Batman 2022

Barry Keoghan makes a surprise appearance as one of the most famous villains in The Batman mythos, but you've seen him many times before Joker.

He stands up loudly to Ikaris’ genocidal notions, and he has a subtle and amusing romance in the margins with Marvel’s first deaf superhero, Makkari (Lauren Ridloff). Take Keoghan’s character Druig. Likely introduced with the intention of being a red herring for untrustworthiness due to Keoghan’s unconventional appearance, Druig is an alien immortal who has the ability to control the minds of humans by the thousands. Indeed, Druig returns in Eternals’ third act to be revealed as one of the noblest of this odd super-family. Now, Keoghan would’ve screwed over Gawain no matter what, but the way in which this meek character and his compatriots can so thoroughly humiliate the film’s protagonist, leaving him begging for his life barely a few miles outside of Camelot, is the first of many examples where we find Gawain’s chivalry left wanting. However, Keoghan’s episodic appearance in the film is also the first illuminating test of the hero’s character. Bart Layton’s followup to his groundbreaking documentary The Imposter is a curious mix of truth and fiction, dramatizing a true crime case with actors as well as using the real people alongside them. This was the event where thousands of civilian boats and vessels came to the maritime rescue of hundreds of thousands of British soldiers stranded in France after the fall of Paris. The film delves into the psychology of these otherwise squeaky clean young men and what drove them to the central event. Keoghan is scary, despite his diminutive size in comparison to Jarvis. He’s charismatic but dangerous in an excellent but stressful movie following an inevitable descent into hell. Despite being only 29 years old, Keoghan has already amassed quite the career of playing weirdos and outsiders, and probably in more than one movie that you’ve seen. Something which became all the more apparent after Warner Bros. and director Matt Reeves released a second, deleted scene in which Keoghan’s Joker has his first on-screen confrontation with Robert Pattinson’s Batman. One who is obviously the Joker.