We Don't Need Another Hero

No contribution to the superhero genre exemplifies this philistinism more perfectly than Joker (2019), which, I now realise, I also watched on an airplane. Joker uses astoundingly obvious visual references to Taxi Driver (1976) with no deeper purpose than to make its viewers say to themselves or their seatmates: “Whoa, this is like Taxi Driver.” Of course, it is not “like” Taxi Driver, for there is a difference in cinematic language between standing on the shoulders of giants and simply riding in their wake.