The Batman's Deleted Scene Fixes Its Joker Problem | Screen Rant
Warning: Contains spoilers for The Batman.
A deleted scene from The Batman fixes the major problem the film had with the Joker. Barry Keoghan’s Joker only has a small cameo near the end of the film, but it still presented issues that both hurt the film and could lead to problems with future installments. The deleted scene involving the Joker alleviates a lot of the major problems with his original cameo, although that’s not to say it isn’t without its own issues.
During the dénouement of The Batman, as Riddler watches his plans fall apart and Gotham begin the road to recovery, he befriends a fellow Arkham inmate who director Matt Reeves confirmed to be the Joker. While it was only a small scene, it felt disconnected from the rest of the film for how little it added to the story beyond establishing that the Joker exists in this universe and is going to do something at some point. The scene came across as a very blatant sequel hook for future installments of the franchise with little else attached to it, and as a result, it muddied an otherwise tight ending for the film.
A deleted scene for The Batman could have fixed those problems, however. The deleted scene shows Batman visiting the Joker to get advice on the Riddler case, which he gives while also setting up a history between the two of them. The scene gives Barry Keoghan's Joker a cameo in a way that doesn’t feel tacked on because it manages to advance the plot, in addition to doing a better job of conveying his place in the world. That being said, the scene isn’t without its own issues, even if it fixes a lot of the problems with the original scene.
The biggest problem with the Joker’s cameo is how disconnected it feels from the rest of the film. Everything in the film up to that point had revolved around Riddler and the various mob families as the antagonists, so suddenly introducing the Joker with so little time left felt very removed from the story and seemed to not serve a purpose beyond establishing the Joker’s existence. Reeves has said that Joker won’t necessarily be in the sequel to The Batman (via IGN), but if anything, that makes his cameo even worse, since it means that the film wasted time teasing a character with no guaranteed follow-up.
Another issue with the cameo is that it involved the Joker, at all. Over the years, both the comics and various Batman adaptations have been inserting the Joker into stories whenever possible, which usually leads to him taking over the plot at the expense of other characters; two noteworthy examples of this in recent years are the Joker being the main antagonist of Batman: Arkham Origins, even though the game was advertised as having Black Mask as the villain, and how a good deal of the comics written by Scott Snyder from 2017 to 2021 featured the Batman who Laughs, an evil version of Batman with the mentality of the Joker, as a central antagonist. Joker’s cameo results in a similar problem as it ends up stealing attention away from the other antagonists to draw attention to the Joker being part of the story. Since Joker is Batman’s archnemesis, it makes sense for various stories to feature him, but after a certain point, it can become excessive when the same characters are being focused on time and time again as opposed to ones who rarely ever get the spotlight.
All of that explains why Barry Keoghan's Joker cameo in Matt Reeves' The Batman doesn’t work as well as cameos in other superhero projects. Most of the time, when a character makes a cameo in a movie or a TV show, they serve a purpose for the actual story they’re appearing in beyond establishing their existence, and even if the main purpose is some sort of sequel hook, it usually happens in a post-credits scene so as not to detract from the main story. At the same time, while it’s not uncommon for cameos to be made by characters who would logically be in the story such as the Justice League appearing at the end of Peacemaker or, to a similar degree, Tails appearing at the end of Sonic the Hedgehog, it’s not usually a character subjected to overexposure in various media like the Joker, so their surprise appearance ends up holding more weight to it. Because of those factors, it’s hard to see the Joker’s original cameo as anything other than a problem for the film.
The Joker’s original cameo has a lot of problems attached to that, and the deleted scene could have fixed most of them. The Batman’s deleted scene works because it has the Joker be involved in the actual plot of the story by giving Batman advice about Riddler and not simply being there to be there. The issue of it further contributing to the oversaturation of the character is inevitable, but it’s balanced out by giving him a better reason to be in the story to begin with.
Because of all of that, if The Batman's deleted scene had been included, it would have made the final scene with Riddler and Joker in Arkham much more important. With the inclusion of the deleted scene, there’s more to Joker’s cameo beyond the movie just establishing that the Joker exists, as it now plays off of something that was previously established in the story. Thanks to that, it can exist outside of being in service to future developments, which gives the Arkham scene a better sense of being organically tied to the film than it originally did.
Joker’s deleted scene fixes a lot of problems with the original cameo, but that doesn't necessarily mean it should have been included. If the original cameo were to be kept intact, then it definitely would have made sense to include the deleted scene. As it currently stands, the original Arkham scene does little more than set up future appearances from Barry Keoghan's Joker with no specific idea of when the payoff will come, but with the deleted scene, the Joker’s presence in the movie becomes more justified as it gives him an actual reason to be involved with the plot.
Taken by itself, however, the deleted scene has less justification to be in the film. The deleted scene likely would have happened sometime in the middle of the film when the search for Riddler is starting to ramp up, so because of that, it could have also been distracting for taking focus away from the story for a scene with the Joker, even if it’s one that adds to the story. While the original cameo doesn’t add much to Reeves' The Batman, since it came at the end of the film, it couldn’t do a whole lot to mess with the general flow of the story; in that regard, the deleted scene could have been even worse for the film from a structural standpoint, even if it does more for the Joker than his original cameo.
The Batman’s deleted scene could have fixed a lot of the problems with the Joker’s original cameo when the two scenes are put together, but by itself, it could have still created problems. While the deleted scene gives the Joker a larger role in the story and better justifies his inclusion in the film, it could have still dragged down the film by abruptly shifting focus from Paul Dano's Riddler to a Joker cameo, and having that happen in the middle of the film as opposed to the end could have been worse in the long run. The deleted scene fixes a lot of the story-based issues of the original Joker cameo, but when pacing is taken into account, the original cameo probably has a better place in the film, even if the actual scene isn’t as good.