Batman: The Killing Joke - The Book Cut

When The Killing Joke was announced by Bruce Timm himself I was skeptical. It's a comic that would be very hard to translate into a film because of various things. One was how short it was, there's no real set up in the book, you're already supposed to know about the characters and their relationships. The other was Bollard's art which is wonderful and very expressive and stunning. So when I saw the film in a theatre screening it was clear Bruce Timm, Alan Burnett(the two made BTAS and many other animated gems), and Brian Azzarello screwed it up in so many ways. Most of what was added hurt Barbara's character and just straight up ruined the movie with the epilogue. The epilogue is half the movie and is very loosely related to TKJ story. The movie even "starts" again with TKJ story! The Book Cut mercy kills that awful epilogue and trims all the unnecessary added things to TKJ that ultimately hurt the movie. It's all made to be closer to the comic, and for the most part it succeeds in making a better movie.





Batman's visit is edited better, and it makes for a better starting point than the weak corpses scene. The stupid unnecessary scene where Barbara is jogging and calls Gordon is also gone! This scene was straight up filler and it had the camera ogle Barbaras butt! These changes, and other trimmed scenes, make for a tighter and better movie.


Batman looking for Barbara is cut into a montage with music over it, which is very similar to how I imagined it'd be if the source material was adapted. I do have mixed feelings on it though. I felt the montage starts abruptly, and that the music somehow doesn't really start off right. Inserting the opening doors is a good call, but there are too many inserts so it becomes repetitive, specially in the rooftop part.The screeching sound of the doors might also be cut off too fast, so this could use a bit more work in order to have. Batman seems to say a whole sentences to the mob boss, but since there's only music and no dialogue, it drags out the whole montage Cutting out the really dumb prostitue scene dialogue was great because the original movie kinda doubles down to suggest joker definitely raped Barbara. Overall a tighter montage with little lip movement and few door inserts would make it flow better.


I would've preferred it if batman's laugh went on longer because now I felt the movie ends a bit too fast. There's a certain vibe that's lost with the abrupt laugh.


The opening and final scene have a new rain effect that makes for better atmosphere, unfortunately it also creates the biggest problems. There are certain angles that don't quite line up with the rain drop direction, like the first and last puddle shots, which make it apparent it's an added effect. Unfortunately the effect and a blotchy image due to compression also makes it very hard to see the rain actually hitting the ground like in the book. I think this is the biggest fault of The Book Cut.


Having the rain keep going in the end when it cuts to black screams of added rain effect but I'm not too bothered by it (The characters don't seem to be hit by the rain drops, but this is the original animators fault, it's just more apparent with the effect). The batman monologue by the end sounds a bit weird to me with the echo, but it's good that the monologue was added in. There are also a few small white line glitches at the bottom of the screen that pop out like three times throughout the movie. These are few small nitpicks that don't work against the overall experience, just thought it was worth pointing out


Overall this cut is superior than the original and should definitely be watched by everyone who thought the movie was weak and wants something closer to the comic book masterpiece.

This is brilliant! In the original version you don't even notice how good the actual Killing Joke parts are but damn, this is a pretty good adaptation (in this edited form). I'd recommend this to any Batman fan.
The only (minor) faults I'd have is that for many outside scenes there's a rain overlay added to change the weather to how it was in the book. But that pulled me out of the experience more than into it. Similarly there were small video or audio editing things that I noticed (I remember hearing a crack in the audio when some music jumps) but those things are few and far between and don't get in the way of enjoying this edit at all.
Most edits are a curiosity thing to experience a movie differently but I think this is the only way I'll ever watch the Killing Joke from now on.

This film, as short and concise as it was, is the best version of the killing joke out there! Removes bad and cringy scenes and plot points and focuses on the real star of the movie: Joker.

I think the editing could have been better at some points, but I honestly loved it despite that because of how it worked and how it managed to tell the story without anything bad within it. It definitely won't make the comic book justice, but I think anyone who watches this will enjoy this very much, and it is thousands of times better than the original.

Thanks MusicEd for making such a cool fanedit and i hope you do more in the future!