Director Todd Phillips has shared another sneak peek of Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck – better known to you, I and the people of Gotham City as the Joker.
Only this time, there’s a twist; it’s an official video that superimposes footage of Phoenix’s demented trickster on top of the mundane Arthur, and it’s all set against “Laughing” by The Guess Who. How very appropriate.
It’s also… strangely unsettling? For one, the camera gradually zooms towards Joaquin Phoenix’s titular protagonist as his lips curl into a sinister smile, only for said grin to drop in the blink of an eye. It’s subtle, but it plays into the character’s psychotic tenets, and it’ll be fascinating to watch an actor of Phoenix’s stature flit between one mindset and the other at the drop of a hat.
Check it out:
Said to be more of a character study than anything else, we know Joker has assembled a who’s who of Hollywood talent, including Robert De Niro and Deadpool 2‘s Zazie Beetz, the latter of whom is said to be playing a romantic interest to the disheveled Arthur. This is an origin story, remember, so expect to find out how Batman’s greatest adversary came to be when the lights go down next fall. Principal photography is now underway, too, so get ready for a whole host of updates from Todd Phillips’ Instagram feed.
Joker has been penciled in for a release on October 4th, 2019 and is said to be completely unaffiliated with Worlds of DC. It is, by definition, a standalone, self-contained story, and this early peek at Phoenix in costume is radically different from Jared Leto’s own interpretation of the Clown Prince of Crime, which was all style and no substance.