WARNING: This article contains spoilersAs good as Joker is, do comic book fans really want its nihilistic malaise infecting the DC cinematic universe? Aren’t superhero films supposed to be fun?
For the modern
Hollywood producer with one eye on a money-spinning sequel – or even a full-blooded cinematic universe – some movies create more problems than they solve. Warner Bros’s Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice provided the superhero smackdown every comic book fan thought they wanted to see, but it ruined the Dark Knight for the big screen for the best part of a decade (outside of those zippy and imaginative Lego Batman flicks). Star Wars: The Phantom Menace gave us Anakin Skywalker before he turned to the dark side, but George Lucas’s decision to show us the future Darth Vader as a child ended up infantilising the prequel and its followups. Alien Resurrection brought Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley back from the dead as a clone of herself, but … well, you know the rest.
Todd Phillips’ Joker has the same problem. A few weeks ago in this column, I speculated that Warner Bros are likely to want to unite Joaquin Phoenix’s clown prince of Gotham with Robert Pattinson’s caped crusader in a putative sequel to the forthcoming The Batman. But having now seen Joker, it’s much more difficult to imagine anybody wanting it to be the spark that ignites a new cinematic universe of darker Gotham stories.