[Note: This article contains major plot details from the animated film version of Batman: The Killing Joke.]
Batman: The Killing Joke has always been a tricky property for DC Comics. Simultaneously the Joker origin story—as written by comicdom’s wild-haired genius grandpa, Alan Moore—it’s also rife with sexual violence and female characters being tortured and maimed merely for the effect it has on their male loved ones. To quote legendary animator Bruce Timm, producer on an R-rated film adaptation of the 1988 comic that debuted last night at Comic-Con, “I’ve always been ambivalent about this particular story. It’s not my favorite Alan Moore comic.”
That comes as part of a longer interview Timm gave to Vulture after the debut, addressing reactions to some of the changes that he, fellow producer Alan Burnett, and writer Brian Azzarello made to Moore’s story to adapt it for feature length. (The movie’s director, Sam Liu, wasn’t mentioned as part of these decisions.) Most of those changes were sexual in nature, like references to The Joker’s penchant for prostitutes and the addition of a sexual relationship between Barbara “Batgirl” Gordon—the subject of the Joker’s brutal attack—and Bruce Wayne’s Batman.
Reactions to the change began developing on the internet yesterday, even before the movie’s release, with a leaked scene from the film showing the two crimefighters having sex on a Gotham rooftop. According to Timm, the change—which occurs in a long, Batgirl-focused prologue to the action of the comic, intended to flesh out her character from her token role in Moore’s original work—was meant to humanize both characters. “It was really important to us to show that both of the characters make some pretty big mistakes,” he said, adding, “I don’t remember who initially came up with the idea, but we all kind of jumped on it all at the same time and said, Yeah, that’s kind of where we need to go.” In their haste, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the film’s creative team that those all-important mistakes could have involved something other than putting Batgirl into bed (or on a rooftop) with Batman.