Society’s obsession with villains is a long one. They are the flawed and twisted underdogs and unknowns that, when conveyed with the right bravado, end up being the characters that we root for or relate to the most. They are also the characters that we seemingly want more of on our screens. However, due to the nature of the superhero genre, the villains who usually dominate the space they occupy are still narratively regulated to the sideline; we understand these villains must escape from the questioning and complexity that we demand from our leading hero. That narrative changes with Joker, but instead of the deep and dark character study that the public (or at least me) has been begging for, Joker reminds us why villains are better regulated as unknown, unpredictable, and surface-level quantities.
Continue reading “Review: ‘Joker’ is an Origin Story That Does Not Know Its Own Origin”