While Jared Leto’s current iteration of the Joker has an uncertain future, DC and Warner Brothers have been hard at work to bring fans a more grounded version of Gotham’s greatest villain… and they’ve just given us our first peek.
Put on a happy face…
The movie unsurprisingly seems to be leaning toward a tone more akin to Hugh Jackman’s last outing in Logan. If Joker can make sense of the character’s origins without underselling him as just another poor, misunderstood soul in an uncaring world, the film might have a shot at something special. It’s hard to tell from what little we see here, aside from Joaquin Phoenix’s usual level of very method acting. We’ll have to see where it takes us.
Joker hits theaters on October 4th, 2019.
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Anyone else getting a The King of Comedy (1982) vibe… with more knives?
“grounded”
We don’t need a grounded Joker movie, or “real” or “gritty” or anything like that. Nor one which explores the Joker’s origins (especially since Gotham just did that, and without being gritty or grounded too). The Joker just *is* and far from being grounded, he ought to be flying high as a kite. The Joker is character that it is impossible to be over the top enough. Turn him up to eleven, then turn him to twenty-two.
This looks like an interesting movie, that will suffer under the weight of explaining the joker. Probably would be a better movie if you removed the DC origin and it was just a guy falling into crazy and crime.
I gotta say, this looks good!
I’m there. I think Joaquin Phoenix can nail this performance. I’m also a bit worried about giving the Joker an origin, but I think this looks like it might work. I get Taxi Driver vibes from this trailer, just with a comedian/clown instead of a cabbie. A guy who is slowly pushed to the breaking point, and in this case, I want that breakdown to be spectacular.
Yes, very strong King of Comedy vibes. Rupert Pupkin lives!
Hmm… I don’t want to be the one to say “They changed too much so it can’t work.” I think there’s always room in fiction for radical reinventions, and sometimes they work out quite well — e.g. Blade Runner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or Men in Black. And the Joker has been many things over the decades, from the solemn Conrad Veidt-esque killer of 1940 to the goofy bank-robbing clown of the Silver Age to the evil trickster of Steve Englehart and Paul Dini to the mass murderer of The Dark Knight Returns and all its imitators, not to mention the very different movie versions like Nicholson’s mobster, Ledger’s anarchist, and whatever the hell Leto was trying to be. Some writers have even posited that the Joker’s ever-shifting personality is intrinsic to his character.
Still, this trailer does nothing for me. It looks pretentious and it’s hard to see what it’s supposed to be about — a sad clown who gets beat up a lot? If there is one element that a Joker story can’t do without, it’s probably the presence of Batman.
Plus — clowns. *shudder*
Looks just terrible. The last thing this character needs is to be saddled with a Darth Vader-esque backstory of “society crapped all over him until he snapped and became evil”. The Joker is a force of chaos. That works way better when the backstory is left unexplained.
@9. Right, as much as I like King of Comedy, this has me worried they’re doing with the Joker what Ridley Scott has been doing to the Alien universe of late. It’s scarier when we don’t know the origin.
Good time to mention that the Joker has had a lot of origins over the decades (the former Red Hood, failed comedian, etc.). The notion that he shouldn’t is of very recent vintage.
As to *this* one, I was a little skeptical at first, am willing to give it a shot now.
@11/Almuric: If anything, it’s the other way around. For 60 years, the only two origin stories the Joker had in the comics were “The Man Behind the Red Hood” from 1951 (11 years after his creation) and The Killing Joke from 1988, plus other stories elaborating on those two (and TKJ was itself a new take on the Red Hood origin). It’s only in the 2000s that we started to see additional alternative origin stories like Paul Dini’s “Case Study” and Michael Green’s “Lovers & Madmen.” The only other pre-2000 origins he got were cinematic, in the Burton movie and Mask of the Phantasm, both of which made him a hardened gangster before his acid-vat accident.
Although it’s worth noting that The Killing Joke specifically has the Joker say that he prefers his past to be multiple choice, so it’s built into the story that the flashbacks we’re shown might not be truthful. So that idea, that the Joker is an unreliable narrator about his backstory even within his own mind, has been around since 1988, long before Heath Ledger came along. The Joker has long been a character defined by his mystery and lack of other identity, since he was never given a real name in the comics. I recall being rather annoyed in the ’90s when Batman: The Animated Series used the “Jack Napier” name from the movie — so trust me, the idea that the Joker shouldn’t have his past known was certainly around before the turn of the century. (The New Batman Adventures later retconned “Napier” as just an alias, fortunately.)
@12. Yes, I think I prefer the multiple choice. It makes more sense to me anyway — this chaotic, anarchic character’s past being a jumble. Like a funhouse from hell.
I’m not saying it looks like a bad movie, or that the performances are bad (in fact, they look quite good)…but I’m just not sure I’m in a place right now where I can watch a movie about horrible people in a horrible world creating a horrible villain.
@14/Lisamarie: Yeah, I have to wonder — who do we root for or sympathize with in a Bat-less Joker movie? It seems to want us to sympathize with the Joker-to-be, but that seems like an odd choice given what he becomes. Granted, a couple of movies asked us to sympathize with Anakin Skywalker, but once he turned into Darth Vader and became monstrous, we were given other characters to sympathize with, Obi-Wan and Padme. So will there be some other character to identify with, someone to whom the lead character becomes a threat once he achieves or nears Joker-dom, or someone who watches in dismay as he descends into evil? The trailer doesn’t seem to suggest any such character — although, granted, as a teaser trailer it shows only a fraction of the story and that’s probably mainly from the first act. (Well, maybe. The initial teaser trailers for big action/FX movies tend to focus on the first act because the big CGI sequences aren’t done yet, but that’s probably less of a consideration for this movie.)
Maybe the other examples to look at here are within the crime genre, like The Godfather and Goodfellas, or psychological thrillers, like the sequels to Psycho where Norman Bates becomes the lead character. Then there’s the aforementioned King of Comedy, which follows a deranged wannabe comedian on his quest to be famous.
Not sure how well those things mesh with something in the Batman universe though. I do miss the more light-hearted takes on… well, anything.
@16/Spike: I’ve never been a fan of gangster movies. And the only worthwhile Psycho sequel is Psycho IV: The Beginning, which is a smart and sensitive story about the recovery from mental illness, whereas the preceding sequels were just exploitative, formulaic slasher films.
Even if this turns out to be an objectively good movie, it doesn’t seem to be one that I’d be interested in seeing. The tenuous links to the comics mythos aren’t enough in themselves to draw me in. I’m not enough of a fan of the Joker character in isolation that I’d want to see a story that’s exclusively about him; I prefer him as an antagonist to more sympathetic characters like Batman, Robin, or Harley Quinn. And this is such a different take on his origin that it hardly seems like the same character anyway.
@16 – re: The Godfather. I like that comparison. I think that while it’s totally possible to become invested in a film about the bad guys (none of the Corleones, save Fredo and the women, were supposed to be anything but terrible people), that really only works when you don’t know what’s coming (Michael’s journey, particularly). This Joker film might not technically be a prequel, but it really is in all but name. We know where the Joker ends up. So this origin story for the bad guy can really only ask us to sympathize with someone we know is going to turn out chaotic evil.
And in today’s climate… I don’t think I have the stomach for a film about a picked-on white guy who decides to start murdering people. There’s enough of that in real life, and maybe… maybe… this film turns out to be a commentary about that, but I’m not holding my breath that WB is going that route.
I suppose, hopefully, it can make the Joker look like a sad and pathetic mentally ill man, instead of the edgy cool criminal we’ve seen of late. Might stop some of the worst and most vocal fans from talking about how cool it is to be evil. Rub some of the mystique away from him. I’m not pinning my hopes on it though.
@19/random22: The problem, though, is that defining the Joker as mentally ill is a misrepresentation of mental illness and a stigmatization of it. It’s popular these days to pretend he’s psychotic, to use his “insanity” (a word that has no actual medical definition) as an excuse for why he gets sent to Arkham instead of prison — but he doesn’t fit either the medical definition of psychosis or the legal definition of insanity. He’s fully aware of the nature of reality; he knows he’s committing crimes and killing innocent people, not fighting demons or something. He’s rational enough to mastermind elaborate criminal schemes, and he’s fully aware that they’re illegal and immoral; he just doesn’t care. He’s not psychotic, just psychopathic and malignantly narcissistic.
(Also, the idea of the Joker being insane is a retcon introduced in the 1970s. There was actually a story in the ’50s where the Joker feigned insanity so he could get close to a criminal in a mental institution and use him in a scheme, and Batman and Robin defeated him by proving that he was sane.)
There’s also the question of whether the film will try to claim that the Joker was driven to his crimes because of how life mistreated him. The ultimate point of The Killing Joke was that the Joker was wrong when he claimed that he was just driven mad by one bad day. When he tried to drive Gordon and Batman to despair and “prove” that they’d sink to the same level as him, they refused to be broken or to compromise their principles. They showed that he was using his alleged tragic past as an excuse for choosing to be a homicidal monster, and that other people wouldn’t necessarily make the same choice. The Dark Knight‘s ferry sequence had the same dynamic. So if this film takes that premise as legitimate, if it tries to claim that he really was a decent guy broken by society or life or whatever, that’s giving too much credence to what’s supposed to be a hollow excuse for his inherent villainy.
@17 – “I prefer him as an antagonist to more sympathetic characters like Batman, Robin, or Harley Quinn.”
Wait, Harley Quinn??
@21/Austin: Sure. Even back in Batman: The Animated Series, Harley was a far more sympathetic villain than the Joker; she was trapped in an abusive relationship with him and struggled to find the strength to get out of it, so she was as much his victim as anyone else. We were rooting for her to break free of that toxic relationship. But in the modern comics, she’s long since achieved that freedom and become her own independent, comedic antiheroine, sort of the DC equivalent of Deadpool but with less overt breaking of the fourth wall (I think).
@20 Yeah, there is no real way to use him that is not problematic. I agree. However, if they are going to use him then it ought to be in a way that doesn’t empower a bunch of toxic fans to go forth and use his supposed coolness factor to just be evil. I’ve long held the opinion that it would be better if DC was to rest the character for a good few years, but he is one of the few outright commercially successful and instantly recognisable characters they have, so that ain’t gonna happen either.
I think there are other DC villains who could more plausibly sustain a solo movie. Lex Luthor could be an interesting villain-protagonist, a tragic lead who has the potential to be a great man but is doomed by his pride and control-freak tendencies. Maybe there’s a movie in the life of Eobard Thawne, a man who starts out worshipping a great hero of the past but ends up twisting it into a destructive obsession. With Batman villains alone, you might be able to make Two-Face or Clayface into a sympathetic horror lead. Or do a revenge thriller centering on Mr. Freeze.
Or you could get a cool action thriller out of Talia al Ghul, the story of a badass antiheroine raised to serve her father’s agenda but turning on him when she realizes it goes too far. Sort of a similar narrative to Marvel’s Shang-Chi, who’ll star in a future MCU movie.
The Joker isn’t supposed to be relatable or human; he’s not even mentally ill in the conventional sense. He doesn’t embody human madness, but existential madness and horror. His challenge to Batman is what can a hero do in the face of chaotic, pointless, and random cruelty?
Humanizing the Joker defeats the whole point of the Joker. He doesn’t need a backstory. This movie looks dumb.
@15 – Chris: Zazie Beetz plays a love interest, and there seems to be a mother character for Joker, too.
And I agree that seems like it’ll be a good movie, just not a good Joker movie, because it’s just so pointless without Batman… And I’m also worried that they might try to make him someone we might empathize with.
@24
Hey, maybe you like gangster movies more than you realize. Because that is pretty much the story of Michael Corleone you’re describing. :)
I should stress, I don’t think any idea should be rejected beforehand as intrinsically “wrong.” A lot of really good movies have had concepts that seemed absurd or unworkable at first blush. (Let’s not forget how one of the most successful current action franchises stars a raccoon and a tree. Nobody thought that would work until it did.) But this is a weird one and it’s not easy to envision how they could make it work. Maybe they’ve come up with some really clever and non-obvious approach that we haven’t thought of. But it’s a difficult needle to thread, and there are surely more ways to screw it up than to get it right (there usually are).