Todd McFarlane has been talking about his forthcoming reboot of Spawn at New York Comic-Con this week. But he’s also been throwing shade at another comic-book movie; namely Todd Phillips’ Joker, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as the title character. And it seems McFarlane doubts that the film will be as hardcore as early word suggests.
Warner R vs Todd R
“Here’s what I’m going to say,” McFarlane told the NYCC audience during a Q&A. “I’m going to make a bet. I hope I’m wrong and you can all ridicule me. But I do not believe that the Joker movie is going to be a hard R. I don’t believe it. It’s going to be a hard Warner Brothers R. That’s different than a hard Todd R. My definition of hard… dude, mine is way out there.”
Making Children Cry
McFarlane then proceeded to pitch his own Joker movie: “If they gave me the Joker, and said, ‘Do whatever you want with it’, here’s the first thing that I would do; first off, don’t bring your children, because they would cry. And if you bring your children and they cry, Mom’s going to have to leave because Dad will dig it. Because I’m going to show adult insanity on that screen for adults. Because it’s R-rated. I don’t care if I sell t-shirts.”
Blaming Batman
He then claimed that Batman is the reason that Joker won’t go hard R. “The next time the Joker has to appear in Batman, that has to be PG-13,” McFarlane claimed. “It has to be PG-13. So they’re going to go insane cool, get us all worked up into a lather, and then put him in Batman and downgrade him back to PG-13 and it’s going to be a watered-down version. They can’t! So what they’re going to do is nudge it. My belief? They’re going to nudge it. They’re not going to go crazy.”
Finally, at the end of his entertaining tirade, McFarlane added mischievously, “But I wanna do Joker Part 2!”