Lady Gaga becomes Joaquin Phoenix’s partner-in-insanity in ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Trailer
'I'm nobody. I haven't done anything with my life like you have,' Gaga's Harley Quinn tells Phoenix's Joker
By Jon Blistein & Tomás Mier
Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are ready to embrace the madness (and fall in crazy love) in the new trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux, set to arrive in theaters on Oct. 4.
The two-minute trailer, which dropped Tuesday, opens with Phoenix’s Joker seeing Gaga’s Harley Quinn for the first time as he walks through the hallways of prison as a slowed, creepy version of Gene Wilder’s “Pure Imagination” plays.
“We use music to make us whole. To balance the fractures within ourselves,” a voiceover says as Phoenix and Gaga’s characters meet for the first time.
“I’m nobody. I haven’t done anything with my life like you have,” she says. The trailer then devolves to show Phoenix and Gaga holding hands, being chased in the streets, dancing at a party, and the duo performing onstage, as well as Gaga doing the Joker’s signature makeup.
“I’ll tell you what’s changed: I’m not alone anymore,” Phoenix declares. “That’s what we should be talking about.”
The end of the trailer sees Gaga visiting Phoenix at Arkham Asylum as she draws a happy face on the glass separating them with her red lipstick. “I want to see the real you,” she tells him.
The trailer marks the first proper look at the long-awaited sequel to Todd Phillips’ anti-superhero origin film about the classic Batman villain. Along with Gaga and Phoenix, the film boasts a stacked 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 teased in the trailer with a scene of the two performing on stage, Folie à Deux is expected to be a kind of jukebox musical. Back in March, insiders told Variety that the film was expected to feature 15 reinterpretations of “very well-known” songs, and that composer Hildur Guðnadóttir would “infuse her distinctive, haunting [music] cues” into the numbers. At the time it was also noted that an original number or two could still make it into the film, though there’s been no further word on that yet.
During an appearance at Cinema Con, Phillips explained, “I like to say it’s a film where music is an essential element. To me, that doesn’t veer too far from the first film. Arthur’s weird and aloof and all these things, but he has music in him. He has a grace to him. That informed a lot of the dancing in the first film… It didn’t feel like that big of a step here. It’s different, but I think it’ll make sense when you see it.”
Joker was released in 2019 and quickly became a massive hit, grossing more than $1 billion at the global box office and picking up 11 Oscar nominations. It ended up winning two awards, Best Actor for Phoenix and Best Original Score for Guðnadóttir.