“The People’s Joker” Is an Outlaw Vision of the Superhero Movie
“The People’s Joker,” directed by Vera Drew, is the best superhero movie I’ve ever seen—because, unlike studio-produced films in the genre, it responds to the filmmaker’s deep personal concerns. There’s a noble history of directors transforming commercial assignments into personal statements, but it usually doesn’t extend to superheroes. First, the characters’ canonical identities admit of only slight shifts, and even these are inflated by fans to intergalactic proportions. Second, even slight changes impose a butterfly effect on a franchise: changing a detail in a movie today will force change all the way down the line in any planned sequels. By contrast, “The People’s Joker”—a crowdfunded, D.I.Y. parody of Todd Phillips’s 2019 film “Joker”—gives not a hoot about comic-book canon and car...
