By No one really has any clue what Todd Phillip’s Joker is going to be like but we’ve got our first poster for the movie and it is incredibly subdued, hinting at a film that is more character than comic. Contrasting this with, say, an Avengers: End Game poster, which crams every character possible into every corner you get an idea of a movie trying to distance itself as far from possible from the comic book norm. Hell, you can barely see Joker himself let alone any other details. If you didn’t know the character you’d assume this was for an arthouse film about a guy who likes dressing up as a clown but the world won’t accept him and then he dies alone in the end in a gutter or something.
Point being, this movie is probably going to challenge a lot of the norms we think about comic book movies, at least the ones from DC and Marvel. While I’ve always given Marvel credit for varying within the norm, DC is clearly just going all outside any box with this one. I think part of that is steering as far away as possible from the laughing stock that the Jared Leto Joker now is, and pulling folks back into the fold by heading closer to Heath Ledger’s take. While Aquaman and Shazam! may have garnered the studio some trust they still have a long way to go before they can call themselves truly successful as a comic book movie making company. Maybe this will finally establish a palatable edgy take they can run with.
Joker releases on October 4, 2019.
