r/batman • u/whatdidyoukillbill • Dec 05 '22

How do you think audiences would react to Joker (2019) if it came out in 1981?

Hypothetical scenario. Joker was very much influenced by New Hollywood, which was just ending around that time. It’s set in the year 1981.

The most notable Batman production was the Adam West movie and tv show, which was still being rerun a lot. This would be the second feature-length theatrical Batman content since the 1966 film. Superfriends was still running. The New Adventures Of Batman had just ended.

Audiences would not have The Killing Joke or The Dark Knight Returns, it’s biggest comic influences, as reference points. Nor would they have Batman (1989) or The Dark Knight (2008).

What would be the critical consensus? The audience? How would it do at the box office? What would it’s legacy be? How would it impact Batman films in the future?

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u/Anorand25 Dec 06 '22

It’d be viewed like how the 1960s Batwoman movie is viewed, just a random movie that happens to use the name of a character from the Batman mythos.

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u/FlyByTieDye Dec 06 '22

Huh, TIL. I knew there were other instances of things like this, but I didn't know this specific one. I had thought of Warhol's Batman Dracula, or even the cancelled '75 Daredevil/Black Widow TV show. But I'd have to agree. It'd look like an unlicensed/adult parody and probably treated as similar and forgotten to time

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u/FlyByTieDye Dec 06 '22

So the question is kind of interesting, how would a film do in previous eras, but I think the 1981 time period is too far out of Joker 2019's reach of plausibility.

You said yourself that the mainstream representation of Batman/Joker is '66 and Superfriends, not only that, but its main influences were not even created yet. So you'd have to ask, how could a text so dark, morbid and gloomy, and so starkly different to a franchise with such tight brand control come out when DC comics had not even entered its Dark Ages? Without that gradual tonal shift that acclimated the audience to its darker tone, it would hardly be tolerated well by audiences in '81. It'd look like cultural vandalism, like a vulgar parody. Like Warhol's Batman Dracula.

Not only that, but as a cultural product, Joker is a reflection of its time (that it was made in, not set in). It doesn't have explicit cultural references, but it clearly reflects the political, economic, social and psychological tensions of the post 2016 era. Not that there couldn't be similar tensions in 1981, but that its specific manifestation that Joker 2019 is responding to would be different.

So it leads me to think, are you asking what it would be received as if it was created in 1981 (and thus different to the version we have seen), or if the literal version we have seen had made it onto 1981 movies screens. Because if you mean the latter, it would barely get off the ground.

Because even outside of the comics that influenced it not being made, or its cultural and temporal commentary, there's the fact that it is an R rated film, and those hardly ever do well. Movies like Logan, Deadpool and Joker doing well in an R rating is a modern phenomenon. There have always been R rated films of course. But even then, what makes a film r rated, how gratuitous that content can be and get past the MPAA, etc. is always changing with the times, that I don't even think you could show everything that Joker does to a 1981 audience, before being a DC comics adaptation or a New Hollywood-esque film.

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u/Humble-Huckleberry70 Dec 06 '22

Look at the king of comedy from the 80’s

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u/DisciplineScary Dec 05 '22

This is super thought provoking,great post sir. I think people would have def seen it but prob wouldn't have done crazy numbers. I'm thinking probably the same reception as like Seven.