Despite some massive box office hits, DC never quite managed to outdo Marvel when it came to their respective shared cinematic universes. Even when “Wonder Woman” made $817 million, the whole shared universe thing just never seemed to suit DC. But it was a different story when it came to projects such as 2019’s “Joker” and 2022’s “The Batman” — both of which existed as separate stories outside of any shared continuity.
These so-called “Elseworlds” stories represented an intriguing future for DC and Warner Bros. following the closure of the DC Extended Universe. Rather than competing with Marvel’s dominance of the superhero genre by establishing a rival shared cinematic universe, Warners seemed to have a ready-made alternative in the form of these director-led projects. “Joker,” made more than a billion dollars, after which Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” made $765 million. Rather than double down on these sorts of standalone movies, however, Warner decided it needed to try the whole shared universe thing again — after all, there’s a lot of money to be made if you get it right. And so, we await the rise of the new DC Universe.
It’s already been confirmed that both Reeves’ “Batman Epic Crime Saga” — as it’s lamentably named — and the “Joker” movies won’t exist within James Gunn and Peter Safran’s newly-minted DC Universe. Still, there has been speculation that Todd Phillips’ decidedly gritty take on 1980s Gotham might pair nicely with Reeves’ own grimy vision of the city. While the “Joker” movies take place in the 1980s when Bruce Wayne is just a child, there’s no reason why the events of these films couldn’t conceivably form part of the history of Reeves’ Gotham. Speculation about this potential crossover previously prompted Phillips to categorically deny that Robert Pattinson’s Bat and Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck would ever meet. But even beyond that specific crossover, the idea of Phoenix’s mentally disturbed villain encountering his universe’s version of the Dark Knight has surely been in the back of every fan’s mind since “Joker” debuted. Now, Phillips has weighed in on what such a meeting might look like.
Todd Phillips thinks his Joker would be impressed by Batman
“Joker” wasn’t entirely without any references to Batman. That is to say that it featured an eight-year-old Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson), who Arthur Fleck menaces after undergoing his transformation from troubled, mentally disturbed loner to full-on anarchic villain. What’s more, it’s implied that Thomas Wayne, played in the film by Brett Cullen, is actually Arthur’s Father. So, it can’t be said that Todd Phillips avoided the traditional Batman mythos entirely with his original film. Now, the director has given us an insight into what a potential meeting between Arthur Fleck and Batman might entail.
Speaking to IGN, Phillips explained how he envisions Arthur being enamored by the Dark Knight, saying, “I think Arthur would be in awe of the alpha male that is Batman. I really do. I think Arthur would look up and appreciate it. I think he’d be in awe of that.” Though Phillips told a story about a perpetually put upon, mentally disturbed outcast in “Joker” the character was quickly identified as an icon of toxic masculinity by the media, most famously dubbed “the patron saint of incels” by TIME’s Stephanie Zacharek. At the time, such criticism seemed misguided in the sense that Arthur’s descent into madness was depicted as the result of societal factors, specifically a lack of mental health support. The questions of whether Phillips painted a sympathetic portrayal of a monster and whether that was a prudent thing to do aside, the incel criticism just didn’t ring true, mostly because incels are guided by a particular set of ideas — warped though they may be — while Arthur is depicted as a villain free of any guiding principles, caring only for himself and certainly not for any perverse anti-female doctrine. (Though that didn’t stop incels from being enraged that Joker has a girlfriend in the sequel.)
Phillips himself even hit back at the “Joker” backlash, which makes his reference to alpha males here somewhat surprising as it seems to feed into this idea that Arthur is some sort of avatar for a kind of toxic online community — one concerned with sigma male ideology. However, the director went on to further explain why he believes his Joker would be so taken by Batman.
Arthur Fleck wants to be ‘a man at ease’
Expanding on his assertion that the Joker of his films would be “in awe” of Batman, Todd Phillips explained that, to him, Arthur “always had a fascination with men at ease, and he is not a man at ease.” The director points to Robert De Niro’s Murray Franklin from the first movie — a talk show host with whom Arthur becomes obsessed and ultimately kills in the film’s climax. For Phillips, Murray represents “a man at ease,” which is something Arthur desperately wanted to feel. The director continued, “He probably saw the guys he worked with as men at ease, and that was the one thing that Arthur could never be was a man at ease.”
Whether Batman could be described as “a man at ease” is debatable. This is, after all, the psychologically scarred product of a horrific murder, who has to dress as a Bat to embrace his true form. There is, I suppose, a kind of ease to that embrace of his dark side, but I’m not sure it’s the same kind of ease that DeNiro’s Franklin exhibited. The talk show host was an accepted member of society, adored by his fans and venerated by those around him. Batman is an outsider, much like Arthur Fleck.
Still, what Phillips is saying here is really nothing new. The Joker has always had a symbiotic relationship with Batman — one which contains an uncomfortable undertone of respect between the two. It’s there in Heath Ledger’s speech from “The Dark Knight,” in which he tells Christian Bale’s Batman, “I think you and I are destined to do this forever.” There has always been a strange sort of reverence for Batman on the part of Joker, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising for Arthur Fleck to be taken in by the Dark Knight. Will we ever get to see that happen? It seems unlikely. But then, Phillips did say he was done after “Joker” so if his sequel similarly makes tons of cash, we might well witness this historic meeting.
