'Joker' sequel director confirms he filmed another 'Batman' villain origin story (original) (raw)

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Joker: Folie à Deux.

Two faces — those of Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga — inhabit the familiar roles of notable DC Comics villains Joker and Harley Quinn in Todd Phillips' big-screen sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. But, as the filmmaker confirms to Entertainment Weekly, a key scene near the end of the film confirms a third Batman series villain's origin story in the form of Two-Face himself.

After scores of fantastical, imagined duets between Arthur (Phoenix) and Lee (Gaga) detail the pair's increasingly unhinged, musically tinged romance throughout the film, Folie à Deux's climax crescendoes in the courtroom, as the back half of the movie outlines Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent's (Harry Lawtey) attempted prosecution of the notorious criminal. We're reintroduced to several characters from the first film (Zazie Beetz's Sophie, Leigh Gill as Gary) as they give testimony and insight into Arthur's psychological state after he inadvertently began a class war in Gotham upon shooting TV host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) in the head on live television at the end of the first film.

With Lee infatuated by his criminal persona as Joker, Arthur scales the legal proceedings with ease, employing the Joker's penchant for comedy and absurdity (as well as his flair for a red suit and clown makeup) as he navigates the legal system, his goal being not only a happy relationship with the woman he loves, but also tightening his grasp on the violence, chaos, and control he exacts — and which Lee fell for in the first place.

Joaquin Phoenix as Joker; Harry Lawtey as Harvey Dent in 'Joker: Folie à Deux'.

Warner Bros. (2)

However, Arkham State Hospital security guards (including one played by Brendan Gleeson) complicate things when they murder one of Arthur's fellow inmates, forcing the central character to come to terms with the collateral damage stemming from his plot. Thus, Arthur decides to come clean to a jury of peers tasked with deciding his face: There is no Joker, after all. He's simply Arthur, a powerless human. He's reminded of his mortality when he's found guilty for his crimes, and a bomb detonates just outside the Gotham courthouse.

In the aftermath, Phillips' camera pans across the wreckage. Among the carnage is Dent, who, after being knocked on his back, briefly enters the frame with one side of his face burned and bloodied.

"Yes, of course," Phillips tells EW when asked if this shot was meant to signal the origin of Two-Face, the iconic Batman comic book villain previously played by Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever and Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight. "[We're] trying to put a realistic answer to why certain things happen. Why does he have [that face]?"

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Though little more is revealed of Two-Face, Phillips says the audience is meant to view the moment as Dent's metamorphosis into the character. He adds that Lawtey, perhaps best known for his role in HBO's Industry, is "playing the character before that character, he’s the young D.A.," Phillips explains. "All we’re doing is saying, let’s use this lore as a foundation, but run it through a realistic lens, or at least a different lens than it’s been run through in other things, to make it our own."

That ideology is consistent in both of Philips' films, as both Joker and Folie à Deux depart from traditional superhero genre fare, painting a grittier portrait of Arthur's evolution without getting caught up in the pre-established lore of the Batman comics. A young, pre-Batman Bruce Wayne (and his parents, Thomas and Martha Wayne) appears in the 2019 movie, though there's no mention of him in the sequel — additionally, no one explicitly references Two-Face in the second film. It's all up to the audience to put the pieces together, and that's exactly what Phillips intended.

It's "not out of disrespect to the original material, not out of rejecting some other person’s idea," he says. It's "just out of, how do we make this our own?"

Joker: Folie à Deux is now playing in theaters.