The Joker Production Strategy Lesson

Scene from the movie Joker (Warner Bros).

It's worth reflecting strategically on the impressive success of the movie Joker (Warner Bros). The film boasts impeccable direction, a profound and consistent script, and a unique performance by American Joaquin Phoenix (who becomes the Joker). The production has no extraordinary special effects and much less superheroes saving the world - an aesthetic that has populated movie screens to an exaggerated degree, with multiple and endless productions from various studios, such as Marvel, Disney+ and DC.

The film depicts in depth the dramatic anatomy of the genesis of a villain, pouring out the open sewage of his life forged in a lack of love, family madness, rejection, social scorn and violence, in an obligation to express joy and normality that is unbearable for the reality of a sick and desperate man, suffering from tearing loneliness and emotional deprivation. With a rusty, almost gloomy aesthetic, the script presents an extremely provocative psychosocial complexity, which leaves the ability to make correct and definitive analyses of the protagonist to only a few.

For us strategists, the question (and the attempt to answer it) is simpler: why is a movie with these predicaments on its way to becoming the biggest global success in recent cinema, which has exceeded US$ 1 billion in ticket sales?

Because the movie is strategically better. Somehow the script shows empathy with the contemporary world of extremes; of obscurantism due to the lack of dialogue; of growing depression accounting for 30% of pharmacy sales; of the embarrassment of people who are unhappy or struggling to achieve moments of rare happiness; in the face of the embarrassing spectacle of success and beauty, which seems to be normal in the lives of others on social networks. The new social capital, of likes and views preferably going viral, makes people feel obliged to smile and show happiness all the time, forcing them to wear masks like clowns on their posts, even those who are actually suffering inside and feeling invisible even to those next to them.

I myself have experienced - and I've heard the same impression from many people - countless people leaving the cinema profoundly silent or sharing a state of shock due to their unconscious identification with the protagonist's drama; penalized by the sad story, more than revolting due to the crimes committed on stage; or simply worried about the hopelessness of the world. The movie touches people, even if they don't know exactly how or why. Riding the wave of the film's success, a few weeks after its release Instagram made effects available so that you could put on the Joker's mask and post the image on your network - a conscious (or not) strategy to exploit the paradox that the film portrays.

This resonance with the character's drama is at the heart of a product or service's design strategy: understanding society's needs, desires and dramas and translating them into solutions through products or services. Cinema has this strategic obligation, as well as being an artistic manifestation of interpreting the anxieties and concerns of the world. The success of the movie Joker is, for us, a lesson in strategy.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: in view of the polarization of the heated debates in the world today, especially on the Internet, it should be made clear that in this text I do not intend to approve of the violence in the film, approve of the possible connection between mental illness and violence, or any other interpretation other than simply recognizing the right strategy of the production, which was able to empathize with an important part of contemporary society.