Joker (2019)

What exactly was wrong with how she was portrayed?

I don’t really consider Ivy being a straight-up villain bad.

Which Gotham Ivy or Batman and Robin Ivy?

Speaking off, i miss the days when Ivy WAS a straight up villain albeit with some noble qualities rather than trying to sell her as an Anti-villain to hero.

Ignoring the pure squick of aging up a little girl to adulthood so she can play Ivy, she did actually have good screen time and presence as a villain.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jun 29th 2020 at 6:40:38 AM

Gotham Ivy I mean.

I think there's supposed to be about a 25 year age difference between Bruce and Arthur (despite Phoenix being older than that), which seems workable for Batman and the Joker. I don't think Batman's ever supposed to be much past 30, with all he does, and the Joker has never been depicted as a physical match for him.

If in the sequel they make a jump from 10 to 20 years, Arthur will be more or less the age of his actor.

And it is noteworthy that Jack Nicholson was over 50 years old when he played the Joker.

I never really get iy, not the chararter but writer seen to flip flop whatever she is likable or not, specially when harley is involve.

For some reason, Ivy is more sympathetic than the Joker when it comes to relationships despite Ivy being just as abusive to Harley way back on before modern writers softened her up.

I think because Ivy still feel like a person, the joker without backstory and grandilocuent act feel more like performance with nothing to back it up, it dosen help joker act like a very steriotypical bastard boyfriend around it.

Granted why they chose a misatrope(ivy dosent really like people, the joker at least have afection with batman, twisted as it is)to be ivy best pal is decision I dont get.

Selina was taken?

But really, there is nothing about the Joker that feels that real beyond his obsession with Batman. So, Harley is obsessing over the mask of a man that's obsessing over someone else.

Edited by Blueace on Jul 3rd 2020 at 5:23:08 AM

Okay define stereotypical bastard boyfriend?

Cause most versions of him aren't even that relatively abusive to Harley. Its only in recent media that hes gotten more visibly physically abusive to better justify Harley leaving him. For the most part hes more emotionally abusive or neglectful which is bad but not like way over the top bad.

Also Ivy is basically just an eco-terrorist which is in some ways worse than Joker because there are people in real life like Ivy but no one is really the super serial killer Joker is.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 3rd 2020 at 2:33:28 AM

My guess on the stereotypical bastard boyfriend is that he's a meathead that isn't charming at all yet somehow managed to get a wife that he can beat up because they're both miserable assholes.

So nothing like Joker then since a big part of the character is that hes clever enough to manipulate people to serve his ends.

Which is pretty much his relationship with Harley. He took advantage of her interest in him into becoming his crony though how he manipulated her varies from adaptation to adaptation.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 3rd 2020 at 2:43:36 AM

Is an issue with writer making the joker more and more of a monster to the point you can said he is a discount pennywise, I this point make him a demon or something like that would feel apropiate for him, it will also back off some of joker inmortality stuff.

He display what most of fictional over the top abuse, I mean in mad love he throw her over a window and that waaaay back to animated batman series were she debuted, if anything it got worst as time move one.

Ivy is a eco terrorist but also a misatrope since she dosent really like people, in part because she is more of a plant.

Hell in the 2004 The Batman cartoon has him use criminal activities as an outlet for her because she's frustrated by people in her daily life & she then joins his side because she found being a supervillain fun.

Kinda, to put it better: the joker act like a typical abusive husbend: yelling her, order it around and depending of the medium outright hitting her, she constantly make excuse and at the first thing going back he just unleash shit on her.

Mad love scene is pretty much what everyone things of joker-harley relationship.

2004? Was it really that long ago?

But "the Joker is abusive" is not exactly news. It might be interesting, a bit sad, if Sophie's daughter is Harley. Of course, as critical to her arc as the death of Batman's parents, she leaves him for a mad (female) ecoterrorist.

It might also be interesting, the same way we saw the innocent Arthur Fleck develop into a crazed killer, someone we might be able to believe would pull Ledger's version's blood-soaked bank job, to see him develop into an abusive partner.

Edited by TwinBird on Jul 4th 2020 at 4:28:06 AM

I think is more is how joker is abusive, his antics with harley are trille and cliche because it miss the point on how the joker is awfull: he twist people mind and the worst thing he does are result of that:

In the batman he is responsable for clayface, from a former police officer.

in jnjustice is him who started that mess by torturing superman in one of the most fuck up ways posible which turn him into a villian.

Is him turing Harvey dent mindset in dark knight which push him into being two face, he also turn the population who was for the first time fasing the crimianls into paranoids.

in joker blogs his antics push jeremiah arkhan into a villian and harlen into becoming....harley.

In short, his him as the corruptor and manipulator what make the joker scary, him as abuser come as out of field.

Joker and Harley's original relationship in Batman: TAS was definitely abusive. "Mad Love" was highly praised as an episode for, among other things, being a chillingly accurate portrayal of an abuser who peppers his abusive behavior with just enough occasional tenderness for the abused partner to want to stay with him. The abuse in not just a recent addition.

Yeah, granted the may difference is that animated joker was still or feel human enough to be belivable, other feel more cartoonesh or just downright evil for the sake of it.

Because that was before the point where Joker become the grimdark super serial killer he is now.

Harley only had a handful of episodes as a standard Joker henchman. "Harley and Ivy" in the first season and "Harlinequade" in the second season shows early on the greater complexities of their relationship, and "Harley's Holiday" shows that Harley has the capacity to be good. It was the better part of a decade before writers realized that the Face–Heel Revolving Door started to look worse on Harley than just being a villain, so she started to get more overt negative traits to become more firmly a villain with certain boundaries rather than just a manipulated pawn.

Also Joker Fish had Harley snarking back at Joker on occasion.

I would like to see a version where it's Harley is the snarky minion who is still loyal because she enjoys being evil, and working for the Joker is a fun experience for her.

I'm in the camp that the Joker can't feel any form of attraction either sexually or romantically to either Harley or Batman.

Well there are moments like this where things are pretty friendly between the 2.

Return of the Joker similarly showed them as being precisely on the same page. Due to length and scope of its characters the DCAU as a whole was able to show a wide variety of different approaches to it's characters. Joker himself varied from broad novelty themed pranks (The Last Laugh, Laughing Fish) to brutal thuggish actions (Joker's Favor, Mad Love) to truly cruel and monstrous behavior (Wild Cards). Mark Hamill said he approached each Joker episode as though it was a new character altogether.

The Batman had a really interesting flip on Harley and Joker's relationship - basically the opposite of usual. Regular Joker is emotionally and physically abusive to Harley, but is also incredibly possessive of her if not arguably attached to her. The Batman's Joker doted on Harley, treated her well and acted like they were in an loving relationship, but ultimately only really cared about her as entertainment.

On the flipside, the Batman was the only adaptation for a while (after her original appearances, of course) to remember that Harley is attracted to the a supervillain lifestyle for reasons beyond just being in love for Joker. It's only recently that other adaptations have started to keep that in mind.