Will 'Joker' Win At TIFF Or Further Ignite The Gun Debate?

Having already won the Golden Lion, the prestigious top prize at the Venice Film Festival, last week, ”Joker” is predicted to nab the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as it concludes this weekend.

The coveted audience award is frequently the harbinger of the Best Picture Academy Award. Joaquin Phoenix, who portrays Arthur Fleck aka the Joker, in the film has earned rave reviews, with some critics already calling for his Best Actor win when the Oscars are given out in February 2020.

Phoenix has earned three Oscar nominations in his career (for “Gladiator,” “Walk the Line” and “The Master”) and if he were to secure another nod and win, he would join Heath Ledger, who won the 2009 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “The Dark Knight,” as the second actor to win an Oscar for playing Batman’s arch-enemy.

“Joker” director Todd Phillips told The New York Times that, at times, the intense and mercurial Phoenix “lost his composure on the set...sometimes to the bafflement of his co-stars.”

Phoenix, who walked the TIFF red carpet on Sept. 9 with “Joker” producer Bradley Cooper and co-star Robert DeNiro, would, according to Phillips, “[I]n the middle of the scene, just walk away and walk out.”

By all accounts, “Joker” seems poised to make a killing during awards season and at the box office. In a recent Rotten Tomatoes poll asking viewers to choose the most memorable film moment of the past 21 years, the Joker from “The Dark Knight” won in a landslide.

However, it is no small irony – and likely a focus of future sociological study - that the very moment selected as a favorite among many moviegoers was once rumored to have inspired one of the most notorious mass shootings. In July 2012, James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58 during a screening of its sequel, “The Dark Knight Rises,” in Aurora, Colorado. While initial reports claimed Holmes identified himself as the Joker after his crimes, these findings were later denied.

“The Dark Knight” may be a favorite among cinephiles, but against the current debate about gun violence and red flag law, how will audiences receive a film about the protagonist's descent into homicidal insanity?

“Joker” opens in theaters on Oct. 4.