Joker: Folie à Deux flips the script on Harley Quinn — but not on Todd Phillips’ problems writing women

Lady Gaga’s Joker character echoes every issue Phillips has had with female roles in the Hangover movies and beyond If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros. Pictures Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux , is catching flak from fans for deviating from perceived canon — both the various comics versions of longtime Batman villain Joker, and what fans thought they were seeing in the earlier film. But that lack of fidelity should be the movie’s greatest strength — especially when it comes to retooling Harley Quinn. Phillips, who’s had notable problems writing women who are funny, fully realized, or even functional in their own right within a story, was handed one of the Batverse’s most popular and engagingly evolved characters of the past 30-plus years. And yet he still manages to warp her with his own creative flaws and blind spots. Harley isn’t an easy choice for live-action adaptation. She originated on the beloved cartoon Batman: The Animated Series , where her initial role as a combination henchman and moll for the Joker, dressed in an outlandish harlequin outfit, cast her as comic relief. She became popular and surprisingly durable on the series, anchoring several of her own episodes and eventually making it into the comics world. Over the course of decades, her antics became less subservient to the Joker, to the point where most current interpretations of the character fully separate her from her irredeemably murderous former boss/lover. The previous round of DCEU movies already covered her emancipation, with Margot Robbie playing the role three times over the course of five years. By reuniting her with her beloved Mistah J, Joker: Folie à Deux runs the risk of feeling like a regression for a character no longer defined as Girl Joker. But the movie has a killer idea to circumvent that narrative. Rather than a psychiatrist obsessed with the Clown Prince of Crime, the movie’s version, incarnated by Lady Gaga as Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, is an unstable fan of Joker as […]

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