Todd Phillips suggests that in Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, Arthur Fleck might not be the real version of the villain that fans know.
In a new featurette called Joker: Vision And Fury attached to the Joker home release, director Todd Phillips teases that Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck isn’t the real villain. The film saw Arthur Fleck slowly spiral through Gotham City as he becomes the Clown Prince of Crime, but Todd Phillips explained that Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is telling a version of the villain’s origin story.
Director Todd Phillips explained in the featurette that there’s several ways to look at how Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck tells the story, mentioning that he’s not a reliable narrator. While some fans criticized the DC Films movie for giving the villain an origin story when he perhaps didn’t need one, it’s remarkable that a gritty character study like Joker was so successful. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance clearly proved popular with audiences as Joker made $1 billion globally. Read what Todd Phillips had to say about Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker below.
“There’s many ways to look at the movie. He might not be Joker. This is just a version of a Joker origin. It’s just the version this guy is telling in this room at a mental institution. I don’t know that he’s the most reliable narrator in the world, you know what I’m saying?”
Do you think Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck is the real version of the villain? What do you think of Todd Phillips’ Joker? 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: ComicBook.com