8 Filmmakers Who RUINED Their Movies By Explaining Them
1. Todd Philips - Joker (2019)
Todd Phillips' Joker has somehow managed to delude a great deal of viewers into thinking it's some kind of underdog film. It's not. It's a film about the most popular comic book villain of all time and owes much of its success to Batman, who is also the most popular superhero of all time. Take into account the amount of material it unashamedly lifts from Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, and it seems frankly bizarre how anyone could consider Joker an avant-garde work that overcame the odds to find widespread success.
Somehow, Phillips has fully bought into this narrative. In a conversation with Deadline, the Hangover Trilogy director said that the film's popularity was down to "more [than Batman]," going on to add that he thought its themes were what made Joker become such a success.
But Phillips doesn't stop there. In the same interview, he says that neither himself, nor his collaborators thought "an R-rated movie could do over $1 billion across the world." This, after Logan made over $600 million two years earlier, and after both Deadpool films had grossed a combined $1.4 billion in total. Both those characters are popular, but they aren't 'Joker' popular. Put two and two together, and it seems absurd that neither Phillips nor anyone else on his team predicted that the film had the potential to be that much of a success.
Phillips just seems determined to explain the making of Joker as an underdog story, but it isn't. It's a comic book film featuring one of the most recognisable literary characters on the planet. The unwillingness to concede that point just makes Joker even more tedious than it was originally.
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