Ever since it was removed from the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for copyright issues after one screening, “The People’s Joker” became what legends are made of. Once its premise and background is heard, it’s hard not to see why: A Batman parody film about a trans coming-of-age story that was made without DC or Warner Bros. knowing a thing? Who wouldn’t want to see that?
Along with its cancellation in 2022 and the film’s director Vera Drew fighting for a distribution deal, “The People’s Joker” became the biggest underdog movie of the decade. Now, almost two years since its opening screening, the movie is getting a small nationwide release with the help of queer film distribution company Altered Innocence.
While it was only shown in two small theaters at St. Louis for two weekends, including the Webster Film Series, the quiet release doesn’t do much to hide its sheer power. “The People’s Joker” makes sure to bite rather than bark.
Drew uses pieces of her own life to create the coming-of-age story of Vera (Vera Drew), a young aspiring comedian from Smallville who navigates friendship, love, and gender identity in the big city. That city, of course, is Gotham, depicted as a dystopian society ruled by surveillance drones (courtesy of a retired Batman) shows about cops committing suicideand the biggest villain of them all, UCB Live, the Batman version of Saturday Night Live.
Told through Scorsese-esque narration, Vera- with her deadname being censored throughout the film- goes on her own origin story, eventually transitioning into Vera and creating her comedian alter ego, Joker the Harlequin. The name itself proves to be an act of defiance against forced gender roles assigned to male and female comedians, who are literally classified as either Joker or Harlequins in this world. Under this identity, she specializes in underground anti-comedy, and confronts her issues with her transphobic mother (Lynn Downey) and challenges the comedy world of Gotham.
In creating the world of DC without the huge multi-million-dollar budget, Drew gets incredibly creative. Utilizing the limitations of her low-budget, the film uses various effects and styles. Backgrounds are obviously green-screened, establishing shots of the city include toy models or crude 3-D shapes, and there are characters that are either shown in stop-motion or underdeveloped 3-D animation. Because of the low-budget, fight scenes are done in 2-D animation reminiscent of YouTube animation and 90s cartoons. There’s even a Batcave scene that was hilariously done in a Minecraft mod. It is all ugly as sin, yet charming.
Alongside the mish-mash visuals is the story. Being a parody film, “The People’s Joker” uses plotlines and details from every Batman movie and puts it all together in an interesting pastiche. While the main story of an aspiring comedian is clearly an ode to the 2019 film “Joker” (this movie originally started as an editing project for Drew, who was encouraged by a friend to re-edit the Joaquin Phoenix film), other plot threads that call back to other iterations of the Joker, good and bad.
There are multiple scenes paying tribute to the iconic imagery of Tim Burton’s “Batman” films. Vera’s toxic love interest Mr. J (Kane Distler) is a riff on Jared Leto’s version of the Joker, this time being a trans man with a less pulpy depiction of an emotionally abusive narcissist. The film includes an opening dedication to director Joel Schumaker, with Vera later describing how his films helped her realize that she wanted to be a woman in her childhood (of course thein-universe versions of his films are done in crappy 3-D models). Lines and locations taken from both the films and comics are thrown in throughout, but never in an overtly mocking way. With all these styles thrown-in together, “The People’s Joker” becomes the Frankenstein of comic book movies. The ambition is clearly seen on the screen, the use of intertextuality and purposefully bad-looking effects coming off as passionate instead of a hack job. Despite it parodying aspects of Batman stories, like the titular hero being a conservative creep with an over-reliance on surveilling the entire city, Drew also has a deep love for it. Why else would there be references so frequent and intricate that it would make the #1 Batman fan’s head spin?
Although the visuals and pastiche-heavy story add a layer of earnest charm, what makes “The People’s Joker” so refreshing is in its significance. Free from the strings of franchise filmmaking, Vera Drew’s DIY passion project inadvertently shows a side of superhero cinema never seen before.
In using Intellectual Property (IP) to tell a semi-autobiographical queer story, Drew deviates from the typical formula done in mainstream superhero films and uses the genre to create an introspective look at identity and the elements, including comic book media, that influence us as people. Essentially, Drew created a low-budget arthouse superhero fan film.
Its style and direction may not be for everyone, including the most die-hard DC fans, but “The People’s Joker” brings variety to a genre that has recently been criticized for being too samey. Perhaps its punk attitude could inspire filmmakers to create their own versions of superhero movies, starting a trend of films done as personal projects rather than studio-controlled popcorn extravaganzas. That future is doubtful, yet it is satisfying enough to live in a world where Vera Drew got to make her own work, a copyright-infringing gamble that happily paid off.
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