Get ready to see the Joker as you have never seen him. Todd Phillips’ new origin story about Gotham’s Prince of Crime is hitting theaters this fall, and it promises a radical new take on one of the most iconic characters of all time. In a recent interview with Empire, the writer-director of the upcoming feature on Gotham’s cryptic supervillain predicts that his choice of not following the comic books’ material will make people “mad”.
“We didn’t follow anything from the comic-books, which people are gonna be mad about,” Todd Phillips said. “We just wrote our own version of where a guy like Joker might come from. That’s what was interesting to me. We’re not even doing Joker, but the story of becoming Joker. It’s about this man.
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Then the director addressed his choice of giving Joaquin Phoenix the role of Arthur Fleck, the vulnerable man who will become Batman’s archenemy eventually.
“I think he’s the greatest actor,” Phillips added. “We had a photo of him above our computer while we were writing. We constantly thought, ‘God, imagine if Joaquin actually does this.’”
Even though it casts aside the feud with Batman, the upcoming R-rated comic book movie will try to dig into Arthur Fleck’s character as Martin Scorsese did with Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. We know for sure that an element of primary importance is Arthur Fleck’s relationship with his mother, which will lead to his dark transformation into the Joker eventually.
Todd Phillips’ Joker will debut in theaters on October 4. What do you think about the director’s choice not to follow the comic books? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
