Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, rakes in $US234 million globally and breaks US box office record
He played the role in Suicide Squad but Jared Leto was seriously unimpressed when he was replaced by Joaquin Phoenix in the new Joker movie.
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Oscar-winner Jared Leto felt ‘alienated’ and ‘upset’ about be snubbed for the new Joker movie.
The actor and 30 Seconds to Mars singer, 47, played the nihilistic villain in the much-criticised Suicide Squad, and — at the time — made no secret that he wanted to play the role again.
But the The Hollywood Reporterclaims Leto was “alienated and upset” once Joker, the Todd Phillips’ stand-alone movie starring Joaquin Phoenix in the title role, was greenlit.
Previously, Leto told NME that he wanted to play the Joker again, and that his scenes in Suicide Squad were “contained”, leaving him feeling like he was “off in the corner of the cafeteria watching all the other kids”.
“I think that would be great to dive in deeper to the Joker and expand the story, and to learn more about this sick and twisted — but lovely — strange man,” Leto said in 2016.
Leto was also snubbed from Margot Robbie’s upcoming Birds of Prey, which centres around her Suicide Squad character, Harley Quinn, the Joker’s love interest.
JOKER’S BOX OFFICE RECORD
Meantime, Joker survived the intense controversy over its violent themes to rake in a record-breaking $US96.2 million ($A142.9 million) on its opening weekend at the US box office.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Joker details the backstory of Batman’s maniacal clown-faced nemesis, painting a dark and disturbing portrayal of a would-be stand-up comedian’s descent into madness.
Joker smashed the previous US October record-holder, Spider-Man spin-off Venom, which opened to $US80 million ($A118.8 million) last year.
Internationally, Joker earned $US140.5 million ($A207 million) from 73 markets — including Australia — resulting in a stunning $US234 million ($A347 million) global debut.
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“This was a much larger result at the box office than we had ever anticipated globally,” Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros president, said.
“Putting recordsaside, we’re just thrilled that audiences are embracing the movie as strong as they are.”
The film, directed by Todd Phillips has divided critics. The Washington Post called it “grim, shallow (and) distractingly derivative,” but Empire magazine deemed the Venice film festival prizewinner as “bold, devastating and utterly beautiful”.
Meantime, some of Hollywood’s most critically-acclaimed actors — including Oscar winners — have been drawn to the dark role of the Joker.
Maniacal, evil and complex, the latest actor to play the Batman villain is Academy Award-nominated actor Phoenix in Joker.
From The Dark Knight to 1966’s Batman: The Movie, this is what Hollywood critics have said about stars who’ve played the Joker.
JOAQUIN PHOENIX
His performance generated Oscar buzz before it was even released and the movie won the coveted Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.
But does Joaquin Phoenix — as the maniacal Batman villain “Joker” — live up to the hype?
While Phoenix’s performance has been acclaimed, the Todd Phillips-directed blockbuster has been branded “muddled”, “wildly boring” and the “most disappointing movie of the year”, with the New York Times, Guardian and Slate among the critics who were less than impressed.
On the flip side, the MA15+ rated movie was praised by Empire and Variety, which called it “astonishing” and a “knockout”, as well as drawing a 69 per cent rating on viewer review site, Rotten Tomatoes. Audience members also gave it mostly positive reviews so-far on crowd critic site, Metacritic, after it was released globally.
Hollywood industry site Variety called it a “neo-Taxi Driver knockout” and praised Phoenix’s performance as “astonishing” and the movie overall as a “hypnotically perverse, ghoulishly grippingly urban-nightmare comic fantasia”.
Empire gave it five stars and said it was “bold, devastating and utterly beautiful”, saying Phoenix and director Phillips had “not just reimagined one of the most iconic villains in cinema history, but reimagined the comic book movie itself”.
In the wake of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, The Hollywood Reporter was also positive, describing the big budget movie as “riveting” and “distinctively edgy”.
News Corp Australia’s National film critic Leigh Paatsch also gave it five stars, saying it was Phoenix’s finest performance of 2019.
In his review, he wrote: “Joker is an unapologetically confronting work some may find hard to forgive, but no-one will ever forget.”
The film was expected to rake in more than $US80 million ($A118 million) at the US box office on its opening weekend.
The movie has drawn heavy criticism for its depiction of gun violence, in the wake of a US mass shooting at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in 2012, which killed 12 people.
Phoenix famously walked out of an interview with Britain’s The Telegraph when asked if the film would “end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about”
Phoenix replied, “Why? Why would you …? No, no,” before leaving the room.
Speaking to SFX, Phoenix said violence scenes in Joker were “a little more visceral and raw” than other comic book movies, and that he “didn’t have any hesitation about it”.
JARED LETO
Perhaps one of the Joker’s most divisive portrayals was by Oscar-winner Jared Leto who starred as the Joker in Suicide Squad.
Released in 2016, Leto’s role was overshadowed by rumours of disturbing on-set behaviour, such as sending X-rated “joke” gifts to his co-stars including rats, condoms and sex toys.
Leto’s Joker had facial tattoos, a grill, short green hair and was apparently inspired by David Bowie.
Of the performance, Vulture said Leto was, “Part James Cagney, part Heath Ledger (who also had a touch of Cagney), Leto doesn’t seem so much unhinged as unhygienic, like a crazy Method actor with no safe word”.
IT didn’t stop there. “When he paws his little blonde thing (Harley Quinn), you wonder how she can stand his rotten breath: Is that why she’s swooning?”
The New Yorker said Leto’s “attempt at pure evil is roughly as frightening as ‘Goodnight Moon’”.
And The Atlantic was also critical: “What Leto offers as the Joker is pure Ledger-lite, a heavy dose of antic wickedness ungrounded by anything deeper or more intriguing,”
Though there was much speculation Leto would be given his own stand-alone Joker movie, the project never eventuated and the character was also cut from the upcoming Suicide Squad sequel/reimagining, The Suicide Squad, and does not appear in Robbie’s Harley Quinn spin-off, Birds of Prey (the trailer explicitly states that Harley and the Joker “broke up”).
HEATH LEDGER
The only actor to win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actor) for playing the Joker, Australian actor Ledger died from an accidental drug overdose in January 2008, before The Dark Knight was released.
Most eloquently expressed by respected critic Roger Ebert, who wrote that the “key performance in the movie is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker”.
“His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent classic The Man Who Laughs (1928),” Ebert said in his review of The Dark Knight, published in July 2008.
“His clown’s makeup more sloppy than before, his cackle betraying deep wounds … In one diabolical scheme near the end of the film, he invites two ferry-loads of passengers to blow up the other before they are blown up themselves.”
Later in his review, the late Ebert added: “Heath Ledger has a good deal of dialogue in the movie, and a lot of it isn’t the usual jabs and jests we’re familiar with: It’s psychologically more complex, outlining the dilemmas he has constructed, and explaining his reasons for them.”
At the time, Empire called Ledger’s Joker “monumental”, The Guardian said he was “tremendous” (“Ledger has a weird collection of tics and twitches, kinks and quirks; his tongue darts, lizard-like, around his mouth,” it said).
Variety said his performance in The Dark Knight was a “tribute to Ledger’s indelible work that he makes the viewer entirely forget the actor behind the cracked white makeup and blood-red rictus grin, so complete and frightening is his immersion in the role”.
“With all due respect to the enjoyable camp buffoonery of past Jokers like Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, Ledger makes them look like — well, clowns.”
JACK NICHOLSON
Released in 1989, Jack Nicholson starred as the Joker in Batman, opposite Michael Keaton in the title role and directed by Tim Burton. Wearing a purple dinner suit, caked on white makeup with a dramatic, blood red-lipped smile, Oscar-winner Nicholson delivered comic yet chilling one liners (“Wait ‘til they get a load of me,” “Where does he get those wonderful toys?” and “as my plastic surgeon always says, ‘if you gotta go, go with a smile’”).
At the time, The Hollywood Reporter said Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker was “perfect”.
“It is difficult to imagine any other actor performing this character as well,” The Hollywood Reporter wrote.
“And Nicholson, in white makeup with his face frozen into a menacing grimace, plays it to the hilt.
“The actor goes over the edge as only he can do and his performance works perfectly.”
Empire called Nicholson’s Joker an “unrestrained performance as he’s ever been allowed to get away with, Jack cuts a showboating swathe that pretty much dominates the movie”.
Nicholson won a BAFTA for the role, and was nominated for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes.
CESAR ROMERO
Less is known about how Cesar Romero, who was the first actor to portray the Joker (he starred in the ’60s TV series Batman) was received by Hollywood at the time.
However, the late Romero’s performance in the small screen series (1966-1968) and 1966 telemovie, Batman: The Movie, has often been categorised as one of the best Jokers of all-time.
Empire recently ranked Romeo as No. 5 on a list of the best Jokers, saying “no one can deny that Romero has left a huge fingerprint on the enduring legacy of the character”.
Romeo played the role with a comic tone, which included dialogue such as, “This life at best is one long practical joke” and “a joke a day, keeps the gloom away!”
Joker (MA 15+) is screening nationally.
Originally published as Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, rakes in $US234 million globally and breaks US box office record