In a genius move, Matt Reeves and Warner Bros have released the deleted scene of Robert Pattinson’s Batman meeting Barry Keoghan’s Pre-Joker. He is known as pre-Joker because he hasn’t become the Prince of Crime we’ve seen in previous adaptations just yet.
You can watch the five-minute scene below.
The quick reason this is such a genius move by WB and Reeves is that it continues the hype around the film as it enters its fourth week, and it could help the box office a little just getting people to think, “I need to see The Batman again.”
As for the scene itself, I loved it. This could be the first time I’m actually terrified of The Joker. The design and make-up departments deserve our applause as he looks like a classic Universal monster. His body has clearly gone into a bath of chemicals with his green hair partly falling out, skin dry and cracked and fingernails either fell or ripped off.
Then we come to the smile, and in a previous interview with IGN, Reeves explained this version of the character has had a smile since birth.
“He’s got this congenital disease. He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here where it’s not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it’s not the Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don’t know where they came from’” said the filmmaker.
“What if this is something that he’s been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he’s had this very dark reaction to it, and he’s had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.’”
And does it get into your head because you can see how awful and cracked his lips are and love the foreshadowing of the lipstick is needed to stop them getting dry and you have the laugh that fits with this younger version, and I can’t wait to see more.
I loved how this character has a history with Batman as they met in his first year of crime-fighting, maybe when Joker was the leader of the Red Hood Gang and the accident in Ace Chemicals and that he’s clever in a Silence of the Lambs way of needing evil to defeat evil.
However, despite my fear and love for this scene, I’m glad this was removed from the main film. It would’ve slightly taken away from crucial moments from the movie, like Batman realising being vengeance has given the wrong people a symbol and needs to be more. Meanwhile, it would’ve made Paul Dano’s incredible scene-stealing performance in Arkham less impactful.
These are probably why Reeves didn’t include it, but I look forward to him giving his reason because the removal shows how great of a director he is.
The Bear Cave 