‘Joker’ Director Says It Isn’t Fair To Link The Joaquin Phoenix Movie To Real Life

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Joker director Todd Phillips says it isn’t fair to link the Joaquin Phoenix movie to real life.

Todd Phillips discussed the controversy surrounding Joker, saying it’s not fair to link it to real life. While Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as the Joker has been receiving rave reviews from critics ever since it debuted at the Venice Film Festival, it’s causing concern about the influence Joker might have in society. Most recently five family members of those who were killed or witnessed the 2012 Aurora tragedy asked Warner Bros. to lobby for increased gun control.

The director of Joker, Todd Phillips, recently addressed the issue of linking the Joaquin Phoenix film to real-world violence, reiterating that it’s a work of fiction about characters who have existed for decades. When asked if he understood the concerns about the film’s influence on violence outside of the screen, he discussed the Aurora situation as well as the difference in reaction to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and other violent films like John Wick 3.

“This is not the thing the movie is trying to represent, the movie still takes place in a fictional world – it can have real world implications, opinions but it’s a fictional character and a fictional world that’s been around for 80 years. The one that bugs me more is the toxic white male thing. When you go ‘I just saw John Wick 3 he’s a white male, he kills 300 people and everyone’s laughing, and hooting and hollering’. Why does this movie get held to different standards? It honestly doesn’t make sense to me.”

What do you make of the controversy surrounding Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker? Let us know in the comments.

Here is the official synopsis for Warner Bros.’ Joker:

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.

Directed by Todd Phillips from a script he co-wrote with Scott Silver, Warner Bros.’ Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Bill Camp, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Douglas Hodge, Marc Maron, Josh Pais, and Shea Whigham.

Joker will be released in theaters on October 4, 2019.

Source: Associated Press

Eammon Jacobs

Eammon Jacobs

British dork who can be found online raving about how good Tron: Legacy is.