Open Post: Hosted By Joaquin Phoenix In Action As The Joker

It looks like those dudes in the background are getting it on as a clown crowd watches… That might be the most interesting part of The Joker.

That Joaquin Phoenix morphing into the Joker clip from the other day looked like some diligent comic book fan’s homemade CGI. It wasn’t. TMZ has posted a clip of Joaquin filming a scene for the upcoming origin story for the famous murder-clown, and that’s really the makeup with which they’re going. Well, they got the clown part right, he typed weakly? It’s an origin story so maybe this is like when the hero is making his own costumes at first and then his lewk evolves a little by the end of the movie? I hope so, otherwise, the Joker is going to look like he became a psychopathic killer after one of the kids at the birthday party he was working at kicked him in the balls.

They filmed the scene in a NYC subway station that was standing in for a Gotham City one. Joaquin walks off the train, giggles a little, and cut! It’s mesmerizing stuff.

Joker’s exact origin story is sort of a muddle in the DC Comics universe except for a 1988 Alan Moore/Brian Bolland graphic novel called The Killing Joke. In that book, the Joker was a failing comedian who got in heavy with the mob, was forced to rob a chemical factory, and Batman accidentally knocked him into a vat of chemicals that messed with his face and drove him insane. They usually keep the chemical vat in Joker stories but there’s a lot of different versions of who he actually is, his name, if he’s actually gay and Harley Quinn is his beard, etc.

So far, all that we know about this movie besides the bad makeup and that no one should have attempted this role after Heath Ledger is that Joker’s alter ego will be “Arthur Fleck.” The movie will also star Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Marc Maron and Bryan Callen and will come out next October just in time for Halloween. This Halloween is at the box office is way better because we’re going to get elderly hippie Jamie Lee Curtis and her shotgun trying to kill Michael Meyers as opposed to the Party City version of Batman’s greatest foe.

Pic: Backgrid