Don’t get me wrong, I really want to like this movie. If it was just called Clownface Killer I think I’d get behind it 100%. Since it is instead called Joker and yet it seems to have zero ties to the comic other than a skeletal association to The Killing Joke…well, I just don’t care. I may be in the minority on this one and honestly I’ll end up seeing it because it’s a “comic” film; but at this time I just don’t get the hype.
Director Todd Phillips “Joker” centers around the iconic arch nemesis and is an original, standalone fictional story not seen before on the big screen. Phillips’ exploration of Arthur Fleck, who is indelibly portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, is of a man struggling to find his way in Gotham’s fractured society. A clown-for-hire by day, he aspires to be a stand-up comic at night…but finds the joke always seems to be on him. Caught in a cyclical existence between apathy and cruelty, Arthur makes one bad decision that brings about a chain reaction of escalating events in this gritty character study.
Joker is due out on October 4th
