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.
LET'S GOOOO! I'm a Marvel fanboy first and foremost and always will be but I loved Batman growing up. Christian Bale is and forever will be Batman to me and I think the reason is DC isn't putting up any numbers against Marvel. It's pretty embarrassing when the standalone franchises are doing way better, using the likenesses of the DC villains and heroes, than the actual DCU integrated films themselves. I mean, I love him but the Ben Affleck 'Batman' absolutely sucked. Superman was nothing to write home about and Suicide Squad made me actually contemplate doing exactly that just to get out of the theater because it was so bad. Needless to say, DC needs to get their credibility back. I digress.
Just like Christopher Nolan took a character everyone knew and molded it into a dark, adult, emotionally heavy, original story, it seems Todd Phillips is looking to do the same here. I am VERY excited to see Joaquin back on screen in such a demanding role. There's a LOT of hype around this movie and I really really hope it lives up to it. October 4th is the release date and I'll be preordering my tickets as soon as I can. - @Traceahamilton