Editorials
Dear WB/DC: How to Learn the Right Lessons from ‘Joker’ and Avoid the Wrong Ones
It’s undeniable at this point: Joker is an enormous success. As I write this, its second weekend at the box office is on track to bring in ~$60m, signifying a less than 40% drop from its opening weekend. That is inarguably astounding. People are clearly motivated to check out this movie. And it’s unavoidable that Warner Bros. – and more specifically, their DC Comics film branch – are going to try and figure out how to replicate that achievement.
Now, this is not going to be a critical opinion piece when looking at Joker. You can hear my feelings towards the movie on my GenreVision episode. Instead, I want to examine what WB and DC should take away from Joker when thinking about how best to utilize their comic book stable moving forward. Movie studios rarely learn the right things from their successes, and I think Joker is a great opportunity to showcase what works and what doesn’t with these kinds of projects.
DON’T Make a Bunch of Villain Movies
When Joker was gaining good buzz and increased interest, I saw a lot of reactions clamoring for more solo movies focused on villains. This is the kind of shortsighted desire that is destined to fail.
Joker made sense as a solo movie for a number of reasons. The most important (and financially sound) reason being that the Joker is the most recognizable and influential villain in comic book history. As risky as Joker‘s approach to the material might have been, its subject character has been proven to be an enormous draw for audiences across the world. While there are plenty of other noteworthy villains – just in Batman’s rogues gallery alone – it’s highly unlikely that any of them have the kind of mass appeal to carry a singular film.
That’s not to say villains aren’t interesting from a narrative perspective. As someone who is intimately familiar with Batman stories in all forms of media, there are plenty of fantastic stories that can be told with a villain as the protagonist. But, to feel that Joker worked simply because it focused on a villain instead of a hero is missing the forest for a single tree. And if the DC film banner starts cranking out villain movies, it won’t help but feel like a crass, exploitative, and frankly uninspired maneuver after Joker.
Side note: I do think there is a good Catwoman movie to be made – she could certainly use some cinematic redemption – but that character has become so much less of a villain in modern interpretations that I don’t think she quite fits in with other potential villain movies.
DO Stray Away From the Shared Universe
When the cinematic marketplace is dominated by a single replicated experience, audiences will eventually begin to crave something new. This has happened time and time again over the years: the Western, the musical, the fantasy epic, etc.
For the last decade, superhero/comic book cinema has been overwhelmed by the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its particular brand of storytelling. This influence caused DC to try and replicate that model with… less than favorable results. Now, we’re beginning to see the DC canon start to embrace singular characters and franchises instead of attempting to create an overarching universal story.
And that is good. Let Marvel continue to do what they do best and let DC offer something different. Now, while the DC universe will continue to have tangential connections to other films, I think Joker proves that these connections alone aren’t what is going to drive people to the theater. Films like Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad will somewhat be continuations of previous DC films, but the impetus to create some grand cinematic universe shouldn’t be what drives the DC stable. Compelling self-contained stories (whether that’s self-contained to a single film or a specific franchise) are something DC can excel at, and Joker has given them the kind of renewed confidence they should have in this regard.
DON’T Try to Go Gritty and Grim for Everything
A stripped-down, bleak take on Joker might not be what some people wanted, but it’s a direction that isn’t without merit in regards to the title character. Doing a downright horror film version of the Joker is something that you can argue makes sense.
However, that shouldn’t be the springboard for the entire DC canon to suddenly turn into a dark and brooding R-rated grimfest. This is my least concerned point regarding the fallout from Joker’s success since it’s pretty certain next year’s slate of films – Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman 1984 – won’t be gritty or anywhere near Joker’s specific take and tone.
Still, I don’t want WB thinking that this means Matt Reeves’ The Batman suddenly needs to copy what Joker was doing. The same goes for the rest of their properties. In fact, it would be invigorating to hear that WB was going to do another standalone one-off film but this time it was focused on Superman. And what would be really enticing would be if it was a bright, anachronistic, cheery, corny, and definitive take on the character that was aimed at an all-ages audience.
Finding what the correct tone is for each property is what seems to work for wide audiences, and it’s just the right direction to take when making these comic book properties into big tentpole events. While a grim and gritty version of Joker was the right call, that doesn’t mean it will be the right call for the rest of the DC films.
DO Let Directors Run With a Unique Vision
No matter how you fall in regards to your feelings on Joker, it’s very clear that it is a specific version from a particular creative voice. Jack Giroux of /Film wrote a great piece about how only Todd Phillips could have been the person to make Joker. It illuminates a really fascinating point about the modern-day landscape of comic book cinema.
Because the Marvel Cinematic Universe has to all line up as part of a greater world, it means that the movies can’t color too much outside the lines with their takes. That doesn’t mean they can’t produce good movies, but there is a reason why a common complaint about the MCU is their samey nature.
On the other hand, DC is often very good at allowing filmmakers to bring a unique style and perspective to their films. Even Zack Snyder’s movies are definitively Zack Snyder movies. The problem that arose for some viewers with that vision was that it felt incongruous to the characters and world that Snyder was playing with (see the previous section).
Allowing creatives to come onto these comic book films and create something that feels distinctly theirs has got to be appealing to filmmakers. That freedom to really play with the material and make it their own is something DC should really lean into. They may not always work, but they will always feel like standout pieces of comic book cinema.
DON’T Turn Everything Into a Prestige Picture
A lot of the fervor surrounding Joker has to do with its position as a prestige picture for the studio. Scuttlebutt about Joaquin Phoenix’s performance was already high, and winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival only made the film look more distinguished. Now, there are plenty of cries for Phoenix to be nominated for Best Actor for the Academy Awards.
That’s all fine and dandy. Awards conversations are often tiresome but it’s always nice to see genre fare getting recognized by the establishment. But, this shouldn’t mean that the DC comics characters should be mined for Oscar bait. The last thing I want to see is DC trying to figure out how best to manipulate their roster in order to garner some kind of high praise from the Academy.
Honestly, this is also something to talk about specifically with the character of the Joker. Thanks to big-screen portrayals by Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, and even Jared Leto, the Clown Prince of Crime is being somewhat pigeon-holed into having to be a Big Deal any time the character shows up in a live-action format. It’d be great to get a supporting turn from someone playing the Joker and it not be touted as some big deal either in terms of performance or how the actor approached the role.
It’s great that Joker is probably getting some folks to watch a comic book movie that might not do so otherwise. If part of that reasoning is because of its critical acclaim, cool. But, I don’t really want to see an Oscar bait take on anyone else in the DC universe.
DO Embrace the Distinct Nature of Your Characters
Much like the section about allowing directors to bring sharp and original takes to their films, DC should also recognize what’s so special about their characters and play to those strengths. Part of the reason Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Shazam! were successful is that they feel like truly representative versions of their characters and their worlds.
The same can be said for Joker. Whether that representation is something you like is up to you, but it’s clearly something that has resonated with audiences and captivated their curiosity. It seems like audiences respond to movies about comic book characters that feel like strong, well-defined versions of those characters.
Instead of trying to make all your characters fit under a tonal umbrella (see the Shared Universe section), let filmmakers find what fascinates them about a particular character and expand upon that idea so that they can shape a version of that character that feels fresh and interesting. If artists are allowed to zero in on the best (read: most compelling) elements of these characters and work outward from there, we’ll get more on-screen heroes and villains that have the chance to become the standards for a certain generation of fans.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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