Joker movie trailer has gritty Martin Scorsese look – it could be an oddball winner for studio
- Joaquin Phoenix plays the Joker as a cackling outcast with echoes of Scorsese characters Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy
- Free of the DC Extended Universe, there’s a whiff of Heath Ledger’s Joker too in the Todd Phillips-directed origin story
More than any other superhero movie in recent memory, Todd Phillips’ Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix as DC’s clown prince of crime, has remained opaque – a curious and modest Gotham spin-off that teased images and casting announcements, but otherwise was cooked up behind a scrim of mystery.
Now the curtain has finally been pulled back. The morning after the first full Joker trailer stoked interest at CinemaCon 2019, the teaser went public – revealing what the feel of this fascinating origin-story film appears to be.
Phillips and Phoenix are delivering a true character study, a stand-alone comic-book movie that looks more like a gritty Martin Scorsese portrait of a cackling outcast as he begins to crack up on the city’s mean streets.
This seems to be the stuff of pre-Casino Robert De Niro, who fittingly happens to co-star in Joker.
This is the textured take of a searching loser coming apart on the urban fringes – a wannabe stand-up celebrity who seems to share cinematic DNA with two iconic Scorsese/De Niro creations: Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) and Rupert Pupkin (The King of Comedy).
This has the whiff of Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning turn as the Joker.