The final trailer for Todd Phillips’ Joker is here, and it shows a much darker side of Joaquin Phoenix’s Clown Prince of Crime than seen in previous clips.
While previous teasers and trailers posed the Joker as a downtrodden and misunderstood underdog, the new footage tracks his descent into villainhood. Starting with a clip of him talking down to his social worker, it then jumps to him seeing Robert De Niro’s character make fun of his stand-up routine on TV, which sparks a long, downward spiral that includes greasepaint, clown-masked flash mobs on the subway, a rebranding of his stand-up persona as The Joker, and a lot of unhinged laughs.
Here’s the film’s official synopsis, according to Dread Central:
Joker centers around the iconic arch-nemesis and is an original, standalone story not seen before on the big screen. The exploration of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), a man disregarded by society, is not only a gritty character study but also a broader cautionary tale.
Joker arrives in theaters October 4.
Well, this is quite encouraging. Mr. Phoenix has (if you’ll excuse the pun) some very big shoes to fill. But he seems to be managing the task.
I only hope they don’t make the character too sympathetic. He is a psychopath, after all.
So a remake of The King of Comedy with some V for Vendetta thrown in?
At bare minimum, if this renews interest in King of Comedy, then it’s worth the exercise. Oneof the best explorations of American celebrity culture, and still relevant today.
@3. Damfino: but so far I’m not seeing any reason to watch this. There’s no original spark in the trailer. It just seems derivative. Is it all supposed to hinge on the performance? Not sure that’s going to be enough. Ledger’s Joker is still a high bar.
Looks like the ideal movie for an angry white guy thinking of shooting up a public space.
Gonna have to pass on this one.
@5 No, no, don’t you see? This is a really important “cautionary tale”! If society doesn’t start treating white men with more respect, they’ll start turning into the Joker.
I think he will do a good job![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
Yeah, Phoenix is a great actor, and his part looks very good… but the topic and focus on “sad/angry white psycho” is quite worrisome.
Meh. Hopefully it will go away fast and be forgotten even faster. Utter dreck with that early 70’s nihilism. Thanks but I’ll watch the new Star Wars and Wonder Woman instead.
@5 and 6 have kind of hit on why this movie doesn’t interest me as much as it might have 20 years ago.
I was kind of the overlooked/invisible/bullied persona in a lot of ways growing up, so I have a soft spot for these types of movies, but there definitely is another aspect to it that I am not the target demographic for.
The joke that Phoenix’s character tells (“Well, no one’s laughing now!”) originated with Bob Monkhouse, a well-known British comic, and it’s considered one of his best jokes. Indeed, it’s one of the jokes he is remembered for.
The scene where De Niro’s character mocks Phoenix for telling the joke is flat-out incomprehensible to me. Why would a successful TV comedian (DeNiro) take time out of his act to mock a struggling, no-name comedian (Phoenix)? Why criticize him for telling a joke that is actually pretty funny? Why doesn’t he have a joke of his own to top it?
Perhaps– I’m stretching here– the point is that De Niro’s character recognizes the joke as a well-known Monkhouse line, and he is accusing Phoenix’s character of joke theft. But I suspect that isn’t the case, and indeed, that the only “joke theft” here is committed by the screenwriters.
The whole scene just seems like a terrible misfire. Maybe it makes sense in context, but as it stands, it doesn’t bode well for the film.
Some reviews are emerging from the festival circuit and they are somewhat confused. Aside from names used, like Gotham and the Waynes, this doesn’t seem to be a DC movie. The main character is complex, but confused and very unreliable. Supposedly it’s hard to tell if what the audience sees is real or not.
But the idea that a psychopath is made largely sympathetic sounds dangerous. I mean that literally. It’s one reason why I think we should be done with Charlie Manson portrayals forever.
Rather than a reflection of/on society, what if it inspires actual violence from people who blur the difference between fantasy and reality? I’m thinking of the shooter at the Dark Knight screening in Colorado. The temperature of the country has only gone up since then, with much more derangement in plain view.
This is meant to be scary and it’s just a film, but… maybe not a wise thing to make.
The 1932 movie Scarface was seen as dangerous for depicting criminals in a sympathetic light, at a time when real gangster violence was on the rise. It was even banned by censors in some places. But despite that, politicians at the time somehow managed to take a sensible step further. They didn’t ban gangster movies. They banned automatic weapons.
Fancy that.
@13. NoDice: “politicians at the time somehow managed to take a sensible step further…”
This may not be a tenable expectation these days.
@14/Sunspear – there were people back then who said the same thing.
@15. daniel: were we as utterly divided then as now? There are always factions, but these days political discourse is splintering fast.
I’m not calling for a new censorship code for ultraviolent movies, or for ones that glorify psychos. We will always be fascinated by dark psyches apparently. There will be detective, vigilante and murder shows into the future.
I haven’t seen the film, so ultimate judgment has to wait, but so far the filmmakers’ judgment seems suspect.
@16/Sunspear – actually, I think we were just as divided – but that’s because I don’t think we’re as divided now as the situation is made out to be. To hear the talking heads on either side tell it, everyone in the country is either red or blue, nobody in the middle, and nobody works with (or even talks to) the other side anymore. But studies show that’s not the case. The nation is *way* more purple than a lot of folks realize.
I wasn’t going in the direction of movie censorship (I agree with what you said there), I was talking about gun legislation that NoDice brought up. Automatic weapons have been banned before, they can be banned again – regardless of what the vocal minority wants (because again, studies show that we’re just not that divided on that issue).