Joker (film)

[bassman]

Directed by Todd Philips(Hangover Trilogy), the film stars Joaquin Phoenix as the title character, with Robert DeNiro, Marc Maron, Zazie Beats, and Frances Conroy. Serving as an origin for The Joker and set in the 80’s, they’re saying this will be a stand-alone film and completely unconnected from the DC Shared Universe. Phoenix is very talented and this appears to be aiming for more of a real-world, dark character study, which I love. They also had a lower, more modest budget, which is something I’ve been wanting applied to certain comic films for some time. No “skybeam”-type massive sequences, something on more of a personal level.

[ProfessorChaos]

sure, why not? can't be any worse than batman vs superman, right? plus, joaquin phoenix can really shine in some of his roles,and i think this could be one of those cases.

[MinionZombie]

Ah, so it was Robert DeNiro I saw glimpsed in that trailer! Blimey. Yep, looks pretty decent and I agree on the budget issue - not every superhero flick needs to be some galumfing great bag of money sloshing about. Similarly, if you can keep it to two hours you'll spend less on the budget anyway! sure, why not? can't be any worse than batman vs superman, right? I quite liked BvS. Never saw the theatrical cut, just the 3 hour director's cut, but I dug it. Sure it has some issues and there's various superhero flicks that are better than it, but I dug it a fair bit.

[shootemindehead]

It's a pity Ledger is brown bread, cos I think he'd have shined in that film.

[bassman]

It's a pity Ledger is brown bread, cos I think he'd have shined in that film. That’s an interesting idea. Would he have gotten a spin off film if he was still with us? It would probably have to be a different story, as his version preferred to keep his origin a mystery. I do feel like Phoenix is probably the next best option. At least it’s not Jared Leto! How will we know if this Joker has a damaged history if that word isn’t tattoo to his forehead?!?

[shootemindehead]

I think Jared Leto is a very good actor, but yeh that iteration of Mr. J was just awful. However, this is the problem when you have multiple actors playing the same role. Eventually, the character becomes utterly meaningless. It might as well be some different character altogether.

[bassman]

Yeah, it’s kinda strange that we’ve seen three different incarnations of the character within ten years or so. Caesar Romero owned it for a couple decades, then Jack Nicholson for a couple decades, but now we’ve had three, all within the same decade. Hopefully Phoenix is the last version of the character for a good while. Although I hear that Leto is involved in Birds of Prey in some small way, so we’ll now be seeing two versions at once. Also, I agree that Leto is actually a very capable actor. In fact, I was super excited when he was announced because I felt he’d be able to knock it out of the park. I still believe he could, but unfortunately they just made some poor decisions for the character....