Layer upon layer of really real-ness

I haven't seen Joker yet -- today, probably -- but I have a theory why we continue to hunger for this material even though DC seems intent on forever screwing it up.

It's because each new incarnation of the DC comic book characters purports to be the "really real" version.

While some comic book movies have been made with an eye for approximating an actual comic book, DC has taken the opposite approach, and it seems like we are at least in theory open to it.

Since Batman is the throughline here, let's look at it from his vantage point.

The first Batman movie was in 1966, and it was total camp, even for the time. I haven't actually seen it, but I feel like I can say this without second-guessing myself. The way you approximated a comic book at that time was to have words like POW! and BANG! on the screen in big letters. That was about all you could do because there was no way to really approximate the look of comic book panels, or anything but the most basic special effects.

When Tim Burton's 1989 Batman came out, it promised to be dark and brooding, which moved it a step away from the original comics, giving it the feel that the comics had taken on since then (or so I assume -- again, I was not a reader). "Dark and brooding" was, of course, more "realistic," as a real person forever avenging his parents' death in a spandex outfit would probably not have the groovy vibe of Adam West's version.

By the time Batman and Robin, the fourth film in that series, came out, the series had descended back into a cartoonish type of camp that almost resembled the 1966 film (if only it could have been more like it, we might have actually liked it). That meant the world was ready for Christopher Nolan's take on the character in 2005, which matched an increasingly sophisticated filmmaking with an even darker take on the character set in consummately realistic settings. This was what Batman would really look like in the real world.

Then Batman got caught up in the attempt to make Superman more realistic. You could argue Bryan Singer tried to do that with Superman Returns, but Zack Snyder again pitched that as our reason to get interested in Superman again with Man of Steel, in which we see a lengthy back story of Clark Kent working on a deep sea trawler and the like. How can you get more realistic than Superman working on a deep sea trawler? But by the time Batman got involved in this with Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder's "even darker" (is it possible?) take on the characters backfired and became kind of ridiculous, again creating the conditions for another reset, another stab toward greater realism in the conception of this character.

I have to assume that reset will be what we get with 2021's The Batman, but for now, we're seeing it in the form of Joker, which will surely be simpatico with the vision of the DC anti-hero that Matt Reeves has planned for his film. (Will Joaquin Phoenix's Joker even be in that film? Not sure.)

What I believe we will be seeing in Joker is the most "realistic" version of this character yet, though you'd have to think Nolan did a pretty good job back in 2008 with The Dark Knight. And by that it seems to mean an independent film-style psychological profile of a character who will later be fighting characters in spandex, though I don't expect to be seeing them in this movie. In fact, I kind of wonder if the intended audience for a DC film will even like it -- a supposition supported by the fact that the movie won the top prize at Venice.

Given that many of DC's movies have been very poorly received -- Batman v. Superman, Justice League, Suicide Squad -- I have many times wondered why they haven't just sent these characters into hibernation for ten years. The most obvious answer, the one we don't even need to go beyond, is that these movies will make money no matter how terrible they are. The second most obvious answer is that they've made movies that have been received extremely well (Wonder Woman) and "better than their worst" (Aquaman). But if you are being less cynical, each time out there seems to be a genuine aesthetic argument to reenvision these characters. And most of the time, that aesthetic is based on the idea of further imagining "what this would really be like in real life."

Joker seems to be a hit, so maybe that means the next wave of DC movies -- which I feel like we are hearing about constantly -- will be tolerable. Because lord knows reviews from critics haven't slowed them down. Birds of Prey, an attempt to reclaim Harley Quinn even though she was portrayed by this same actress in one of DC's biggest turds, hits theaters next year, followed by The Batman and at some point James Gunn's reimagining of that aforementioned turd, Suicide Squad.

Then again, Gunn didn't succeed with Guardians of the Galaxy because it was "realistic." So maybe instead of going forward with a consistent artistic vision, they'll just give each film to the filmmaker they think is best suited to tell the story, and hope for the best. Perhaps that straddling the worlds approach starts with Todd Phillips, who is not the type of "visionary" I would have expected to be given a movie that does a deep dive into the Joker's psychology, with the help of one of the best actors working today. If this works, which it appears to have, maybe anything they try will.