JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX - Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck Is Looking The Worse For Wear In Latest Set Photos

@Feralwookiee - you know that exchange in Taxi Driver - Robert De Niro - Harvey Keitel?

Travis Bickle : I'm hip.

Sport : Buddy, you don't look hip.

(We're never going to get that level of great again.)

@DocSpock - DC's "Elseworlds" stuff is much better than their main stuff. If you just want to consoome glorified 2 hours commercials of cinematic universe and toys, good for you. But I want good movies and not commercials. If this one is good, it'll gross more than enough to be considered a success.

@TCronson - Gotta agree with that other guy, DC Elseworlds has always been better than their main stuff, and so have their movies now (Joker, The Batman). Very little faith their latest cinematic universe will be any better than the last.

@ObserverIO - Comics, my man. Elseworlds comics has more often than not been better than their stuff tied to their main continuity.

@PlusUltra - Which is why I'm gonna look like a genius when I turn out to be right, lol.

I think it might be a slight exaggeration that the Elseworlds comics are mostly better than the main canon comics (I mean there's a lot of classic stuff in canon, from writers like Alan Moore, Jack Kirby, Dennis O'Neil, Neal Adams, Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, most of the Vertigo stuff, the Silver Age stuff, the OG Golden Age stuff, the goddamn Bronze Age stuff!) but I can see why you would say that, because when you think of a classic GN, it's usually like Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns (although Year One, Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum were in canon), Kingdom Come (which was more of an alternate future in-continuity), New Frontier, etc.

I think the main reason for this though is that if you are doing an Elseworlds GN you have all the tome in the world to craft it, whereas a monthly comic needs to be written and drawn on time every month.

But these days we have prestige series. For the past 20 years or so there are books that are in canon but are limited series (sometimes with very erratic schedules) and they have been just as well crafted as any Elseworlds book you can name.

But movies all have the same schedule. In fact movies like Joker and The Batman will probably have a lesser quality because they are studio cash-cows that are being rushed out without the supervision of James Gunn and his policy of making sure there is a script first.

Having no script obviously paid off with the first Joker movie but it's a gamble every time you make a movie with no script.

The Batman took Matt Reeves 5 years to write and still was picked apart buy the fans and critics, but now they've set a start date of fall this year for the sequel and he hasn't even started writing yet.

This is in clear contrast to James Gunn's policy of script being king. He won't start a production without one. Superman: Legacy is so far the only film with a release date because it is so far the only film with a finished script (as far as we know).

So by comics standards, James Gunn's stuff is more akin to an Elseworlds graphic novels and prestige series set in continuity and Joker 2 and The Batman part II are the monthly titles that are being churned out without any time to properly craft them.

@ObserverIO

Joker’s script leaked online like a year before it came out. It was also nominated for best adapted screenplay at the Oscar’s.

Also I’m not sure what Gunn would’ve added to Matt Reeves Batman script.

@regularmovieguy - That's what I was saying. He signed on in 2017 and it came out in 2022. That's 5 years.
That's where I got '5 years' from, @PlusUltra. Okay, so they were shooting about a year before release, so I guess it's 4 years.

That's still a long time. Now he has only half a year to write the sequel, since the start date is November and they already have a release date.

Only 1 DC Studios film has a release date (Superman) and that has a finished script.

Creating DC Studios is the opposite of a studio mandate. That's relinquishing a huge level of creative control. David Zaslav only okayed the slate, he didn't come up with it. The only person mandating anything is an actual writer/director. The writer and director of Superman. That's about as pure of a project as you are ever gonna get.

As opposed to Joker 2. You say Joaquin came up with the idea of the first Joker movie and the studio made it happen? I'm not sure how true that is. If I recall, Leonardo DiCaprio was the studios' first choice and Joaquin had to be convinced. Also, Kevin Tsujihara had the idea to do a series of low-budget R-rated villain movies that were unrelated to the main universe, back in 2013. The first Suicide Squad movie was originally to be the first of these ideas, but became a DCEU movie over time.

But all of that aside, I wasn't actually talking about the first Joker movie there anyway. I meant the sequel. That is utterly studio mandated.

The first movie made a billion dollars. Zaslav knew that both that and The Batman had to be sequelled regardless of what his new DC Studios might want. Because of the billion dollars.

@ObserverIO - I can’t fault you*

Also wasn't it recently reported that the script is "Always changing" in reference to who the actual villain is going to be?

That doesn't sound nearly ready.

Maybe it will be ready by the time they start principal photography, maybe not.
This is MCU-level process. The opposite of DC Studios' process.

@PlusUltra - So you're speculating. But if rumors are to be believed, he hasn't even decided on a villain yet. Also, I'm fairly sure that Legacy is finished.

@ObserverIO - We all want Superman: Legacy to be good, but creating this false narrative that it’s some sort of passion project, and not the studio mandated movie that’s being rushed out to kickstart another cinematic universe that it is, isn’t going to make it any better than it’s going to be. If Reeves walked away from The Batman right now, they’d just move on to Brave and the Bold, the real studio mandated Batman movie. If Gunn drops out, they’ll rehire the next director for Legacy. That’s the difference.

@ObserverIO

“ he hasn't even decided on a villain yet.”

You think Reeves is blindly writing his script without know which characters/villains he’s going to use?

“

“ As opposed to Joker 2. You say Joaquin came up with the idea of the first Joker movie and the studio made it happen?”

Where did I say any of this?

“This is in clear contrast to James Gunn's policy of script being king. He won't start a production without one.”

Tell me again which movies went into produxtion within a script? 🤨

You’re running in circles, dude. I know you’re obsessed with these movies being connected but your reasoning makes absolutely zero sense.