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Rumor: Joker origin movie will feature a young, bullied Joker with a permanent smile

Dalek

Member
the-smile-man-willen-dafoe-creepy.gif


LMAO
 

Cvie

Member
1980's, an inner city convenience store.

Two gunmen burst in shooting in the air, the customers and staff hit the deck and find cover.

While one gunman raids the till and cigarettes the other keeps an eye on the store. He notices a young boy, he's smiling.

The gunman approaches the boy and says, in a 1930's movie gangster accent "nyaah whattya smilin faw kid? you some kinda joka?"

close up of the boys smiling face

cut to black, gunshots and screaming

Title

Joker: Super Dark and Real
 

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
It's like they see all the good will they got for Wonder Woman and want to get rid of that ASAP.
 

Let's break this down:

1) De Niro

2) De Niro

3) The people who's film he adapted for the only Best Director win he ever got.

Todd Phillips is asking WB to get Scorsese to put his name on the movie for no other reason than his vision is apparently inspired by 3 completely different Scorsese films and he needs the shot of legitimacy a name like Scorsese's can give him.

It's a savvy call, because if you google Scorsese right now, all you get are shitty entertainment news "reports" calling the Joker movie his, although neither Variety or The Hollywood Reporter could confirm Scorsese had even been approached, much less agreed to the job.

So what reason would Scorsese have to lend this film the legitimacy of his brand without any real personal connection to the people making it?

Todd Phillips wants his Joker movie to have Marty's name on it so he just... gets to have it?

Really?

If anything I could see shitty stories like this causing him to bail, because so far as anyone appears to be concerned, this is HIS movie and he hasn't contributed thought one to its pre-creation. Imagine being Martin Scorsese and realizing every stupid idea Todd Phillips has while chasing this Joker movie down is goign to be attributed to you.
 
The idea of "auteur-driven" DC films standalone from the DCEU was questionable as it is (it begs the question of why WB even bothered to establishing the DC Films division in the first place), but any hope for it turning out to be good is dead on arrival if this is the shit they're going to greenlight.
 

Jigorath

Banned
Scorsese isn't Spielberg. He's not going to attach his name to any pile of trash just because he'll get a check for it.
 
I really, really dislike the Joker with a permanent smile interpretation. I don't really like a Joker Origin movie in general, but if you have to do something give him the illness/disorder that makes him laugh at inappropriate times and make him laugh at a time of great heartache like his father being murdered (you COULD have both parents die and a family member or orphanage takes him in, but that's a little too on the nose for Batman's greatest villain) and laughing at the funeral could spark his new guardian to beat him. He can even have some psychotic break where he goes from laughing inappropriately but still feels emotions and some level of empathy to having psychotic breaks as a teenager. Then when he becomes the Joker something snaps and he no longer feels apathy.

This is if you have to do something. I'd prefer they didn't to be honest.
 

A-V-B

Member
I really, really dislike the Joker with a permanent smile interpretation. I don't really like a Joker Origin movie in general, but if you have to do something give him the illness/disorder that makes him laugh at inappropriate times and make him laugh at a time of great heartache like his father being murdered (you COULD have both parents die and a family member or orphanage takes him in, but that's a little too on the nose for Batman's greatest villain) and laughing at the funeral could spark his new guardian to beat him. He can even have some psychotic break where he goes from laughing inappropriately but still feels emotions and some level of empathy to having psychotic breaks as a teenager. Then when he becomes the Joker something snaps and he no longer feels apathy.

This is if you have to do something. I'd prefer they didn't to be honest.

"Permanently smiling" is what Joker does to his victims. It's not the case with the man himself.. Or at least that's the way I like to look at it.

Besides, from a visual perspective you gotta give the actor more flexibility. Unless he's wearing a mask, in which case the smile doesn't matter too much. His voice and body language do.
 
"Permanently smiling" is what Joker does to his victims. It's not the case with the man himself.. Or at least that's the way I like to look at it.

Besides, from a visual perspective you gotta give the actor more flexibility. Unless he's wearing a mask, in which case the smile doesn't matter too much. His voice and body language do.

Most of the comics have it where his face is frozen in a smile.
Endgame, for example, goes out of its way to mention that he can only hold other expressions by taking muscle relaxants.

Screen versions drop this because they want him to be more expressive.
 

Burai

shitonmychest57
“It’s dark. It’s like a dark Joker. As a kid, he had a permanent smile and everyone made fun of him. It’s like on the streets of Brooklyn. It’s super dark and real.

Hold on! There's more. Old women are comin'! And they're also in the movie and they're gonna come...and cross...attack...these two brothers. But let's get back to the brothers because they're- they have a strong bond! You don't wanna know about it here, but I'll tell you one thing.

The Moon. It comes crashing into Earth! And whaddya do then? It's two brothers and I- and...and they're gonna...it's called 'Two Brothers' ...'Two Brothers'...it's just called 'Two Brothers'!"
 

Figboy79

Aftershock LA
Goddamn, why did we never get Willem Dafoe Joker

I still hold out hope that if Warner Bros ever does a live action proper The Dark Knight Returns fill (the animated one was awesome though), they'd cast Dafoe as old Joker.

Sigh.
 

A-V-B

Member
Most of the comics have it where his face is frozen in a smile.
Endgame, for example, goes out of its way to mention that he can only hold other expressions by taking muscle relaxants.

Screen versions drop this because they want him to be more expressive.

Yeah, I imagine most moving visual mediums drop this aspect.
 

Creamium

shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuup
I don't want to see kid Joker. I don't even want to see Joker: Origins. And I definitely don't want to see this.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
The logical conclusion is that the Joker is the long lost twin brother of Bruce Wayne that was kidnapped from the hospital after birth. Martha and Thomas never knew. That's why Martha became the Joker in Flash Point after she took up her other son's mantle like Thomas took on Bruce's. It was always the Wayne family. Or at least that's what makes the most sense. At least to me.

The best way to handle the Joker is to leave him without a past. Like they did in TDK. He is far more scary without a backstory.
 

Temp_User

Member
“My boy Todd Feldman put this together with Todd Phillips,” Schaub said. “It’s dark. It’s like a dark Joker. As a kid, he had a permanent smile and everyone made fun of him. It’s like on the streets of Brooklyn. It’s super dark and real.”

No. First off, the Joker DOES.NOT.NEED an origin story. Force-of-nature villains like him dont need an origin story.

Second, if you really, really need to tell a Joker origin story making him an emo loser is not the way to do it. We should never pity the Joker. It only makes him look like a bitch. Make him like Alex DeLarge. An ultra-violent right from the start but was subjected to terrible experiments to make him conform with society. So that when he conquers his personal demons and reverts back to his murdering ways, we the audience could root for him.
 

SoulUnison

Banned
What a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material.
Giving the Joker a definitive origin story ruins the character.

The only way I'd accept a "definitive" Joker origin story is if the movie unapologetically and constantly contradicts itself, like some kind of extended fever dream sequence.

Like, have the character's wardrobes change randomly between shots with no attempt at an explanation.
Have the same character played by a different actor/actress every time they appear on screen with nobody reacting oddly to it.
A character that blatantly dies on-screen shows up casually later and everyone just accepts it.
Identical twins of characters can be seen casually hanging out in crowd shots.
Two actors entirely switch roles halfway through a scene and finish the movie that way without attention ever being called to it.
Doorways and staircases lead to impossible places but nobody bats at eye at it.

That sort of thing.

Make the "joke" of the movie on the audience for expecting to understand the origin of a character like The Joker.
 
Fuck no.

Rule #1: Ben Parker is dead
Rule #2: The Joker doesn't have an origin, a name or a clear motive. He also doesn't actually want to kill Batman.
Rule #3: Ace the Bat Hound is Alfred's only friend
 

Caelus

Member
What a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material.
Giving the Joker a definitive origin story ruins the character.

The only way I'd accept a "definitive" Joker origin story is if the movie unapologetically and constantly contradicts itself, like some kind of extended fever dream sequence.

Like, have the character's wardrobes change randomly between shots with no attempt at an explanation.
Have the same character played by a different actor/actress every time they appear on screen with nobody reacting oddly to it.
A character that blatantly dies on-screen shows up casually later and everyone just accepts it.
Identical twins of characters can be seen casually hanging out in crowd shots.
Two actors entirely switch roles halfway through a scene and finish the movie that way without attention ever being called to it.

That sort of thing.

Make the "joke" of the movie on the audience for expecting to understand the origin of a character like The Joker.

I'm reminded of American Psycho / Memento and I'm into it, I'm totally into a "Joker origin story" movie if they end up mixing in every proposed origin for the Joker and made some fever dream unreliable narrator sequence, almost as if Batman is attempting to pinpoint who the Joker is but hits several snags along the way, eventually giving up.
 
This is an extremely thin pitch... you have all the talent of Hollywood on speed dial and this is what gets you excited to greenlight a movie? At least 'Wonder Woman fights the god of war in WW1' or 'Batman goes dark and tries to kill Superman' are high concept ideas (with varying success of execution.) This sounds like the most obvious idea ever.

I don't get these WB people, I really don't.
 
What a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material.
Giving the Joker a definitive origin story ruins the character.

The only way I'd accept a "definitive" Joker origin story is if the movie unapologetically and constantly contradicts itself, like some kind of extended fever dream sequence.

Like, have the character's wardrobes change randomly between shots with no attempt at an explanation.
Have the same character played by a different actor/actress every time they appear on screen with nobody reacting oddly to it.
A character that blatantly dies on-screen shows up casually later and everyone just accepts it.
Identical twins of characters can be seen casually hanging out in crowd shots.
Two actors entirely switch roles halfway through a scene and finish the movie that way without attention ever being called to it.
Doorways and staircases lead to impossible places but nobody bats at eye at it.

That sort of thing.

Make the "joke" of the movie on the audience for expecting to understand the origin of a character like The Joker.
This reads like Shutter Island, a movie that infuriated me on first watch because it seemed so sloppily made. Spoiler:
Everyone is just pretending to investigate the crime.
 
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