Joaquin Phoenix Goes Full Joker in Camera Test for Todd Phillips’ Origin Film

Movies News joaquin phoenix
Joaquin Phoenix Goes Full Joker in Camera Test for Todd Phillips’ Origin Film

Our first look at the forthcoming Joker origin film earlier this week gave us a surprisingly bare-faced Joaquin Phoenix playing the iconic Batman villain. However, a camera test video shared Friday on Instagram by director Todd Phillips teases more of the full picture.

Camera test (w/ sound). Joker.

A post shared by Todd Phillips; (@toddphillips1) on

With the appropriately titled “Laughing” by The Guess Who playing in the background, we see a blank-faced Phoenix as Arthur, The Joker’s previous alias, as revealed in Phillips’ most recent post teasing the forthcoming origin film. As the teaser goes on, though, The Joker’s iconic clown makeup gets projected in flickers onto Phoenix’s face, a smirk growing as we cut to reveal Phoenix now in full Joker makeup.

With just a few frames to go by, even in full makeup, it looks like Phoenix’s transformation to play the Batman arch-nemesis will be a bit more muted than was the case for Heath Ledger’s or Jared Leto’s past iterations of the character. Perhaps it’s a result of the clip’s understated lighting, but the clown makeup doesn’t look as garish as it did in those previous iterations, and The Joker’s iconic green hair is toned down, with his purple suit replaced by some shade of brown. It could be that this is Joker in an earlier part of his personal transformation, given that this film is an origin story.

We’ll be sure to get more footage of Phoenix’s Joker as filming continues on the project, and with it, hopefully some answers to boot.

DC Films is set to release the still-untitled Joker origin film on Oct. 4, 2019.

Share Tweet Submit Pin