Joker director Todd Phillips on how Arthur Fleck would react to “alpha male” Batman

Bruce Wayne is still a child in Joker and Joker: Folie à Deux, so the movies naturally take place in a period before Batman. But how would Arthur Fleck react if he came face-to-face with the real Batman?

Joker: Folie à Deux director Todd Phillips has a few thoughts on the matter. “I think Arthur would be in awe of the alpha male that is Batman. I really do,” Phillips told IGN. “I think Arthur would look up and appreciate it. I think he’d be in awe of that.”

Phillips believes “Arthur always had a fascination with men at ease, and he is not a man at ease. [Robert De Niro’s] Murray Franklin in the first movie was a man at ease. He probably saw the guys he worked with as men at ease, and that was the one thing that Arthur could never be was a man at ease.“

It’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever see Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker face off against Batman, as Phillips has said he doesn’t intend on returning for Joker 3. “It was fun to play in this sort of sandbox for two movies,” he said, “but I think we’ve said what we wanted to say in this world.” Phillips has previously said that he expects the ending of Folie à Deux to be unsettling for some. “For the people that have seen this movie in general … at the end, they sit and they don’t move for about three to five minutes,” Phillips said during a recent Q&A. “Then they text me, the ones that know me, or email me and go, ‘I need a minute to process the movie.’” Phillips added, “I think it’s going to leave you with a very unsettling … I think it’s unsettling.”

In addition to Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, Joker: Folie À Deux stars Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Jacob Lofland, and Harry Lawtey. Zazie Beetz also returns to reprise her role as Sophie Dumond from the first movie, a love interest for Arthur. Plot details are being kept under wraps, but it’s been said that much of the sequel will take place within Arkham Asylum, which is where we left Arthur in the last film. Joker: Folie à Deux will hit theaters on October 4th.