the story of Joker

Joker is a 2019 American psychological thriller film directed by Todd Phillips, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Silver. The film is based on DC Comics characters, and stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker.

 Set in 1981, the film follows Arthur Fleck, a failed clown and aspiring stand-up comedian, whose slide into mental illness and nihilism inspires a violent countercultural revolution against the wealthy in a declining Gotham City. Robert De Niro

, Zazie Beetz, and Frances Conroy appear in supporting roles.XXX The Joker film was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, and produced by Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Films in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, Bron Creative and Joint Effort.

Phillips conceived Joker in 2016 and wrote the screenplay with Silver throughout 2017. The two were inspired by 1970s character studies and the films of Martin Scorsese, particularly Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982), who were initially attached to the film.

 The project as a product. The film loosely adapts plot elements from Batman: The Killing Joke (1988) and The Dark Knight Returns (1986), but Phillips andXXX Silver did not otherwise look to specific cartoons for inspiration

. Phoenix became attached in February 2018 and was cast in July of that year, while the majority of the cast had signed by August. Principal photography took place in New York City, Jersey City, and Newark, from September to December 2018.

 Joker is the first live-action Batman film to receive an R rating from the Motion Picture Association.[a]

Joker premiered at the 76th Venice International XXXFilm Festival on August 31, 2019, where it won the Golden Lion, and was released in theaters in the United States on October 4. 

The film received polarized reviews from critics, with praise directed at Phoenix's musical performance. The score and cinematography, while the tone, depiction of mental illness and lack of originality polarized critics.

 The film was a box office success and set records for its October release. It grossed over $1 billion, the first R-rated film to do so and became the sixth highest-grossing film of 2019 during its theatrical run. The film also won several awards

. The sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, is scheduled for release on October 4, 2024

Arthur Fleck is a clown and aspiring comedian who lives with his mother, Penny, in crime-ridden Gotham City during the recession of the early 1980s.XXX He suffers from a neurological disorder that causes him to have random, uncontrollable fits of laughter, requiring social services-based treatment to obtain.

 After Arthur is attacked by street urchins, his co-worker Randall XXXgives him a gun for self-defense. Arthur strikes up a relationship with his neighbour, single mother Sophie, and invites her to see his routine at the comedy club.

Arthur is fired from his job at a children's hospital when he accidentally reveals the gun despite his explanation that Randall gave it to him, which he denies. While returning home on the subway still wearing clown makeup,

 Arthur is taunted and beaten by drunken businessmen from Wayne Investments; He shot two of them in self-defense and killed the third while trying to escape. The killings were condemned by his employer, billionaire mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne, but protesters began wearing clown masks in Arthur's image.

 Budget cuts led to the closureXXX of the social service program, leaving Arthur without his medications.

Sophie attends Arthur's impromptu routine, which goes poorly; He laughs uncontrollably, as his jokes fall flat. Arthur intercepts a letter from Benny to ThomasXXX, in which he claims to be Thomas' illegitimate son, and berates his mother for hiding the truth.

 He goes to Wayne Manor, where he meets Thomas' young son, Bruce, but runs away after a quarrel with the family's butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Penny suffers a stroke and is taken to hospital. Arthur's idol, popular late-night talk show host Murray Franklin,

 shows clips of Arthur's failed performance on his show and sarcastically calls him "the Joker."

Arthur encounters Thomas in a movie theater. Thomas tells him that he is not his father, and Penny is not his biological mother.

 In denial, Arthur visits Arkham XXXState Hospital and steals Penny's file, which states that she was a narcissist who adopted Arthur while working as the Waynes' housekeeper in the 1950s. 

Penny then raised Arthur with her abusive boyfriend who later died in prison. Penny was sent to Arkham for allowing the abuse. Distraught, Arthur enters Sophie'sXXX apartment without warning.

 A frightened Sophie asks him to leave, revealing that their relationship is a figment of Arthur's imagination. 

The next day, Arthur strangles Penny to death in the hospital.

After his stand-up segments went viral, Arthur was invited to appear on Murray's show. He then plans to commit suicide during the broadcast. While crafting a clown-inspired character, Randall and another former colleague, Gary, visited him

. Arthur kills Randall, but saves Gary because of his past kindness to him. Two detectives investigating Arthur's involvement in the murder of businessmen pursueXXX him into a subway filled with clown protesters. A detective accidentally shoots and kills a protester, sparking a riot, while Arthur escapes.

In the studio, Arthur asked Murray to introduce him as "The Joker", a reference to his previous sarcasm.

 As the show goes live, Arthur behaves lewdly, tells morbid jokes, confesses to the subway murders, rants about how society abandons the downtrodden and mentally ill, and berates Murray for making fun of him. After one last prank, Arthur shoots Murray dead on air. He is arrested and riots break out throughout the city.

 Rioters in an ambulance ram the police car carrying Arthur and release him. A rioter corners the Wayne family in an alley, kills Thomas and his wife, and spares Bruce. Arthur stands on top ofXXX a car and begins dancing to the cheers of the audience, his face smeared with blood in the form of a smile.

In Arkham, Arthur laughs to himself about a joke while with a therapist, but refuses to tell her, claiming she won't get it. He leaves a trail of bloody shoeprints behind him as one of the orderlies chases him down the corridor.

Between 2014 and 2015, Joaquin Phoenix expressed interest to his agent in starring in a low-budget "character study" film about a comic book villain, such as the Joker in DC Comics. Phoenix had thought of the idea a year or two before Phillips conceived the Joker in 2016

[37] Phoenix had previously declined to act in the Marvel Cinematic Universe because he would have been asked to reprise a role, such as the Hulk (initially portrayedXXX by Edward Norton before being recast by Mark Ruffalo) or Doctor Strange (eventually portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch). 

, in multiple films.[38] Phoenix dismissed the idea of the Joker due to the "character study" idea and tried to think of a different idea. "I thought, 'You can't do the Joker, because, you know, you can't do this character, it's just been done.'" Phoenix's agent suggested an exploratory meeting with Warner Bros.

, but he declined and abandoned the idea.[8] Likewise Todd Phillips was offered to direct comedies several times, but he declined because he thought they were "loud" and didn't interest him. According to Phillips, the Joker was created from his idea to create a different, more grounded comic strip.

 He was drawn to the XXXJoker because he didn't think there was a specific image for the character, Which he knew would provide a great deal of creative freedom.[40]

Phillips pitched the idea for Joker to Warner Bros. After his film War Dogs premiered in August 2016.[39] Prior to his appearance in War Dogs, Phillips was mostly known for his comedies, such as Road Trip (2000), Old School (2003), and The Hangover (2009); 

War Dogs was a venture into more troubling territory. During the premiere, Phillips realized that "War Dogs wasn't going to set the world on fire and I was thinking, 'What do people really want to see?' “In addition, he found it difficult to make comedy.

 Films in “woke culture” amid opposition from “30 million people on Twitter.” XXXHe finally thought "How do I do something that's so disrespectful, but screw the comic? I know, let's take the world of comic book movies and turn it upside down with this.

 He suggested that DC Films should differentiate its slate from rival Marvel Studios by producing low-budget independent films. Following the successful release of Wonder Woman (2017), DC Films decided to reaffirm the shared nature of the DC-based film franchise,

 the DC Extended Universe (DCEU).[45] In August 2017, Warner Bros. revealed and DC Films have announced plans for the film, with Phillips directing and co-writing with Scott Silver and Martin Scorsese, and set to co-produce with Phillips.

 According to XXXTatiana Siegel of The Hollywood Reporter, Scorsese considered directing Joker before casting Phillips, though a Warner Bros. source said he was only involved because the film needed a New York City-based producer.

According to Kim Masters and Boris Kitt of The Hollywood Reporter, Jared Leto, who portrayed the Joker in the DCEU, was upset about having a project XXXseparate from his interpretation. In October 2019, Masters reported that Leto "felt alienated and upset" when he learned that Warner Bros

. — which promised him a standalone DCEU Joker film — allowed Phillips to move forward with Joker, going so far as to ask his music director Irving Azoff to cancel the project. Masters added that Leto's discomfort was what prompted him to end his association with Creative Artists Agency (CAA), as he believed that "his agents should have told him about the Phillips project earlier and fought harder for his version of the Joker.

" However, sources associated with Leto deny that he tried to cancel Joker and left CAA because of it.

Warner Bros. pressured Phillips to cast Leonardo DiCaprio as the Joker,[41] hoping to use his frequent collaborator Scorsese's involvement to attract him.[48] However, Phillips said that Phoenix was the only actor he considered, and that he and Silver wrote the script with Phoenix in mind,

 "The goal was never toXXX introduce Joaquin Phoenix into the world of comic book movies.

 The goal was to introduce comic book movies into the world of Joaquin Phoenix." [51] Phoenix said when he learned about the film, he became excited because it was the kind of film he was looking forward to making, describing it as unique and stating that it did not feel like a typical "studio film.

" It took him some time to commit to the role, as it intimidated him "A lot of times, in these movies, we have these simplistic, reductive archetypes that allow the audience to get away from the character, just like we do in real life, where it's easy to label someone as evil, and then say, 'Well, I'm not...'" he said. Also.”[51]

Phillips and Silver wrote Joker throughout 2017 and the writing process took about a year.

 According to producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff, it took some time to get approval from Warner Bros., partly due to concerns about the content. XXXLikewise, Phillips commented that there were "myriad obstacles" during the year-long writing process due to the character's emergence. 

Phillips said that although the screenplay's themes may reflect modern society, the film was not intended to be political. He also noted that Joker is a story about childhood trauma and mental illness.

 In his script, Phillips talked about how difficult it is for patients to disclose their diagnoses, referencing a line from the film: "The worst part of having a mental illness is that people expect you toXXX act as if you're not one." [54]

The script was inspired by Scorsese's films such as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) and The King of Comedy (1983), as well as Phillips' The Hangover trilogy. Other films that Phillips has cited as inspiration include character studies released in the 1970s—such as Serpico (1973) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)—the silent film The Man Who Laughs (1928) and several musicals.

 Phillips said that aside from the tone, he doesn't consider Joker different from his previous works, such as his Hangover films. The film's premise was inspired by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke (1988),

 which depicts the Joker as a failed comedian, while the climactic talk show scene was inspired by a similar scene in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.XXX (1986).[56] However, Phillips said the film "doesn't follow anything from the comic books... That's what was interesting to me.

 We're not playing the Joker, but the story of him becoming the Joker." Phillips later clarified that he meant that they did not look to a specific comic story for inspiration, but rather "pick and choose what we like" from the character's history.

 Having grown up in New York, Phillips was also inspired by life in New York City during the early 1980s. 

The subway shooting scene and itsXXX aftermath are inspired by the 1984 New York City subway shooting, while Arthur Fleck is partly based on the perpetrator of the shooting, Bernard Goetz.

Phillips and Silver found that the most common origin story of the Joker, in which the character becomes disfigured after falling into a vat of acid, is largely unrealistic. Instead, they used certain elements of Joker lore to produce an original story,[61] which Phillips wanted to feel as authentic as possible.

[39] Since the Joker doesn't have a specific origin story in the comics, Phillips and Silver were given great creative freedom and "push each other every day to come up with something completely crazy." While the Joker has appeared in several films before,

 Phillips saw it possible to produce a new story highlighting the character. “It's just another interpretation, the way people do interpretations of XXXMacbeth,” he told the New York Times. However, they attempted to retain the ambiguous "multiple choice" nature of the Joker's past by positioning the character as an unreliable narrator 

- with entire storylines merely being his delusions - and left his mental illnesses unclear. ] As such, Phillips said the entire film is open to interpretation.[40]

When a draft of the film's script, written in April 2018, was leaked and posted online,

 Phillips stated that it was an old version six months XXXbefore filming began. Phillips also refused to take legal action against the spread of the text, explaining that he liked to publish an old version

Following the disappointing critical and financial performance of Justice League (2017), in January 2018, Walter Hamada replaced Jon Berg as head of DC film production at Warner Bros. Pictures. Hamada sorted through the various DC films in development, canceling some while progressing on others;

 The film was scheduled to begin filming in late 2018 on a shoestring budget of $55 million.[2] Kim Masters of The Hollywood Reporter said that Warner Bros. was reluctant to let Joker go ahead and gave it a small budget in an attempt to dissuade Phillips. Phillips said that Al-Hamada did not understand what he was trying to do

.[66] By June, Robert De Niro was under consideration for a supporting role in the film.[67] The deal with Phoenix was completed in July 2018,[68] after four months of persuasion from Phillips.[39] Immediately afterwards, Warner Bros. The film was officially greenlit,[69] renamed it Joker and gave it a release dateXXX of October 4, 2019.

 Warner Bros. described the film as "an exploration of a man overlooked by society [that] is not only a bold character study, but also a broader cautionary tale."

Koskoff, Scorsese's longtime colleague, joined the production, although Scorsese left his producing duties due to other commitments. Scorsese considered serving as executive producer, but was busy with his film The Irishman.

 It has also been confirmed that the film will have no impact on Leto's Joker and will be the first in a new series of DC films that have no connection to the DCEU. In July, Zazie Beetz was cast in a supporting roleXXX and De Niro entered negotiations in August.

 Frances McDormand turned down an offer to portray the Joker's mother and Frances Conroy was chosen. At the end of July, Marc Maron,[30] and Brian Cullen joined the cast.[29] [76] Alec Baldwin was cast as Thomas Wayne on August 27,

 but dropped out after two days due to scheduling conflicts. Baldwin also cited the character's description as a reason for his departure, which described Thomas Wayne as a "cheesy, nail-biting businessman who is closer to the mold of 1980s Donald Trump."

Principal photography began in September 2018 in New York City,[b] under the working title Romeo.[80] Shortly after filming began, it was announcedXXX that De Niro, Brett Cullen, Shea Whigham, Glenn Fleshler, Bill Camp, Josh Pais, and Douglas Hodge had joined the film,

 with Cullen replacing Baldwin. Bradley Cooper joined the film as producer,[82] and director of photography was Lawrence Sher, both of whom Phillips had previously collaborated with.[26] On September 22, a scene depicting a violent protest was filmed at the Church Avenue station in Kensington, Brooklyn, 

although the station was modified to look like the Bedford Park Boulevard station in the Bronx. The violent scenes were also filmed on the abandoned lower platform of the Ninth Avenue station in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

According to Betz, Phillips rewrote the entire script during production; Since Phoenix lost a lot of weight for the film, there will be no opportunity for reshoots. "We would go to Todd's trailer and write the sceneXXX at night and then we would do it.

 While doing hair and makeup we would memorize those lines and then we would do them and then we would reshoot that three weeks later," she recalled. ] Phillips recalls that Phoenix would sometimes walk off the set during filming because he lost control of himself and needed to compose himself, 

which confused the other actors, who felt they had done something wrong. De Niro was one of the few people who never left Phoenix, and De Niro said that he "was very focused on what he was doing, as it should be, as it should be."[87]

Filming began in Jersey City on September 30 and closed on Newark Avenue, while filming in November beginning on November 9 closed on Kennedy Boulevard. XXXFilming began in Newark on October 13 and continued until October 16

Shortly before filming in Newark, SAG-AFTRA received a complaint that extras were confined to subway cars for more than three hours while filming in Brooklyn, a break-in violation. The issue was quickly resolved after a representative visited the set.[88] That month,

 Dante Pereira Olson joined the cast as a young Bruce Wayne.[23] Whigham said at the end ofXXX October that the film was "in the middle" of production, adding that it had been an "intense" and "incredible" experience. By mid-November,

 filming returned to New York. Filming concluded on December 3, 2018,[90] with Phillips posting a photo on his Instagram account later in the month to commemorate the occasion.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Emma Tillinger Koskoff said the most stressful filming was the "Stair Dance" scene. Since there are no paparazzi laws in New York City, filming was disrupted by them. 

The South Bronx stairs used in the biographical crime film American Gangster (2007) were originally used for these scenes, according to The New York Times,XXX but were deemed to be XXXrepaved and spruced up so that they would not be aesthetically acceptable for the tone of the film. Initially, 

Lawrence Sher and Phillips wanted to shoot on 65mm film in the 70mm format, but Warner Bros. She declined this due to the cost, and the film was later shot using Arri Alexa 65 digital cameras. However, Warner Bros. ended up releasing it.

 Giving Joker a limited theatrical release in converted 70mm and 35mm presentations.