In recent years, the public has come to understand the Joker as a criminal mastermind. From movies such as The Dark Knight, The Killing Joke, and Tim Burton’s Batman, the Joker is portrayed as a genius, having worked his way up through the ranks of the seedy underbelly of Gotham City. These same ideas persist in virtually every iteration of the Joker since the initial creation of the character. Arthur Fleck, however, is a very different Joker. The man does not come across as a criminal mastermind. Instead, throughout the movie he only commits murders when given the opportunity by chance.
Many perceive this as an ‘incorrect’ Joker, because he is so unlike the previous incarnations of the character, but time and time again in the portrayal of the character, he does not have such a specific origin story. In the graphic novel, The Killing Joke, the Joker explicitly states: “If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!” In The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s version of the character has two different explanations as to how he came to have the scars on his face. Neither involves any sort of chemicals, as his appearance is a result of makeup, similar to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker.
The main difference between this film and any of the other films is that Batman is not in it at all. Fleck briefly interacts with Bruce Wayne as a child, but this happens even before Thomas and Martha Wayne are killed. It does not seem that this film is attempting to say that this is definitively how the Joker came to be, but one of the many possible origin stories that he might say to someone. Because the Joker has had so many conflicting stories about his origins, so there is no real way to say which one is the definitive truth. Perhaps this entire film was something he imagined one day with nothing else to do while locked up in Arkham Asylum, or perhaps there is some truth to it.
One of the big issues that people have with Joker is that the character is so much older than Batman, so how could they possibly interact with each other in the way that they do in the majority of other Batman content? To be fair, in some iterations the Joker is significantly older than Batman, as Tim Burton’s Batman does have Jack Nicholson’s Joker admitting that he was the one to kill Batman’s parents. One theory that has been floating around is that Phoenix’s Joker is not the one the audience has come to know in relation to Batman, but a completely separate person.
Fleck inspired all these protests when Bruce and the man who would later become the Joker were young boys, but where Bruce was inspired to end crime, the Joker was instead inspired by Fleck. Perhaps many years later, this subsequent clown prince of crime would paint his face just as Ledger’s Joker does, as an homage to an old political movement he valued, or perhaps he would fall into a vat of chemicals just as he did in The Killing Joke and find his reflection disturbingly similar to the mask chosen by the protestors so long ago.
There are so many ways to read a number of different events in the film, whether Phoenix's character is the Joker or not is just one instance of this. Perhaps Fleck’s mother, Penny, really was delusional, and she made up how Thomas Wayne was his father. Or perhaps Wayne really was the father, and because he is so wealthy, he had the documents stating that Fleck was adopted forged. Penny is said to have endangered her child by allowing her boyfriend to abuse Fleck, and the only person to inflict physical violence on Fleck in the film explicitly because of his laughing is Thomas Wayne.
Many events in the film are similar to this, in the sense that the audience is not entirely sure of who is in the right, who is telling the truth, or even if any event is really happening because it is clear from early on that Fleck suffers from delusions. The film is problematic with regards to what’s canon, but perhaps it is best viewed as something that is not entirely canon. It seems that in the creation of the film, Todd Phillips did not explicitly intend to make something that would be canon. He wanted to say something about the world and he used the Joker as a means to portray that message. And who would have thought that the director of The Hangover trilogy would have been able to do this so successfully? Although, everyone said the same thing when Heath Ledger was cast in The Dark Knight.
Joker truly is an incredible film. Phoenix’s performance won him the Academy Award for Best Actor, and it was also nominated for Best Picture. Superhero movies are rarely even nominated for an Oscar, let alone do they win them. Admittedly, the film can be hard to watch if a person already has the preconceived idea of the Joker as a criminal mastermind, or virtually anything else that is considered canon, along with the idea that this Joker is that same one. Although, it seems that any person who feels this way, who hasn’t watched the film with the notion of Phoenix’s Fleck not as the Joker, but someone who would inspire him, should certainly give the film a re-watch with this idea in mind.