Finally! Joaquin Phoenix meets his creepy match: Watch the ‘Joker’ teaser
Joaquin Phoenix's mumbly, croaking voice and eerie hairlip have lent his signature unique weakness to his portrayal of feckless tyrants in Gladiator and cucky personal letter-writing assistants in Her, not to mention a try-hard fictionalized version of himself in I'm Still Here, but it could be argued none of his roles over the years has truly matched the actor's onscreen creep level.
The 2019 teaser for Joker made that case with a single, unsettling close-up. Phoenix's Arthur Fleck stares into a mirror, applies white makeup, and lets a thin smile crack across his face. The clip, set to Jimmy Durante's version of "Smile," captured the moment the character began to crystallize. Viewers felt the shift from awkward loner to something far more volatile.
The Teaser's Marketing Success
The teaser dropped in April 2019 and racked up more than eight million views within hours. Critics immediately reached for comparisons to Taxi Driver and Requiem for a Dream, noting how the footage signaled a darker, more intimate take on the character. The marketing team leaned into that unease, releasing only the bare minimum of footage and letting the performance do the heavy lifting.
Box Office and Awards Legacy
When the full film arrived that October, the numbers spoke for themselves. Joker crossed $1 billion worldwide, becoming the first R-rated title to reach the milestone. Phoenix collected the Best Actor Oscar for the role, and the film earned eleven total nominations. The performance that looked merely unsettling on a phone screen translated to something audiences were willing to pay for on a massive scale.
Cultural Impact and Comparisons
Reviews were mixed, yet Phoenix's work remained the consistent point of praise. The film sparked conversations about how mental health gets depicted on screen, with some critics arguing the story glamorized violence and others defending it as a portrait of systemic neglect. Either way, the character became a reference point in broader discussions about alienation and spectacle, moving beyond comic-book fandom into mainstream cultural debate.
Sequel Outcome: Joker: Folie à Deux
The 2024 follow-up, Joker: Folie à Deux, shifted the tone entirely. Lady Gaga joined Phoenix as Harley Quinn, and the story leaned into musical sequences and a courtroom framing device. Critics were largely unmoved, and the box office landed around $208 million, a sharp drop from the original's run. The experiment showed how quickly audience appetite can shift once the initial shock value wears off.
Looking back at that first teaser now, the creep factor still registers. Phoenix's voice, the halting movements, the sense that the character could tip at any moment, those elements carried the film further than most origin stories manage. The franchise tried to build on that foundation and learned its own limits in the process. The original clip remains the clearest snapshot of what made the performance land so hard in the first place.
