Joker: Joaquin Phoenix as the most notoriously happy super villain

There's a sense of madness associated with the character, who famously obeys his own menacing instructions. 'Let's put a smile upon that face'. In the new origin story, the intrigue travels back to a time before Joker was Joker – behind the mask, he's Arthur Fleck, a failed and ostracised stand-up comedian who finds his path by following a little craziness.

'I used to think my life was a tragedy', says Joaquin Phoenix's Joker

Phoenix stars alongside Zazie Beets (Deadpool) as a potential love interest to upset Joker's blood-boilingly tragic existence, and Robert De Niro who plays a talk show host. The first glimpses of the film reveal Phoenix's physical transformation for the role, as his shockingly bony frame brings to mind De Niro's own committed performance as Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Joker posits itself as a simultaneously more humble and epic offering within the superhero canon – there's no big ensemble or fight between Good and Evil, and yet the stakes feel so much higher with a heavily theatrical portrait of a man on the brink of insanity.

Entering the DC canon of superhero films this October, Joker is already setting itself up as one of the major onscreen events of the year.