Yesterday, months after we got our first taste of Todd Phillips’ Joker film with that eye-catching makeup test, we got a full-length trailer for the movie. Sure, the studio may have labeled it as a “teaser trailer,” but it pretty much felt like a full-length one to me. As was advertised by the studio from day one, there are shades of a gritty crime thriller from decades past, and there was one film’s influence that could not be missed.

The King of Comedy was a film by Martin Scorsese in 1983, and in it, Robert De Niro’s character plays a struggling comedian who goes to desperate lengths to achieve his dream. Sound familiar? Yeah, it very much feels right in line with what we’ll be getting with the Joker, but things don’t stop there. In a shot from the trailer, we see Robert De Niro’s character standing in front of a curtain, which is very reminiscent of The King of Comedy.

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Speaking with IndieWire, the legendary De Niro addressed that connection.

“There’s a connection, obviously, with the whole thing. But it’s not as a direct connection as the character I’m playing being Rupert many years later as a host.”

So don’t expect De Niro’s character to be the same one from that original film. Instead, it sounds like his character, named Murray Franklin, was conceived “in the spirit” of the earlier role, though HOW that spirit is retained, we don’t know.

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SOURCE: IndieWire