This may be stepping onsome toes, but can we have a word about Joker?
Joker has pretty much salvaged the year for Warner Bros, whose pre-September 2019 box office performances have ranged between mediocre to outright bombs. It dethroned Deadpool 2 as the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time before crossing the one billion dollar mark. Produced on a comparatively shoestring budget, Joker is also officially the most profitable comic book movie in history.
And two months after it’s release it’s still in the top ten box office earners.
The Oscar buzz train that was pulling out of the station before the movie was even released has only gained stream and is now barreling towards some serious awards recognition (it would be genuinely shocking not to see star Joaquin Phoenix nominated for an Oscar). And despite previous claims that Joker was a one-and-done movie, its success has the powers that be openly contemplating a sequel.
And none of that speaks to the cultural conversations the movie has ignited.
But let’s leave all that aside and talk about how the movie treats its starring character. This is your obligatory spoiler alert, so if you haven’t seen Joker yet (c’mon, it’s been almost two months people) you should probably beat it. Now that that’s out of the way . . .
In short, Joker short-changes one of the greatest comic book villains in history.
Batman is far more than a mere comic book character. He’s an icon. Like it or not, no other character has dominated western media the past eighty years the way the Dark Knight Detective has. There’s a reason he has commanded comic books, movies, television and countless other things for the past eight decades despite western audiences’ infamously anemic attention spans. Batman is a force of nature, pure and simple. And the Joker is his equal, the blood stained dark side of the same coin.
Just as the Caped Crusader is more than just a comic book character, the Joker is also an icon and arguably the most famous comic book villain this side of Thanos. But while Batman personifies willpower and the pursuit of order, the Joker (an irresistible force of nature in his own right) is malevolence, murder and chaos made flesh. He has filled the graveyards of Gotham City ten times over, delighting in the suffering and misery every step of the way. He revels in torture and degradation, sincerely enjoying the outright terror he inspires. It can be argued that the only time the Joker is truly happy is when he’s plotting mass murder or hip deep in the blood of some helpless, screaming victim.
While he may be genuinely charismatic, the Joker is also truly and completely evil, utterly devoid of remorse, pity and humanity.
But there is a lethal genius residing beneath the malevolent exterior. No one has pushed the Batman closer to murder more than the Clown Prince of Crime. No one has challenged the Batman and his unshakeable resolve more. No one else has maimed and killed members of the Bat family or come closer closer to killing the Batman himself where plenty of other super villains, intergalactic warlords and even gods have failed.
All of this is probably why DC Comics has taken great care over the past eighty years not to give the Joker an official origin story (probably because you couldn’t come up with one that would satisfy his gravitas as the arch-nemesis to the world’s greatest crime-fighter). Even Alan Moore’s seminal origin in Batman: The Killing Joke is consider possible and not canon.
In Batman Rises (arguably the best Batman movie ever made), Heath Ledger’s Joker brought Gotham City to its knees, outwitting the police, politicians and even the Batman himself at every turn. He was five steps in front of an entire city and made manipulating everyone look easy. And he did it all because he got bored of stealing from the (notoriously brutal and vengeful) Gotham mob.
Now having said all that, can you honestly imagine Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker taking an entire city hostage with his brilliant machinations? Could you genuinely see the star of DC’s current blockbuster oppose the Dark Knight as his equal? Could you see Arthur Fleck twist and corrupt an experienced and highly educated criminal psychologist into his eye-candy sidekick? Could you see the guy running away from orderlies at the end of Joker crippling Barbra Gordon/Batgirl and murdering Jason Todd-Batman’s ill fated second Robin-torturing both along the way?
Could you see him surviving the Batman’s wrath afterwards?
The essential question is, was this Joker in any way, shape or form the Batman’s equal?
There are a few other sensitive questions Joker flirts with more than a little recklessly. The Joker isn’t your run of the mill psychopath. He is genuinely and unapologetically evil. His body count makes Hitler, cancer and old age look like amateurs. So when the movie takes great pains to imply that his evil is the result of mental health problems (derived from years of abuse suffered as a child) and social neglect, well it’s surprising more eyebrows haven’t been raised.
And how do you feel that Gotham’s oppressed and economically neglected adopted the Joker as a symbol of social resistance, even after he confesses to murder on live television before painting the walls with another victim’s brains? Arthur makes no secret that he kills to satisfy a newfound taste for murder, yet Gotham’s downtrodden still embrace and adopt him as their hero.
More disturbing, many movie goers have painted him as an anti-hero. A tragically misunderstood figure driven to murder by forces beyond his control combined with society’s bullies. Does that not paint Batman as a future fascist? An authoritarian fighting to preserve the status quo where the wealthy elite rule from their gilded perches miles above the law?
(And by-the-by, what was the point of Arthur’s hallucinated relationship with his neighbour? How did that affect either the plot or his character development? If he hallucinated that, how do we know he didn’t hallucinate his encounter with Thomas Wayne? Or visiting the Wayne manor, where he would meet a young Bruce? What was actually real? How do you feel sympathy for someone who may have hallucinated the very things that drove him to become a monster?)
The movie was obviously trying to make a number of commentaries on the current state of society, but those are some pretty bold assertions to make.
And troubling ones.
Make no mistake, Joaquin Phoenix deserves each and every accolade he’s been showered with. But while the movie tries to handle it’s themes with blunt caution, as origin stories go, this one belonged to a troubled man destined to fade into anonymity after being locked away for sensational but not uncommon crimes. The Joker is one of the greatest and most terrifying villains ever created. But perhaps more importantly, he’s also the foil-and equal-to the world’s greatest hero.
And this movie wasn’t that story.
Image Warner Bros. Studios and Dazed Digital
