Venice Lookback: When ‘Joker’ took the festival, and skeptics, by surprise

After $1 billion at the box office, 11 Oscar nominations and two major wins, including for Joaquin Phoenix, it’s easy to forget the handwringing over “ Joker.”

In the lead up to its release in October 2019, the Todd Phillips film, a dark origin story about the mentally ill man who becomes the deranged Batman villain, hit a cultural inflection point that had divisions forming before most had even seen it. People worried “Joker” would glorify violence, that people would take the wrong message and there’d be incidents at movie theaters. Words like “dangerous,” “irresponsible” and “incel-friendly” were thrown around.

Even its inclusion in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival was enough to get people gossiping. (Its sequel, “ Joker: Folie à Deux,” will also be debuting in competition at Venice on Sept. 4.)

At the time, some assumed Phillips had called in a favor. How else could a comic book movie play alongside auteurs and Oscar-contenders? This, Phillips assured The Associated Press, was not true. But the fact that it wasn't being treated like a standard comic book movie release and instead getting the rollout of an Oscar contender was enough to send movie fans into a tizzy.

The world was further shocked when it won the festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion, which in previous years had gone to films like “The Shape of Water” and “Roma.” One article called it “insane.”

Accepting Venice's top prize from jury president Lucrecia Martel, Phillips thanked Warner Bros. and DC for “stepping out of their comfort zone and taking such a bold swing on me and this movie” and Phoenix for trusting him with his “insane talents.”

And it sent a clear message to the skeptical film world: “Joker” was not to be underestimated or dismissed. Neither was Phillips, a filmmaker whose biggest successes had at that point come from frat-bro comedies like “The Hangover” and “Old School.”

Phillips took cues from movies like Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy” to add a disturbing realism to the story. He does not fall into a vat of acid and come out laughing, he said. Instead, it's a chilling portrait of a loner pushed over the edge.

Phoenix too underwent a drastic physical transformation, losing 52 pounds on an extremely calorie-restricted diet with the supervision of a doctor. He told the AP he expected “feelings of dissatisfaction, hunger, a certain kind of vulnerability and a weakness.” Instead, he found the emaciation led to a physical “fluidity” that he didn’t quite anticipate.

Reviews were mostly positive and even the more critical responses admired the boldness. In his review, AP Film Writer Jake Coyle wrote that “Phillips and Phoenix have made something to reckon with, certainly, and that alone makes it a bold exception in a frustratingly safe genre.”

Phillips wasn’t shy about discussing the film, his intentions and the criticisms.

“I just hope people see it and take it as a movie,” Phillips told the AP before its release. “Do I hope everyone loves it? No. We didn’t make the movie for everyone. Anytime anyone tries to make a movie for everyone it’s usually for nobody. ... You have a choice. Don’t see it is the other choice.”

The concerns continued to escalate as family members of the victims of the 2012 movie theater shooting during “The Dark Knight Rises” wrote a letter to the studio’s then CEO urging the company to advocate for gun safety.

By the time it was ready for its U.S. premieres, the studio pressed pause on interviews. The red carpets at the Hollywood and New York Film Festival premieres would be photo-only affairs.

“A lot has been said about ‘Joker,’ and we just feel it’s time for people to see the film,” a studio representative said at the time.

And people certainly saw it. It opened to nearly $100 million in Oct. 2019 and by the end of its run had grossed over $1 billion, holding the record for highest grossing R-rated film until “Deadpool & Wolverine” passed it a few weeks ago. Phillips congratulated Shawn Levy, Marvel and Disney for the feat.

Soon, he’ll be heading back to the Venice Film Festival, with Phoenix and Lady Gaga to debut “Joker: Folie à Deux." The expectations are higher. So are the stakes. It carries bigger budget than its $60 million predecessor, but Phillips told Variety that reports of it exceeding $200 million are “absurd.”

It has also already inspired a fair amount of discourse. But this time it’s not about violence: It’s about musicals.