Fans didn't know what to expect from The Joker's movie future after Suicide Squad, but the reports of a Joker origin movie from Martin Scorsese was a true bombshell. It's a shocking rumor not only because of Jared Leto's role in Suicide Squad 2 and Gotham City Sirens, but because this proposed Joker solo movie won't be played by Leto at all. Apparently, it will chronicle the formative years of Joker's life with a younger actor in the lead role... and strangest of all, set outside of the shared universe known as the DCEU.To some, those details make absolutely no sense - to those already writing off DC Films' decisions, it's proof they're as doomed as ever. For the comic book fans, it's an easier concept to grasp, especially with a character as popular, as storied, and as inherently enigmatic and fractured as the Joker. And if the rumor is true, and Scorsese is interested in producing the movie from director Todd Phillips (War Dogs) and screenplay from Scott Silver (The Fighter), why not let them tell whatever story they wish (especially if it's set decades before the rest of the DCEU)?
RELATED: What is The Future of Jared Leto's Joker?
Naturally, the words "Joker origin story" will raise the hackles of many a comic book fan - and alone constitutes the reason a Joker origin movie shouldn't exist. But if we shake off the chains and assumptions of restrictive shared universes, and free ourselves from any responsibility to tell a "canonical" story of how Joker became... well, Joker, it's hard to believe anyone would think this project isn't worth a shot at all.
Especially when you break down the reasons Why The Joker Origin Movie Can Work.
The Joker Has Had (Multiple) Origin Stories In The Comics
"What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that... Something like that happened to me, you know. I... I'm not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha ha ha!"
For starters, let's tackle the first argument likely to be made by those opposed to a Joker movie set before his time as Batman's nemesis: "The Joker doesn't have a set origin, that's the whole point!" And it's true that The Joker's canonical origin story has changed dramatically over the years, with writers (and even Joker himself) poking fun at the gag made of most heroes and villains' formative experience.
Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight kept the idea alive by offering more than one explanation for Joker's signature facial scars. For some, that's an illustration of the reason why a Joker origin should never be set in stone: that the mystery, the 'unknowable' events and trauma that gave rise to The Joker are what makes him so interesting. That's a fine argument, but it doesn't address the reason why so many talented writers have felt the urge to write one.
A question unanswered can be compelling, but it's also unnecessarily restrictive. As one of, if not the most iconic fictional villains of the modern world, The Joker is bigger than one incarnation (or one writer, or one movie, or one actor...). And writer after writer has convinced DC to allow them the chance to answer the question: how can a normal person grow into a legendary evil?
Give Movies The Same Chances as Comic Books
The results of the origin stories created have obviously varied, with the most well-known being Alan Moore's Killing Joke version: a failed stand-up comedian plunged into a chemical vat that bleached his skin, dyed his hair, and destroyed his mind. In the New 52, Scott Snyder imagined him as just one of the many faceless members of the Red Hood Gang drawn to the anarchy that pierced society's safety blanket. Grant Morrison cast him as an amateur detective in Batman & Robin, he was re-imagined as a hired gun in Batman Confidential, and so on, and so on...
Readers will all respond positively or negatively to each origin or re-imagining, but the idea that there is 'one Joker' isn't one that DC history supports. And if comic creators can spin a story of Joker's fall and rise, all with the understanding that it's coming from the most unreliable narrator in comics, why can't a movie? Unless we're making the restriction that a good take on Joker's story on the page doesn't get to be a good story on film, because... why, exactly?
If the story is branded as a standalone exploration of The Joker from the start, refusing to see the story being pitched gains nothing, and costs plenty - especially with this kind of talent looking to bring their vision to audiences.
Show Why Joker is More Than Just 'a Batman Villain'
With a half-century of experience and stories under his belt, reducing The Joker to 'a Batman villain' is as inaccurate as describing Darth Vader as 'the bad guy in Star Wars.' He's a villain of primal force, an elemental monster as much as a flesh-and-blood human... which is where movie adaptations have seriously fallen short.
There's no real mystery as to why: Joker may be more than just a Batman villain, but he still is the best known Batman villain. That means when a Batman movie, TV show, video game, animated feature, or even animated series needs a big bad, Joker is usually the one to get the call. Unfortunately, that makes him the villain to beat; the villain to Batman's hero; the character existing to serve another character's story. And that's the main reason why no other medium has managed to create the same breadth of stories, styles, philosophies, and mythology of The Joker as comic books and graphic novels.
Alan Moore made The Joker the star of The Killing Joke, and it remains one of DC's best selling books. Brian Azzarello did the same with Joker, and was instantly placed alongside Moore for exploring what makes this well-known, but completely unknown villain tick. To give Joker the spotlight in a movie - a spotlight he doesn't have to truly share with Batman - is the obvious next step. And if you're looking to tell a story that movie audiences have never seen before, humanizing, dramatizing, and scrutinizing the reasons behind The Joker's evil ways is almost certainly the most intriguing.
Placing Joker opposite Batman without any explanation of how he got there may be interesting on the surface (people fear the unknown), but what if a writer or director wants people to do more than just fear The Joker? What if audiences can be made to not sympathize or agree with The Joker... but understand him? Does that honestly make subsequent or parallel versions of the character less interesting to watch or discuss? It was the step needed to begin a new chapter for The Joker in DC Comics, and it's well past due for the movies.
Stop The Restrictive "Shared Universe" Assumptions For Good
Now we move from the fictional 'red flags' thrown up by the mention of a Joker origin film to the structural/DCEU/shared universe ones. The explanation is straightforward enough: this new Joker would not conflict with Jared Leto's version in a Harley Quinn vs The Joker movie, since it would be set years before, and played by a different (younger) actor. Not only that, but it won't be framed as a 'prequel' to the DCEU Joker, instead allowing it to tell its own story without having its end chapter already written and expanded itself. Yet the idea of having not one, but two Jokers in separate films, in separate points of their life, from separate creators... is already a contradiction online commenters see as a guaranteed disaster.
In all honesty, it's disheartening to see how quickly Marvel's "shared universe" approach has transformed from a single Thanos-focused story to the only way the average moviegoer can make sense of adapting characters from the same licensed universe. Not only that, but any suggestion that a character adaptation will deviate from this strict formula must now be met with confusion, pessimism, and belief that the studio has absolutely no idea what it's doing (Spider-Man fans can't see how Venom could share the screen with Peter Parker and NOT also include Iron Man, Captain America, Thor...).
We've previously explained how the DCEU avoided Marvel's issues from the start, and acknowledging that The Joker is flexible enough to support two different adaptations is a similar no-brainer (especially when so many doubting this decision also derided Leto's Suicide Squad rendition). On one hand, the DCEU Joker is played by an Oscar winning actor - on the other, creators are telling their own story of how The Joker came to be. Not the DCEU's Joker-- The Joker, the one every Batman fan knows like the back of their hand.
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Call it an Elseworlds, call it an origin story, call it a spiritual prequel - whatever keeps the skeptics from drowning the project in negativity before it enters production. But at the heart of the doubts appears to be the rationale that only one version of a DC character should get to exist on film at one time. And as much as different versions, targeting different audiences, with different goals and different actors may risk 'confusing' the average moviegoer, robbing them of the choice seems the far crueler solution.