Warner Bros just debuted a brand new trailer for Todd Phillips’s Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix as the titular Batman villain. Take watch and jump below for my thoughts.
Well, that sure was something, wasn’t it?
As Phillips has said again and again, the best approach for Joker is to totally ignore the fact that it’s a Batman property, that Phoenix is playing a comic book villain and that the movie even takes place in Gotham City. Just look at the film as its own entity, free of anything else. When you do that, Joker looks absurdly good. Sure, there have been plenty of films that haven’t lived up to their trailers and Joker could be one of them. But, damn, what a trailer.
This movie is finally coming together for me and I’m officially sold. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to do that but this trailer has finally done it for me. This looks good. It looks very good. I have my concerns — mostly about Phillips himself — but I can’t deny how great Phoenix looks. I am also all about the gritty, gross world Phillips and crew have created. And De Niro looks in rare form too. That’s the thing: everything in this trailer looks terrific. I just had to put aside all my Batman baggage to see it.
I still think this movie might have a lot of issues and I’m never going to really warm up to Phillips but Joker looks like the real deal. Send in the damn clowns already!
