Who is the Clown Prince of Crime?
The Clown Prince of Crime, or in the perspective of most comic book and superhero fans, is known by another name, the Joker. This character was created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger (Both were also Batman’s co-creators), and Jerry Robinson in 1940.
Prominent British German actor Conrad Vedit’s character Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs film, which was released in 1928, primarily inspired the illustration of the Clown Prince of Crime. The nickname was gained by Joker in 1975 when he got his mini-series based on this name by the Late Dennis O Neil.
The origin of the Clown Prince of Crime
The thing that has made Joker, alias Clown Prince of Crime, a most exciting product is that perhaps this character was the first supervillain that didn’t have a backstory or a name. Various backstories and names were given about our favourite Clown Prince of Crime in several adaptions.
The most famous origin story in this context came up from the critically acclaimed comic book writers “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta” famed Alan Moore’s book “Batman: The Killing Joke” which tells about the man who became Clown Prince of Crime, was a failed standup comedian that eventually leaned on crime world and failed on a vat of chemicals during a robbery that paved the way for the creation of the classic character we ultimately know about.
However, this origin, alongside others, is heavily implied in the comic books that our favourite clown prince of Crime loves to fake his origin and always confuses the comic book readers by giving them multiple origins by his side.
Why the 2019 film Revolutionized Clown Prince of Crime
My Thoughts
When I first heard that Joker would get a solo film, I was sceptical, and I wondered why the clown Prince of Crime needed a solo movie as it would be the same thing I witnessed multiple times on various adoptions (The most common origin as I mentioned about Clown Prince of Crime above). A man, either a hitman (The common trope made famous by Tim Burton in his take on Batman), failed comedian, ended up onto the vat of chemicals and became our favourite green-haired clown as we are familiar with.
However, after watching the film in 2019, I was shocked, and in my perspective, immediately, this was the best live-action depiction of the Clown Prince of Crime besides the iconic take on Late Heath Ledger in 2008. One of the reasons I felt that the film revolutionized the character is that in this film, the pre-history of our favourite Clown Prince of Crime is not limited to him as just a hitman/mobster named Jake Napier (A common trope that is used in various adoption of joker regarding its origin which got famous due to the 1989 batman film.
I mentioned above that was further repeated in the Dcau and New 52 origin of the clown prince of Crime) and was always evil. His evilness was further twisted by exposing himself to the vat of chemicals.
The role of Todd Philips
In this adaption, the pre-Clown Prince of Crime is Arthur Fleck, an ordinary guy who has no bad intentions; you always see someone like him in your surroundings, a guy who wants to receive good behaviour from society, but society, in return, always punishes him by, rejecting them in the form of failure or providing a holistic behaviour towards them like bullying. I’m sure many people can relate to it as most people have experienced it in their lifetime. In this film, there were no chemicals for the transformation; the vat of chemicals was the society of Gotham City itself, whose toxicity towards Arthur Fleck emerged as an invisible chemical for his transformation into the Clown Prince of Crime.
In the popular adaptions, the vat of chemicals took only a few seconds to transform the guy into our classic Clown Prince of Crime. However, in this film, the society masquerading as the chemical waste for nearly 30 years in Arthur Fleck’s life, each day, Arthur Fleck felt the invisible vat of chemicals was driving him insane and turning him onto the path of the clown prince of Crime.
This allegory automatically makes the take of Todd Philips regarding the origin of the Clown Prince of Crime revolutionized as not in 84 years of history of this character no one come up with such a brilliant origin of making the society the ultimate antagonist on the rise of the Joker.
The role of Joaquin Phoenix
However, Todd Philip’s take further got a new height due to the performance of Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role of Arthur Fleck. His act in the whole film was memorable; the way he suffers pain and humiliation and the way he tries to deal with it; you feel pity for the guy; you will feel how society in every step treats him as a piece of trash, which automatically foreshadow the way to go him onto the path of crime and anarchy as the Clown Prince of Crime.
Especially in the scene where he is with Thomas Wayne, you will ultimately feel sympathy for Arthur as Arthur shows his desire to get a hug from Thomas Wayne because he thinks Thomas Wayne is his father. But the most banger scene is the climax scene where he is on the Murray Franklin show (Now getting fully transformed into the Clown Prince of Crime persona) and the way he shifts his tone from clownery to serious and the way he reveals that he killed the wall street guys in a funny tone that only Joaquin Phoenix was capable of pulling this feature as Joker (No wonder he ended up winning the Oscar for best actor on that year).
Joker in this film is no longer a typical evil guy but a guy who is pushed into the darkness of evil due to the wrongdoings of society. This Clown Prince of Crime was not created by Batman (Since, for most of the adaptation, he falls into the chemical accidentally while trying to deal with Batman) but by society itself. Some viewers will ironically route for Arthur in his every step or movement as they will see how Arthur is getting rejected every time despite the fact he has no bad intentions.
This is how the film humanizes Joker (As I don’t think in any of the adaptions of The Clown Prince of Crime someone will sympathize with him, neither will root for him) and provides a more sympathetic take on the Clown Prince of Crime, which is fresh in the air for the character, and on this point, it revolutionized this character.
Final Thoughts
Lastly, I will say that both performances of Todd Philips and Joaquin Phoenix as director and actor jointly contributed to making the first solo outing of The Clown Prince of Crime a masterpiece piece of art and also cultivating the film to ensure a long-lasting impact on the character is made. Without Todd Philip’s direction and writing, we wouldn’t have archived this masterpiece, and if Joaquin Phoenix hadn’t played so well in the role of Clown Prince of Crime, we would have never seen the film inching onto his masterpiece status.
So, both have equal roles in the process of creating the chef-d’oeuvre. I hope this stroke of genius will continue in the film’s sequel. Hopefully, the sequel won’t be the victim of the “Rotten sequel of a masterpiece prequel that the studio made just to capitalize on the success of the prequel” aspect of Hollywood.
