With last year’s Joker, Joaquin Phoenix took a character made iconic many times over and reinvented it once again in an indelible – and Oscar-winning – new shape. And if his Arthur Fleck proved Phoenix was a firm fit for the grittier end of the DC universe, in another world he could have ended up playing the Joker’s crime-fighting counterpart – the star was pegged as a potential Batman by Darren Aronofsky, who was tapped up by Warner Bros for a new take on the Dark Knight in the early ‘00s after the success of Requiem For A Dream.
Alas, Aronofsky’s Bat-vision wasn’t to be – but in the new issue of Empire he opened up about his plans at the time, and how far they differed from those of the studio. As it turns out, Warner Bros fancied a much more clean-cut Bruce Wayne. “The studio wanted Freddie Prinze Jr and I wanted Joaquin Phoenix,” he recalls. “I remember thinking, 'Uh oh, we're making two different films here.' That's a true story. It was a different time. The Batman I wrote was definitely a way different type of take than they ended up making.”
Where Christopher Nolan, who eventually got the gig, borrowed elements from Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One comic, Aronofsky’s take was a closer adaptation of that influential series, with nods to Death Wish, The French Connection and Taxi Driver. It even had Miller himself on scripting duties. “It was an amazing thing because I was a big fan of his graphic novel work, so just getting to meet him was exciting back then,” the director recalls. Apparently even the hard-boiled writer was shocked by how dark Aronofsky was looking to go, with Batman veering into torture territory. “The Batman that was out before me was Batman & Robin, the famous one with the nipples on the Batsuit, so I was really trying to undermine that, and reinvent it,” he explains. “That's where my head went.”
In the case of Joaquin Phoenix going from Batman to eventual Joker, perhaps that adage from The Dark Knight is true: you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Read Empire’s full Darren Aronofsky interview, talking 20 years of Requiem For A Dream, in the Wonder Woman 1984 issue, on sale now – read here for more information about picking up a copy while social distancing.
