Why 'Joker' Might Just Be the Best DC Comics Movie Ever Made

Over the course of just a few days, a slew of new details, photos, and footage from director Todd Phillips’ Joker movie have surfaced, and so far, it all looks very promising. The Joaquin Phoenix-led thriller is the third of four DC Comics related films being released next year, sporting an October 4th, 2019 release date. Filming began on September 10th of this year, with the first official photo of Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck (the man who would become The Joker) debuting on Phillips’ Instagram page six days later. Five days after that, Phillips posted a short video of Phoenix in classic clown makeup, indicating that this is the look Arthur will adopt once he becomes the titular Clown Prince of Crime. The very next day, set footage of Phoenix in full Joker attire was captured by paparazzi in an Upper Manhattan subway station. All these first looks and paparazzi shots are certainly making a good first impression. These sneak peaks, coupled with other previously announced details, could very well be teasing fans with what might be one of the best DC Comics films in a long time, maybe ever.

Firstly, the cast and crew are phenomenal. As previously mentioned, Academy Award-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix portrays Arthur Fleck/The Joker, a struggling comedian in 1980’s Gotham City who lives with his mother (played by Frances Conroy of American Horror Story fame). Alongside Phoenix is a star-studded cast, including Zazie Beetz and Robert De Niro. Beetz is set to play a character by the name of Sophie Dumond, a single mother who will serve as Fleck/The Joker’s main love interest. Beetz is immensely talented, stealing scenes both on the FX series Atlanta and the superhero comedy Deadpool 2, and it is very exciting to see her exercising her talents in this crime thriller. The venerated Robert De Niro plays a currently-unnamed late-night talk show host, and it’s assumed that Arthur/The Joker’s main goal in the movie is to land a guest spot on this talk show to perform his stand-up routine and achieve fame, similar to how comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres launched their careers on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Other actors in this movie include Glenn Fleshler as another stand-up comedian, Mark Maron as a booking agent, and Brett Cullen as Batman/Bruce Wayne’s father, Thomas Wayne. Unlike previous versions of the character, Cullen’s take on Thomas Wayne won’t be as sympathetic as his comic book counterpart, running for mayor of Gotham City and playing a role in The Joker’s origin, which he might not have in the source material. Now, he “might not have” because Joker’s origin is not exactly set in stone, or “multiple choice” as Alan Moore put it in his seminal graphic novel: Batman: The Killing Joke. This is a stellar cast, and they’re guided by an equally-stellar crew.

The film is directed, produced, and co-written by Todd Phillips, who previously wrote and directed multiple comedies, such as Old School, Starsky & Hutch, War Dogs, and the entire Hangover Trilogy. Joining him in co-writing the script is Scott Silver, who holds multiple writing credits, including the Oscar-winning movies 8 Mile and The Fighter. Joined by producers Emma Tillinger Koskoff (Silence, The Wolf of Wall Street) and Bradley Cooper (American Sniper, A Star Is Born), and legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese (Casino, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, etc.) acting as executive producer, Phillips has built himself a crew that knows how to make a good movie.

Secondly, Joker is influenced by some fantastic stories, specifically Scorsese’s films Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, and Alan Moore’s Batman: The Killing Joke (as previously mentioned). Both Raging Bull and The King of Comedy feature a main protagonist who’s down on his luck and struggling to make a name for himself in their respective professions. And both Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy feature a main protagonist played by Robert De Niro slowly losing his mind. The King of Comedy specifically follows an unstable stand-up comedian named Rupert Pupkin (played by De Niro) who gets rejected for a spot on a comedy talk show hosted by Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis) and gets revenge by kidnapping Langford and forcing him to feature him on his show. Many are already suspecting that part of the reason Arthur/The Joker goes mad and adopts his infamous nom de plume is that he was rejected by De Niro’s talk show host character and seeks revenge (ironic). While that might be a little too on-the-nose, a similar plot should be expected, given how Batman: The Killing Joke features a similar story.

Alan Moore and Brian Bolland crafted what might well be the darkest and most tragic Batman story ever told with The Killing Joke, and that’s saying something. While the main story won’t be gotten into here, the Joker’s backstory is told in the graphic novel by the Clown Prince himself as an unreliable narrator. The Joker describes an unnamed man, a struggling comedian with a pregnant wife, who works as an engineer at Ace Chemicals. When his latest gig fails, he leads two criminals through Ace Chemicals to rob the neighboring playing card company. Taking on the guise of the Red Hood to protect his identity, Batman shows up, frightening the unnamed man, causing him to trip and fall into a vat of chemicals, which turns his skin bone white, his lips ruby red, and his hair emerald green. All the while, his wife and unborn child die in a tragic accident. This is The Joker’s “one bad day”, a concept he believes can drive anyone mad. If Joker is half as good as any of these inspirations, it looks like it’ll be an incredibly dark and compelling story.

Thirdly, Joaquin Phoenix looks pitch perfect as The Joker. He looks severely depressed, overworked, and desperate to achieve his dream of comedy stardom, much like the unnamed man from Moore’s story. And once he becomes The Joker, he looks tremendously creepy (as he should). Sporting makeup reminiscent of real-life serial killer clown John Wayne Gacy and a purple zoot suit ripped straight from the pages of a comic book, this iteration of The Joker is already the most visually accurate comic book characters to appear in a comic book movie. Of course, he might not be accurate to the source material in every way, though. It’s doubtful that this gritty psychological crime thriller will feature The Joker’s more fantastic elements, like his taser joy buzzers or his Joker Toxin that makes his victims laugh themselves to death. Instead, it should be expected that Phoenix’s Joker will use more gruesome and real-life tactics to commit his crimes.

Fourthly, this movie is rumored to be aiming for a hard R rating, and because of that, it has a budget of only $55 million dollars, which is actually a meager budget for a movie based on a comic book. This could be a good thing, however. Some of the best comic book movies in recent memory have been R rated movies with ‘small’ budgets. Deadpool, Deadpool 2, and Logan were all rated R and boasted budgets less than $130 million (compared to the $400 million budget of Avengers: Infinity War, that’s not a lot). These lower-budget R-rated movies, however, allow filmmakers to make their movie without studio interference. Studios tend to interfere with big budget movies because they could suffer a bigger loss if the movie underperforms (despite evidence that studio interference causes movies to underperform, but that’s another article). Less studio interference means audiences will see Phillips’ original, untainted vision for The Joker, and that’s a very good thing.

Fifthly, this is the first DC Comics movie since Man of Steel to not be a part of the Worlds of DC, Warner Bros' shared universe of DC Comics movies. Meaning the events of this movie don’t affect any of the Worlds of DC movies that have been or will be released. Rumors claim that Joker is the first in a series of darker and grittier genre films based on DC Comics properties that are not connected to each other or the Worlds of DC. This new film series is suggested to be called either “DC Dark” or “DC Black” to distinguish them from the popcorn action flicks of the Worlds of DC.

The cast, crew, story influences, aesthetic, budget, lack of studio influence, and its status as a standalone story create a recipe for a potentially fantastic movie, possibly the best DC Comics movies ever made. At least, that’s what fans are hoping for. Not to mention, especially after all the rumors that Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck are out as Superman and Batman, respectively, Warner Bros needs a win on the DC Comics front, and Joker could be exactly what they need to get back into the fans good graces.