SDCC: "Batman: The Killing Joke" Screenwriter Explains Controversial Sex Scene

[Badou]

You've watched the movie?
I assume you haven't because Batman doesn't say that line its another character.
There's an entire narrative about spoilers:

batgirl getting more and more violent and worked up about one particular villain. Batman points this out and that's why they inevitably argue about this particular case and who should work it. It culminates in Babs giving in to her rage after being pushed too far and almost beating said villain to death.

end of spoilers

This is all given much more focus in tandem with the dynamic between Babs and Bruce as partners. For people to mischaracterize what happens as a "relationship drama" about them being lovers and having sex are being willfully ignorant.

For you to simplify the crux of the prologue down to Batgirl complaining and being in a huff is essentially devaluing her character and her development in that prologue.
It's not the first time I've seen someone ignore the entire plot to single out 13 second development but it does strike me as pretty egregious here since this controversy has ballooned into overtaking the actual TKJ elements which are much more controversial.

Well we've known about the actual TKJ story for 28 years. There is nothing surprising about that. It was the prologue that caught everyone off guard in which her characterization was horrible and all over the place. I mean it wasn't just the sex scene which you keep trying to push as being the sole reason for all the complaints. Barbara flying into rage and trying to beat some rape-y villain to death has never been part of her character either. All of this basically is because of her relationship with Batman and how he treats her in the movie too.

[Rakiduam]

never mind

[Nite-Wing]

This is such a weak argument. It was a bad story. Hydra Cap was a dumb gimmick that was meant to rile people up to get headlines. Maybe this "controversy" was thrown in for the same reason, which it worked, but this was a bad attempt at people trying to create a "good" story for Batgirl leading into the actual Killing Joke adaptation, but they failed miserably.

Also the pre crisis argument doesn't really work. She was never deaged until the New 52. She was always several years older than Dick (she was in her 30s when Dick was in his late 20s before Flashpoint) when they had their romance in comics putting her in between Dick and Bruce age wise which is what she was at when she was created, but even in pre crisis she was never depicted as a serious romantic love interest for Bruce. Only in Timm's work does that happen, which is all post crisis. So leaning on a some post crisis argument just doesn't work when for decades now Batman has operated as more of a father figure to her in the Batman family.

The problem is that she doesn't come across as an adult at all. She is like a needy teenager who wants some attention and recognition from the adult figure in her life, Batman, who acts like a father, coach or teacher to her. Him sleeping with her is kind of creepy regardless if both are adults age wise and this all certainly did not need to be in a Killing Joke movie. It completely took away from what the movie was supposed to focus on, Joker and Batman.

I disagree with a lot of this post

I'm pretty sure Pre crisis Batgirl fell in love with Bruce at least initially.
She was also romantically interested in him in the 60s batman tv show and that couldn't have come from nowhere right?
BTAS is a show that draws from the early pre crisis elements(neo deco aestetic and all) and yes while Babs remained older than Dick post crisis her actual age was moved down post crisis and in other shows(you see this a lot more in recent years) to make it less ridiculous for her to be interested in Dick as Batgirl. That is undeniable as I remember people used to send letters to DC complaining about Dick having a crush on an "older" woman.

She's a needy teenager in the movie? Really I see her having her own job and friends outside of Bruce or her father. I see her have problems that aren't primarily centered around Batman.
Hell even in the movie Batman isn't her Teacher,Mentor, or Father Figure( Batman never raised Babs and at any point in any continuity he's only at most a decade older than her plus she has Jim around)
Batman is her partner in this movie, He gives orders but she isn't compelled to listen to him like a Robin or someone much younger than him.

If you want to uphold the integrity of the TKJ elements in the movie those are still there and are essentially untouched. If anything you just got a prologue showing Batgirl so now you have context to the woman Joker shot and she isn't just a prop.
If you object to that then you might as well not watch the movie

[batsgrayson]

You've watched the movie?
I assume you haven't because Batman doesn't say that line its another character.
There's an entire narrative about spoilers:

batgirl getting more and more violent and worked up about one particular villain. Batman points this out and that's why they inevitably argue about this particular case and who should work it. It culminates in Babs giving in to her rage after being pushed too far and almost beating said villain to death.

end of spoilers

This is all given much more focus in tandem with the dynamic between Babs and Bruce as partners. For people to mischaracterize what happens as a "relationship drama" about them being lovers and having sex are being willfully ignorant.

For you to simplify the crux of the prologue down to Batgirl complaining and being in a huff is essentially devaluing her character and her development in that prologue.
It's not the first time I've seen someone ignore the entire plot to single out 13 second development but it does strike me as pretty egregious here since this controversy has ballooned into overtaking the actual TKJ elements which are much more controversial.

No, I didn't watch the film and I won't. All I know from it comes from a friend, who like me is a big Batgirl fan.

And no I'm not simplifying anything, Batgirl getting violent to the point where she almost kills someone is still OOC. That is all due because of how attached she is to Batman on the film. But sure I'm hang up on a single scene.

[joybeans]

I disagree with a lot of this post

I'm pretty sure Pre crisis Batgirl fell in love with Bruce at least initially.

She was created with the intention of NOT being a love interest, a stark contrast to the Kanes, but rather an independent character with autonomy over her own narrative. Her being romatically involved with Dick Grayson decades later doesn't take detract from that autonomy, as Nightwing is not a big enough character to overshadow her.

She was also romantically interested in him in the 60s batman tv show and that couldn't have come from nowhere right?

Adaptations have always made liberal changes.

BTAS is a show that draws from the early pre crisis elements(neo deco aestetic and all) and yes while Babs remained older than Dick post crisis her actual age was moved down post crisis and in other shows(you see this a lot more in recent years) to make it less ridiculous for her to be interested in Dick as Batgirl. That is undeniable as I remember people used to send letters to DC complaining about Dick having a crush on an "older" woman.

BTAS de-aged Barbara, making her the same age as Dick, a far cry from the 60s show.

The letters were in response to the 70s Batfamily comic, which was pre-Crisis, and displayed clear age gap between the two.

[Rakiduam]

I disagree with a lot of this post

I'm pretty sure Pre crisis Batgirl fell in love with Bruce at least initially.
She was also romantically interested in him in the 60s batman tv show and that couldn't have come from nowhere right?
BTAS is a show that draws from the early pre crisis elements(neo deco aestetic and all) and yes while Babs remained older than Dick post crisis her actual age was moved down post crisis and in other shows(you see this a lot more in recent years) to make it less ridiculous for her to be interested in Dick as Batgirl. That is undeniable as I remember people used to send letters to DC complaining about Dick having a crush on an "older" woman.

She's a needy teenager in the movie? Really I see her having her own job and friends outside of Bruce or her father. I see her have problems that aren't primarily centered around Batman.
Hell even in the movie Batman isn't her Teacher,Mentor, or Father Figure( Batman never raised Babs and at any point in any continuity he's only at most a decade older than her plus she has Jim around)
Batman is her partner in this movie, He gives orders but she isn't compelled to listen to him like a Robin or someone much younger than him.

If you want to uphold the integrity of the TKJ elements in the movie those are still there and are essentially untouched. If anything you just got a prologue showing Batgirl so now you have context to the woman Joker shot and she isn't just a prop.
If you object to that then you might as well not watch the movie

Did you say friends?! There was this one guy she talks about Bruce. Yes she's a needy teenager in the movie, she literally waits by the phone, everything she did she did it for him, he orders her around, the only time she isn't thinking about Batman is when she is talking with Batman.

She literally says [SPOILER]"I'm the best STUDENT you ever had" [/SPOILER] How is not can you say he is not her mentor?

[Badou]

I disagree with a lot of this post

I'm pretty sure Pre crisis Batgirl fell in love with Bruce at least initially.
She was also romantically interested in him in the 60s batman tv show and that couldn't have come from nowhere right?
BTAS is a show that draws from the early pre crisis elements(neo deco aestetic and all) and yes while Babs remained older than Dick post crisis her actual age was moved down post crisis and in other shows(you see this a lot more in recent years) to make it less ridiculous for her to be interested in Dick as Batgirl. That is undeniable as I remember people used to send letters to DC complaining about Dick having a crush on an "older" woman.

Unless you have a page where it shows pre crisis Barbara falling in love with Batman I have no memory of it. In the 60s TV show she was a romantic love interest for both Bruce and Dick. She was meant to be foil for both of them, but it was never serious at all. Bruce had other more serious love interests on the show. As for their ages I don't think Barbara's age ever moved until the New 52. Sure in movies (like the Batman and Robin movie) and animated shows (including Timm's BTAS and all the ones that followed) she was deaged to be closer to Dick's age and further away from Bruce, but I don't think that was ever the case in comics until recently. In Batgirl Year One there is still clear gap in age between her and Dick and that was the foundation for a lot of their modern ages.

She's a needy teenager in the movie? Really I see her having her own job and friends outside of Bruce or her father. I see her have problems that aren't primarily centered around Batman.
Hell even in the movie Batman isn't her Teacher,Mentor, or Father Figure( Batman never raised Babs and at any point in any continuity he's only at most a decade older than her plus she has Jim around)
Batman is her partner in this movie, He gives orders but she isn't compelled to listen to him like a Robin or someone much younger than him.

Well to be fair Bruce never raised her. She never lost her parents so he didn't need to. Still, I always looked at her relationship with Batman as her using him as a replacement for her father who was always busy and not around a lot, but their relationship is mainly teacher and student. To me she came across as a needy teenager. She wanted Bruce's attention and recognition and her whole character revolved around that, and when Bruce spurned her she and acted out like how a teenager would rather than an adult.

If you want to uphold the integrity of the TKJ elements in the movie those are still there and are essentially untouched. If anything you just got a prologue showing Batgirl so now you have context to the woman Joker shot and she isn't just a prop.
If you object to that then you might as well not watch the movie

I get the reason for the prologue. It was meant to show how Babs quit being Batgirl. It wanted to show that quitting was her own decision rather than something that happened because the Joker shot her and she had no control over it. She gave it up rather than it being taken away. It's just it was horribly done. From the awkward romance, to her acting like a jilted lover, to her going all Jason Todd on someone's face, to her dealing with some rape-y villain. So much of it just wasn't needed when the movie wasn't meant to be about her anyway.

[Johnny]

What was Jason objectified as?

Someone whose main purpose in the story is to die at the hands of the Joker so we can see the effect it has on Batman afterwards. He is a plot device, an object used as a means to an end. The movie was good by the way, arguably Conroy and Hamill's best performances as the characters.

[batalia]

She was created with the intention of NOT being a love interest, a stark contrast to the Kanes, but rather an independent character with autonomy over her own narrative. Her being romatically involved with Dick Grayson decades later doesn't take detract from that autonomy, as Nightwing is not a big enough character to overshadow her.

.

So why is her being involved with Bruce destract from that. Nightwing is certaintly big enough to overshadow her since no one can stop bring him up anytime Barbara gets involved with anyone be it Bruce, Jason, random guy, etc. But what about Dick becomes the fanboy/girls outcry.

BTW: Busiek is talking about how things were in pre-crisis between Batman/Batgirl/Robin age wise.
https://twitter.com/KurtBusiek/with_replies

[Aioros22]

He didn't die a hero, he died a victim of Batman's nemesis, that Bats wasn't quick enough to save. Barry Allen died a hero, so did Superman. Both Babs and Todd suffered through horrible things that people for some reason don't see the same way, while if you look at the stories for what they are, both of them were used as victims by writers who meant to use them as victims in said stories. Case closed.

As issues I may have with DITF and how it was a publicity stunt, you`re wrong. Claiming he "did nothing" and adding "case close" doesn`t make a sustendable argument. He tracks alone the same case as Bruce until they meet again in the middle East. They both take down an entire terrorist camp. Batman only defeats Shiva because of Jason. Jason accomplishs what he sets out to do: find his real mother. He saves hundreds of lives by tailing Joker and finding about his plan and then tries to save his own mother. His last act on Earth as Robin was selfless towards someone who sold his ass out to the Joker. Scale aside, there`s no difference between what Jason did and what Barry and Superman did. They all gave lives selflessly for others without thinking twice about it.

It was a bloody publicity stunt to increase Batman`s drama towards the Joker yesure but Jason died a hero. That`s the one major redeeming characterization in the story.

Jason was shown as competent and impactfull in his story whereas Barbara was mia for years to return and only get shot. Look, there`s a reason why Moore was the first person to claim he hated TKJ and wished he had never written it.

[batalia]

You've watched the movie?
I assume you haven't because Batman doesn't say that line its another character.
There's an entire narrative about spoilers:

batgirl getting more and more violent and worked up about one particular villain. Batman points this out and that's why they inevitably argue about this particular case and who should work it. It culminates in Babs giving in to her rage after being pushed too far and almost beating said villain to death.

end of spoilers

This is all given much more focus in tandem with the dynamic between Babs and Bruce as partners. For people to mischaracterize what happens as a "relationship drama" about them being lovers and having sex are being willfully ignorant.

For you to simplify the crux of the prologue down to Batgirl complaining and being in a huff is essentially devaluing her character and her development in that prologue.
It's not the first time I've seen someone ignore the entire plot to single out 13 second development but it does strike me as pretty egregious here since this controversy has ballooned into overtaking the actual TKJ elements which are much more controversial.

Exactly.
People just like reducing things to booster their argument. What is on page or on screen doesn't matter anymore.

[Johnny]

I think you've got some good points, but I do think your previous arguments are a bit oversimplified. Understand, I'm not saying your wrong, or that you're ignorant or anything like that, just that a few more cues do kind of go against your point. For instance, you're right that in a comic book, there should be nothing inherently wrong with a character being killed in a random and almost nihilistic way; you need moments of tragedy to make some conflicts work.

The thing that makes TKJ's example worse to some people is all about context. There is nothing intrinsically wrong, story wise, with the Joker shooting someone and crippling them, not even if the character is female. But since TKJ came out in the 80's when comics first started ramping up their stakes and portrayal of violence, Babs being crippled wasn't quite as original or as random as it could be; for about a 15 year period, if a character was going to be injured or killed to motivate a character or test his resolve, they were almost always women. In each individual case, there's nothing too wrong with that, but cumulatively, it seems to portray 50% of the human species as only useful as "canon" fodder that can't defend itself. There's moral objections to that (it seems to infer that women are weaker than men in almost all ways, for one) and economic ones as well (it decreases female interests in comics if they have fewer characters to relate to.)

But that's not the only context issue. A Death In The Family is famous for one reason: a Robin is killed by Joker in it. And that's because the entire, multi-issue storyline fits that description. Jason Todd kicks off the main conflict himself, subdues more than a few villains in the arc, and his run-in with the Joker is a cruel twist of fate that sees him dead but dead in uniform, serving as Robin, and supposedly spending his last minutes trying to absorb a bomb blast to save his mom. It's very much a Jason Todd storyline that ends tragically. You are right that there was an attempt to pigeonhole Jason into a certain role in the story though; the little prologue at the start highlights all the events of his career that could be seen as painting a reckless and angry picture of him, when he wasn't that much different from other sidekicks at the time. But he was very much a major character in his last story, arguably even the main one for most of it. And please note: not only was Jason's last act in that story a courageous last effort, but he manages to help subdue Shiva, and the mission does end with Joker in packaged for a few months, giving the story a bite but present taste of Pyrrhic victory.

And again, it's context that makes Babs being crippled look far worse than Jason's death. As other people have noted, she was mostly in limbo before TKJ, which means the first reappearance of the character in years featured her as a victim. A victim out of costume, with very few lines, or even much characterization. There's honestly nothing in TKJ that would tell a new reader that this red headed woman is Batgirl if the text didn't. Now, regardless of the sex of the character, that kind of sucks for her fans. It's not so much an appearance as a plot point labeled with the character's name, and those are almost never fun, like when Manhunter started featuring dead ex-Manhunters who went out like chumps in embarrassing fashion. But beyond that, Babs and her injuries are also used as props to torture Gordon; the fact that the woman in the pictures is a crime fighter who's probably helped beat Joker more than once is completely inconsequential to the story, while the fact that even in the published addition it's implied that Gordon's seeing naked pictures of his daughter implies that her nakedness is what's relevant to the story.

And the animated film doesn't quite manage to make the situation better. Like in Death In The Family, the prologue of the film is used to paint Batgirl as a reckless and rash crime fighter who's out of her league. But it also seems clear that the most important part of her characterization is her sexual nature; her own character arc revolves around an out-of-character tryst with Batman with unfortunate undertones, while even her prologue's anatagonist takes time to make sure we know that he views Batgirl as a sexual object. Even for animated movies, Babs comes off looking worse than Jason Todd; at least his DtV still showed him combating the Joker when he went down and he was the centerpiece to the entire film.

This is a very good comment and I can totally see where you're coming from. I saw Batman: Under the Red Hood recently and I see the comparison you're making between the two animated films as well. Jason's death certainly wasn't the best example on my part as far as context is concerned, that's for sure, but I stick to my point about the victimization of both characters. Still, I do understand how the Babs situation can seem more problematic to people, compared to Jason.

[Godlike13]

Exactly.
People just like reducing things to booster their argument. What is on page or on screen doesn't matter anymore.

Yet this is exactly what Nite-Wing and you tried to do by bringing up Dick, trying to reduce people's criticisms of this as fans seeing her as property of Dick Grayson.

[batalia]

I wouldn't bring Dick up if y'all didn't bring him up. How many times has but she dated his son as an argument against it. She is his son's ex was brought up. You don't expect any rebuttal for that. Is funny how that works.

[Bukdiah]

This whole debacle made me realize how beloved Batgirl is. I would have never thought she was as popular as she is.