Joker was absolutely the highlight of 2019 for Warner Bros, all these months later and people are still ready and willing to discuss the film. Now, the director is facing questions about whether the entire hubbub around his movie is due to the affiliation with Batman. Todd Phillips hit this one out of the park with regards to budget and dominating the public consciousness and he told Deadline that he believes his work stands on its own. There is no doubt that Joker feels like one of the least comic book-feeling comic book movies of this era in blockbuster cinema. There are a number of themes swirling around in Joker and Phillips’ own inspirations are on full display for everyone to see. Some of those thought-provoking choices linger in the minds of fans far longer than the nods to comic continuity or sly easter eggs present from Batman’s mythos. Still, in the minds of a lot of the genre’s critics, anything even tangentially related to one of these big franchises is absolutely going to rake in money because of that installed fanbase. Phillips doesn’t see it that way.
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“I think it was more than that,” the director began. “I mean, I think there are themes in the movie that really resonated with people. None of us thought an R-rated movie could do over $1 billion across the world. But I think the themes in it really resonated. The thing Scott Silver and I set out to do when we wrote the movie together was to make something meaningful in that comic book space, but also something really that addressed what was going on in 2016, when we started writing. It’s pretty obvious what was happening in our country in 2017 while we were writing it, and really wanted to use Joker to make a movie about the loss of compassion and the lack of decorum in the world.
“I’ve been around the world with the movie,” he added, “and, speaking to the audiences, some people see it as an indictment of America and other people see it as a mirror for what’s going on in their country, both with the lack of compassion and with the wealth and equality issues.”
For his part, those nods to other issues have cropped up in protest movements around the world. Some of them have even adopted the character’s facepaint as a mask to show others how much the portrayal stuck with them. The fact that people are still talking about this film all the way into 2020 should show those who might question it that there’s some sort of nerve that both Phillips and his movie have hit. It remains to be seen if the film will bring home an Oscar, but that would seem to indicate that it is more than just a movie popular for featuring some Batman characters.
