Earlier this week, it was announced that the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie would be released under the no-frills title of Joker, but if there’s one way in which this simple name could cause some confusion among audiences, it’s that it doesn’t specify exactly which Joker.
For while the Todd Phillips-helmed picture will serve as a standalone movie that exists separately from the DCEU, Suicide Squad actor Jared Leto plans to reprise his role as the Clown Prince of Crime in several future films, including Suicide Squad 2 and Gotham City Sirens.
The double-casting was met with some objections, not least by Leto himself, but for Kevin Smith, this could be a good opportunity for the franchise, voicing his support for the plan at this week’s San Diego Comic-Con.
“I’m all for it. I know a lot of people got sh*tty about it… I’m all for it. When I was growing up, we had no Joker movies and you were lucky if you got a Batman movie, and the Joker was usually in that. But think about it now, it’s a world full of comic book movies. We’ve seen all the big guns and all the main characters. Aquaman‘s coming down the pike this summer, that’s tremendous. But in that world, why not single out one of the most famous comic book villains, most famous bad guys of all time, the Joker?”
Smith even argues that the two Jokers could be just the sort of fresh idea that DC needs to get out of the shadow of the MCU.
“To me, it smells like a step in the right direction. They’ve taken a lot of crap for all the movies they’ve made so far not being as good as the Marvel movies, because they’ve been trying to make them in the Marvel method.”
He has a point, really. DC’s attempts to repeat the success of Marvel’s cinematic universe model haven’t exactly been going swimmingly, with only the relatively standalone Wonder Woman receiving near-universal acceptance from fans and critics, so it probably couldn’t hurt to try something different. I guess we’ll see if the move pays off when Joker releases on October 4th, 2019.