![]() “People identify with it in some way - not that they go to those extremes,” he said. But he also observed that having a fascination with Travis Bickle doesn’t make you Travis Bickle yourself. Of course Phoenix had seen and admired Nicholson’s and Ledger’s versions of the Joker, but he claimed to be “blissfully naïve” about the immense expectations to measure up.ĭe Niro, who played disturbed loners in several of the movies that inspired “Joker,” said he could understand why actors and audiences continued to be drawn to these characters. Phoenix declined to explain to me why he did this “I think they - I don’t know,” was all he said. In 2014, when Marvel was casting “Doctor Strange,” the studio sought Phoenix to play the super-sorcerer, but he reportedly broke off negotiations, and in the end Benedict Cumberbatch got the gig. He collected them avidly as a teen, though he preferred brutal Marvel antiheroes like Wolverine to DC’s staid pantheon. But in the long run, I think he got it and appreciated it.”Ĭomic books are not unknown to Phoenix. “It would have been easier for him if the movie was called ‘Arthur’ and had nothing to do with any of that stuff. “He never liked saying the name Thomas Wayne,” Phillips said. ![]() Phillips said Phoenix’s greatest misgivings about “Joker” were its explicit ties to comic-book mythology, represented most prominently by the character of the outspoken, out-of-touch billionaire Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), whose son, Bruce (Dante Pereira-Olson), will grow up to be Batman. “You want to root for this guy until you can’t root for him any longer,” Phillips explained. While its citizens shun him and stomp on him, Arthur descends into a cycle of retribution and violence, becoming a folk hero for all the wrong reasons. In the “Joker” screenplay written by Phillips and Scott Silver, the protagonist is Arthur Fleck, a troubled clown-for-hire in rundown, uncaring Gotham City. In particular, Phillips was fascinated with the Joker, who had been so memorably played by Jack Nicholson ( in Tim Burton’s “Batman”) and by Heath Ledger ( in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight”).Īs Phillips saw it, there was still room to tell a new story about this villain, closer in spirit to grimy urban narratives he admired, like “Taxi Driver,” “Death Wish” and “The King of Comedy.” “It’s just another interpretation, like people do interpretations of Macbeth,” he explained. What Phillips proposed to the studio was a series of smaller, stand-alone movies that would closely examine the DC characters without conflicting with previous films. He wondered how he could possibly compete. At the premiere of his 2016 crime caper, “War Dogs,” Phillips found himself anticipating its tepid reception while gazing at a billboard for a Marvel superhero juggernaut. ![]() LET’S SET ASIDE PHOENIX for the moment and return to Phillips, who is best known for directing the lucrative “Hangover” comedies. “I’m not going to talk about it.” (He did eventually talk about it.) “It’s so stupid to talk about,” he grumbled. Nor was he in any hurry to explain his process for figuring out his “Joker” character before filming began. “It sucks - this is why interviews are the worst,” he said despairingly, adding that he was tempted to make up a story “just to sound exciting.” I’d have to be sent home.”īut some of that lightness evaporated as soon as I asked how he’d been approached about the film and he replied that he could not remember. When I noted how nimble he looked in some of his dancing scenes in “Joker,” he swatted away the compliment, saying, “I would get injured just from doing a light jog down the street. Phoenix is 44, with hair that is a mixture of brown, copper and gray strands, and he spoke with an unexpected gentleness, like Commodus, the wicked emperor he played in “Gladiator.” (We know how it turned out for Commodus.)
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