{"id":1078976,"date":"2026-01-23T06:58:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=501065"},"modified":"2026-01-23T06:58:05","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:58:05","slug":"the-joker-movies-never-got-the-point-of-the-joker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-joker-movies-never-got-the-point-of-the-joker\/","title":{"rendered":"The Joker movies never got the point of the Joker"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure> <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" data-caption=\"\" data-portal-copyright=\"\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/the-joker-movies-never-got-the-point-of-the-joker.jpg\" \/><figcaption><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">We live in a landscape where words like \u201creboot\u201d and \u201cretcon\u201d are common knowledge. Hollywood executives use the word \u201cmultiverse\u201d in complete seriousness. No one can talk about \u201cBatman in the movies\u201d anymore \u2014 you have to specify. Nolan Batman? Snyder Batman? Reeves Batman? Bryan Singer\u2019s Magneto, or the <em>First Class<\/em> one? Raimi Spider-Man or the Amazing run or the MCU version? Superhero movies don\u2019t have to explain comics anymore. They can just <em>be<\/em> like comics \u2014 places for creative folks to drop in, do their take on a long-established character, and see what the audience thinks about it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">The gift this era has given me, as a comics fan and a critic, is a new thought experiment: What would I think of this superhero movie if it had been a comic book? Did the movie find something insightful to say about a decades-old character? Did it play well in the space, relative to all the other stories that have gone before it?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">I think <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/reviews\/22951429\/the-batman-movie-review-2022\">Matt Reeves\u2019 <em>The Batman<\/em><\/a> might actually have been even better as a 12-issue alt-universe miniseries, giving its characters more time to breathe in a new variation on Gotham. On the other hand, the original <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/2018\/11\/28\/18105326\/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-review\"><em>Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse<\/em><\/a> has <em>so<\/em> much to say about Spider-Man\u2019s themes of responsibility and identity, and it\u2019s also so inventive with the form of the animated film that converting it into a comic would definitely rob it of some of its magic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">But this year, I found my experiment running aground when considering Todd Phillips\u2019 Joker duology. Setting aside <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/movies\/460843\/joker-2-review-folie-a-deux\">my own problems with Phillips\u2019 writing and directing<\/a>, did these two movies \u2014 which reimagine the Joker as the alternately pathetic and dangerous failed comedian turned successful murderer Arthur Fleck \u2014 have something to say about the iconic supervillain? And how did that statement measure up against the comics themselves? With <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/movies\/460843\/joker-2-review-folie-a-deux\"><em>Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux<\/em><\/a> now streaming on Max, it seemed like a good time to reconsider the question.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">And here\u2019s my conclusion: Todd Phillips\u2019 Joker movies don\u2019t have anything to say about Joker comics, because they are simply not about the character of the Joker in any recognizable way. <\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who is the Joker?&nbsp;<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/the-joker-movies-never-got-the-point-of-the-joker-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" data-caption=\"\" data-portal-copyright=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">The mutability of a character is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/24196694\/dc-marvel-superhero-continuity\">a sign of its strength<\/a>, but characters are not <em>endlessly <\/em>mutable. <em>How much<\/em> mutation is acceptable before a character becomes unrecognizable is a topic upon which gallons of metaphorical blood have been spilled in forums digital and in person.&nbsp;But I think we can agree that that line exists.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">You could slowly make changes to Batman \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/2019\/3\/13\/18263820\/batman-who-laughs-grim-knight-dc-comics\">give him guns<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/2019\/4\/2\/18292128\/batman-no-killing-rule-zack-snyder\">make him OK with killing criminals<\/a>, take away his money and friends, give him a differently themed costume \u2014&nbsp;and eventually he would simply become the Punisher. We can argue about exactly where the line between the two of them would be, but that line <em>exists<\/em>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">And where the Joker is concerned, I believe, that line is about his interiority.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">Phillips makes a lot of changes to the Joker. His films give him a name, Arthur Fleck, and an inciting incident: getting roughed up by some corporate bros and blowing them all away. They give him mommy issues and a yearning for a romantic partner, and remove his rivalry with Batman and his context within a world of theatrical supervillains and powerful superheroes.&nbsp;<em>Folie \u00e0 Deux<\/em> has Arthur meditate aloud on the question of \u201cWho is Arthur Fleck?\u201d \u2014 via a sad and profoundly delivered knock-knock joke recited during the closing argument of a trial in which he has elected to defend himself, no less.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">You can make a lot of changes to the Joker, because good characters are mutable. You can remove him entirely from <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Batman_(1989_film)\">a setting where superheroes and villains are commonplace<\/a>, or remove Batman, and therefore his rivalry with him, entirely. You can make him a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Batman_(1966_film)\">silly trickster<\/a> or a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Dark_Knight\">horrifying psychopath<\/a> or a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Lego_Batman_Movie\">Lego man<\/a>. You can give him obsessions like \u201cgetting Batman to acknowledge me\u201d or obstacles to overcome like \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Joker%27s_Millions\">accidentally committing tax evasion<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">But if you give the Joker a parsable human interiority, I would argue you\u2019ve stopped interacting with the idea of \u201cthe Joker\u201d in any meaningful way. I think this is the fundamental nucleus of his character, as whittled down, sharpened, and compressed to a fine point by 80 years of Joker stories and hundreds of striving creative minds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Batman\u2019s dark mirror<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/the-joker-movies-never-got-the-point-of-the-joker-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" data-caption=\"\" data-portal-copyright=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">We like to say that the best supervillains are mirror reflections of their heroes, which is fun to apply to Batman and the Joker, because I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anyone out there who, when asked \u201cWhat is the opposite of a bat?\u201d would answer \u201cA clown.\u201d Dig a little deeper and you can pull some oppositions from the way they\u2019re typically characterized: They\u2019re equally theatrically invested in fear, but they aim it in opposite directions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">Batman is taciturn where the Joker is chatty, and dark where he\u2019s colorful. Batman represents order, while the Joker is chaos. But careful! Batman is mutable. He\u2019s not always frightening, grim, and lawful, and neither is the Joker always flamboyant, deadly, and philosophically chaotic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">What\u2019s immutable about Batman is that he does what he does for extraordinarily specific reasons. His motivations are entirely known, and constantly restated to the audience. His core character trauma is infamous for how often it\u2019s been recreated in adaptation. It\u2019s been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/comics\/2020\/8\/25\/21307399\/batman-slapping-robin-meme-explained-comics\">memed into immortality<\/a>. With Spider-Man as a close second, Batman is <em>the<\/em> origin-story superhero. And so by force of the narrative Joker is the anti-origin-story villain.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">We don\u2019t know why he does what he does. It\u2019s not even clear whether he knows. His interiority is a black box, open to embody our worst fears about man\u2019s inhumanity to man. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/comics\/2016\/7\/29\/12299352\/batman-the-killing-joke-movie-controversy\">Titans of the genre<\/a> have tried to give the Joker a motivating origin story, and none of them have succeeded in crafting one that sticks. And while we should never dismiss something as impossible just because nobody\u2019s done it yet, I also think it behooves us to learn from history.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">Even recent history would suffice: It\u2019s hard to find a compelling emotional throughline if you can\u2019t peek into your main character\u2019s thoughts, but Matthew Rosenberg and Carmine Di Giandomenico\u2019s 2022 series <em>The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing<\/em> gets around that issue by featuring a main character who isn\u2019t sure whether he\u2019s really the Joker, or just a guy the Joker brainwashed into being a Joker decoy. Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino\u2019s 2019 series <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/comics\/2019\/10\/1\/20892028\/joker-dc-comics-batman-killer-smile-jeff-lemire\"><em>Joker: Killer Smile<\/em><\/a>, meanwhile, is actually a series about the Joker\u2019s new psychiatrist.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/the-joker-movies-never-got-the-point-of-the-joker-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" data-has-syndication-rights=\"1\" data-caption=\"\" data-portal-copyright=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">James Tynion IV and Guillem March\u2019s 2021 <em>Joker<\/em> series tells a great story about the Clown Prince of Crime based on the extremely cogent observation that ex-police commissioner James Gordon might be the only person in Gotham City <a href=\"https:\/\/dc.fandom.com\/wiki\/Sarah_Essen_(Prime_Earth)#History\">more<\/a> personally <a href=\"https:\/\/dc.fandom.com\/wiki\/Barbara_Gordon_(Prime_Earth)#Early_Life_and_Career\">wronged<\/a> by the Joker than Batman. Their book features Gordon as the point-of-view character on a <em>Catch Me If You Can<\/em>-style manhunt for the Joker, wrestling with whether he should just put a bullet in the murderer for the good of humanity instead of apprehending him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Said the Joker to the thief<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">This is why I struggled to apply the \u201cIs this a good Joker story?\u201d framework to Todd Phillips\u2019 <em>Joker<\/em> and <em>Joker: Folie \u00e0 Deux<\/em>. The Joker resists origin stories and clear motivation because they\u2019re fundamentally opposed to the narrative purpose he fulfills as the summation of all that Batman opposes. At his most immutable, Batman is the guy who says \u201cA senseless thing happened to me, and that\u2019s why I have to stop more senseless things from happening.\u201d And what has made the Joker his perfect foil is that at his most immutable, the Joker is a machine for making senseless things happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">If you remove Batman, the character the Joker was molded around, you might still have a Joker story on your hands. And if you change the Joker so that he\u2019s the main character of the story, you might still have a Joker story on your hands. But if you do all that <em>and<\/em> you examine who the Joker is and why he does what he does \u2014 you are simply not making a story about the Joker anymore.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">And that\u2019s fine! There are a lot of characters who are not the Joker, and I think we can agree that some of them are even quite compelling. But you\u2019re not telling me anything salient or new about the Joker, a character honed over 80 years into a highly efficient narrative machine for making senseless things happen. You\u2019ve made him make sense. You\u2019ve made up a new guy for your story, and slapped Joker\u2019s name on him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">That is, I think, what I most want to explain to any creative who, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/movies\/460843\/joker-2-review-folie-a-deux\">like Phillips<\/a>, sees the superhero genre as a means to an end. I don\u2019t just want to point out the faux pas of dismissing the work of the creators who came before you, of picking up someone else\u2019s toys while not \u201cplaying in the space.\u201d Not because I don\u2019t think that\u2019s important, but because I just think that if you\u2019re a person who sees superhero cinema as a means to an end, you probably don\u2019t care about being rude to comics creators.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">What I want to get into the skulls of this particular kind of superhero filmmaker is that comics have <em>already done the work<\/em>. What you\u2019re dismissing is decades of evidence of what succeeds, doesn\u2019t succeed, or only succeeds if you do it <em>like this<\/em>. Phillips saw the Joker\u2019s lack of an origin story as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/movies\/460843\/joker-2-review-folie-a-deux\">freedom to make his own take<\/a>, not a sign that his origin story\u2019s very absence, despite 80 years of opportunity to create one, was significant.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-none\">Declining to learn from decades of stories made by hardworking creatives developing the same character is rude, sure, sure. But it\u2019s also shooting yourself in the dang foot.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/movies\/501065\/todd-phillips-joker-2-folie-a-deux-streaming\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We live in a landscape where words like \u201creboot\u201d and \u201cretcon\u201d are common knowledge. Hollywood executives use the word \u201cmultiverse\u201d in complete seriousness. No one can talk about \u201cBatman in the movies\u201d anymore \u2014 you have to specify. Nolan Batman? Snyder Batman? Reeves Batman? Bryan Singer\u2019s Magneto, or the First Class one? Raimi Spider-Man or the Amazing run or the MCU version? Superhero movies don\u2019t have to explain comics anymore. They can just be like comics \u2014 places for creative folks to drop in, do their take on a long-established character, and see what the audience thinks about it.&nbsp; The gift this era has given me, as a comics fan and a critic, is a new thought experiment: What would I think of this superhero&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"excerpt-more\"><a class=\"blog-excerpt button\" href=\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-joker-movies-never-got-the-point-of-the-joker\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1078977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1078976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polygon"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Joker movies never got the point of the Joker | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We live in a landscape where words like \u201creboot\u201d and \u201cretcon\u201d are common knowledge. 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