Although it has been only a week, rumors are beginning to emerge about the Joker origin movie planned by Warner Bros. This rumor is one that comes from a very unlikely source, an MMA fighter-turned-actor. Take all of this with a grain of salt, as Warner Brothers just announced the film, and it is highly unlikely that much if not any of the film is set yet.
The few details that have emerged about the project is that the film is set in the early 1980’s Gotham City, and will be a gritty crime film. Enter Brendan Schaub. He claims to know what some of the details for the film, because he and director Todd Philips share an agent. According to Schaub, via the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (Batman News):
“My boy Todd Feldman put this together with Todd Phillips. It’s dark. It’s like a dark Joker. As a kid, he had a permanent smile and everyone made fun of him. It’s like on the streets of Brooklyn. It’s super dark and real.”
I am still on the fence about a Joker origin film, because the character having an unknown background is part of what makes him the way he is. You don’t know what he has been through. you don’t know how he was raised. Should these even be questions that we are answering? I think you should ask the Joker himself about this. He has talked about it in an excerpt from The Killing Joke:
“All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once. Am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up like a flying rat? You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else… only you won’t admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there’s some point to all the struggling! God, you make me want to puke. I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger?
Something like that, I bet something like that… something like that happened to me, you know. I… I’m not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice! Ha Ha Ha! But my point is… I went crazy. When I saw what a black, awful joke the world was, I went crazy as a coot! I admit it! So why can’t you?
You’re not unintelligent, you must see the reality of the situation? Do you know how many times we’ve come close to World War III over a flock of geese on a computer screen? Do you even know what triggered the last world war? An argument with Germany over how many telegraph poles they owed their war debt creditors. Telegraph poles! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! It’s all a joke! Anything anybody ever valued or struggled for, it’s all just a monstrous, demented gag. So why can’t you see the funny side? Why aren’t you laughing?“
You might need a huge helping of salt for this Joker rumor. There are many types of sources and plot leakers, but this is the first time that something has leaked through an MMA fighter. The Joker film is expected to launch a string of DC standalone films that will be auteur-driven and can flesh out crazy and unusual comic stories.
