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Movies & TV

29th Aug 2019

Director of new Joker movie responds to divided fan reaction to new version of the character

Rory Cashin

Oscars 2020 predictions

The brand new trailer has got everyone talking.

As the comic-book/superhero genre of movies continues to become more and more popular, it also allows filmmakers to do interesting, original things within the genre.

There have been some successes on the big screen (Logan, Deadpool) and the small screen (The Boys), and some failures too (that whole mess with The New Mutants), but with the arrival of the brand new trailer for Joker, audiences are split down the middle.

Some fans are huge supporters of the grim reality that Oscar-hyped Joaquin Phoenix has planted his performance in, while others don’t like that the movie is giving a backstory to one of fiction’s greatest villains, as part of his creepy appeal was that we never actually found out how the Joker became the agent of chaos we know him as.

Director and co-writer Todd Phillips (best known for the directing The Hangover movies) told The Los Angeles Times the following:

“There are always going to be naysayers, but from what I gather about the momentum of the movie and the response to the teaser we put out, the majority of fans seem to be excited about going down a different road.

“But also this will not be the last Joker movie ever made. It might be the last one Joaquin and I do, but someone else is going to come along and do another one, just like with Spider-Man. So if you don’t like this one, don’t worry, it’ll get reinvented again.”

He then compared the comic books to Shakespeare, saying: “And just like there are many versions of Hamlet and Macbeth, they’ve done four or five versions of the Joker in the last 25 or 30 years. So why not do another one that’s wildly different?”

Joker is released in Irish cinemas on Friday 4 October.

Watch the final trailer below:

Clip via Warner Bros. Pictures

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