'Joker': Why Joaquin Phoenix's Joker Will Never Meet Robert Pattinson's Batman

Joker, which has now been released in cinemas, has a number of moments in it which fans think are teasing a sequel that will see the upcoming Robert Pattinson Batman take on Joaquin Phoenix's Joker⁠—a move that the makers of the current film have flat-out denied.

This chimes with other moments in Joker that show that not only is a Phoenix/Pattinson battle movie unlikely, it is actually impossible based on what we know about the movies Joker and The Batman, which seem to exist in completely different timelines according to a number of hidden clues.

Why Joaquin Phoenix's Joker will Never Meet Robert Pattinson's Batman

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Joker

If we look at the hints as to what year Joker is set in, the Bruce Wayne (played by Dante Pereira Olson) we see in the film is too old to be the same one to be played by Robert Pattinson.

At one point in the film, we see a cinema marquee advertising the films Blow Out and Zorro the Gay Blade. Presuming Gotham has the same release schedule as the real New York, this puts the action of the end of Joker, where a protester kills Bruce's parents, as happening in July 1981.

As usually depicted in Batman lore, Bruce is between 8 and 10 years old when his parents die, with Joker actor Dante Pereira Olson about nine years old, giving the Joker version of Bruce Wayne a date of birth somewhere between 1971 and 1973.

In 2021, the year The Batman is scheduled to be released, this would make the character 50 years old.

In contrast, Pattinson was born in 1986 and will be 35 years old at the time of The Batman's release, making him considerably too young to play the Joker Bruce Wayne. Similarly, if the Phoenix Joker is the same age the actor who plays him is (44) in 1981, The Batman will see The Joker at the age of 84. Though the idea of an octogenarian Joker would certainly be a fresh take, it is hard to see an 80-year-old pose a major threat to a Bruce Wayne in the prime of his life.

Of course, The Batman could be a period piece set sometime in the mid-00s, and while a Bruce Wayne living in the era of flip-phones, MySpace and Ed Hardy hats could be fun, there has been no indication so far that this is to be the case.

Director Todd Phillips has also previously ruled out a Joker/The Batman crossover film. He told Variety "No, definitely not" when asked about a crossover, adding: "Oddly, in the states, comic books are our Shakespeare it seems, and you can do many many versions of Hamlet… There will be many more Jokers, I'm sure, in the future."

This also seems to rule out the idea that were the Pattinson Batman to meet a Joker it would be the one played by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad. However, that decision will likely be in the hands of The Batman director Matt Reeves.

According to Forbes, casting calls have been made for The Batman so far for Riddler, Penguin, Catwoman, Two-Face plus a "host of other villains," suggesting that Joker may in fact be the only major villain not to be facing Robert Pattinson's Batman.

Joker is in cinemas now.