You say it's a "fact" yet the character is still a gigantic money maker lol.
And he doesn't seem to have any makeup on his face except for the hair dye.
Movie monster Joker is something we've never truly gotten before. And, let's face it, this kind of uber-grotesque Joker design was inevitable at some point or another, among all the chalk white-skinned and face paint Jokers they usually alternate between. The fact that it's a deformity rather than some Glasgow smile is already a nice change of pace.
The thing about it is, this doesn't feel like a "monster". This doesn't feel like the Bogeyman, Michael Myers-esque take on the Joker that we've been talking about for the longest time. This feels like an edgy kid who watched 'The Dark Knight' one too many times, did something crazy, and ended up in a mental asylum. The whole thing just feels "off".
There's nothing scary about it.
The views and trend activity this scene has gotten would suggest otherwise. Brah, by the time we see this character again in a significant capacity, it will have been at least five years since the last major appearance of the character (2019).
You say this like 5 years is some long stretch of time, when it's barely enough for people to get over the honeymoon phase of Phoenix's portrayel being cemented into pop culture (like Ledger was).
You're also not taking into account the very real possibility of a Philips JOKER sequel, which is just gonna dillute the character even more if Reeves also pursues the character in the sequel (not saying he will).
And for an audience that is "not excited" about this character anymore, he sure does make bank literally every single time he features in a movie.
But the success for each one of these examples can be broken down to a specific catch, that, at the time, was wholly new to audiences.
- The Dark Knight reinvented the Joker after a 20 year hiatus, grounding him, and his dichotomy with Batman in deep philosophy, all of which was spearheaded by an academy award winning performance. Ledger defines the character even to this to day
- Suicide Squad was another (controversial) reinvention that introduced audiences to the Mad Love aspect of Joker with Harley Quinn, which had previously never been explored, and which the market was hungry for, given Harley's popularity
- JOKER, once again, reinvented the character, this time taking inspiration from the 'Killing Joke' and classics like 'King Of Comedy'), grounding the character in humanity and contemporary conversations about mental health & class inequity. 'JOKER' was a deconstruction of the character's icongraphy.
All 3 of these Jokers are radically different from each other, in mannerisms, aesthetic, and even the THEMES they explore. They all brought something new to the table to grab audiences.
The Elephant Man angle that Reeves is going for, feels like a desperate, lip service-y attempt by Reeves to justify telling the story again -- because it doesn't feel like that at all in execution. To me, it feels like a byproduct of Reeves rushing to establish a Joker in his Gotham, and not having enough time come up with something truly imaginative and fresh.
This is what happens when you rush things. The Joker did not need to be seen for at least another 5 years.
And, to once again stress, we have no idea what capacity Reeves intends to use him in. Maybe he's the main antagonist of a sequel, maybe he's just one of many villains in a sequel, maybe he only ever shows up in a spinoff. Complaining about fatigue when we are completely oblivious to how he will be used in the future sounds like complaining for the sake of it to me.
But my complaint isn't about usage, it's the character's existence in itself.
Why did another version of the Joker NEED to be established so early, when Reeves has a plethora of Rogues at his fingertips. I understand that every filmaker is gonna be chomping at the bit to get their hands on the most iconic elements of a pre existing story, but when your adaptation of said property is like the 4th/5th reboot in a long line of franchise films, the burden is on you to seperate your take from all the others, and if you can't do that in a satisfactory manner, then you have no business telling the story at all. No reason to tell it again..
Now you're just being willfully obtuse. Come on. The only difference is the tenor of his voice? The only difference?
Ledger didn't have patchy short hair (practically bald), Ledger didn't have significant scarring and blistering all over his head and face, Keoghan isn't wearing grungy clown makeup, Keoghan's mouth is naturally shaped by a genetic condition and not a physical mutilation.
The context of these design choices don't mean anything when the design itself looks like if somebody set Heath Ledger's Joker on fire.
It's nothing more than an even
more grotesque, more extreme ideation of the same aesthetic choices that Nolan made with his version of the character. Reeves needed more time to think
I don't know if the obscurity of the glass is playing tricks on your eyes (dark eye sockets + big red smile = Ledger), but objectively there are significant design differences between these two.
Ofc there are some differences. The problem is, both designs are cut from the same cloth, the same design philosophy, just one is a more extreme version of the other