Warner Bros’ forthcoming Joker origin tale has been a very weird project from the get-go, but that approach has served in its favour when it comes to audience expectation levels. The last two big screen iterations of the Clown Prince of Crime were like chalk and cheese – Heath Ledger’s phenomenal portrayal of the character in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight blew everyone away, whereas Jared Leto’s tattooed Suicide Squad villain …er, didn’t.
The Hangover director Todd Phillips was certainly an interesting choice to helm the project and his take seems geared towards being the opposite of a fun Batman spin-off with people comparing it to Taxi Driver, You Were Never Really Here and The Woodsman. That sounded extremely bleak, and definitely not what you’d first connect to the man who had a global smash hit with the kind of comedy outing where Mike Tyson’s tiger is drugged with Rohypnol for reasons we don’t need to revisit here. Although, out of context, that does sound pretty bleak.
Now the second Joker trailer has dropped and it leans heavily into themes of mental health issues, disenfranchisement and what it might have taken to turn Arthur Fleck – who the trailer suggests isn’t necessarily a bad guy at first – into one of the most iconic DC villains (or perhaps anti-heroes, here). This trailer gives us a much better look at Robert De Niro’s character too which is a clear nod to his role in Martin Scorsese’s The King Of Comedy.
Check it out below.
You can watch the first teaser trailer here too which gave us our first hints at what attracted the very much in-demand Joaquin Phoenix to the tragic role of Arthur Fleck in the first place.
Take a look…
Joker also stars Zazie Beetz, Shea Whigham and Marc Maron, and will be released on 4th October.
