If Heath Ledger brought a simmering manic quality to his Oscar-winning performance as Joker in The Dark Knight, Joaquin Phoenix expertly peeled the various layers of the complex DC villain through his intense and emotional performance. This portrayal which was raw and immersive, won him all the awards that year, including the coveted Best Actor award at the Academy Awards for Joker.
The actor is now set to regale audiences once more in Joker: Folie À Deux which will release on 4th October, 2024. This time he will have Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn for company. Director Todd Phillips and the talented star went wild with their imagination when it came to imagining new aspects to the intriguing villain in the first film.
Joaquin Phoenix And Todd Phillips Went Crazy With Their Imagination Of Joker
With an impressive repertoire of films in a gamut of genres, Joaquin Phoenix has proved that he is one of the true actors of his generation. His towering performance in Joker proved this point amply. Now, the actor will reprise his Oscar-winning role once more in Joker: Folie À Deux, which will also see pop star and actor Lady gaga playing the role of Harley Quinn.
In an interesting twist, the film will unravel in the form of a jukebox musical, with both celebrities revisiting many evergreen songs from the past. As far as the nuanced character of Joker was concerned, Phoenix and director Todd Phillips had an absolute blast in the first film while letting their creative juices flow.
In an interview with Empire, Phoenix revealed how he Phillips would invent various fantastical situations involving the DC villain, and how he would react in these predicaments. This included imagining the character in avatars from various iconic roles in movies.
It felt like you could put him into almost any situation, and I would be interested to see how he would navigate it. I mocked up all of these posters of films that have already been made, like Rosemary’s Baby and Godfather, and I put Joker in them and I gave them to Todd. There were even intergalactic gags. There was a running joke of, ‘What about Joker in space’? But yeah, I was fascinated by where he would end up.
This level of obsession with the protagonist paid rich dividends, as the actor and director succeeded in giving audiences a character who instigated a myriad emotions within them.
Joaquin Phoenix Had No Pressures Stepping Into Joker’s Shoes After Heath Ledger
Joaquin Phoenix’s powerful Oscar-winning portrayal of the titular protagonist in 2019’s Joker is still being remembered as one of the memorable lead performances by an actor. Phoenix played the unhinged DC villain with a gut-wrenching vulnerability that added huge emotional heft to the character.
The Gladiator star’s effort is even more praiseworthy considering the fact that he had extremely big shoes to fill with Heath Ledger’s iconic portrayal of Joker already etched in people’s mind. In an interview with Collider, before he was officially on board to play the role, Phoenix was asked about the pressure and expectation of reinventing a comic book character that was already made memorable by someone else.
The Beau is Afraid actor though, welcomed the opportunity with an open mind and believed that the beauty of these adaptations was the fact that it allowed actors to explore these characters in their own way.
There are different interpretations. It’s so interesting. I think that genre, comic books, kind of lends itself to having different people play the same character and interpret it in a different way. It’s kind of built into the source material in some ways. I think it’s cool when people do that.
As it turned out, Phoenix’s singular and unique approach worked wonders for him. His performance as Joker was hailed as one of the most iconic portrayals of a comic book villain. With the 2nd part set to release soon, fans will be eager to see what new tricks the actor has up his sleeve.
Joker is streaming on Apple TV.
