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:
We were thinking about the original ‘Joker’ film, the one with Joaquin Phoenix. The way that explored the Joker’s psychology while it was telling a story. We’ve got the story that’s in the appendices, and we’ll tell that story, but we’ll tell it from an internal Gollum perspective. You’re taking written things by Tolkien and filming them from a certain POV, and that means you have to get inside his head. I’ve got no particular desire to get inside Gollum’s head. Andy Serkis can do that himself.
That last line is very funny, but it also gets to the real reason this comparison works better than it sounds at first. Jackson is not saying The Hunt for Gollum is about to turn Middle-earth into a grimy, R-rated descent through urban misery. At least, I certainly hope not. The point of the flick seems to be all about perspective.
Phillips' original Joker takes one of pop culture’s most familiar villains and builds a story around his mental state. Whether or not the movie works for every viewer, its whole engine was psychological intimacy. It's a film less interested in the broad new superhero movie and comic-book machinery around the Joker than in the broken human being beneath the makeup.
Gollum is a different creature entirely, but he has always carried that same uneasy pull. He's pitiful, frightening, funny, dangerous and tragic, sometimes in the span of one scene. In Jackson’s original Lord of the Rings films, Andy Serkis made him more than a visual effect or a riddle-loving cave monster. He became a person whose soul had been worn thin by the Ring until only hunger, memory and old pain remained.
That makes him a much more interesting subject than a simple prequel checklist would suggest. Jackson is producing The Hunt for Gollum, while Serkis is directing and reprising the titular role. The film is currently set to hit theaters Dec. 17, 2027.
The more Jackson talks about the movie as an internal story, the easier it is to understand why he did not simply direct it himself. Serkis has lived inside Gollum in a way no other filmmaker has. He created the voice, the body language, the twisted vulnerability and the divided personality that made the character unforgettable on screen.
If the movie really is going to follow Tolkien’s existing material through Gollum’s damaged point of view, Serkis may be the safest risky choice. That sounds contradictory, but it is not. He knows the character well enough to push the film into stranger emotional territory without making it feel like fan fiction wearing the One Ring on a chain.
The idea of using Tolkien’s appendices as the bones and Gollum’s mind as the meat is much more compelling than I expected. Phoenix’s Joker may be a strange compass for Middle-earth, but for this particular character, it points in a direction worth following.
While fans wait for The Hunt for Gollum, they can stream the original Lord of the Rings trilogy using an HBO Max subscription. That same membership also gives access to Joker and its 2024 sequel, Folie à Deux.
