I haven't paged through it in a while but I seem to recall the story being fairly graphic and having a lot of dark tones. I'm sure that even the implication of the scene you mentioned is enough to sway it towards getting an R rating too. I'm sure it isn't being glorified but I do think that animation gets away with less of that type of thing easily when it comes to ratings.

The Killing Joke seems a bit too dark so I will probably skip it.

I don't know anything about the long Halloween Batman comic. But it seems popular and still doesn't have a movie? It wouldn't have to be R-rated?

It's always been my impression that due to content and tone that an adaptation of The Killing Joke would always be Rated R if done as-is. It's been speculated that their previous wanting to avoid an R rated DC Animated title is why it has taken this long for the adaptation to happen.

If you're going to do the book, do it right, or not at all. The R rating seems to be them doing it right. Getting Conroy and Hammill back is icing on the cake.

Exactly. Agree 100%. I can't for the life of me understand how the R-rating would be viewed as some kind of misstep by DCAU.

I guess I'm not sure why some feel so strongly about the R rating in this case. If you've read the comic the rating seems appropriate. Just because its an animated feature doesn't mean it should be tamed down. Hell I'm surprised the two part adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns wasn't R.

^ yeah. and the Joker shoots women and children with a gun in TDKR

Pretty much THIS.

If it was toned down, the title would be more than just a metaphor.

The problem with adapting The Long Halloween is that it's a very long, intricate story. There is no way it could run as a 70-minute movie without butchering the original comic narrative. Think more like a sprawling 3-hour movie to tell that story. It would be harder to adapt than Watchmen.

They can just split it into two releases as they did The Dark Knight Returns. I have a feeling it will be made eventually. The Killing Joke was the only one that most of us felt would be off the table, yet here we are.

Isn't some elements of the Long Halloween in Batman Begins?

Only have the first 15. Need to ketchup.

Special thanks to hdnmickey, got my steelbook last night for JL vs TT and it looked great, can't wait to watch it soon. Let's hope this situation doesn't happen again, but now that we all are going to be on lookout, maybe this will be a little smoother next time.

It had some influence on The Dark Knight. Mainly the stuff with Batman, Gordon, and Dent/Two-Face. The overall story is a lot different though. The Long Halloween is about a serial killer.

Batman Begins does co-opt the famous the sequence with the bat swarm largely from Year One.

Wached Justice League vs. Teen Titans.

Things I never needed to fucking see in a superhero movie:

1. A woman having sex with a demon.
2. Superheroes playing Dance Dance Revolution
3. Anime-style transformation sequences that wandered in from frigging Sailor Moon. Also, I know that Starfire is one of the the most needlessly sexualized characters in comics, but dressing Raven like that when she's supposed to be a teenager was amazingly unnecessary.

The demonic realm stuff was cool, but I wish the designers had gone a little more nuts with it. The voice cast is still kind of "meh." I don't get why they continue to insist on using O'Mara as Batman. He just doesn't have the gravity. There was some cool stuff in this, but it had too many characters and ideas and was undercooked. The rare moments of actual character development, though a bit secondhand, were nice. This new universe really needs some actual development and fleshing out instead of constant threats of the week.

I agree that the Sailor Moon magical girl transformation sequence was out of place. Someone on the animation staff had to throw that in there as a gag and got away with it.

The Dance Dance Revolution battle didn't bother me. It was a nice moment showing Damien acting like a normal tween/teenager.

I'm guessing that the final script was two wildly different scripts mashed together. There were elements from a safer Teen Titans adventure and one from a much darker version of the Titans in the final cut.

trailer for the Killing Joke (Which is Rated R for Some Bloody Images & Disturbing Content)

I agree with most of your assessment. Starfire's costume seemed wildly inappropriate for a woman working with adolescents. While better than some of the other recent DC animes, there were points in the climax where I just felt like I was watching "stuff" and I felt no connection to it.

We watched it over the weekend and were not too impressed with it either. I would barely put it above Gods and Monsters.

i guess i was expecting a little more carnage with that. looked ok, but nothing great...

Still no release date, I guess they are waiting until SD Comic Con.

Have you ever read The Killing Joke? What carnage were you expecting?

no. just meant, wanted to see what makes this an R rating...