The Joker is the most overexposed supervillain in history. I think we can all agree on that. He’s been around since the 1940s and he’s been played by a great many actors across film and TV. Now, The Hangover director Todd Phillips has tapped Joaquin Phoenix to play the Clown Prince of Crime in an origin story. Do we really need another story about this character?
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The answer, apparently, is yes, because the trailer is pretty cool. Watch:
By the looks of it, this story won’t include any kind of clash with Batman. Instead, it’s about the Joker’s descent from a depressed workaday stiff who has a codependent relationship with his mother (Frances Conroy) to a psychopathic criminal. Or, as costar Marc Maron puts it, the movie is “a character study of a mentally ill person that becomes The Joker.” With wiry body and hangdog smile, Phoenix looks pretty compelling as the central character, and Phillips looks like he’s bringing a small-scale sense of style to the movie that sets it apart from the dozens of other superhero/villain movies on the market. Avengers: Endgame this ain’t.
Okay, fine, I wanna see this.
And yes, that is Robert De Niro as a talk show host. Superheroes movies are getting classy. De Niro’s presence is one of several links between this movie and the Martin Scorsese’s 1982 classic The King of Comedy, about a mentally ill comedian who snaps and kidnaps his idol. Scorsese is also a producer on Joker.
There's a new Joker in town. #JokerMovie pic.twitter.com/9vDz3ot4HF
— The Pixel Factor (@ThePixelFactor) April 3, 2019
Joker hits theaters on October 9.
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