“Joker” executive producer Michael Uslan defended the upcoming film in an interview Thursday, saying its depiction of the notorious Batman villain is reflecting of the times.
“Look at what I consider some of the most important films: What have they done?” he told the Asbury Park Press. “They’ve held up a mirror to our society, and there are times when people don’t want to see that reflection, they want to run from it.
“They don’t want to acknowledge it because sometimes the reflection shows warts and all, whether it’s biases and prejudices or what’s happened to our society, reflecting the times,” he said.
Mr. Uslan, who served as the producer of the “Batman” film franchise for 30 years, was responding to critics who have accused “Joker,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, of promoting real-world violence and painting the notorious supervillain as a hero. Last week, families of the victims who were killed during a Batman movie at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012 wrote a letter to Warner Bros. demanding that the studio donate profits to gun-victim charities.
Warner Bros. defended the film, explaining in a statement that one of the functions of storytelling is to “provoke difficult conversations around complex issues.”
In his interview, Mr. Uslan cited provocative works of 1970s cinema that he described as “Joker” antecedents such as Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” and Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,” the Asbury Park Press reported.
“If anything, I believe movies can shake people up and bring issues to attention, whether it’s about guns or the need to treat mental illness or the need for civility and for us to start talking with each other instead of at each other again,” he said. “You can’t suppress that, you can’t censor that.”
His comments came one day after The Wrap published an interview with “Joker” director Todd Phillips, who also defended the film as sparking a conversation around uncomfortable issues.
“I’m surprised. … Isn’t it good to have these discussions?” Mr. Phillips said. “Isn’t it good to have these discussions about these movies, about violence? Why is that a bad thing if the movie does lead to a discourse about it?”
“What’s outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far left can sound like the far right when it suits their agenda,” he said. “It’s really been eye-opening for me.”
