Joker Origin Story Announced

I like it. Taxi Driver by way of The King of Comedy starring Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker and co-starring DeNiro. On paper it sounded interesting and different, but the whole "from the guy who made Old School and the Hangover trilogy" gave me pause.

This trailer looks like he may have actually pulled it off. At the very least, the cinematography looks gorgeous. The guy that made The Omen gave us optimism incarnate with Superman '78. The guy that made The Evil Dead Trilogy gave us two great Spider-Man movies. The guy that made Elf gave us Iron Man and kicked off the great superhero arms race, which has been rewarding as hell. And a couple Arrested Development/Community directors gave us The Winter Soldier/Civil War/Infinity War. Sometimes the left-field choices hit it out of the park. Fingers crossed.

 

Even hardcore fans who've seen the franchise built up with craft and care and all those other cheap schmaltz words found in second rate adverts with click background muzak?

(Yep. Even I adore creations like, say, the Borg Queen. And there's only so much that could have been done with the Borg otherwise. And adhering to the missed opportunity that was "Descent", would not have been as good.)

 

What is so great about origin stories? Like prequels, they rarely engage and we know what happens later on -

Spoiler

They become like really evil and stuff, bizarre but true.

And so many have already been done, ask Darth Vader, Davros, and others... what's the point of the point being explored when a good villain could also have a moment with the hero and do the "When I was younger" cliche? Even an episode of Get Smart did more than enough by letting Seigfried reveal to Max why he turned bad and became head of KAOS. How brilliant is that, a trope that was lampooned decades before it even became "a thing".

Why not make shows where the villain has their own show but it's not what made them eeeeeeeeeeeeevil in the first place

- but just being their current self and successfully conquering and all that? I don't think that's been done before and as both "spinoff where evil person wins" and "origin story" tend to cater more to established fans as the casual viewers aren't going to care that lil' Skippy had his pet elephant stamped on at Seaworld and that's why he became The Penguin... I'm not sure hardcore fans would relish such a plot either...

 

Funny how things evolve. For the weekend, a co-worker loaned me a compilation volume of Batman stories which included the Joker's debut. Mind you, I think this was a copy of the revised printing. If the accounts I've read are correct, when first published, the Joker falls to his death at the end of the issue. But when the character proved so popular as to bring him back, the debut story was reprinted with an altered ending, one in which Batman grabbed the Joker a second before an otherwise deadly plummet. This was that second version.

Sorry, that wasn't the point of this post. Rather the point is how the narration boxes described the Joker's demeaner. Of particular note was his voice being "monotone", without much inflection. Monotone? The Joker?! That's just about as opposite as he would later become. Oh, he could get "brooding" at times, but like the flipping of a light switch, his attitude could perform a 180, demonstrating fevered delight or alternatively, rage. A fantastic example of this is Mark Hamill's "eulogy" when the Joker believes some schlubb "goon" has "offed" the Caped Crusader through dumb luck. He exhibits almost every significant motional state within a 2 to 3 minute span. No, this is not meant to claim Hamill is the best the Joker (merely my personal favorite).

No, I point out this only to drive home characters as come to prefer them often start very differently. Like the Borg. When introduced, "Q" claims they don't give a crap about people, only technology. But with their second appearance which shaped all subsequent ones, the writers basically "flipped" that notion. Suddenly, their core schtick is converting people into more Borg, kinda' like "robo-zombies" or "techno-vampires". Another example, the Daleks. Viewers usually know them best as "robo-Nazis from outer space". (Yes, I know they are not robots. the term just rolls off the tongue.) But when introduced, they are the dwindling survivors of a "5 minute" nuclear war, goaded into using a doomsday bomb to thwart invaders. they gradually degenerated into their final state, their growing paranoia of reprisal leading them to mount guns upon their mobile "iron lungs". They are pitiful creatures, driven insane by their fears and distrust. One can almost feel sorry for them.

As others have stated, just exactly what can be considered the definitive Joker? Can one point to a specific issue published in a certain year and say, "This is the pinnacle! Everything builds to this point and everything since has deviated from that 'ideal'." Actually, a lot of fans believe they can. But unless one can devise a truly unbiased poll taking into account the grater bulk of generally agreed upon "candidates" and select from that list a "winner", it's gonna' be open to debate.

Hmm, I kinda' rambled there. What were we discussing?

 

I know that feeling! lol

 

I have to admit, now that Micheal Keaton has switched over to mostly villain roles, I would be very curious to see what he would do with the Joker. Especially if he went back to a more Bettlejuice style performance.
I don't know if I want to say it's the most accurate the comics, since I'm not as much as an expert as a lot of people, but Mark Hamill is still my absolute favorite Joker. Pretty much all of them have been good, I still say Jared Leto was a great Joker if you just look past the tattoos and the behind the scenes behavior.

 

Can you have a joker origin without batmannas hes intergral to his creation

 

We already did. It was called A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Or 1979's THE WARRIORS for that matter: https://thewarriors.fandom.com/wiki/The_Baseball_Furies

That's the direction this movie is headed. GODSPELL meets Saul Goodman.

 

Todd Phillips has said that this takes nothing at all from the comics, which really makes me wonder why the hell they are even calling it Joker?
I know it was pretty obvious from the trailer that this wasn't going to be doing it's own take on things, but I still expected them to take at least some elements from the comics, it sounds like this won't even do that.
I know the comics do Elseworlds stories, but even those usually still take at least a few familiar elements from the regular version when they put it together.

 

So basically..."What if The Joker didn't have to worry about the Batman or any of his allies or foes?" Meh. Seems like they've missed the point of the Joker.

 

I have to admit, up to this point I was still kid of expecting there to end up being a Batman at some point in the movie, but it really is starting to sound like there won't be. Which to me, kind of the defeats the whole point of the character, since the modern version at least, is kind of a counterpart to Batman. He's the chaos to Batman's order, and at least how I interpret things, you really can't have a Joker without a Batman.

 

Overall this looks a little too joyless for my taste.

Kor

 

I'm not sure how much box office they can draw from name recognition but it'd probably be a cult classic if it was called "Clown" or something like that and then let the public declare it a Spirtual Adaptation or Serial Numbers Filed Off.

 

Because they wanted to attract comic fans to this.

See, this is what happens when you don't have a proper Studio Head in charge, you get prima donna directors who want to tell their own story by co-opting a pre-existing character to get a built in audience.

 

Meh. Still doesn’t bother me. It’s an elseworld story. I’m still going to see it. Truly negative reviews might change my mind, but the trailer looks incredibly engaging. And it’s not the same super hero schtick. So, I’m there.

 

I'm so glad they didn't use anything from the comics except the character. I mean, there basicly is no Joker origin story to begin with. Sure, some stories told what could have happened, but even Joker himself is kinds fussy about it. I loved how he told different stories about his scars in The Dark Knight for example.

So yeah, I'm totally cool with this. Just another possible origin for a pretty unique character. And truly, I've never given a rat's behind about what happened in comics when it comes to comicbook movies. Comics have rebooted more than the average computer, so if a movie is different as well, I'm cool.

 

I'm really looking forward to this. It's either gonna be a masterpiece or a disaster. If it's successful it'll encourage more and more out-of-the-box comic-inspired movies.

 

Officially rated R.

"Strong Bloody Violence, Disturbing Behavior, Language and Brief Sexual Images."

 

Final trailer

OK, despite my issues with the lack of comic book material in it, this does look good. I just have to approach it as a movie with a character who happens to call himself "Joker" rather than a movie about the comic book character "The Joker".

 

This looks brilliant.

And De Niro playing the talk show host who doesn't think Phoenix is funny is kind of beyond meta, isn't it?*

*Okay, no. It's meta. It's exactly meta.