The Joker Reveal: Reactions To Joaquin Phoenix's Killer Clown
5. Genuine Cause For Optimism
[Ewan Paterson]
Full disclosure: when reports first emerged that Warner Bros. were fast-tracking a solo Joker ‘origin’ movie to sit alongside their fifty-five other Joker and Harley Quinn spin-offs, I found it boring. The Clown Prince - to me - has always worked best as a force rather than as a typical supervillain. The lack of any motive is what makes him so terrifying, and indeed, what has seen him persist as one of the genre’s most notorious adversaries for well over seven decades.
That being said, Joaquin Phoenix certainly looks the part, and the footage uploaded by Todd Phillips over the weekend seemed to conjure the specific sense of dread that only a select few actors have managed over the years.
Put simply, he looks horrifying. And though it’s important to note that one can lament WB’s supposed need to ‘explain’ one of the medium’s few inexplicable actors, now that we’ve seen Phoenix in full garb, there’s genuine cause for optimism.