Director Matt Reeves actually shot two scenes for “The Batman” in which a very special character appears: the Joker (Barry Keoghan). One of those scenes didn’t make it into the theatrical version, but has now been released after the fact.
“The Batman” ends with what could almost be a post-credit scene: After Batman (Robert Pattinson) manages to foil the plans of the Riddler (Paul Dano), the latter is at an all-time low and despairing in his cell at Arkham Asylum. But then he is approached by his cellmate: the Joker (Barry Keoghan).
In an interview, however, “The Batman” director Matt Reeves already told us about the theatrical release in March 2022 that this last scene is not meant to be a preview of “The Batman 2,” but merely the conclusion of Riddler’s character development. And he also revealed to us that there was one more scene with Barry Keoghan as the Joker – and now it has been officially released.
You can watch the scene in the video embedded above. In it, Batman visits the Joker in Arkham because he expects him to help him find the Riddler. This situation is somewhat reminiscent of “The Silence of the Lambs”, where the incarcerated cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is supposed to help the FBI find another killer.
AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT JOKER
“The Joker gets Batman all riled up,” Reeves described the scene to us in an interview – and that’s actually true: The Joker sees through the Riddler’s motivation pretty quickly, but would rather talk about his favorite enemy, Batman, whom he confronts with some uncomfortably accurate observations.
As in the final scene in the theatrical version, the Joker is never really visible in the edited out scene, but is sometimes partial and sometimes blurry. Still, this impression is enough to establish:
Barry Keoghan’s scarred and disfigured Joker seems to be once again a completely different interpretation than the anarchic Joker from “The Dark Knight” (Heath Ledger), the gangster boss from “Suicide Squad” (Jared Leto) or the tragic clown from “Joker” (Joaquin Phoenix).
THE INSPIRATION FOR BARRY KEOGHAN’S JOKER
Talking to US industry magazine Variety, Matt Reeves revealed that he didn’t want to reveal the Joker quite yet because he’s not yet 100 percent the Joker as we know him from the comics. However, although the exact look will never be shown, the character’s appearance has been fleshed out in detail.
Incidentally, the inspiration for the Joker is the character that served as the template for the comic book Joker: Conrad Veidt’s Gwynplaine from 1928’s “The Man Who Laughs.” And instead of mysterious scars on the corners of his mouth or a vat of chemicals, this Joker’s Origin Story is a congenital disease because of which he can’t stop laughing.
