The great promise of Todd Phillips Joker was removing the comic book elements of the main character and showing what would happen if a regular guy in 1980s Gotham City decided to put on clown makeup. (Turns out things didn’t go well, mostly for everyone around him.) A young Bruce Wayne is in the original film, and you might wonder what would happen if an adult Batman met this version of his nemesis. According to director and writer Todd Phillips, he believes Arthur Fleck would simply think Batman is cool. (You’re in shock, I’m sure.)
In a recent IGN In the interview, Phillips explained how Arthur “would be in awe of the alpha male that is Batman. Believe [he’d] Look up and appreciate it.” In his reading, Arthur is “fascinated by quiet men,” like his own coworkers and Robert De Niro’s talk show host Murray Franklin from the first film. Those men are everything he’s not, and why wouldn’t that extend to Batman? Presumably this Batman knows that Arthur is responsible for his parents’ murder, but maybe they can get over that.
the original Joker It ended with Arthur losing his cool so much that he shot Murray in the face on live TV, so the fascination clearly has a limit. Still, Phillips’ comments get at something: namely, how Arthur has fallen in love very quickly, whether romantically or platonically. But Warner Bros. probably isn’t interested in making the decades of subtext between Bats and Jokes in real text, or at least no more than what lego batman he already did in 2017. Considering Arthur’s luck with people he likes, anything between this Clown Prince and a Dark Knight old enough to punch his face in would probably end in a bad romance.
Joker: Folie for two hits theaters on October 4.
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