The prospect of a mid-budget Joker origin story produced by Martin Scorsese and starring Joaquin Phoenix is such an amazing idea that I’m perpetually worried some calamity will befall the production and it’ll be cancelled. I really, really want to see what this movie is going to be like, as it sounds like one of the most unique comic book adaptations currently in production. The pic has taken another small step towards reality today, too, as with shooting soon to commence, Joaquin Phoenix rocked up at the Deauville American Film Festival looking pretty damn Joker-y.
Sporting slicked back hair, a sinister grin and a noticeably more slender physique than his previous roles, it’s as though Phoenix is begging the internet’s legion of Photoshop experts to play Axis Chemicals and turn that hair a shade of acid green, his skin to alabaster white and his lips into blood-red slashes.
Seeing Phoenix looking like this makes the film itself much easier to visualize and cements precisely why he’s such a good pick for the role. Throughout his career, he’s played characters who’ve had undercurrents of rage bubbling away inside them, creating tension as to when they’ll emerge. Just check out his Commodus in Gladiator or Johnny Cash in Walk the Line to get an idea of what I’m thinking of; people who can suddenly snap and unleash a wave of sadistic and masochistic violence.
As the film continues to cast its supporting characters, including a new actor for Thomas Wayne after Alec Baldwin denied he was ever involved, we should start to form more of an idea of what to expect. Obvious touchstones are Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s classic The Killing Joke and perhaps Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermego’s 2008 Joker (which I think is severely underrated), but plot details remain scarce at the moment.
Joker is pencilled in for an October 4th, 2019 release, which means that it’s just over a year away. Hopefully Warner Bros. will pre-empt any blurry on-set pics of Phoenix in full costume by giving us a decent look at him when shooting begins. Fingers crossed, eh?