All the Easter Eggs Hidden in the Joker Trailer
The Joker trailer sent a chill and a thrill through the movie-loving world this week. Director Todd Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix‘s upcoming take on the origins of Gotham’s most iconic villain looks mesmerizing. Joker looks like no other film based on a comic book character that we’ve ever seen.
In fact, Joker looks more like a very intriguing character study of a man with mental illness (just as Marc Maron said it was) than a film based on a character ripped from the DC Comics universe. This Joker isn’t turned into a supervillain via a vat acid, as he was in Tim Burton’s seminal Batman, played by none other than Jack Nicholson. Nor does Phoenix’s Clown Prince of Chaos appear to be like Heath Ledger’s iconic iteration, that gleeful nihilist whose backstory kept changing, in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. This Joker seems more grounded, and, in that way, even scarier. He seems like a man you could actually meet, or, avoid, on the subway.
We’ve watched the trailer several times. Okay, more than several times. Yet thankfully, the good folks at ScreenCrush have gone over it on an Easter Egg hunt. They’ve identified a whopping 37 of them hidden throughout. We advise you not to watch it if you want to go into Joker knowing as little as possible. ScreenCrush makes a lot of connections to not only the world of DC Comics but to other films. For example, lots of people pointed out there seemed to be a Pyscho/Norman Bates-like connection between Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) and his mom, Penny (Frances Conroy). There are also more direct connections to producer Martin Scorsese’s seminal films like Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy.
The video drills down into the jokes Arthur was writing down in his notebook (he’s a wannabe standup comedian, after all)—and how one joke actually relates to the rest of the film.
If you’re okay with having a few plot points potentially revealed, check out the video below.
Joker laughs its way into theaters on October 4, 2019.
Featured image: ‘Joker’ theatrical poster. Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
