While there were plenty of people who predicted success for Todd Phillips’ Joker, I don’t think many could have predicted it being a billion-dollar earner, far outpacing the likes of Logan and Deadpool quite easily. Between its arthouse-like feel, its character-driven story, and its unrelenting, dour tone, it seemed to click with critics and audiences alike, but a billion dollars?

What can account for the film’s mammoth success? Surely, there are plenty of factors that played into it, but what about the name recognition and connection Joker has to Batman? Well, director Todd Phillips doesn’t think that was much of a factor.

“I think it was more than that,” he told Deadline. “I mean, I think there are themes in the movie that really resonated with people. None of us thought an R-rated movie could do over $1 billion across the world. But I think the themes in it really resonated. The thing Scott Silver and I set out to do when we wrote the movie together was to make something meaningful in that comic book space, but also something really that addressed what was going on in 2016, when we started writing. It’s pretty obvious what was happening in our country in 2017 while we were writing it, and really wanted to use Joker to make a movie about the loss of compassion and the lack of decorum in the world.

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“I’ve been around the world with the movie,” he continued, “and, speaking to the audiences, some people see it as an indictment of America and other people see it as a mirror for what’s going on in their country, both with the lack of compassion and with the wealth and equality issues.”

Well, you can’t say the filmmaker lacks confidence. That being said, I can’t say he’s completely wrong. There was definitely some curiosity as to how or if Joker would connect to Batman, but I don’t think any of that would have mattered if the story didn’t work on some level. It may have made a few hundred million dollars out of curiosity, but no way would it have made much more beyond that.

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SOURCE: Deadline