Jax leaned back in his expensive, ergonomic gaming chair and let out a long, exhausted sigh. He dragged a hand down his face, pushing his headset back slightly so it rested off one ear.
He was twenty-two, he had forty thousand people watching him live on Twitch, and he was currently getting bullied by every single one of them.
His secondary monitor, which displayed the live chat, was a vertically scrolling waterfall of text moving so fast it was almost unreadable. But Jax didn't need to read every individual message to know what they were saying. The emotes and the capitalized words painted a very clear picture.
WATCH IT JAX
bro is dodging the greatest movie of all time
EMPIRE EMPIRE EMPIRE
Luke NOOOOO
Just watch the first one on stream u coward
"Guys, I play video games," Jax said into his studio microphone, gesturing helplessly to his main monitor, which was currently paused on a character select screen. "I click heads. I don't do movie reviews. And I definitely don't watch sci-fi movies from years ago."
The chat somehow managed to move even faster. A donation alert chimed, an automated text-to-speech voice reading out the attached message: "It's not just a sci-fi movie idiot, Daniel Miller made it two years ago. Watch A New Hope right now or I'm canceling my sub."
Jax rubbed his temples. It had been exactly one month since Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back had hit theaters, and the internet had completely lost its collective mind. Jax couldn't open Twitter, YouTube, or TikTok without seeing a billion spoiler-free reaction videos or memes about the movie. The film had just crossed the 1.1 billion dollar mark at the global box office in four weeks and it was still dominating everything. It was suffocating the culture.
"Alright, fine," Jax groaned, throwing his hands up in defeat. "You win. Chat wins. I will watch the space wizard movie. But if it's boring, I'm shutting it off and we're going back to Valorant."
The chat erupted in a wall of celebratory emotes.
Jax opened a new browser window and pulled up HBO Max. He clicked on the search bar, typed in Star Wars, and clicked on the poster for the first movie. He adjusted his OBS software so his stream could see the movie while keeping his facecam in the corner of the screen.
He hit play.
The Miller Studios logo flashed. Then, the screen went black. A blue text appeared: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....
Suddenly, the massive brass blast of John Williams's score hit, and the yellow logo smashed onto the screen.
"Okay, the music goes incredibly hard," Jax admitted, adjusting his volume dial.
He started the movie making sarcastic jokes. When Darth Vader first walked through the smoke of the breached Rebel ship, Jax made a comment about the heavy breathing sounding like a broken asthma inhaler. When Luke Skywalker was staring at the twin suns, Jax joked about the kid needing sunscreen.
But as the movie progressed, Jax slowly stopped talking to the chat.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk. He watched the practical effects of the cantina scene. He watched the Millennium Falcon jump to hyperspace. He watched the tension build as they snuck around the Death Star.
By the time the climax arrived—the chaotic, claustrophobic trench run with the X-Wings diving toward the exhaust port—Jax was completely silent. He was practically sitting on the edge of his chair, his eyes wide. When Han Solo swooped in at the last second to clear Vader off Luke's tail, Jax actually threw a fist in the air.
"Let's go!" Jax yelled at his monitor.
The movie ended with the medal ceremony. The credits rolled.
Jax sat back in his chair, completely stunned. He looked over at his chat, which was currently spamming TOLD YOU SO.
"Okay," Jax breathed, shaking his head. "Okay. I was wrong. I admit it. That was... that was actually a masterpiece. The pacing was insane. The effects looked so real."
Another donation alert chimed. "If you thought that was good, Empire is ten times better. But it's only in theaters. Go. Now."
Jax looked at the time on his computer. It was 8:30 PM on a Tuesday.
He looked at his camera. "Stream is over, boys. I'm going to the movies."
---
Three hours later, Jax was sitting in the driver's seat of his parked Honda Civic. The engine was off, but the interior dome light was casting a harsh, pale glow over his face.
He was holding a small vlogging camera up with one hand, staring directly into the lens. He looked physically devastated.
"I don't even know what to say right now," Jax told the camera, his voice quiet, lacking any of his usual high-energy streamer persona. He ran his free hand through his hair, messing it up completely.
He had driven straight to the AMC theater down the street. Even on a random Tuesday night, a month into its theatrical run, the massive IMAX showing had been completely sold out. He had managed to snag a single seat in the second row, craning his neck the entire time.
"I thought I was going to watch a fun sequel," Jax continued, shaking his head in disbelief. "I bought a large popcorn. I bought a blue slushie. I was ready to have a good time. And then Daniel Miller just systematically destroyed my entire will to live for two and a half hours."
He shifted in his seat, leaning closer to the camera.
"He chopped his hand off. He actually chopped the main character's hand off," Jax said, his voice rising slightly in pitch as the trauma bubbled back up. "And the twist? Bro. Bro. I'm not going to spoil it for the vlog, but if you know, you know. When the bad guy said that line... my entire theater gasped. Like, a physical gasp. I felt my soul leave my body."
Jax let out a long, shaky breath, looking out the windshield at the dark, nearly empty parking lot of the movie theater.
"It's making a billion dollars for a reason," Jax summarized, looking back at the lens. "Daniel Miller is a sick, twisted genius. He made me care about these characters just so he could torture them. I'm going home. I'm going to sleep for fourteen hours. Go watch the movie."
He reached up and clicked the camera off.
---
While half the country was still reeling from the cultural impact of Empire Strikes Back, Daniel Miller had completely left the galaxy behind.
It was 5:00 AM on a Monday morning. The Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank was dark, cool, and quiet, save for the low hum of power generators and the occasional beep of a reversing equipment truck.
Inside a massive, brightly lit double-wide trailer parked near Soundstage 16, the air smelled strongly of coffee, rubbing alcohol, and liquid latex.
Daniel was sitting perfectly still in the barber's chair.
He was wearing a plain white t-shirt and grey sweatpants. In one hand, he held a paper cup of black coffee. In the other, he held a half-eaten everything bagel.
Sandy, his lead makeup artist, was leaning over him, a small, intense flashlight clipped to her glasses. She was using a tiny metal spatula to smooth the edges of the silicone Glasgow smile prosthetics into the corners of his mouth.
"Don't chew," Sandy ordered gently. "If you stretch your jaw too much before the adhesive sets, the scar tissue is going to wrinkle and look like cheap rubber."
Daniel took a small, careful sip of his coffee instead.
Once the silicone was set, Sandy moved on to the greasepaint. She didn't use a fine brush or a delicate sponge. She used her fingers and a rough, textured pad, actively smearing the stark white foundation across his forehead and cheeks. She intentionally missed spots near his hairline, leaving his natural skin tone peeking through, giving the impression of a man who had applied the makeup himself in a dirty, poorly lit bathroom.
Next came the eyes. She worked thick, charcoal-black paint into his eye sockets, making them look bruised, sunken, and hollow. Finally, she took a tube of bright, aggressive red paint and smeared it over his lips, dragging it out across the jagged silicone scars to create the iconic, horrifying smile.
"Alright," Sandy said, stepping back and wiping her hands on a towel. "The face is done. Hair is next."
A stylist stepped in, aggressively working a dark, greasy, toxic-green dye into Daniel's hair. He didn't comb it neatly; he slicked it back with a heavy pomade that made it look unwashed and stringy.
"You look disgusting," a voice said from the doorway of the trailer.
Daniel turned his head, careful not to mess up the hair.
Florence was standing in the doorway, wearing a comfortable oversized sweater, holding her own cup of coffee. She had driven to the lot with him this morning, insisting on being there for his first official day of principal photography.
"Thank you," Daniel smiled. The movement made the red scars stretch sickeningly across his cheeks. "The goal was 'deranged vagrant'."
"You nailed it," Florence laughed, stepping into the trailer. She walked over to him, leaning down carefully. She didn't kiss his lips—that would have resulted in a face full of red greasepaint. Instead, she pressed a soft kiss to his temple, right near his hairline where the white paint ended. "Good luck today, Dan. Try not to scare the crew too much."
"I make no promises," Daniel replied, reaching up to squeeze her hand. "What are you doing today?"
"I have a fitting for a magazine shoot at noon, and then I'm going to read some scripts," Florence said, stepping back toward the door. "I'll see you at home tonight. If you come home looking like that, I'm locking the doors."
"I'll shower, I swear," Daniel promised.
Florence waved and stepped out into the cool morning air.
A few minutes later, a wardrobe assistant knocked lightly on the open door frame, holding a heavy garment bag over his arm.
"Mr. Miller? Wardrobe is ready," the assistant said nervously, clearly unsettled by the terrifying face staring back at him.
"Bring it in," Daniel said, standing up and tossing the rest of his bagel into the trash.
Daniel unzipped the garment bag. Inside was the iconic purple suit. But true to Daniel's vision, it didn't look like a tailored, comic-book-accurate superhero costume. It looked cheap. The fabric was a slightly faded, textured wool. The green vest underneath was pilling. The shirt was a patterned, mustard-yellow button-down that clashed violently with everything else.
Daniel had specifically instructed the wardrobe department to take the finished suit, throw it in the dirt behind the soundstages, and run it over with a golf cart a few times before washing it. He wanted it to look like clothes a maniac had pieced together from a thrift store.
He stripped off his sweatpants and t-shirt and pulled the costume on.
The pants were slightly baggy. The purple trench coat was heavy. He slipped his feet into a pair of scuffed, worn-out brown dress shoes.
He turned and looked at himself in the full-length mirror mounted on the closet door.
It was perfect. It wasn't clean. It wasn't polished. It was raw, grounded, and deeply unsettling.
He checked his watch. It was 6:15 AM.
Daniel grabbed his script sides, opened the trailer door, and stepped out onto the backlot.
---
Dante Ferretti's Gotham City was fully awake.
The two-block stretch of the Warner Bros. backlot had been transformed into a filthy, decaying, 1980s metropolitan nightmare. The sun was just starting to peek over the Los Angeles hills, casting a pale, gray light over the artificial fog pumping from massive machines hidden in the alleyways.
Dozens of crew members were swarming the street, laying down thick black cables, adjusting massive lighting rigs, and carrying equipment boxes.
Daniel walked down the center of the asphalt street, the heavy purple coat flapping slightly around his knees.
As he walked, crew members actually stepped out of his way. They had known Daniel was acting in the movie. They had seen the concept art. But seeing it in person—seeing their boss, the guy who had just won an Academy Award, walking toward them looking like a genuine psychopath—was deeply jarring.
"Dan! Over here!"
Daniel turned. Tom Wiley was standing near a battered, blue passenger van parked on the curb. Tom was wearing a heavy jacket, holding a thick clipboard, and wearing a communications headset over one ear.
For this movie, Tom wasn't just sitting behind the monitors offering script notes. Because Daniel was pulling double duty as the lead actor and the director, he needed someone he trusted implicitly to run the set while he was in front of the camera. Tom had officially taken on the role of First Assistant Director. He had spent the last three years basically filling that role unofficially anyway, managing the bullpen and organizing Daniel's chaotic process.
Daniel walked over to him. "How's the schedule looking, Tom?"
Tom looked up from his clipboard, physically flinching when he saw Daniel's face up close for the first time. "Holy shit. Okay. You need a breath mint, but otherwise, the look is... it's a lot."
"Focus, Tom," Daniel said, a small, normal smile breaking through the horrifying makeup.
"Right. Schedule," Tom recovered, flipping a page on his clipboard. "We have the block booked for the next three days. We're shooting the exterior bank heist today. The interiors tomorrow. The stunt team is already walking the extras through the glass-shatter sequence."
"Good," Daniel nodded, looking down the street toward the massive facade of the Gotham National Bank.
"And looking ahead to the rest of the week," Tom continued, tapping his pen against the paper. "Margot flies in on Wednesday. We have her scheduled for wardrobe fittings on Thursday, and we shoot her first scenes at the Arkham set on Friday."
Daniel nodded. The inclusion of Margot Robbie as Harleen Quinzel—soon to be Harley Quinn—was a major pillar of his original script. He wasn't doing a brief, fan-service cameo. Harley was a central figure. The chaotic, deeply toxic romance between the Joker and his psychiatrist was the emotional anchor that Daniel used to explore the Joker's manipulative genius. He didn't just break her out of a hospital; he systematically broke her mind down until she saw the world exactly the way he did. Margot had the perfect blend of frantic energy and sharp intelligence to pull it off.
"Make sure Margot's trailer is near mine," Daniel instructed. "I want to run lines with her before we shoot. The Arkham scenes are dialogue-heavy, and we need the rhythm to be perfect. If the manipulation doesn't feel earned, the audience won't buy her transition."
"Got it," Tom noted it down. "And Colin Farrell is scheduled for Saturday. Just a one-day shoot for the Iceberg Lounge sequence."
"Perfect," Daniel said. Casting Colin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot—The Penguin—was another strategic move. In Daniel's script, the Joker was a nobody trying to climb the ladder of the Gotham underworld. To show the Joker's rising power, Daniel needed him to step on someone established. Colin's Penguin wasn't the main villain of the movie; he was a mid-level club owner and mob lieutenant. The scene they were shooting on Saturday involved the Joker casually walking into Penguin's club and violently taking over his operation, establishing dominance over the traditional mob structure. Colin was a fantastic actor who could bring the necessary arrogance and subsequent terror to a minor, but incredibly impactful, scene.
"Alright," Tom said, clipping his pen to his board. "Bob is ready for you down at the corner. Let's make a movie."
Daniel patted Tom on the shoulder and walked down the street toward the intersection.
Bob Elswit was standing near the curb, surrounded by three burly camera operators. They weren't using the standard 35mm Panavision cameras they normally used.
Mounted on a massive, heavy-duty dolly track was an IMAX camera. It was a giant, bulky, incredibly loud piece of machinery that looked more like a jet engine than a film camera. Daniel had insisted on shooting several key sequences of the movie—including this opening bank heist—in native IMAX format. The massive film negative would capture the towering, oppressive scale of the Gotham skyscrapers and the gritty detail of the city streets in unparalleled clarity.
"Bob," Daniel greeted him, stepping up to the camera.
"Dan," Bob said, eyeing the purple suit. "The camera is set. We're on the 50mm lens. The depth of field is shallow, so when you hit your mark, don't lean forward, or you'll fall out of focus. This camera is a beast, and reloading the film magazine takes ten minutes, so we want to nail this in as few takes as possible."
"Understood," Daniel said. He didn't sound like the Joker. He sounded completely calm, authoritative, and technical. He looked around the street, checking the placement of the extras.
A few feet away, standing safely behind the cluster of video village monitors and a pop-up tent, was Jonah Gantry.
The head of Warner Bros. had shown up at six in the morning just to watch the first shot. He was holding a paper cup of coffee, looking incredibly nervous. He had seen the camera test. He knew Daniel was good. But the reality of a massive, multi-million dollar production resting on a twenty-six-year-old's shoulders was enough to give any executive an ulcer.
Daniel caught Gantry's eye and offered a brief, professional nod. Gantry nodded back tightly.
"Alright," Daniel called out, his voice echoing off the brick facades of the backlot. "Let's set the first mark! Bring the van in!"
A battered, blue passenger van rolled down the street and stopped exactly on a yellow tape mark near the curb. The side door slid open. Inside sat three stuntmen, all wearing cheap, plastic clown masks and holding prop duffel bags.
Daniel walked over to the corner of the street, about twenty feet away from the van. He held his own prop in his hand: a scuffed, slightly dirty clown mask with a wide, red painted smile that mirrored the scars underneath.
"Everyone on their marks!" Tom Wiley's voice boomed through a megaphone, instantly silencing the chatter of the crew. "Settle down! We are rolling picture on the IMAX!"
The massive IMAX camera spooled up. It wasn't quiet. It sounded like a loud, mechanical sewing machine whirring aggressively on the dolly track.
"Sound is speeding," the mixer confirmed over the radio.
"Camera is rolling," Bob Elswit announced, gripping the focus wheel.
Daniel stood on the street corner. The backlot was dead silent, save for the mechanical roar of the camera and the hiss of the artificial steam vents.
Daniel didn't pace. He didn't take a deep breath. He didn't close his eyes.
He held the plastic clown mask up, and in one fluid motion, he slipped it over his face, securing the elastic band behind his greasy green hair.
The second the mask dropped, the switch flipped.
The calm, authoritative director vanished completely. Daniel's posture collapsed into a hunched, uneven slump. He shifted his weight to one leg, his shoulders dropping. His hands hung loosely by his sides, his fingers twitching slightly against his thighs in an erratic, unpredictable rhythm. He didn't look like Daniel Miller anymore. He completely disappeared into the anonymous, terrifying thug waiting for a ride on the corner.
"Action," Tom called out firmly.
Daniel didn't move immediately. He stood there for three seconds, letting the massive IMAX lens capture his isolation against the towering, dirty buildings of Gotham.
Then, he moved. His walk wasn't a normal stride. It was a heavy, lumbering, slightly disjointed shuffle. He walked toward the idling blue van, the purple coat catching the wind.
He reached the van. The side door was open. He didn't look at the other clowns inside. He just climbed into the back seat, moving with a strange, fluid apathy.
He pulled the heavy sliding door shut with a loud, metallic SLAM.
The van instantly accelerated, peeling away from the curb and driving out of the frame toward the massive facade of the Gotham National Bank.
The IMAX camera tracked the movement perfectly, the massive lens panning smoothly to follow the vehicle before coming to a stop.
"Cut!" Tom yelled through the megaphone.
The mechanical roar of the IMAX camera spooled down into silence.
For a second, the crew didn't move. They had just watched their boss put on a mask, change his entire physical presence, and climb into a van, all without saying a single word. It was a masterclass in physical acting.
The side door of the van slid open down the block. Daniel stepped out.
He pulled the plastic clown mask off his face, tossing it casually to a prop assistant. The hunched posture was gone. He stood up straight, rolling his shoulders back, the calm intelligence returning to his dark, heavily painted eyes.
He walked back up the street, ignoring the stares of the crew, and headed straight for the video village tent where Jonah Gantry was standing.
Daniel stepped under the canvas, looking at the playback monitors.
"How was the framing on the pan, Bob?" Daniel asked over the radio headset.
"Framing was perfect, Dan," Bob's voice crackled back. "Focus held all the way to the van doors."
"Great," Daniel said, turning to look at Tom. "Let's move the camera setup to the bank steps for the interior breach. We don't need another take of the approach."
Tom nodded, immediately raising his megaphone to start barking orders at the grips to move the heavy dolly track.
Jonah Gantry stood near the monitors, staring at Daniel. The Warner Bros. CEO was holding his coffee cup so tightly the cardboard was denting. He looked at the horrifying makeup, the dirty purple suit, and the completely calm, professional demeanor of the kid wearing it.
"You didn't even rehearse that," Gantry said quietly, almost to himself.
Daniel looked over at him. The red, scarred smile stretched as Daniel offered a brief, entirely normal grin.
"Rehearsal is for people who don't know the script, Jonah," Daniel said lightly. He tapped the top of the monitor. "I wrote it."
Daniel turned and walked away, heading down the street toward the bank set to organize the next shot.
Jonah Gantry watched him go, the heavy purple coat disappearing into the artificial fog of Gotham. Gantry took a slow sip of his lukewarm coffee. His stomach was still tied in a knot, but the anxiety had completely changed.
He wasn't worried that Daniel Miller couldn't pull the performance off.
He was worried that Daniel was going to pull it off so well, it was going to give the entire world nightmares.
Gantry let out a long breath, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and typed a quick email to the Warner Bros. board of directors.
Let him do whatever he wants. We have a monster on our hands.
------
A/N: As promised, I am back, with diarrhoea, but back anyways.
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