Commentary: How 'Joker' mirrors our fascination with monsters, now in the Trump years

As the comic book biopic "Joker" was opening in movie theaters to record-breaking box office last week, Twitter erupted (as it does, every time) with the news that Martin Scorsese did not think Marvel movies and presumably, by association, any superhero movies, were actually cinema. He wasn't talking specifically about "Joker," which tells the backstory of Batman's longtime archenemy and steals liberally from Scorsese's oeuvre, particularly "Taxi Driver" and "King of Comedy." He was talking about a weightlessness many detect in superhero films, a pattern of superficial motives and artificial consequences. Archetype standing against Archetype, with scant nuance.

Scorsese wasn't