JOKER trailer discussion

[Asita]

So yeah, they're apparently doing this. Joaquin Phoenix is starring in a Joker origin story. Yes, that Joker.


Now, I really don't know what to think about this. On the one hand, canonizing an origin story feels almost antithetical to the character, and the trailer seems almost too grounded and sympathetic for the Joker. And I admit to growing weary of Marvel and DC dominating the box office. On the other hand, I have to admit that I'm somehow more optimistic about this film than I was for most of the DCEU, and in the moments in the trailer where he's cracked/cracking make me think Phoenix could be a good Joker. I'm certainly more optimistic about his performance than I was about Leto's.

So to you, Escapists, I ask what are your thoughts? Good idea/bad idea? Does this seem interesting to you? How does it compare to what we've been seeing?

 

[Erttheking]

Joker is D.C.'s Wolverine. In that they keep cashing in on him because he brings in the big bucks and it needs to stop.

On the other hand I do have to admit this trailer piqued my interest. I don't know if it'd be my preferred Joker backstory (I prefer not knowing where he came from) but in a vacuum it looks to be interesting, and Phoenix does look like he's putting in a strong performance, so I'll give it a look.

Plus I appreciate them giving Joker a bright purple suit and more classic clown make up. It's a nice change from the more dark stuff.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

neato. looks like an actual character movie and that's all I care about ultimately. it can piss on any lore as long as it turns out good overall. Joaquin seems to put his best into his roles so far, enough so that I got a fair bit of faith from this new audio-visual data that this is no different

 

[the December King]

... Jeez.

That looked pretty cool.

Am I going to have to start watching comic book movies now?

 

[twistedmic]

I gotta say, I'm not really feeling this one. First off all, I never really liked the idea of a concrete origin story for the Joker. I always saw him as a kind of physical manifestation of chaos rather than an actual person.
Secondly, I can't really explain it but the makeup looks off somehow.
Finally I don't like how they seem to be trying to make the Joker sympathetic.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

 

[Erttheking]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

On another forum I saw someone remark that the best way to do something like this would be to have it be the standard set up but then a third of the way through the movie it stops and the narrator goes "wait, no. That's not how it went..." before starting over with a totally different premise.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

I can think of better opposites for Batman then the Joker.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Honestly, this looks like a feature length apology for Leto.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Honestly, this looks like a feature length apology for Leto.

I haven't seen Suicide Squad, so I don't know whether he's really bad or people just don't like how he looks.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

Honestly, this looks like a feature length apology for Leto.

I haven't seen Suicide Squad, so I don't know whether he's really bad or people just don't like how he looks.

He's not really in it much but he's pretty bad. I gotta say, I wasn't sold on the look but I think they could have made Marilyn Manson Joker work. But he ended up being awful like practically everything about Suicide Squad.

To be fair, this trailer looks pretty bad too but for entirely different reasons.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

See, I get this but then again comic book writers have been humping and pumping the whole multiple choice past, he can be anyone angle that the joker has simply become downright unbearable.

He's immortal and omnipotent, able to do anything to anyone because he's the joker. Some people try to claim that his unpredictability makes him scary, but by making him so "unpredictable" he's entirely predictable. He's not insane, he's a serial killer with some make up.

This trailer, while certainly pinning an origin story on a character defined by their lack of one, seems to at least want to slow down and focus on what make the joker a villain. And why he's scary in the first place. Maybe even give us a plausible reason for why someone like Harley might fall for him.

But part of his character is that Batman can't figure out who he used to be - he knows aliases and a bunch of backstories, but nothing concrete.
This version of the Joker not only seems like he'd be very easy to find out(seeing how he's a stand up comic) and like he can't take Batman on in a fight. If this is supposed to be a DCEU, as it was originally invented, written, cast and filmed, then we're expected to see this Joker fight BatFleck, and I don't see that happening.

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

On another forum I saw someone remark that the best way to do something like this would be to have it be the standard set up but then a third of the way through the movie it stops and the narrator goes "wait, no. That's not how it went..." before starting over with a totally different premise.

See that sounds interesting. Or at least to me do the entire story straight, and the final scene have the real Joker walk in, shoot the main character, kill him, and then over his corpse tell him 'I'm the real Joker'
Credits.

The entire movie being a complete misdirect, and ultimately, meaningless. Because its the Joker and a set story defeats the point of him

 

[Casual Shinji]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

The whole 'Joker is a mystery and no one possible fathom him' is itself pretty bog standard and run into the ground by now.

Personally I'd rather they'd give us a Joker who is more in the realm of Cesar Romero or early BTAS Mark Hamill Joker; A guy who's just a clown with a real mean streak, but still just a joker. This movie at least tries something a tad different, not much, but a tad.

And I'm glad Batman isn't going to be in this. How many times do we need to see these two clash and symbolize the duality of whatever? We kinda know this song and dance by now. Take the Joker and put him in a world where there is no Batman. I'd at least be interested in how that ends up.

As for the trailer.. it looks okay. Phoenix in full make-up looks great, but I feel the trailer pretty much showed how things are gonna unfold; He starts off as a naive every-man, and through the harshness of the world treating him badly becomes a criminal lunatic. I hope it dives into a bit more depth than just that.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

The whole 'Joker is a mystery and no one possible fathom him' is itself pretty bog standard and run into the ground by now.

Personally I'd rather they'd give us a Joker who is more in the realm of Cesar Romero or early BTAS Mark Hamill Joker; A guy who's just a clown with a real mean streak, but still just a joker. This movie at least tries something a tad different, not much, but a tad.

And I'm glad Batman isn't going to be in this. How many times do we need to see these two clash and symbolize the duality of whatever? We kinda know this song and dance by now. Take the Joker and put him in a world where there is no Batman. I'd at least be interested in how that ends up.

As for the trailer.. it looks okay. Phoenix in full make-up looks great, but I feel the trailer pretty much showed how things are gonna unfold; He starts off as a naive every-man, and through the harshness of the world treating him badly becomes a criminal lunatic. I hope it dives into a bit more depth than just that.

Saying the Joker's mysterious backstory is run down is kinda' like saying we're tired of Batman always being Bruce Wayne, lets get a different backstory.
What i mean is that the Joker's mysterious backstory is part of the character. That's his whole point when he says anyone can be a Joker with just one bad day.

And I disagree with it being more interesting without Batman. Its the same problem Gotham has. You're telling the Batman story, without Batman. Without him, the Joker is just serial killer in a costume, not the super villain he's supposed to be. It'd be like a Superman story without Superman, where its just Lex being a corporate dick. We've had enough gangster/mob movies, and you could argue we've seen enough Batman vs Joker movies, but he IS a Batman villain. Its strange to go to the Batman IP and deliberately remove the central part of that story, the Batman.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Saying the Joker's mysterious backstory is run down is kinda' like saying we're tired of Batman always being Bruce Wayne, lets get a different backstory.

Now that you mention it, I actually wouldn't mind much at all. I remember someone had put up a poll once about what if Batman was played by this black actress, and to me that would be the perfect oppertunity to try something different with the character as a whole.

What i mean is that the Joker's mysterious backstory is part of the character. That's his whole point when he says anyone can be a Joker with just one bad day.

This movie won't be canon, it'll be an elseworld story. And who knows what they're actually gonna do with it.

And I disagree with it being more interesting without Batman. Its the same problem Gotham has. You're telling the Batman story, without Batman. Without him, the Joker is just serial killer in a costume, not the super villain he's supposed to be. It'd be like a Superman story without Superman, where its just Lex being a corporate dick. We've had enough gangster/mob movies, and you could argue we've seen enough Batman vs Joker movies, but he IS a Batman villain. Its strange to go to the Batman IP and deliberately remove the central part of that story, the Batman.

At this point I'll take any shake-up to these comicbook franchises. And I actually liked Gotham for not shoving its iconography down my throat, until it tried to shove its iconography down my throat.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

So you don't like The Killing Joke?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

So a complete misunderstanding of the Joker movie. Great.

The whole point of the Joker is A. He can be anyone and B. He's an opposite to Batman.

Giving him an actual name, backstory and removing Batman is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with the Joker, and I'm including street-thug Damaged tattooed Suicide Squad Joker.
Also making the Joker a sympathetic anti-hero is a huge mistake. If there's one character in ALL of pop-culture you're not supposed to root for, its the Joker.

So you don't like The Killine Joke?

Killine or Killing Joke? I know what the killing joke is and its okay(I did hear the movie was terrible), Killine joke(I'm assume its a meme of some sort?) I don't know.