There was a lot to get excited about when it came to Todd Phillips’ The Joker. Joaquin Phoenix could be great as the main character and Zazie Beats has not let us down in Deadpool 2 or Atlanta. There’s been a lot of talk that the film would do a lot to humanize the clown prince of crime, giving us a tragic tale of a downbeat man and what drove him to become the joker.
Unfortunately, we are not seeing new reports that the film will also explore ‘V for Vendetta’ style political undercurrents and will feature some pointed commentary on Donald Trump. News of this has got people fairly divided. For some, they welcome the chance to see anything that pokes Trump, but for others (myself included), we don’t want that from a movie like this.
It’s fine to say that the X-Men comics were created to explore metaphors for the broad construct of racism. That is a good thing. What we are hearing is that this is going to be a commentary on a single man. We want the focus of the film to be on a different man – The Joker.
As to how they’ll do it? Our guess is that they are using the Thomas Wayne character as a surrogate for Trump. After all, they even had Alec Baldwin cast in the role for a while. The biggest thing he’s done in the last five years is playing Trump on SNL.
It will be interesting to see if overt political messaging in the film will bring in more fans or keep the ones looking for an escapist experience at bay.