One of the most well-known comics that features the Joker is Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s The Killing Joke. In Batman lore, the comic is famous because it tried to offer an origin story for the Clown Prince of Crime; it depicts the Joker attempting to drive Commissioner Gordon insane by subjecting him to “one bad day”, a gauntlet of horrors that the Joker believes is the key ingredient - and perhaps some kind of excuse - for mental illness, his own included.

In his insanity, the Joker of The Killing Joke isn’t quite sure if the story imagined in flashbacks in the graphic novel is even real. It’s just one possible sequence of events that might have led to where he is now. No matter how you choose to read the comic, learning just a fragment about how the Joker came to be is a fascinating exercise; after all, Batman’s origin has been done hundreds, if not thousands, of times across various media, so shouldn’t his greatest nemesis get the same level of examination? 

For its part, Todd Phillips’ new film Joker clearly incorporates some of the narrative DNA from The Killing Joke. But it doesn’t pin the Joker’s ailments on “one bad day”, a simple kick off the cliff. Instead, the movie goes with something more systemic and terrifying: the Joker here is a victim of childhood abuse and neglect, a man with poorly-treated mental illness who is bullied and overlooked by others. Crucially though, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) decides to funnel these experiences into violence, and the uncomfortable, unanswerable question is how much free will Arthur has. Was he incapable of choosing differently? Or does he simply ignore right and wrong because it’s more convenient?

It’s a pattern that’s eerily similar to recent news stories about hate-filled, brutal attacks by similarly ill individuals, and some hand-wringing pundits have tried to suggest that Joker is designed to apologize for, and even encourage, this behaviour. All of that is nonsense, but it hints at the more pernicious problem that Phillips and Phoenix are trying to untangle; where is the line between what we choose to do and what we’re driven to do? 

For Arthur, his response is to lash out, and it soon becomes clear that even if his first act of violence was a mistake, or a fight-or-flight response, he eventually returns to bloodshed willingly, as it gives him a sense of power that he didn’t have before. In that context, it’s hard to see how the movie might be accused of depicting this progression as either an apology or as a critique of a “bad society” that birthed a monster. Just knowing someone’s backstory doesn’t give him a blank cheque to behave however he wants.

Messy psychology aside, Joker behaves in the Batman film universe very much like The Killing Joke does for comics: it doesn’t need to connect to any other stories or characters, and captures just one possible timeline for how the Joker came to be, much like the several different threads that Heath Ledger’s Joker references in The Dark Knight. With this kind of narrative freedom, Joker is able to focus on the details that power its character study. We don’t need the amount of plot you’d typically get in a superhero movie, and Joker puts its attention in the right places.

Phoenix is completely absorbing in the lead role. On first viewing, you never know what he’s going to do next, and it’s chilling. He twists his emaciated frame into pretzel-like shapes, visibly contorting in sync with his mind. Phoenix layers so many distinctly unwell behaviours into his performance, making it obvious that Arthur’s comedy aspirations might as well be a hallucination. Arthur doesn’t have the charisma or innate theatricality of other screen Jokers, or of Robert de Niro’s character in The King of Comedy, which is another touchpoint for this movie. Whereas De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin is able to project a far more cohesive front of civility and charm, when Phoenix’s Joker is in his full costume he seems barely in control of his image. And though I know we won’t get it, I’d be curious to see what the Batman of this universe would be like: might he be even more grounded than Christopher Nolan’s interpretation?

Phoenix may have had free reign to take the character wherever he wished, but that approach doesn’t help the film in all aspects. The director and the star spoke in interviews about how much they improvised on set, and it seems like Phillips took that approach to the editing as well. Certain segments of the movie feel a bit haphazardly placed, and some of the needle drops on the soundtrack either occur at odd times or overstay their welcome. It’s unclear whether Phillips intends this to reflect Arthur’s deteriorating state of mind, or whether it’s partly a tactic to account for the free-form production. This leads to a sense that maybe by trimming 10-15 minutes, Joker would hit just a bit harder.

Whatever your reaction to the film’s messaging, Phillips’ movie reinforces the idea (suggested by Logan) that you don’t necessarily need Marvel-style continuity to make a good superhero movie. One-offs can be just as effective as 23-film arcs - a lesson that comics writers learned long ago. If Joker can encourage producers to try out some of the weirder, more narratively risky threads in superhero/supervillain storytelling, I won’t need any Joker venom to get a smile on my face.

Joker gets three and a half stars out of four.

Stray thoughts

• The supporting cast is very well-chosen - why isn’t there an Oscar for casting direction?

• There’s an early shot of Arthur in a meeting with his social worker, where the light catches his eyes with perfectly malicious glint: A+ cinematography

• I don’t think we needed to either see Thomas and Martha Wayne die in the alleyway again, and certainly not the same night as Joker’s emergence.