The final trailer for Todd Phillips’ Joker upon us and let’s not beat around the bush, Joaquin Phoenix’s take on Batman’s greatest nemesis is the stuff of nightmares.
After all those stories about the Daniel Day-Lewis-esque levels of preparation Phoenix underwent to play Arthur Fleck, the new trailer shows just creepy his take on the Clown Prince of Crime will be. His laugh alone will keep you up at night.
Jared Leto, this is how you do the Joker.
But beyond what looks to be an all-time great Joaquin Phoenix performance, we finally get to see some stuff that not only adds extra dimensions to the character but also some narrative context.
There’s new glimpses of Arthur’s battle with mental illness, his failed stand-up career, and his troubled family life. Throw in appearances from Robert De Niro’s cheesy talk show host who instigated Arthur’s downfall, Atlanta‘s Zazie Beetz, and Brett Cullen as an unsympathetic Thomas Wayne who socks Arthur in the face, Joker is certainly nothing like any other “superhero” film we’ve ever seen.
Honestly, it seems like Joker is a modern day reinterpretation of Martin Scorsese’s 1982 classic, The King of Comedy, which happens to also star Robert De Niro and revolves around a mentally ill stand-up comedian who slowly loses it.
With no action sequences, no Batman, and spectacle being replaced with a dark character study into a mentally ill person, it’s not wonder why Todd Phillips had such a hard time convincing Warner Bros. to buy into Joker.
But based on what we’ve seen so far, it seems like the studio chose well because the movie is looking like a solid winner. We’ll soon find out whether the final product is as good as all the promotional trailers when it opens on October 4.
And hey, even if the movie doesn’t turn out as good as we hoped, we’re going to get a fantastic Joaquin Phoenix performance that’ll wipe away whatever memory we have of Jared Leto at the very least.