Joaquin Phoenix’s ‘Joker’ Trailer Drops
We’ve had to wait a long time since the initial announcement that DC were doing a Joker film that had nothing to do with their shared universe, but now a trailer has finally arrived.
The trailer is more of a character piece, establishing a tone and showing off Phoenix’s performance as Arthur Fleck, the burgeoning Clown Prince of Crime. That’s all we need to see at this stage though, and from what the trailer does show us, Phoenix absolutely nails it.
His Joker begins the story as a mentally-ill man who genuinely wants to make the world smile, but decades of bullying by random citizens of Gotham, along with a variety of other factors in his life that make him miserable, end up pushing him over the edge. From what we can tell, he works his way up as a performer to the point where he actually gets his moment in the spotlight. It’ll be interesting to see what happens then, but knowing the character’s history, it’s likely to end up in tragedy… Or worse.
We also get a look at Robert De Niro’s Thomas Wayne, along with his son Bruce, with Phoenix telling him to ‘smile’, through the bars of his estate’s garden. A central relationship in this film comes between Joker and his mother, who instills a sense of purpose in him and guides him through his life. It will be intriguing to learn how this Joker operates without a foil like Batman. But from what we can see so far, it doesn’t look like that will harm this film one bit.
Joker is directed by Todd Phillips, starring Joaquin Phoenix in the title role, along with Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Dante Pereira-Olson, Douglas Hodge and Josh Pais. The film will debut in theaters on October 4 2019.
Josh is a huge a fan of Star Wars, superheroes and video games. He spends most of his time wondering who would win in a fight between Boba Fett and Star Lord.
