Thanks to Joker director Todd Phillips, we now have our first glimpses of Joaquin Phoenix in full clown makeup.
Earlier this week, Phillips dropped our first look at Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, the character that would go on to become one of the greatest comic book villains of all time, The Joker. The photo was pretty well received, but it wasn't able to quench our thirst entirely. It lacked the signature look of the infamous Batman-nemesis: the white facial makeup with ruby lips and green hair. However, such guise is no longer missing in the new video posted by the director on Instagram.
The clip is short, running for merely half a minute, and is labeled by Phillips as a camera test for his October 4, 2019 release. Set to The Guess Who's 1969 hit Laughing, the video shows a clapperboard for the first couple of seconds that suggests that it's the makeup/wardrobe test for Arthur's full white look. What we actually see next is Phoenix in the normal Arthur attire.
However, a few seconds later, the three-time Academy Award nominee's face starts being interspersed with images of him in clown makeup. The camera slowly keeps pulling closer until a point where the normal version vanishes and the clown version prevails. We see the enigmatic, psychotic supervillain grinning but it doesn't take long for his expression to fall all of a sudden. Check out a YouTube version of the clip below along with a couple of screenshots!
Of course, Joaquin Phoenix looks very creepy in the video, but compared to the previous incarnations of The Joker, he seems to have more of a tradiional clown makeup. But again, Heath Ledger and Jared Leto too looked very different from the Clown Prince of Crime that we are used to seeing in the pages of DC Comics.
