Director Todd Phillips expressed that he thinks the success of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker isn’t necessarily tied to the popularity of Batman.
While Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker will undoubtedly be picked over by fans and critics for years to come, director Todd Phillips explained that he doesn’t think the film’s success has ties with Batman. Arguably, the film wouldn’t exist without Batman, but Todd Phillips feels that Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker was a success because of the societal themes it dealt with and that audiences across the world could relate to the messages it explored.
Speaking at Deadline’s The Contenders New York award-season event, Todd Phillips was asked whether he thought Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker was successful because he’s directly linked to Batman as his archenemy. He explained that there’s more to it than just Batman and he thinks audiences recognize the themes in it after everything that’s happened in the U.S. since 2017, which is when he started writing Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker with Scott Silver. Take a look at Todd Phillips explaining his views on Joker below.
“I think it was more than that. I mean, I think there are themes in the movie that really resonated with people. None of us thought an R-rated movie could do over $1 billion across the world. But I think the themes in it really resonated. The thing Scott Silver and I set out to do when we wrote the movie together was to make something meaningful in that comic book space, but also something really that addressed what was going on in 2016, when we started writing. It’s pretty obvious what was happening in our country in 2017 while we were writing it, and really wanted to use Joker to make a movie about the loss of compassion and the lack of decorum in the world.”
Do you agree with director Todd Phillips? Or do you think Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is popular because of the character’s ties with Batman? Sound off in the comments below!
Here is the official synopsis for 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, Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix, Zazie Beetz, Bill Camp, Frances Conroy, Brett Cullen, Glenn Fleshler, Douglas Hodge, Marc Maron, Josh Pais, and Shea Whigham. The DC Films movie is not part of the DC Extended Universe, and seems to play into Warner Bros.’s interests of making creator-driven superhero movies over necessarily building a hyper-connected shared universe… At least for the time being.
Joker is still playing in theaters and is currently available to watch on digital formats. The movie will see a release on Blu-Ray and DVD on January 7, 2020.
Source: Deadline
