The Batman: Are There Too Many Jokers in the DC Movie Multiverse?

| December 16, 2021 |

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Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. — *Photo: Warner Bros.*

In the latest edition of its Oestrus Vision newsletter, the Hollywood Reporter dropped a lilliputian news detail saying that Warner Bros. Pictures recently test-screened two different versions of manager Matt Reeves' The Batman — one featuring a particular histrion, and i without him. Although the Reporter would not say who the histrion was, or what role he played, information technology was heavily implied that it was Irish gaelic thespian Barry Keoghan, and the office in question was the Joker.

Keoghan is in fact listed in the cast of the motion picture, as Gotham police officer Stanley Merkel (who, in the comics, was James Gordon's partner when he started on the forcefulness). Just last month, his brother Eric posted on social media that Barry had been cast as the Joker in a post that was swiftly deleted before long after information technology first surfaced. Did Eric take bad intel, was he merely trying to rile upwardly the internet, or did he accidentally mail service a major spoiler from the film?

We're not going to know the respond to this for sure until The Batman begins officially screening for press former in (our judge) late Feb 2022. But the possibility does bring up a question which nosotros've been pondering ever since hearing the news: are there too many Jokers in the DC film universe?

Before we go into that, nosotros desire to make it articulate that if Keoghan is in fact playing a homo who becomes the Clown Prince of Crime, we're all for information technology from a casting level. Keoghan is a compelling performer with a weird, sinister charisma all his ain, and his career so far has consisted of an interesting mix of tormented or unsettling characters.

He was one of the highlights of Eternals as the imperious, arrogant Druig, but if yous want to meet him at his creepiest, watch The Killing of a Sacred Deer (in which he appears contrary our new Penguin, Colin Farrell). You can easily make the jump from his operation in that moving-picture show to seeing him every bit a scarred, psychopathic supervillain — in fact, arguably the greatest comic book supervillain of them all.

Only here's the thing: there are currently two other Jokers circulating in the DC pic universe. At that place is the Oscar-winning Joaquin Phoenix version who nosotros met in the 2019 movie Joker , and there's the notorious Jared Leto edition, who fabricated his debut in 2016's Suicide Team and popped up before this year in the bonus "Knightmare" sequence of Zack Snyder's Justice League .

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Is there such a paucity of imagination within the DC moviemaking manufacturing plant that their Batman movies always default to the Joker, merely as the Superman movies, by and big, focused on either Lex Luthor or General Zod as the villains?

On one paw, we get information technology: Matt Reeves is reinventing several of the Caped Crusader'southward heavy hitters in The Batman . Non counting TV shows or animated films, this will be the first time nosotros've seen the Penguin and the Riddler (Paul Dano) on the screen since 1992 and 1995, respectively. By the fourth dimension the pic comes out and gives us Zoe Kravitz'southward take on Catwoman, it'll be nearly a decade since Anne Hathaway portrayed her in The Dark Knight Rises . We're specially glad to run into Oswald Cobblepot and Eddie Nygma/Nashton return to theaters.

We're sure that Reeves would similar to try his own interpretation of the Joker also. The character is too rich, dangerous, and electrifying to ignore. Merely the Night Knight's rogues gallery is often cited as ane of the ii best in the biz (along with Spider-Man'southward), and since we've seen the Joker several times already in the last few years, why get dorsum to that well again right away?

Scarecrow, Two-Confront, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze — they've all been washed in the movies before, but we wouldn't heed seeing new versions of whatsoever of them (especially Ivy and Freeze). Same with Blackness Mask (we didn't intendance much for the Ewan McGregor edition in Birds of Prey ). Meanwhile, there are bad guys like Hugo Strange, Hush, Clayface, and fifty-fifty the Mad Hatter (granted, he'd demand a substantial makeover) who have nonetheless to testify up in a Batman moving picture.

And aye, we know: at that place are also multiple Batmen soon to testify upwardly on the big screen also, with Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck reprising the office for the multiverse-embracing The Flash in 2023. Just that's dissimilar, and nosotros doubtable it's more than of a 1-off plot indicate than an ongoing scenario. If all goes well, The Batman 'southward Robert Pattinson is likely to be our official Caped Crusader for several years and movies to come. Why have him fight a nemesis who we've seen the Batman square off against over and over?

In the cease, nosotros suspect that the lure of the Joker is too much to resist for the studio and any filmmaker it hires. And we too are pretty sure that we'll savour the hell out of Keoghan's interpretation in this movie and whatever future ones in which he dons the white greasepaint and frozen grinning. But we can't help wondering if — with such a large catechism of enemies to cull from — the joke's going to be on u.s..

The Batman is out in theaters March 4, 2022.