The billion-dollar movie David Fincher called a “betrayal”
David Fincher‘s being unimpressed by the Oscar-winning, $1billion smash hit Joker speaks to how dramatically comic book storytelling has become immersed within popular culture, such that a film about one of Batman’s villains could become a controversial event.
By setting itself in the 1970s, earning a deserved R-rating, and debuting at the Venice Film Festival (where it won the prestigious ‘Golden Lion’ award), Joker went out of its way to prove that it was nothing like Aquaman, Wonder Woman, or the rest of the DC slate.
While no one would have expected a Joker prequel to amount to anything since George Clooney’s Batman suit was donned with rubber nipples, Todd Phillips’ gritty imagination of the iconic villain became one of the most widely debated films in recent memory, for rather than drawing from the rich history of DC comics, it was inspired by classic works of anti-hero cinema, and characterised its protagonist as a mentally ill man who is being sidelined by society.
Although earning an amazing 11 Academy Award nominations and briefly becoming the highest-grossing R-rated film ever (before it was surpassed by Deadpool & Wolverine five years later), it was not immune to criticism. Fincher, who had created an anti-hero classic of his own with Fight Club, took issue with the way that Joker was received.
“Nobody would have thought they had a shot at a giant hit with Joker had The Dark Knight not been as massive as it was,” Fincher told The Telegraph, adding, “I don’t think anyone would have looked at that material and thought, ‘Yeah, let’s take Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin and conflate them, then trap him in a betrayal of the mentally ill, and trot it out for a billion dollars’.”
Fincher’s references to Bickle and Pupkin refer to the characters played by Robert De Niro in the Martin Scorsese films Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, respectively, and it’s not hard to see why Joker drew so many comparisons to these two films in particular; Taxi Driver is centered on a lonely, mentally unstable man who inadvertently starts a violent revolution, and The King of Comedy is about a failing comedian who takes elaborate measures to secure an audience with his idol.
Perhaps the fact that De Niro himself makes an appearance in Joker is an acknowledgement of these influences, but the film is so derivative of Scorsese’s work that it almost feels like plagiarism. Fincher’s frustration may echo that of older moviegoers who don’t understand why the film was hailed as a work of genius, and, in all likelihood, those with the most praise for Joker may not have even seen either of the influential films.
The director’s argument about the success of the film also seems to be a defence of The Dark Knight, another Batman film that connected to broader societal and political ideas. Although the latter drew inspiration from crime movies like Heat, Nolan’s film is slightly more original in presenting new objectives and contexts, and considering that Fincher and Nolan are friends, it’s not hard to understand why one colleague would vouch for another.
Fincher’s most curious criticism of Joker is that it was a “betrayal of the mentally ill”, in what’s likely a reference to the depiction of such a character becoming radicalised into indulging in violence, where some perceived this as sympathetic, others saw it as unfair to suggest that anyone with mental issues had it in themselves to become a super-villain. Either way, when its sequel became one of the most notorious critical and commercial disasters of all time, disparagers of the film eventually had the last laugh, vindicated in their opinions.
