when looked at under a feminist lens.

Everything else, I stand by. Batman is just Bojack Horseman in a cape & cowl.

 

[shrekfan246]

And furthermore, this was never gonna be a feminist vehicle away. She's little more than a prop in this story, so may as well just get most out of it. Gives Batman more motivation and creates conflict between Batman and Gordon. Some might say thats a problem to correct, I don't though. I don't think everything needs to get the SJ-Filter treatment, sometimes it is nice just to watch something problematic. Like I can acknowledge Frank Millar can't write women well at all, but also still enjoy watching Sin City.

m8, while the issues with the original story have been endlessly debated since it came out, it's entirely different for them to take something that already treated its only woman as nothing more than an object and then objectify her even more. Barbara Gordon as plot device to get shot is one thing, Barbara Gordon as sex toy and plot device is entirely another. You don't have to take issue with it, but at least acknowledge that it's fucking gross.

I can acknowledge that it's blatantly offensive and horrible when looked at under a feminist lens.

Everything else, I stand by. Batman is just Bojack Horseman in a cape & cowl.

It's not just horrible from an "SJW" perspective, man. It's horrible from an "I expect decent writing" perspective, too. This is the epitome of lazy, hackneyed writing. This is the sort of thing they would've done for shock value in the '90s. This is more than just offensive, it's boring.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

And furthermore, this was never gonna be a feminist vehicle away. She's little more than a prop in this story, so may as well just get most out of it. Gives Batman more motivation and creates conflict between Batman and Gordon. Some might say thats a problem to correct, I don't though. I don't think everything needs to get the SJ-Filter treatment, sometimes it is nice just to watch something problematic. Like I can acknowledge Frank Millar can't write women well at all, but also still enjoy watching Sin City.

m8, while the issues with the original story have been endlessly debated since it came out, it's entirely different for them to take something that already treated its only woman as nothing more than an object and then objectify her even more. Barbara Gordon as plot device to get shot is one thing, Barbara Gordon as sex toy and plot device is entirely another. You don't have to take issue with it, but at least acknowledge that it's fucking gross.

I can acknowledge that it's blatantly offensive and horrible when looked at under a feminist lens.

Everything else, I stand by. Batman is just Bojack Horseman in a cape & cowl.

It's not just horrible from an "SJW" perspective, man. It's horrible from an "I expect decent writing" perspective, too. This is the epitome of lazy, hackneyed writing. This is the sort of thing they would've done for shock value in the '90s. This is more than just offensive, it's boring.

But we do agree it IS terrible from the "SJW" perspective right? Cause oh God, am I in 100% agreement there.

Like I said, i don't think it is bad writing. It all makes perfect sense to me why Bruce would do it, and why Barbra would do it.

And if it's gross, well the world is gross and there are gross people in it that do gross things.

and even from a writer perspective... barbra the girl in the fridge here. It's not her story, she's a plot point. And the story needs padding for it to have a good run time. It makes perfect sense to do something that shows Batman's connection to Barbra rather than... Showing Barbra living the life of Batgirl and why it means so much to her and how tragic itll be when thats taken from her. Hey if it was an expanded universe, then maybe I'd take issue for the decision to have them bang instead of some type of mentor bullshit but it's not. It's a one shot.

I don't think I would of had them fucking on a roof top in costume if I was writing it, but I probably would've written the relationship like that. You can call it lazy, I call it writing for your audience. After all we need justification to Batman snapping Joker's neck later at the end.