Dynamic Duo, the hybrid puppetry, stop-motion, and animation feature from DC Studios, has announced its cast and who they’ll be playing. The Black Phone‘s Mason Thames is playing Dick Grayson. Ghostbusters: Afterlife actor Logan Kim is Jason Todd, the Red Hood. But he’s not the only Red Hood coming to the party. There’s a whole gang, including Red Hood One, played by Lee Pace, and Red Hood Two, voiced by Steve Buscemi. It doesn’t take Sesame Street’s resident vampire to count that there are three Red Hoods slated for Dynamic Duo. Considering the Red Hood is the original identity of the Joker, three Red Hoods could hint at the story animation studio Swaybox is trying to tell.
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The studio has already shown a brief clip of Dynamic Duo at Annecy in France this past June. The presentation detailed that Dick Grayson and Jason Todd are teenagers coming up on the streets of Gotham City, calling themselves the dynamic duo. As they get older, they get pulled apart by outside influences, with Dick being pulled toward Batman, and Jason being seduced by the allure of the Red Hood. In the comics, Jason has a much different reason for becoming the Red Hood, but there is one comic story that could be amalgamated into the film’s premise and work: Batman: Three Jokers.
What is Batman: Three Jokers?
Over the roughly 90 years that Batman has been facing down villains, readers have noticed generational changes in his foe, the Joker. In his original outings, based on the imagery of the film The Man Who Laughs, the Joker is a hard-boiled gangster who wanted to get one over on Batman. During the Silver Age, he became a flamboyant showman with larger-than-life gimmicks. In the modern age, he became a hardened anarchist and sadist with evil intentions. Retcon expert Geoff Johns could make that work to DC’s advantage.
For Batman: Three Jokers, Johns and artist Jason Fabok fulfilled a story first teased when Batman sat in the Mobius chair in Justice League #42. When Batman asks the all-knowing chair for the Joker’s identity, it reveals there are actually three Jokers. Johns and Fabok would delineate the different Jokers into the Criminal, the Clown, and the Comedian.
In the arc A Death in the Family, the Joker beats Jason Todd with a crowbar before leaving him to die in a warehouse with a bomb. Fans could have saved Todd from his fate, but a fan poll included at the end of the comic resulted in readers voting to let Jason Todd die. Later, when the second Boy Wonder comes back to life, he takes on the Joker’s original moniker as a vigilante identity. He fights Gotham’s criminal element but goes way past Batman’s limits on killing.
In Three Jokers, the trio of Mr. Js is trying to create another Joker using the chemical-bath process associated with the characters’ origin. Much the same way Joker was able to create a new version of himself inside Tim Drake in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. Dynamic Duo‘s two Red Hoods could indicate they’re looking to add a third.
Bat-Family Love Triangle
Batgirl is currently rumored to be a major part of Dynamic Duo, with some reports claiming Black-ish actress Marsai Martin has been cast in the role. Barbara Gordon’s story has been intertwined with the Joker since the clown prince of crime shot her, shattering her spine in The Killing Joke. Her story is pivotal to Three Jokers as she completes the Batfamily triforce of Joker trauma.
Barbara Gordon was commissioned by the producers of the Batman ’66 TV series, debuting in the comics later that same year. In the comics, she’s had a long-running on-again, off-again relationship with Dick Grayson. In Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series universe, Barbara pursued Batman, acknowledging a relationship in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman, Batman Beyond, and explicitly in the new opening of the animated version of The Killing Joke. Dynamic Duo will probably abandon the Batman love fest, but a love triangle is still in the cards. In Batman: Three Jokers, Jason and Babs share a kiss, with Todd admitting his love for her in a letter that she never receives. Applying that unrequited tension to Dynamic Duo‘s heroic trio may give this puppet movie a new dimension.
Why Dynamic Duo Could Be the Right Place for This Story
A live-action Three Jokers in the DCU right now would be a hard pill to swallow. After years of multiverse stories and alternate versions of characters in projects like the standalone Joker film, audiences may scratch their heads at a Batman movie with three Jokers. Dynamic Duo has a bit more freedom. The movie is already combining puppetry, stop-motion techniques, and animation into something visually unlike the rest of the DC Studios slate. That kind of heightened format has served complicated projects well, like Lord & Miller’s Spider-Verse films.
It’s also possible that the Red Hood Gang is a feint, and the name is providing cover for the reveal of the actual bad guys, the Jokers. Lee Pace and Steve Buscemi could easily be the Criminal and Clown archetypes, while they search for a potential Comedian in Jason Todd. A boy wonder known for harsh banter and violent tendencies. The Red Hood identity may not be a disguise or gang affiliation. It could be a transitional role, something someone has to become as a rite of passage before becoming a Joker.
Whether the Red Hoods are filling in for the three Jokers, or they’re a full-fledged gang as the company line suggests, it’s hard to imagine a Batman project featuring Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon that doesn’t maintain some sort of connection to the Clown Prince of Crime. Much like how the Lego Batman Movie felt like a natural place to explore the particular dynamics around Batman and the Joker’s unique relationship, Dynamic Duo seems like the perfect place for the Batfamily to trauma bond. We just hope Steve Buscemi gets to ask the question, “How do you do, fellow clowns?”
Is there another Batfamily story you’d like to see in Swaybox’s animation style? Call it out in the comments below.
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