We are all familiar with or have heard of the Joker, the iconic DC villain familiarized with Batman. He has been a household name since his debut in Batman #1 in 1940.

The villain is iconic for his bright purple suit, green hair, and crazy attitude. Constantly making puns and jokes, we all came to adore the character. 

After all of the recent DC movies not getting close to the level of Marvel, DC needed a huge hit to keep them in the competition of Hollywood. With the determination of writers and comic fans they found one. 

They managed to come up with an idea that no one saw coming: a Joker origin story. Joker was an out of nowhere movie that blew the minds of critics and viewers.

No one expected much of the movie upon it’s announcement in December of 2018.  

With the long list of flopped movies released by DC, they had the right to not expect much from a villain backstory movie. The odds were overcome when the movie came into theaters on October 4th.

The movie shocked audiences with star Joaquin Phoenix’s amazing acting and the deeper meaning of the Joker. Audiences experienced the confusing plot with the Joker’s rare condition of personality disorder and PTSD.

As some viewers know, some of the movie is just a figure of his imagination and never happened, hinting at him being completely insane. 

Fans got to see the full potential backstory of their favorite villain, based largely off of graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke.

What shocked audiences even more was the records Joker broke. It set the stage as the highest grossing October release movie in history. The most shocking record was it achieving the highest grossing rated-R film ever released.

That’s right: it beat most horror movies competing for the top spot. 

It only beat the past record holder, Deadpool 2, by about $3 million in grossing. For a movie that only had a budget of $55 to 70 mil., a grossing of $788.1 mil. is a huge profit. 

These records make it the most successful DC movie to date.

The success of Joker overshadows many other DC movies that have come out the past couple of years. With new movies based on the comic series scheduled to start production soon, we can only hope that DC has as much success with them as they did with Joker.