It’s been a pretty busy few months for superhero cinema, but once the MCU and DCEU have each brought us their respective 2019 slates, there’ll still be one more comic book movie waiting in the wings before the year comes to a close.
We’re talking, of course, about Todd Phillips’ Joker, which doesn’t just stand apart from the rest of the crowd in terms of continuity and release date, but also because it looks to have a style all its own, too, and it appears that it won’t exactly play by the rules, either. In fact, if this latest piece of intel is to be believed, it’ll feature a controversial twist. It’s definitely a spoiler for the film as well, so if you want to go in with a clean slate, you may want to turn back now.
Still with us? Good, because according to a source close to the production, there’ll be a major twist in Joker that tells us Arthur Fleck (whose real name is Happy Wayne, apparently) is actually the illegitimate son of Thomas Wayne, who had an affair several decades prior with a woman who wasn’t Martha. This, of course, would mean that the Joker is the half-brother of Bruce Wayne and thus, in this continuity at least, Batman and the Clown Prince of Crime are related.
We know, we can already hear the cries from fanboys outraged with this twist on the Dark Knight’s mythos. And to be fair, it is a pretty controversial change, though one that can lead to some very interesting encounters down the road should Phoenix’s Joker ever cross paths with Robert Pattinson’s Batman.
Not to mention that seeing as Thomas seems to be a character with political aspirations, it would make sense to take the drama down this route, with the very existence of Arthur serving as a potentially career-threatening source of scandal for his father. Think about it, if Thomas tried to bury the truth and keep the young boy out of his life, you can see how Arthur might eventually feel pushed into his anarchic outsider persona.
So, while it might prove to be a divisive decision to have Bruce and Mr. J as half-brothers, it’ll certainly be interesting to see how this twist plays into future DC movies and how it ultimately helps shape Joker when it touches down in theaters on October 4th.
