New ‘Joker’ trailer teases director Todd Phillips’ ‘wildly different’ comic-book movie
“Joker†offers a new take on the Batman villain, with Joaquin Phoenix in title role.
Ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival later this week, Warner Bros. released on Wednesday a new trailer for its highly anticipated “Joker,†promising a gritty, grounded take on the comic-book genre unlike anything fans have seen before.
The film, which hits theaters Oct. 4, offers a new twist on the origin story of Batman’s ultimate nemesis, with Joaquin Phoenix stepping into shoes previously worn by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger to play Arthur Fleck, a troubled, alienated clown-for-hire and aspiring comedian living on Gotham’s margins.
With ‘Joker,’ director Todd Phillips gives the comic-book movie a dark new Scorsese-esque spin.
Dispensing with the typical CGI spectacle of comic-book movies, the film was inspired by gritty character studies of antiheroes of the 1970s such as “Taxi Driver†and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.â€
“It really came from this idea: What if you just did a comic-book movie differently?†Phillips told The Times. “We all grew up on these character studies, and they’re few and far between nowadays. So it was like, ‘Let’s do a deep dive on one of these guys in a real way.’ No one is going to fly in it. No buildings are going to collapse. It’s just going to be on the ground, so to speak.â€
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