“I’ll tell you what’s changed: I’m not alone anymore,” Phoenix’s character declares
Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are ready to embrace madness (and fall madly in love) in the first trailer of Joker: Folie à Deuxwhich hits theaters on October 4.
The clip opens with Phoenix’s Joker seeing Gaga’s Harley Quinn for the first time as she walks through the prison corridors and a slowed-down, creepy version of Pure Imagination by Gene Wilder.
“We use music to complete us. To balance the fractures within us,” says a voiceover as Phoenix and Gaga’s characters meet for the first time.
“I am nobody. I haven’t done anything in my life like you have,” she says. The trailer then transitions to show Phoenix and Gaga holding hands, being chased through the streets, dancing at a party, and the duo performing on stage. And then Gaga wearing the characteristic Joker makeup.
“I’ll tell you what’s changed: I’m no longer alone,” Phoenix declares. “That’s what we should talk about.”
The end of the trailer sees Gaga visiting Pheonix at Arkham Asylum while drawing a happy face on the glass separating them with red lipstick. “I want to see the real you,” she tells him.
The trailer marks the first real look at the long-awaited sequel to Todd Phillips’ anti-superhero film about the classic Batman villain. Along with Gaga and Phoenix, the film boasts a supporting cast of Zazie Beetz (reprising her role from the original film), Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Steve Coogan, Jacob Lofland, Ken Leung and Harry Lawtey.
As anticipated in the trailer with a scene in which the two perform on stage, Folie à Deux should be a sort of jukebox musical. Already in March, some insiders had told Variety that the film should contain 15 reinterpretations of “very famous” songs and that composer Hildur Guðnadóttir would “infuse her ideas [musicali] distinctive and disturbing” in the numbers. It was also explained at the time that one or two original numbers could still be included in the film, although there is no further information on this yet.
Joker was released in 2019 and immediately became a huge success, grossing more than $1 billion at the global box office and earning 11 Oscar nominations. He ended up winning two awards, Best Actor for Phoenix and Best Original Score for Guðnadóttir.
From Rolling Stone US
