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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Apr 13, 2024 1:58:32 GMT
She actually first appeared in the Batman animated series from the 90s. I suppose you could say that the Batman Joker in this universe might not have a Harley... but it just seems dumb to have Harley only exist for Phoenix’s Joker, and still have a very similar backstory as the Batman-Joker Harley, but not actually be present in Batman-Joker’s world. Basically all this just feels like twisting into pretzels in order to make sense of how poorly written Phoenix’s Joker is – like maybe the filmmakers are just taking pieces that they like from the Batman mythology and mixing and matching just for the appeal of the iconography even if it’s completely incoherent in terms of how everything fits into the universe. To me, it's only incoherent if we presume that the Bruce Wayne in this universe must become Batman and Batman must fight a Joker. Which is just audience expectation, there's nothing in the universe of Joker that suggests it has to go that way. Seems pretty clear to me that Phillips isn't really interested in making something to fit into a traditional Batman universe (and given the way he shoehorned in the origin at the end of Joker, he really shouldn't) and instead wants to use the character of the Joker to do a pastiche of some of his favorite films since, well, studios won't give him the budget for the comedies anymore and his one attempt to branch out with War Dogs underperformed. One could argue there's some cynicism in a filmmaker leveraging a property to do something entirely different, but then again it's cynical enough for a studio to leverage a property to make assembly line filler so at least in this way there's a bit of inspiration to it. I suppose I would appreciate the attempt to do something entirely different if the movie wasn’t going out of its way to shoehorn in Bruce Wayne, his parents, and the Batman origin story (as you point out). So to me it does come across as a cynical ploy to coopt the Batman brand for Phillips to do whatever he wants, and that’s not something that really interests me as both a fan of Batman and non-fan of Phillips (in general). It’s true that it's cynical enough for a studio to leverage a property to make assembly line filler, but that doesn’t make Phillips’ work inherently more appealing to me, especially since his first Joker movie cribbed so much from Scorsese that saying there's a bit of inspiration to what he’s doing is kind of generous to me.
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Post by The Numbers on Apr 13, 2024 2:30:21 GMT
Two cash grab sequels to two bad movies. Neither.
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