![]() The truth of this reveal is later thrown into question by Penny’s medical records that tell of Arthur’s adoption and her own psychosis that include narcissism and compulsive lying, records that Penny tells Arthur were falsified and forged by Thomas Wayne to keep his indiscretion and bastard secret. Financial concerns, mental illness and feelings of inadequacy remain the same between the two iterations, but in the film they are explored to an extreme, a lifetime of abuse and hardships culminating in “one bad day” that sends Fleck over the edge and further blurs the lines between reality and fiction.įleck reaches a major turning point in the film when it’s revealed that his father is Thomas Wayne, who abandoned him and his mother to a life of poverty. Although Moore and Bolland’s proto-Joker is largely innocent, Fleck is not. Like Bates, and later psycho Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) from Taxi Driver, Fleck becomes obsessed with a woman who shows no romantic interest in him, resulting in an act of violence. There’s a Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) element to Fleck, and the end result of matricide is the same. There are girls on the street who earn that in a weekend without having to tell a single joke.” Instead of a wife, Joker gives the character a mother, Penny (Frances Conroy) whom he bathes and shares a bed with. “I just want enough money to get set up in a decent neighborhood. Like Fleck, his immediate concerns are focused on proving he has talent and escaping the poverty that Gotham has sucked him into. ![]() In that story, Joker begins as a struggling comedian trying to support his pregnant wife. Fleck is a sad sack, not unlike the man who would become the Joker in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s controversial graphic novel, The Killing Joke (1988). ![]() Most of the film focuses on Arthur Fleck before he adopts the persona and chilling confidence of the Joker on Murray Franklin’s (Robert De Niro) show. Because of the attention placed on him as the lead character, there are even more parallels to be drawn between the comics and Phoenix’s Joker than there are to the character’s most iconic live-action appearance, Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning portrayal in The Dark Knight (2008). Joker is Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) in its level of demystification, given the sheen of Scorsese’s New York nightlife. While the comics, particularly those since Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns (1986), have often allowed Joker to lurk in the shadows of unpredictability, biding his time so that his appearances become events, the film puts the spotlight right on him, holds him in frame so that we know him, intimately. The very idea of making a movie about the Joker, telling his origin, suggests a deconstruction of his myth and intrigue. In the comics, Joker’s name is unknown, and as for his origin story, it has varied drastically over the years while still remaining a mystery. On the subject of comics, Phillips has said he enjoyed finding the balance between keeping “one foot in” and one foot out of the comic book world. Arthur Fleck’s downward spiral is taken seriously but with a certain irreverence that’s only a gutter removed from the real world and comic world that border it like funny book panels. There are no narrative ties between this Joker and the one we’ve watched Batman beat into the pavement time and again. Joker isn’t based on any comic book storyline, and its comic book characters are few and far between. But it’s not entirely true, and the gap between comic book movie and awards season character study is a small divide. That’s the set-up, and it’s what the filmmakers would seemingly have us believe. logo, the suggestion that this is something different, a prestige film that distances itself from comic book mythos in order to achieve a kind of elevation, which some have suggested may be dangerous. Instead, Joker opens with the mid-’70s Warner Bros. ![]() Joker, written by Phillips and Scott Silver, doesn’t open with a DC Comics logo or even a title card suggesting the character’s comic book background, something every audience member innately is aware of regardless of reading habits.
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