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Against Every 2022 Oscars Movie - Vulture

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Netflix, Apple TV+ and United Artists Releasing

This has been a rough Oscars race, though it’s not the fault of the movies. You wouldn’t guess from the Academy’s apologetic panic that the Best Picture slate this year is varied and interesting, running the gamut from a sci-fi blockbuster to a meditative drama about grief and from a refreshed musical classic to a nostalgic coming-of-age comedy. But rather than coalesce around a favorite, this year’s discussions have felt more like they’re been in search of a villain that’s failed to materialize or at least of some fitting receptacle for all those disgruntled feelings as cinema heads toward its unknown future. This chaotic award season has been defined more by fears of irrelevance than by the movies themselves — as well as by the declining ratings that have resulted in multiple categories being banished from the live telecast and by the introduction of a Twitter-driven “Fan Favorite” poll that’s immediately become a standom battleground.

Is it any wonder the usual narratives have failed to come together? While there’s plenty to recommend about The Power of the Dog, the Jane Campion western feels as if it has maintained its place atop prediction lists less because of its winning qualities and more because it just has the least chance of losing. Its late-breaking rival, CODA — a Sundance breakout of cozy predictability — has risen through the ranks seemingly because it’s a sleeper contender that Academy members haven’t had the chance to get tired of talking about yet. Meanwhile, Belfast, Don’t Look Up, King Richard, Nightmare Alley, and the rest have already had a chance to be found wanting either because of their respective controversies and shortcomings or because of the ways in which they might be perceived as failing the viewing public or film fans. And in these uncertain times, hell, who are we to disagree with what the people want? As award season comes to a close, Vulture is surrendering to darkness with an array of arguments making the case for why any one of this year’s ten nominees can be the Oscars villain. If you’re still not sure what to root for this year, at least you can come up with something to root against.

CODA

No one had any problems with CODA until it started winning. When it was lingering around the bottom half of the Best Picture rankings, everyone was happy to let Sian Heder’s film into the Oscars club. A little Sundance movie about a hearing girl in a Deaf family, how cute! Good for Apple TV+. Now that it appears to be actual threat to win Best Picture, though, the knives have come out. (And not in a fun, Daniel Craig way.) Its big win at the Producers Guild of America Awards last weekend was Film Twitter’s Fort Sumter moment. Suddenly, if you were rooting for CODA, it meant you were a philistine who doesn’t appreciate great art; if you were rooting against it, you were a heartless snob. (Except it’s worth noting that Deaf critics have side-eyed the film, too.) — Nate Jones

Drive My Car

Imagine you’re an Academy executive. You’re doing everything you can to make this telecast a treat for the average moviegoer, even moving a full third of your categories off the live broadcast. Sure, everyone’s making fun of the idea of the Oscars Fan Favorite, and half your membership is up in arms, but those complaints will fade away when you produce the most mainstream, accessible Oscars in years. Wait, what’s that? The biggest trophy of the night has gone to a three-hour Japanese film about a guy listening to his dead wife read Uncle Vanya? Jesus fucking Christ. It was all for nothing. — N.J.

Don’t Look Up

I’ve made my case. — Alison Willmore

Licorice Pizza

If there were a category for most annoying discourse, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest would have it on lock. Licorice Pizza has been the locus of not one but two terrible online fights: First, there was the matter of the racist restaurant owner played by John Michael Higgins, whose scenes made a punch line out of the grotesque “Asian” accent he used when talking to his successive Japanese wives. The character spawned debates about whether it mattered that the joke was supposed to be on him. (It didn’t.) Second, there was the issue of the age difference between the two main characters, a drifting 25-year-old (Alana Haim) and a confident 15-year-old (Cooper Hoffman) who end up in a romantic embrace. That discussion, which sent some viewers spiraling over the age gap while leading defenders to declare that kissing high-school students was no big deal, was annoying enough. But because of the strange, staggered way the film was released, those conversations kept hellishly returning as new people saw the film. I never want to talk about Licorice Pizza again. — A.W.

Belfast

Filmmaker Kenneth Branagh has been working nearly as hard as Hercule Poirot’s mustache to sway voters on the awards circuit, and certainly the film has its charms. Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan are lovely together, and the many Van Morrison songs are integral to Belfast’s wistful, whimsical atmosphere. But as Nate Jones noted, “These days, you’re not a real auteur unless you too have lovingly crafted a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age film,” and that observation speaks to the familiarity — and sameness, even safeness — of a film like Belfast. It can’t help but be compared with Alfonso Cuarón’s similarly personal, similarly black-and-white Roma, and it comes up a little short in terms of cohesiveness and compellingness. (Roma losing out to Green Book at the 91st Academy Awards remains an injustice, by the way.) A Best Picture win for Belfast would be, again, fine. But maybe the top winner should inspire more than a resigned shrug?— Roxana Hadadi 

Dune

First things first — Dune is really Dune: Part One. A second Dune movie is coming, and if filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s wildest ambitions can be believed, possibly even a third. All of this is to say that Dune: Part One feels at best like a portion of an idea, and it would be odd to reward an introduction to a potential trilogy instead of its culmination. While there is a fair amount of technical mastery in Dune (Greig Fraser’s cinematography and Joe Walker’s editing) and one stupendous performance (Jason Momoa’s tonally perfect Duncan Idaho), that doesn’t add up to one fully formed film. Recall how The Return of the King’s 11 Academy Award wins, including for Best Picture, were really a sort of culmination for all the effort The Lord of the Rings trilogy required; Villeneuve needs to show us more than “just the beginning,” as Zendaya’s Chani says, to collect the same award. Oh, and there’s that whole “Dune totally erases all acknowledgment of the novel’s Middle Eastern and Islamic influences” thing. That’s pretty exhausting, too.— R.H.

King Richard

Will Smith’s performance in King Richard as the man who helped raise and train the greatest tennis players of all time is considered a lock for Best Actor. But as our critic Bilge Ebiri wrote in his (otherwise positive!) review of the movie, he’s not done any favors by the film’s script: “It’s a touching turn, but not a particularly surprising one, thanks to a pro forma script that telegraphs all its big moments and rarely tries for the unexpected, keeping all its key emotional beats to the level of incident and dialogue — which feels like a bit of a waste when you have as dynamic and versatile a presence as Smith.”

West Side Story

Hollywood’s most acclaimed living director blowing $100 million to remake a lionized 1962 Best Picture Oscar winner in no particular need of remaking is villainous enough behavior by itself. Add to that Boricuan resistance to “cosmetic changes to right the previous version’s sins,” the sexual-assault allegations that resurfaced and have angrily swirled around co-star Ansel Elgort since the film’s December rollout, and Steven Spielberg’s cringeworthy comments about hiring dialect coaches to “help Puerto Ricans who have lived in New York too long remember where they came from,” and you start wondering why West Side Story 2.0 has been sucking up awards-season oxygen at all. — Chris Lee

The Power of the Dog

Jane Campion’s film is the heavyweight contender, the one to beat. With a leading 12 nominations in marquee categories, you could even call it the overdog. (A fact Campion herself may be loath to acknowledge.) But despite its biblical grandiosity and aura of self-seriousness — not to mention a “For Your Consideration” ad blitz featuring fawning blurbs from Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, Ang Lee, and Sofia Coppola — I haven’t been able to shake an early hot take I overheard at TIFF, where Dog premiered: “Good movie; nothing happens.” In a post-Yellowstone Hollywood that emboldened Sam Elliott, for one, to dig at Dog’s “allusions of homosexuality” and ask, “Where’s the western in this western?” the movie has come to stand for something other than an indictment of toxic masculinity. Instead, it’s the latest proof of the Academy’s chronic humorlessness. — C.L.

Nightmare Alley

Listen, sometimes the Academy is going to follow its muse no matter what anyone else thinks. If it wants to hand three acting nominations to a mediocre showbiz biopic like Being the Ricardos, it’s going to do it, and there’s nothing you or I can say to stop it. Same goes for this handsomely mounted period piece, a feat of Production Design that neither critics nor the broader public really showed much interest in. Perhaps, as Karina Longworth speculated, all the major contenders could knock each other out, allowing Nightmare Alley’s strong craft support to lead it to an unexpected Best Pic victory. Sound crazy? It probably is, but Guillermo del Toro has done it before. — N.J.

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Bridgerton Season 3 May Tell a Different Love Story Than Expected - E! NEWS

In the books, Eloise is sort of furious at her best friend Penelope for suddenly getting married, and she begins a pen pal love affair with a man named Phillip. Phillip has just lost his wife (Eloise's cousin, Marina), who suffered from a horrible depression, and he and Eloise begin writing to each other.

Eloise is one of the series' best characters, and there's some good stuff to be found here as she goes to stay at his country house and meet his two badly behaved children, but the show might be taking this story in a different direction. On screen, Marina is a Featherington cousin who is devastated to find out that the man she loves has died in battle. Phillip is the one who arrives to tell Marina this news, and offers to marry her instead. At the end of season one, we saw them riding off in a carriage together. And in season two, as she tells Colin, Marina is content in her decision to marry Phillip.

So, it's not clear what the plan is for Eloise. It could stay the same, since Eloise is currently 17 and doesn't get married until she's 28. But that's a dark future for Marina that we're not sure we're into.

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Critics’ Conversation: ‘CODA’ Backlash, ‘Belfast’ Boredom and Other Oscar Frustrations and Fascinations - Hollywood Reporter

DAVID ROONEY: So, here we are again, Lovia, a couple days out from the Oscars ceremony after an awards season that feels more interminable than ever.

It’s boiling down to the backlash against CODA vs. the backlash against The Power of the Dog, and looking increasingly likely the pendulum has swung toward the former. Unlike the folks savaging CODA as barely a notch or two up from a Disney Channel movie, I like it just fine, and of course appreciate its importance in terms of representation for the deaf community. But as for scope, ambition and artistry, the two movies are in different universes.

The same applies to the masterful Drive My Car, a movie so rich in emotional complexity that for me it resonates more powerfully in this time of isolation and loss than arguably any other work of art to surface during the pandemic years.

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LOVIA GYARKYE: I agree that this season has felt longer than the last. Awards season always has this unhinged frenzy around it — the rush to predict winners and losers, the hyperbolic endorsements and cruel denunciations. It’s a lot to digest.

I hit a new level of annoyance after Amy Schumer, who is co-hosting the ceremony with Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes, talked about her idea of having Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky call into the show. (The show’s producers shut the idea down.) The idea that Zelensky should phone in to an American awards show is ridiculous and self-centered. It’s like when celebrities thought it would be a good idea to make a compilation video singing “Imagine” in the early days of the pandemic — bizarre and uncalled-for.

The conversations around the films have the same tenor as the conversations around the significance, or not, of the awards: Everything feels on edge. I was moved by CODA — I cried at the end! — but I don’t think it should win best picture because there were, quite frankly, better movies. I love Drive My Car, a film that manages to unfurl deliberately while still being rapturous. There are scenes and sequences — the opening one with Yusuke and Oto lying in bed enveloped by darkness, the initial table reading of Uncle Vanya and one of the penultimate scenes with Yusuke and Watari — that I still think about for the way they both advance the story and create intimacy with these characters.

ROONEY: I would add Sonya’s closing monologue from Uncle Vanya, about the suffering that’s part of life and the tears we cry. The overwhelming depth of feeling, the sheer beauty of Park Yu-rim’s signing, particularly in that silent conclusion — I tear up just thinking about it.

Maybe this is the year we finally have to acknowledge that the Oscars are seldom primarily about excellence? Sure, the standout film of any given year occasionally squeaks through to a best picture win, like Moonlight or Parasite. More often, the Oscars seem to reward what’s most palatable to the widest swathe of voters, many of whom still believe movies have to be uplifting, not too intellectually challenging and not in a language other than English.

That last factor would explain why three of the most accomplished and affecting screen performances of the year — Hidetoshi Nishijima in Drive My Car and Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie in The Worst Person in the World — were overlooked.

To choose one category that typifies the Oscars as a kind of Miss Congeniality contest, it makes my head explode that CODA — all due respect to writer-director Siân Heder — is the front-runner for best adapted screenplay. The work involved in retooling a French comedy-drama for an American setting just can’t compare with the probing intelligence and vitality of Rebecca Hall’s dissection of a 1929 novel in Passing (which isn’t even nominated); with Jane Campion’s incisive grasp of character and milieu in The Power of the Dog, drawing out blisteringly modern perspectives on masculinity and sexual repression from a book published in 1967; or with director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and co-writer Takamasa Oe’s deft interweaving of themes from a Haruki Murakami short story with surging currents from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya to investigate the mysteries of art and human connection as emotional catharses.

GYARKYE: As you said, David, maybe this will be the year more people can admit that the Oscars aren’t about excellence, but I doubt it. The Academy has rarely been who I turn to for guidance on what to watch.

Returning to the competing backlash narratives you mentioned, I’ll refrain from commenting on Jane Campion’s remark about the Williams sisters, but I will say that The Power of the Dog — like Drive My Car — is another film I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe it’s because I went in with little knowledge of the Thomas Savage novel Campion was working from, but I was enthralled the entire time. What I like most about Drive My Car and Power of the Dog are the ways the films treat their source material: They are adaptations that complicate, layer and try to extract a point of view from the original texts. They are visual acts of reading.

In terms of other films that apparently have a shot at the top prize, I was not impressed with Belfast, and I think I’ll be genuinely upset if it wins. Kenneth Branagh’s film got a fair amount of praise for its personal perspective on The Troubles. I respect that Branagh needed to tell this story, but I think it’s one he should keep revisiting; I experienced the film as a draft of a promising memoir, one in which the material is there but the execution needed to be further thought through.  (I’m not going to even talk about Don’t Look Up, which was one of my least favorite films of the year. I know a lot of people who loved it, but it’s appalling to me that it’s up for best picture and best screenplay.)

ROONEY: You’ll get no disagreement from me about the sledgehammer subtlety of Don’t Look Up, a film that pummels you over the head with its pseudo-cleverness so relentlessly that clearly some of the folks dishing out Oscar noms mistook it for substance. Or they were blinded by the galaxy of overqualified stars. Yeesh.

And I can’t disagree about Belfast, either. I’m all for a feelgood crowdpleaser if it’s done well, but as a fellow veteran arts journalist said on Twitter, it makes The Troubles look like The Inconveniences. I was already feeling the saccharine overload in the opening scenes, with about a thousand kids skipping and playing sword-fights or stick ball on a picture-perfect little street in the title city, as if some Northern Oirish version of Norman Rockwell World had exploded. I kept wincing, waiting for a voiceover to say something like, “It was a happy time; it was an innocent time.”

Branagh isn’t that cheesy a filmmaker, but he’s not much more sophisticated either. He views the past through such rose-tinted glasses of selective nostalgia that any actual conflict is overshadowed by what a hot-damn gorgeous couple Ma and Pa were. (Also, call me a nit-picker, but Judi Dench’s Granny would have to have been close to 50 when she gave birth to Jamie Dornan, and I don’t believe reproductive medicine was quite there in 1969.) This is a movie that’s obviously very personal but also cloyingly artificial, reducing a violent sectarian clash to a cute family photo album.

I have to confess I’m so exhausted by the months of Oscar punditry and the seeming inevitability of a bunch of undeserving winners that I’m tempted to tune out. Do I really need to see Jessica Chastain be crowned best actress for a performance with all the nuance of a RuPaul’s Drag Race turn? Chastain is a terrific actor, who probably should have won for Zero Dark Thirty. But she’ll have other opportunities. Handing her an Oscar for the stunningly mediocre Eyes of Tammy Faye would be like giving Glenn Close her long-overdue Oscar for playing Ma Kettle, sorry, Mamaw, in the execrable Hillbilly Elegy.

My seriously underwhelmed feelings about so many of this year’s forecast winners have reduced me to the petty sourness of just hoping Lin-Manuel Miranda doesn’t win for best song. I’m as much a Hamilton fan as anyone, but the enormously talented Miranda has spent years now skirting dangerously close to the edge of over-exposure, and having to hear the acronym EGOT attached to his name for the next decade would likely push him over. Besides which, I think “No Time to Die” is a kickass Bond song that perfectly mirrors the brooding tone of the movie.

GYARKYE: Let me join you in griping for a moment to say that I’m still mad about Passing getting no Oscars attention! Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson were incredible, and while I didn’t always love the direction Hall’s adaptation took, I was impressed overall. I’ve always thought Nella Larsen’s novella would be difficult to translate to the screen, but I think Hall does a wonderful job peeling back the layers of what is a pretty interior work.

On a more positive note, while King Richard wasn’t one of my favorites this year, I’m glad Aunjanue Ellis got a nomination for supporting actress. She really carried that film for me; I found myself searching for her in most scenes, totally rapt by her dynamism. I feel the same way about Ariana DeBose in West Side Story, though I didn’t enjoy the film as much as you, David (I’m still not sure why there’s a remake).

Can we talk about the (less overhyped) documentary nominees? I particularly like Summer of Soul and Attica, different but equally powerful examples of the form, and reminders of how much American history we have to both uncover and understand.

Questlove’s film stitches together archival footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival to create an ecstatic tribute to Black music history. The recovered videos of the festival, which was overshadowed by Woodstock, alone would have made the film fascinating, but I think Joshua Pearson’s editing and Paul Hsu’s sound mixing turn it into an event.

Stanley Nelson’s doc is a carefully composed portrait of the five-day rebellion at Attica Correctional Facility in 1971. The film corrects the established narratives about that week, including the police version that nine of the hostages were killed by the incarcerated individuals. It also contextualizes the abhorrent conditions in the facility that led people to riot, clearly lays out what they demanded and tries to make sense of how it all went wrong. Nelson includes powerful testimonies from survivors of the rebellion, too. The result is a disturbing and honest film about how police always act with impunity and how national narratives are designed to conceal.

ROONEY: I also loved Summer of Soul, which is such a joyous act of reclamation but also an indictment of the cultural gatekeeping that archived this incredible event in the invisible margins of music history for so long.

But I adored Flee, too, and feel anxious that after breaking out with nominations in an unprecedented combination of three categories — documentary, animation and international film — it risks going home empty-handed. With a fresh refugee crisis now gestating in Europe as Ukrainians flee their country, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s film about the search for immigrant identity is more relevant than ever. It’s also a tender story of queer self-acceptance unlike any I’d seen before.

However, the big question, of course, is who will win the inaugural Twitter’s Choice Award, and how soon after the ceremony will that monumentally dumb idea be shelved away and forgotten? I understand that the Academy is desperate to get the kids involved, but seriously, folks, show some dignity.

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Triple H reveals he'll 'never wrestle again' after heart scare - New York Post

Triple H is on the mend, but he revealed he will never step foot in a wrestling ring again.

The two-time WWE Hall of Famer sat down with Stephen A. Smith for his “Stephen A.’s World” program on ESPN+. An excerpt of the interview ran Friday morning on “First Take”.

Opening up on his heart scare from last September, Triple H said he initially had viral pneumonia, and that his wife, WWE scion Stephanie McMahon, noticed him spitting up blood. Tests revealed he was experiencing cardiac issues, with his heart not pumping enough. He was rushed to the emergency room with heart failure.

“I was nose-diving, and sort of at the one-yard line of where you don’t want to be for your family and your future,” he said.

“We have three young girls — 15, 13, 11. Suddenly I come home, I’m a little bit sick, and their dad, who’s strong always, is in the hospital. I don’t know if they understood the consequences of it but there’s moments when you think ‘This is it.’ Do you wake up? That’s tough to swallow, and it makes you think differently — I’m sure, as (Smith) come out of your COVID scare — it makes you feel differently about life. It doesn’t make you any less driven for the things that you do, but it certainly makes you appreciate what you have more.”

Smith asked him what’s in store for his professional future.

“As far as in-ring, which I get a lot, I’m done,” he said. “I will never wrestle again. First of all, I have a defibrillator in my chest, and it’s not a good idea for me to get zapped on live TV…”

Triple H is a 14 time world champion in WWE, and is also a corporate executive with the title of EVP, Global Talent Strategy & Development.

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Teresa Giudice hospitalized for 'emergency medical procedure' - Page Six

Teresa Giudice was admitted to the hospital Wednesday night and underwent an “emergency medical procedure,” Page Six can exclusively confirm.

“She is in recovery, currently resting, and she thanks everyone for their prayers and well-wishes,” Giudice’s rep tells us, noting that Thursday morning’s surgery was “non-cosmetic.”

She is set to be released from the hospital “within the next 24 hours,” the rep says.

Eldest daughter Gia Giudice revealed on her Instagram Story Thursday afternoon that the “Real Housewives of New Jersey” star, 49, had been in the emergency room.

“Such a trooper. I love you,” the 21-year-old wrote over a selfie of her mom wearing a face mask while in a hospital bed.

“Pray for a speedy recovery,” Gia then asked her followers alongside a prayer-hands emoji before reiterating, “I love you @teresagiudice.”

Gia Giudice posted this selfie of Teresa Giudice in a hospital bed, breaking the news that her mom had been admitted.

_giagiudice/Instagram

Teresa’s other family members, including brother Joe Gorga, sister-in-law Melissa Gorga, fiancé Luis Ruelas and her three younger daughters, Gabriella, 17, Milania, 16, and Audriana, 12, have not commented on the hospitalization on social media.

The reality star’s most recent Instagram post was shared Tuesday and was a shout-out to her co-stars from Season 1 of “Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip,” which premiered on Peacock and is airing on Bravo.

She captioned the picture of the cast on a boat, “I can’t believe The Ultimate Girls Trip is coming to an end tonight! I had such a blast on this trip Hope you guys all enjoyed it!”

Teresa had not recently complained to the public about any health issues and leads a pretty healthy lifestyle that has included yoga workouts and weightlifting.

In 2018, she placed third in her first-ever bodybuilding competition.

She told Us Weekly at the time, “This is the most confident I’ve felt after my kids. This is the best I’ve ever felt since having Gia.”

Teresa has four daughters from her marriage to ex-husband Joe Giudice.

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The mother of four added, “My body drastically changed because of yoga, but this was even more extreme. It debunks the myth that if you’re over 40, you can’t look good.”

In February, Teresa shared on Instagram that she had a minor procedure done to help reduce the appearance of varicose veins but noted at the time, “My legs look and feel great.”

The Bravolebrity’s most recent in-person appearance was on “Watch What Happens Live” last week, in which she revealed Melissa, 43, would not be one of the bridesmaids at her summer wedding to Ruelas.

Teresa was married to Joe Giudice from 1999 to 2020.

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‘The Batman’ Releases Deleted Joker Scene With Barry Keoghan and Robert Pattinson - Variety

“The Batman” director Matt Reeves released a deleted scene from his superhero epic on Thursday featuring Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader facing off against his classic nemesis, the Joker, played by Barry Keoghan. The scene is available after visiting a website that mimics the word puzzles posed by the Riddler (Paul Dano) in the movie.

As Reeves explained to Variety in an interview in February, the scene follows Batman’s discovery that the Riddler has killed the Gotham City police commissioner, leaving behind another of his cryptic notes addressed to the Batman. Unnerved by the Riddler’s interest in him, Batman decides to seek out insight into what makes the Riddler tick.

“I thought he would be really insecure about this and he’d probably want to find some way to get into the [Riddler’s] mindset, like in ‘Manhunter’ or ‘Mindhunter’ — this idea of profiling somebody, so you can predict his next move,” Reeves said.

The filmmaker liked the idea of suggesting to the audience that Gotham is rife with villains just on the edge of the story, and that Keoghan’s Joker is one of the first enemies Batman captures.

“Almost our anniversary, isn’t it?” Joker tells Batman in the scene.

Noted Reeves: “You realize that they have a relationship, and that this guy obviously did something, and Batman somehow got him into Arkham.”

Batman pushes Joker for reasons why Riddler is doing what he’s doing, and why he’s leaving notes for Batman at all of his crimes.

“Maybe he’s a fan of yours?” Joker says. “Or maybe he’s got a grudge against you, too. Maybe you’re the main course.”

The scene crescendos with Joker taunting Batman with the unsettling truth that there’s a part of him that agrees with Riddler’s decision to dispatch Gotham leaders who are mired in corruption.

“I think somewhere, deep down, you’re just terrified, because you’re not sure he’s wrong,” Joker says, dissolving into cackles.

In his earlier interview with Variety, Reeves went far more in depth into why he ultimately deleted this scene but kept a follow-up scene a the end of “The Batman” in which Joker and Riddler connect in adjacent cells in the Arkham State Hospital, and how he developed the Joker’s look with Keoghan and makeup artist Michael Marino.

You can watch the five-minute deleted Joker scene below.

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