Don't Miss Out On Tickets For Joker

Fans of sadistic clowns, your day has finally arrived. 

Joker tickets are now on sale, meaning you can now officially snatch up your opportunity to see Joaquin Phoenix's critically-acclaimed take on the Clown Prince of Crime. 

The news arrived via a tweet from the film's official Twitter account on September 23, declaring that the ticket pre-sale was officially open ahead of the movie's October 4 release. The tweet also included a GIF of Phoenix's Arthur Fleck (a.k.a. the Joker) as he's about to have the curtain lifted before a performance in the film, which was a nice touch.

To celebrate Joker's release, Fandango and Dolby released two new posters for the movie, uploaded the DC Films United Twitter account. They each feature Phoenix in his full Joker makeup, with the character grinning in the darkness in one poster and looking pensive while bathed in light in the other. The pair contrast each other quite nicely, though it's not clear if that was intentional or is just a happy coincidence. 

🃏 New posters for #JokerMovie by @Fandango @DolbyCinema

-Tickets are now on sale! 🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/Or0FELL8LY
— DC Films United (@DCFUnited) September 23, 2019

Advance ticket sales have become a trend among blockbuster films in recent years, with the record for most pre-sale tickets sold being broken almost constantly. The current record-holder is Avengers: Endgame, according to Fandango, and given that the Marvel adventure is the highest-grossing film of all time, it's pretty safe to say that Joker isn't going to come anywhere near breaking its record. Still, Joker is a hotly-anticipated film — Variety expects it to have an opening weekend in the $80 million range — so it stands to reason that many fans are likely to scoop up their tickets online ahead of time rather than risk their local theater selling out before opening night. 

Before buying an advance ticket to Joker, you should know what you're in for, as this isn't your average comic book movie. The film comes from Todd Phillips, the director mostly known for helming comedies such as Road Trip, Old School, Starsky & Hutch, and The Hangover trilogy. But Phillips has been getting into more serious material of late. His most recent film prior to Joker was 2016's War Dogs, a black comedy-drama based on a pair of real-life arms dealers. With Joker, Phillips is getting even darker: the R-rated tale shows how a mentally disturbed man — Arthur Fleck — slowly transforms into the hyper-violent criminal who comes to be known as the Joker. There's no Batman in the movie to save the day — this is all about how a sick criminal was born. 

In the film, Fleck is a struggling comedian who works a demoralizing job as a clown-for-hire. He attends therapy sessions regularly and lives with his mother in a run-down apartment. Then one day, he's physically harassed on the subway and the experience awakens something in him. From this point forward, with a newfound confidence and an ever-heightening thirst for violence, Arthur transforms into the Joker and begins causing city-wide chaos in gritty 1980s Gotham. Joker is a bleak film about a bleak man, and nobody is going to confuse it for the feel-good movie of the year. Heck, even Batman v Superman has a rosier outlook on life than this movie.

Although advance tickets for Joker have just now gone on sale, a decent number of people have already seen the film. That's because, in a fairly unusual move for a movie based on a comic book character, Joker made the rounds on the festival circuit well ahead of its theatrical release. The movie had its world premiere on August 31 at the Venice Film Festival, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation and walked away with the Golden Lion — the festival's top prize. The movie also screened at the Toronto Film Festival on September 9, where it was similarly well-received.

As far as the overall critical reaction to the film, it's been largely — but not completely — positive. As of this writing, the movie holds a 76 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 70 from Metacritic. Most reviewers have praised Phoenix's performance — with many pegging him as the frontrunner for the Best Actor award at next year's Oscars. But some reviewers have taken issue with the way the film sympathizes with a murderous psychopath, noting that Arthur shares similarities with real-life mass shooting perpetrators. Some critics have even gone so far as to question whether the film will incite real-world violence. One interviewer from The Telegraph asked Phoenix if he thought that was possible, and it prompted the actor to exit the interview. 

On the flip side, the controversy surrounding Joker could even end up driving more people to see it, which is something we will soon find out now that tickets are on sale.

Joker hits theaters on October 4.