Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Joker.
Robert De Niro’s Joaquin Phoenix.
Directed by Todd Phillips, Joker captures a grimy big city aesthetic that Scorsese depicts in the 1976 film Taxi Driver. Phoenix’s character, of course, is based on the DC Comics supervillain Joker, Batman’s arch enemy who lives in Gotham. Joker chronicles Arthur Fleck’s origin story, most notably how public humiliation and mental illness pushed him over the edge, and serves as the psychological foundation for a life of crime. Taxi Driver similarly follows a social outcast, Travis Bickle (De Niro), who feels misunderstood and turns to violence in New York City to resolve immediate problems. In Joker, however, De Niro’s character doesn’t reference Taxi Driver and doesn’t have a comic parallel.
De Niro’s Joker character references the 1982 film Jerry Lewis) and hopes to perform live on national television. Like Joker’s Arthur Fleck, Rupert Pupkin takes a few short cuts along the way, which doesn’t go unnoticed by New York City police officers.
Joker flips the script, in of the comedian-talk show host relationship. Phoenix portrays a mentally unstable man, a tragicomic figure with a warped self-image. Whereas De Niro’s Murray Franklin parallels Lewis’ character from The King of Comedy (both characters are men who fulfilled their comedic potential), Phoenix’ Arthur Fleck is a cinematic cousin of De Niro’s Rupert Pupkin - men who shift their immediate goals to fulfill their potential as being familiar names in pop culture, if only briefly.
In Joker, Joker character symbolizes all the glory and public iration that both Arthur Fleck and Rupert Pupkin once dreamed of.
