Does The Batman Really Need a Joker?

The next DC film to star the Dark Knight is Matt Reeves’ The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as the brooding street vigilante. While The Batman shows the early days of Bruce Wayne’s crimefighting career, it will still feature a bevy of villains from Batman’s rogues gallery. Riddler (Paul Dano), Penguin (Colin Farrell), and Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) all play important roles, pushing Batman to his upper limits. As threatening as each individual villain is, no one has caused more sleepless nights for Batman than The Joker. Whenever a Batman story is told in any format – movies, TV, comics, video games – it inevitably involves Joker in some capacity. But does that mean any future sequels or spinoffs of The Batman should utilize the Clown Prince of Crime?

As promotion for The Batman ramps up to its March 4th release, the cast and crew have started to respond to questions pertaining to its next installments. Robert Pattinson has even come out and confirmed how The Batman ends with a tease for a sequel, stating, “I mean, they always have that little bit at the end, that’s like: ‘…and coming up!’ But other than that, it feels strangely personal. I think people will be quite shocked at how different it is,” Pattinson told Total Film magazine. As more future projects are teed up, fans will keep demanding that Joker debut as Batman’s next film foe. 

Playing Joker can take an emotional toll on the actors that have stepped into the role, which isn’t surprising when you consider trying to get into the mindset to play a psychopath. Batman and Joker have often been pitted as mirrors of each other, which helps to drive home their toxic relationship. They’ve become so linked to one another that it’s hard to picture a big-screen Batman project without Joker. This is why if The Batman becomes a box office success – and all signs point to it being one – any and all future projects will lead to the duo squaring off.

If we can steal a phrase from DC’s competition, if Joker were to ever appear in a sequel to The Batman, it should be in the finale of the franchise as its “endgame.” That’s how important their confrontation is and should be. If Joker were to be the main antagonist of The Batman 2, how would Warner Bros. follow that up with a third film? Of course, we’ve seen that happen before with Heath Ledger’s Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. Director Christopher Nolan chose to end his trilogy with Tom Hardy’s Bane in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. Since we’ve already seen that play out, WB would be wise to hold off as long as possible for Joker to terrorize Gotham City in any The Batman sequels.

Fans got to see a version of Joker’s origin story in the self-titled 2019 film directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix. One creative way to build to a Batman-Joker showdown is to introduce the villain in his own spinoff project, either a streaming series on HBO Max or another feature film. A Gotham PD and Penguin series with a returning Colin Farrell are already in the works at HBO Max, so WB is comfortable enough to use its DC IP to build up its streaming service. If a theatrical release is a preferred route, then Joker could square off with another DC hero in anticipation of his clash with the Dark Knight. If Joker were to get the upper hand against this other hero, it would only increase the build-up for fans. It also wouldn’t hurt if Robert Pattinson filmed a post-credits scene to drive the point home even more.

So does The Batman really need Joker? The true answer lies somewhere in the middle, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt Warner Bros.’ pockets at the box office, and fans could consider themselves winners as well for having seen it take place.

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