Admittedly, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker was not the first movie I expected to hear mentioned in the same breath as the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. The Middle-earth-based creature and Gotham’s clown prince do not exactly feel like natural traveling companions. Yet, as it turns out, according to Peter Jackson, Phoenix’s take on the Joker influenced the standalone LOTR story for a very understandable reason.
Peter Jackson was at the Cannes Film Festival when he explained why Todd Phillips’ 2019 book-to-screen adaptation of the comic-book character has been part of the thinking behind the new Gollum movie. Speaking with IndieWire during the festival, the New Zealand filmmaker said the upcoming movie release will use material from J.R.R. Tolkien’s appendices, but tell it from Gollum’s internal perspective. According to him:
