Joaquin Phoenix had reservations about playing the iconic Batman villain in Joker.
Todd Phillips's upcoming crime drama follows the Walk the Line actor's failed stand-up comedian Arthur Fleck, who is mentally ill and disregarded by society, as he turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City and slowly becomes the legendary antagonist, the Joker.
In a new interview with Total Film magazine, Phoenix admitted he was hesitant about joining the superhero genre in a role that had been made famous by the likes of Heath Ledger and Jared Leto.
"It took me a while (to commit). Now, when I look back, I don't understand why," he said. "There was a lot of fear, yeah. But I always say there's motivating fear and debilitating fear. There's the fear where you cannot make a f**king step, and there's the kind where it's like, 'OK, what do we do? That's not good enough.' And you're digging deeper and deeper. I love that kind of fear. It guides us, makes us work harder.
"I think oftentimes, in these movies, we have these simplified, reductive archetypes, and that allows for the audience to be distant from the character, just like we would do in real life, where it's easy to label somebody as evil, and therefore say, 'Well, I'm not that.'"
However, Phillips's movie ignores the comics and is a completely original standalone origins story which is more of an intimate character study of Fleck/Joker than a regular entry in the superhero genre.
The director and co-writer explained that taking this approach meant he could explore the character more.
"There are times where you're going to feel yourself connected to him, and rooting for him, and times when you should be repulsed by him," he shared. "And I like that idea of challenging the audience, and challenging myself to explore a character like that. It's rare to explore characters like that in any movies, but specifically in the superhero genre."
Joker will debut at the Venice International Film Festival next week ahead of an October release.
