Last Updated: 27th August, 2022

Todd Phillips Reveals: The Joker is the talk of town once again, after quite a while. We have Joaquin Phoenix to thank for this with his performance in Todd Phillips‘ Joker. It seems that Phoenix’s performance as the psychotic murderer of Gotham City has been the most impressive since Heath Ledger.

With so much talk about the new Joker is going around, director Todd Phillips has weighed in as to what makes his Joker very different from Christopher Nolan’s.

Referring to the Ledger‘s dialogue of “I just want to watch the world burn“, Phillips said, “I don’t think it was this Joker’s goal to watch the world burn. This Joker had in mind a completely distinct purpose. He’s sitting here in the very first scene at the start of the film doing this (pushing himself to grin as well as frown) and he’s a person looking for an identity. I believe he’s becoming a symbol, erroneously, and adulation really was what he was looking for. He never sought to blow up the world, this Joker. That’s a separate thing about the previous ones. But this wasn’t his actual goal, our man.”

One of the biggest changes of Phoenix’s Joker from the previous one was the point of origin. The Joker is known for going nonsensical after falling into a vat of acid during a robbery. Even though Heath Ledger’s Joker did not confirm this origin, he suggested that an accident had led to his unusual appearance. Phoenix, on the other hand, plays a Joker who descends into madness after being ridiculed and abused in a very negative society.

Phoenix also revealed that he did not refer to any of the previous versions of The Joker as they were aiming to create an entirely new Joker, which even a psychiatrist would not be able to decode or understand. This is similar to Heath Ledger’s efforts who had also claimed that he was trying to create a new Joker free from his comic book roots or the previous versions appearing on the big screen.

Joaquin Phoenix Impresses at the Premiere as Joker, the movie won an 8-minute Long Standing Ovation! Watch It!

Here's the 8 minutes standing Ovation for "Joker" at Venice Film Festival pic.twitter.com/ZeINhs5cpU

— Hazem Haddad™ (@HazHaddad) September 2, 2019

Joker recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received a large amount of praise. The film is set to hit theaters on 4th October.