Joker (2019)
Joker is an American suspense movie directed by Todd Phillips in 2019, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Silver. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, based on characters from DC Comics. The film follows Arthur Fleck, a struggling stand-up comic who transforms into a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City, an origin story set in 1981. In supporting, roles feature Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Bill Camp, Shea Whigham, and Marc Maron. Warner Bros created Joker. In partnership with Bron Creative and Village Roadshow Pictures, DC Films and Joint Effort, and distributed by Warner Bros.
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| Joker (2019) |
Throughout 2017, Phillips designed Joker and wrote the script with Silver. The two were influenced by Martin Scorsese's character studies in the 1970s and movies, which were initially attached as a producer to the project. The concept was based on the graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), but Phillips and Silver did not look for inspiration in different comics otherwise. In February 2018, Phoenix was annexed and cast that July, while most of the cast was signed on by August. Principal photography took place from September to December 2018 in New York City, Jersey City, and Newark. It is Batman's first live-action theatrical film to receive a score from America's Motion Picture Association due to its violent and upsetting content.
Joker premiered at the International Film Festival in Venice on August 31, 2019, where he received the Golden Lion and was released on October 4, 2019, in the United States. The movie polarized critics; although Phoenix's work was lauded, there were divided reactions to the dark tone, depiction of mental illness, and handling abuse. Joker also raised concerns about inspiring real-world violence; in a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, the movie theater where the 2012 Aurora, Colorado mass shooting took place refused to show it. The film set box office records for an October release, grossing more than $741 million worldwide, making it the eighth-highest-grossing 2019 film and the fourth-highest-grossing all-time R-rated movie.
About The Joker
Directed by: Todd Phillips
Produced by: Todd Phillips, Bradley Cooper and Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Written by: Todd Phillips and Scott Silver
Based on: Characters by DC Comics
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix
Music by: Hildur Guðnadóttir
Cinematography: Lawrence Sher
Edited by: Jeff Groth
Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Films, Joint Effort
Bron Creative and Village Roadshow Pictures
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date: August 31, 2019 (Venice) and October 4, 2019 (United States)
Running time: 122 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Budget: $55–70 million
Box office: $741.3 million.
Plot
Party clown and aspiring stand-up comic Arthur Fleck were living in Gotham City in 1981 with his wife, Penny. Gotham is fraught with violence and poverty, leaving disenfranchised and poor segments of the population. Arthur suffers from a disorder that causes him to laugh at inappropriate times and is dependent on medication for social services. Arthur's co-worker, Randall, gives him a gun after a gang attacks him in an alley. Arthur invites a stand-up comedy show for his neighbor, Sophie's single mother, and they start dating.
Arthur's gun falls out of his pocket while entertaining at a children's hospital. Randall lies that Arthur himself bought the gun and fired Arthur. Three drunken Wayne Enterprises businessmen beat Arthur on the subway, still in his clown makeup; he shoots two in self-defense and executes the third. The killings were denounced by Thomas Wayne, who describes those envious of more successful people as "clowns." Demonstrations start against the rich Gotham, with protesters in Arthur's photo wearing clown masks. Funding cuts the social service program to shut down, leaving Arthur without medication.
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| Joker (2019) |
The comedy show of Arthur goes badly; he laughs uncontrollably and has difficulty telling his jokes. Murray Franklin's talk show host mocks Arthur by showing regular videos on his show. Arthur intercepts a letter written by Penny to Thomas, claiming to be the illegitimate son of Thomas, and pleads with his mother to hide the truth. Arthur speaks to the young son of Thomas, Bruce, at Wayne Manor, but flees after a butler scuffle with Alfred Pennyworth. After a visit by two detectives from the Gotham City Police Department investigating Arthur's role in the train killings, Penny is having a stroke and hospitalized.
Arthur approaches Thomas at a public event, telling him that Penny is crazy, not his biological mother. Arthur visits Arkham State Hospital in denial and steals the case file of Penny; the file says that Penny raised Arthur as a baby and allowed her abusive boyfriend to hurt both of them. Penny claimed that Thomas used his influence to make the adoption and commit her to the asylum to hide their business. Arthur goes to the hospital, depressed, and kills Penny. He returns home and heads unannounced into Sophie's apartment. Fearful, Sophie asks him to leave; the hallucinations of Arthur are their past experiences.
Thanks to the sudden success of his daily videos, Arthur is invited to appear on Murray's show. As he prepares, Randall and ex-colleague Gary visit Arthur. Arthur kills Randall, but in the past, he leaves Gary unharmed to treat him well. On the way to the theater, the two detectives were chasing Arthur on a train loaded with clown protesters. Accidentally, one detective shoots a protester and sparks a riot to allow Arthur to escape.
Arthur asks Murray to introduce him as Joker before the show goes live, a nod to Murray's previous parody. Arthur walks out to a warm reception, but tells morbid jokes, admits on the train that he killed the men, and rants how society abandons the disenfranchised. Arthur kills him after calling out Murray to taunt him, and is charged as riots tear through Gotham. One rioter in a street corners the Wayne family and kills Thomas and his wife Martha, sparing a traumatized Bruce. Rioters smashed into the police car carrying Arthur in an ambulance and set him free. He dances to the crowd's cheers.
Arthur laughs at Arkham, telling his psychiatrist that she wouldn't understand the joke. He runs out of orderly, leaving a bloodied footprint trail.
Cast
- Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck / Joker:
- A mentally ill, impoverished stand-up comedian disregarded by society, whose history of abuse causes him to become a nihilistic criminal. Phoenix had been interested in a low-budget "character study" of a comic book character, and said the film "feels unique, it is its own world in some ways, and maybe ... It might as well be the thing that scares you the most." Phoenix lost 52 pounds (24 kg) in preparation, and based his laugh on "videos of people suffering from pathological laughter." He also sought to portray a character who audiences could not identify with and did not look to previous Joker actors for inspiration; instead, he read a book about political assassinations so he could understand killers and motivations. Director Todd Phillips said that he intentionally left it ambiguous as to whether Arthur becomes the actual Joker as seen in traditional Batman stories or inspires a separate character.
- Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin:
- A talk show host who plays a role in Arthur's downfall. De Niro said his role in Joker pays homage to his character from The King of Comedy (1983), Rupert Pupkin, who is a comedian obsessed with a talk-show host.
- Zazie Beetz as Sophie Dumond:
- A cynical single mother and Arthur's love interest. Beetz, a "huge fan" of Phoenix, said that it was "an honor" to co-star with him, and that she learned a lot working with him on set.
- Frances Conroy as Penny Fleck: Arthur's mentally and physically ill mother, who formerly worked for Thomas Wayne. Hannah Gross portrays a young Penny.
In contrast, Brett Cullen plays the Gotham mayor's Thomas Wayne, a billionaire philanthropist. Unlike in the comics, Thomas is less forgiving than conventional incarnations and plays a role in the history of the Joker. Originally cast in the role, Alec Baldwin was dropped due to scheduling conflicts. Douglas Hodge is playing Alfred Pennyworth, the Wayne family's butler and caretaker, and Dante Pereira-Olson is playing Bruce Wayne, the son of Thomas, who becomes the adult archenemy of the Joker Batman.
Additional cast members include: Glenn Fleshler and Leigh Gill as Randall and Gary, Arthur'sclown co-workers; Bill Camp and Shea Whigham as two detectives in the Gotham City Police Department; Marc Maron as Gene Ufland, a Franklin show producer; Josh Pais as Hoyt Vaughn, Arthur's agent; Brian Tyree Henry as a clerk at Arkham State Hospital; Ben Warheit as a Wall Street banker who gets assassinations; Justin Theroux on Franklin's show has an uncredited cameo as a celebrity guest.
Production
Around 2014 and 2015, Joaquin Phoenix expressed interest in working on a kind of movie about a comic book villain, such as the DC Comics character Joker, in a low-budget "character study." Phoenix had previously refused to act in the Marvel Cinematic Universe because he would have had to play the roles in multiple films, such as the Hulk and Doctor Strange. He did not believe that his concept for a movie would cover the Joker because he felt the character had already been depicted in a similar way and tried to think of another. The agent of Phoenix proposed setting up a Warner Bros. meeting, but he refused. Likewise, Todd Phillips was offered several times to direct comic-based movies, but he refused because he felt they were "loud" and he wasn't involved. Joker was created from his concept, according to Phillips, to create a different, more grounded comic book movie. He was drawn to the Joker because he did not believe that there was a definitive representation of the character that he knew would offer significant creative freedom.
When his film War Dogs debuted in August 2016, Phillips pitched the idea to Warner Bros. for Joker. Until War Dogs, Phillips was mostly known for his comedy films including Road Trip (2000), Old School (2003) and The Hangover (2009); War Dogs marked a step into the more troubling territory. During the premiere, Phillips noticed that "War Dogs wouldn't set the world on fire and I wondered,' What do people really want to see?'" He proposed that DC Comics distinguish its slate from rival Marvel Studios by making low-budget, independent comics. DC Comics wanted to underline the collective existence of its DC-based film franchise, the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), after the successful release of Wonder Woman (2017). Warner Bros. and DC Films announced plans for the film in August 2017, with Phillips directing and co-writing with Scott Silver, and Martin Scorsese partnering with Phillips to co-produce.
Jared Leto, who portrays the Joker in the DCEU, was disappointed by the existence of a project separate from his interpretation, according to Kim Masters and Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter. Masters reported in October 2019that Leto "felt' alienated and upset'" when he learned that Warner Bros.— who had promised him a stand-alone DCEU Joker movie— let Phillips go with Joker and ask his music manager Irving Azoff to cancel the project. Masters added that Leto's frustration prompted him to end his relationship with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), claiming that "his agents should have told him earlier about the Phillips plan and fought harder for his version of Joker." Nevertheless, sources affiliated with Leto dispute that he was seeking to get Joker canceled and quit CAA because of it.
Warner Bros. forced Phillips to cast Leonardo DiCaprio as the Joker, hoping to attract him with the help of his frequent collaborator Scorsese. Phillips said, however, that Phoenix was the only actor he considered, and that he and Silver wrote the script with Phoenix in mind, "The goal was never to introduce Joaquin Phoenix into the universe of comic book movies, the goal being to introduce comic book movies into the universe of Joaquin Phoenix." Phoenix said when he learned about the movie, he became excited because it was the kind he looked for m. It took him some time to commit to the role, as it scared him and he said, "We often have these simplistic, reductive archetypes in these films, and that causes the viewer to be distant from the character, just as we would be doing in real life, where it's easy to label someone as evil and say, ' Oh, I'm not that.'"
Writing
In 2017, Phillips and Silver published Joker, and it took about a year to compose. It took some time, according to producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff, for Warner Bros. to gain approval for the script, partially due to concerns about the content. Likewise, because of the character's popularity, Phillips commented that there were "a zillion obstacles" during the year-long writing process. Though the themes of the script may reflect modern society, Phillips said the movie was not intended to be political. Although Joker had previously appeared in several movies, Phillips thought a new story with the character could be made. "It's just another reading because people do Macbeth's versions," he told The New York Times.
Scorsese films such as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and The King of Comedy (1983) and Phillips ' Hangover Trilogy inspire the script. Many movies that Phillips cited as inspiration include studies of character published in the 1970s— such as Serpico (1973) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)—the silent film The Man Who Laughs (1928) and several musicals. Phillips said he didn't regard Joker as different from his previous work, including his Hangover films, apart from the sound. While the idea of the film was inspired by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), which depicts the Joker as a struggling stand-up comedian, Phillips said it didn't "invoke anything from the comic books ... that's what was fascinating to me. We're not even doing Joker, but the tale of becoming Joker."
Phillips and Silver found the most common story of Joker's origin, in which the hero becomes too unrealistic after falling into a vat of acid. Instead, many aspects of the Joker legend were used to create an original tale that Phillips wanted to feel as authentic as possible. Because the Joker doesn't have a clear story of origin in the comics, Phillips and Silver got tremendous creative freedom and "pushed each other to come up with something totally insane every day." Nonetheless, they sought to maintain the vague "multiple choice" aspect of the history of the Joker by portraying the character as an unreliable narrator— with all the stories being just his delusions— and left unclear what mental illnesses he experiences. Phillips said the whole film is open to interpretation as such.
Pre-production
In January 2018, after Justice League's disappointing critical and financial performance (2017), Walter Hamada replaced Jon Berg as Warner Bros ' head of DC-based film production. Hamada sorted in development through the various DC movies, canceling some while advancing work on others; the Joker movie was set to begin filming at the end of 2018 with a small $55 million budget. In an attempt to dissuade Phillips, Masters revealed that Warner Bros. was hesitant to let Joker go forward and offered him a small budget. For a supporting role in the film, Robert De Niro was being considered by June. After four months of Phillips persuasion, the contract with Phoenix was finalized on July 2018. Immediately after, the film was officially green-lit by Warner Bros., renamed it Joker, and gave it a release date of October 4, 2019. Warner Bros. described the film as "an exploration of a man disregarded by society is not only a study of gritty character but also a wider tale of caution."
The former collaborator of Scorsese, Koskoff, joined in producing, while Scorsese quit his production duties due to other duties. Scorsese was known to be an executive producer but was concerned about his movie The Irishman. It was also reported that the movie would have no impact on Leto's Joker and would be the first in a new series of Non-DCEU DC movies. Zazie Beetz was cast in a supporting role in July, and in August De Niro began talks. Frances McDormand declined an offer to play the Joker's wife, and they cast Frances Conroy. Marc Maron, who had recently finished shooting the third season of the GLOW web television series, joined the cast at the end of July, and Bryan Callen. On August 27, Alec Baldwin was cast as Thomas Wayne but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts two days later.
Release
Joker premiered at the 76th International Film Festival in Venice on 31 August 2019, receiving an eight-minute standing ovation and winning the Golden Lion award. It also premiered on September 9, 2019, at the Toronto International Film Festival. Warner Bros released the film theatrically. Pictures in the U.S. on October 4, 2019, and in Australia and several other international markets a day ago.
The film did not play during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater where the 2012 mass shooting took place. Three victims ' relatives, as well as a witness's wife, signed with the petition a letter to Warner Bros., restricted access only to journalists to the red carpet at the U.S. premiere on September 28, 2019. Furthermore, Landmark Theaters forbade moviegoers to wear Joker costumes during their run, while Los Angeles and New York City Police Departments increased police visibility in the area theaters, although they did not receive "any specific threat."
The U.S. Army distributed an email warning service on September 18, 2019, to members of potential violence in theaters screening the movie and noting the popularity of the Joker character among the incel community. A separate memo revealed that the Army received "credible" information from Texas law enforcement "related to targeting an unknown movie theater during the release." However, according to Deadline Hollywood, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department of the United States found no credible threats to the release of the movie. In an interview with TheWrap, Phillips expressed surprise at the uproar, stating, "I think it's because indignation is a commodity, I think it's something that has been a commodity for a while ... What's remarkable for me in this film's debate is how quickly the far left could sound like the far right when it suits their agenda. He returned later to finish the interview, but the question was not answered. After that, reporters were disinvited from the TCL Chinese Theater premiere, leaving only photographers to connect with filmmakers and actors on the carpet. Warner Bros. said in a statement to Variety, "There has been a lot of talk about Joker, and we just feel it's time for people to see the film."
Conclusion
In Gotham City, society is disregarding and mistreating the mentally disturbed actor Arthur Fleck. He then embarks on a progressive downward spiral and a bloody crime. Through his alter-ego, this course brings him face to face: "The Joker."
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