People have been talking about The Batman for almost a month now, and for good reason. But after the reveal of the deleted scene featuring Joker and Batman talking with one another, fans are desperate for more, and for more details on this version of Joker.
Matt Reeves has already discussed this in part via his chat about him being inspired by “The Man Who Laughs”, who gave inspiration to the original Joker character. But in a chat, he went deeper:
“It’s like Phantom of the Opera,” Reeves explained. “He has a congenital disease where he can’t stop smiling and it’s horrific. His face is half-covered through most of the film.”
“It’s not about some version where he falls into a vat of chemicals and his face is distorted, or what [Christopher] Nolan did, where there’s some mystery to how he got these scars carved into his face,” the director added. “What if this guy from birth had this disease and he was cursed? He had this smile that people stared at that was grotesque and terrifying. Even as a child, people looked at him with horror, and his response was to say, ‘Okay, so a joke was played on me,’ and this was his nihilistic take on the world.”
An interesting take, and he also elaborated that we MIGHT see more of him in one of the HBO Max spinoff series that are in the works:
“There might be places,” Reeves said of the Joker’s next appearance. “There’s stuff I’m very interested in doing in an Arkham space, potentially for HBO Max. There are things we’ve talked about there. So it’s very possible. It also isn’t impossible that there is some story that comes back where Joker comes into our world.”
So that is something to be on the lookout for.
Source: Variety