Joker

[detourne_me]

A very conflicted 2 thumbs up from me.
Is this DC's Logan? Maybe.
I just left the theatre with my wife. She knows next to nothing about DC, and really enjoyed the film, too.
Just Joaquin Phoenix's performance in this is worth the ticket price.

Y'know, at first I was really skeptical about a Joker standalone. We really don't need a sympathetic origin story for the Joker. If we sympathize with him, that just ruins the whole mystique of Batman as a superhero. He's just a rich kid beating up poor mentally ill people....
Well, hmmm. Thats still my main problem with this film. It's utterly fascinating, but worrisome.

I still highly recommend watching it.

[UnkoMan]

I enjoyed it. It's not quite King of Comedy, it's not quite Taxi Driver.
It was visually impressive though, has moments of brilliance, but it falls short of being a classic.

I'll still back the recommendation to watch.

[Silver Shocker]

Yeah I was iffy on this movie throughout its cycle, in terms of it being a loose adaptation and whether the Joker "needed" his own movie like this.

But now that it's out, and I'm hearing people talk about it and checking out reviews, a lot of what I'm hearing sounds really cool and interesting.

Even those that dislike the story and writing seem to be praising Joaquin Phoenix's performance in the movie, so it's certainly got that going for it.

I'll certainly check it out at some point.

[Shogunn2517]

A very conflicted 2 thumbs up from me.
Is this DC's Logan? Maybe.
I just left the theatre with my wife. She knows next to nothing about DC, and really enjoyed the film, too.
Just Joaquin Phoenix's performance in this is worth the ticket price.

Y'know, at first I was really skeptical about a Joker standalone. We really don't need a sympathetic origin story for the Joker. If we sympathize with him, that just ruins the whole mystique of Batman as a superhero. He's just a rich kid beating up poor mentally ill people....
Well, hmmm. Thats still my main problem with this film. It's utterly fascinating, but worrisome.

I still highly recommend watching it.

Yeah. Completely back this. And quite frankly, to think about it that way makes it even worse. I kind of have in my mind the idea of movies is being escapism, where we can put ourselves in the shoes of a hero and see aspects reflected back at us. This turns it all on it's head. I mean, is this really what I want to see reflected in myself?

That and the whole time during the development, I couldn't help but to feel that they're trying to rewrite  what the Joker is supposed to be.  TKJ was perfect enough if we ever needed an origin story for a bad guy and quite frankly, we don't. That's what made the Joker SO great in The Dark Knight, the ambiguity in his story. It could have been anything.

But I suppose Batman beating up on a completely mentally ill senior citizens makes sense.

But it was a good watch. If not tragic. I'm not mad I spent the money, but it was definitely different.

Spoiler

I know it wasn't shown, but I am to assume he killed Sophie and her daughter. I do wish they would have mad it more clear though, even if they didn't have to explicitly show it. I don't think he would have let them live would he?

[BentonGrey]

Interesting that this is getting so much praise.  I can't bring myself to watch it for the reasons folks have already outlined, but curious.

[detourne_me]

Shogunn,

Spoiler

I don't think so, the confrontation in the apartment was just before he killed penny. I think that was the real turning point for him.  At this point I'm sure he was still Arthur.

BG, I think you should still watch it, just keep in mind that it's completely non-canon. The world-building is incredible, and this vision of Gotham is just fantastic, it's every cliche of crime-filled gritty 70's New York City rolled into one

more spoilers/thoughts:

Spoiler

Does anyone else think about why he wanted to become a comedian? I think that the movie giving him the 'laughing affliction' is incredibly brilliant motivation in becoming the joker.
Think about it. He said a couple times that his calling in life was to make everybody laugh.  What happens when the joker laughs?  He is in pain.  to joker, laughter=pain. His mom even said "He was always a happy boy." He was always in pain. He just wants to make the world feel pain.

[Shogunn2517]

Yeah, that was interesting. I'm not completely mad at what they did with the character.

Spoiler

The thing that really got me was when he found out his mom left him with her abusive boyfriend, chained to a radiator beaten and bruised and she said "I never heard him cry. All I heard was laughter." I'm like man, that's pretty disturbing... and tragic. I do like some of the misdirection they were trying to do, I was able to diagnose it early(or just not believe it at all(no that lady ain't at all interested in you(no you're not Thomas Wayne's son))). But it showed how his mind thinks and when it's taken away from him, when that's taken away, they cut social services, he gets fired from his job, his "hero" makes fun of him and his life's passion. He never had any chance.

[Shogunn2517]

But yeah Benton, I got a feeling many of us have similar reservations, but the hype was enough for me to see it and like I said, I'm not mad that I did. Though I compare it to other movies that changed the story. I was fully prepared to come out of it saying "Why couldn't they just do an adaptation of The Killing Joke instead of their "edgy/gritty take", we know when producers follow a comic storyline it pays off and has with the MCU and we saw how ugly it goes when you completely wipe your but with the source material like with what the X-Men franchises did."

I was prepared to say all of that. But I didn't. I liked it well enough. Yeah I'm disturbed they decided to do their own take and kinda ignore the whole Batman part of the Joker, but when you look at it as a movie itself, I can't say it wasn't bad.

[Silver Shocker]

Well there's adherence to the source material, which I had concerns about, but there's also the general "is it too dark?" Which, you know, I think someone can say about the movie, but I wouldn't call that a flaw with the movie. It's a matter of taste. If the movie makes you uncomfortable, then it is doing its job because that is what it set out to do (or rather, one of the things it has set out to do). Now I've long been of the opinion that "dark is not good. Good is good." I.E. you can do dark poorly (Zach Syder's DC movies, for example) and you can do light-hearted poorly (Batman and Robin, the most recent season of Legends of Tomorrow, Rise of the TMNT; feel free to disagree with me about any of these btw. Except Batman & Robin of course  ) It is all in the execution. And yes, there will be people who will say "that's not for me." Me, personally? I'm not a gore hound. I didn't watch horror movies growing up, so I've never gravitated towards that kinda stuff (except in the realm of video games, where the interactive element appealed to me). But I think if I were to critique slasher films, I'd need to watch them enough to get a sense of whether they're any good.

I might be rambling here. At some point, I meant to say "Benton, I wouldn't recommend it to you. Not in a condescending way, but having a sense for your tastes, you'd probably would dislike it." In any case, I do want to give this movie an open mind, and a lot of what I'm hearing, even from people who didn't like the movie, sounds really interesting and neat. I am hearing a lot of the negative critics say Phoenix's material is underwritten but he elevates it with his performance. If nothing else, we can probably all agree that he's great.

[kkhohoho]

Well, I'm not seeing it because it sounds like alt-right propaganda. And the creator's comments as of late seem to support this.

[Tomato]

Let's put the kibosh on that end k thx. For the sake of everyone's sanity let's leave politics out of it.

I will say, even excluding that element, the director went into interviews where he complained about how he did this film because comedy (this is the director of the Hangover film) is too hard. There's a sense of... Entitlement in his statements that I have an issue with. Just because people didn't want to see Hangover 3 does not mean comedy is too hard, it means you made 3 of the same movie and people got tired of it. And everything I've heard about the film is that it's basically his wish fulfillment fantasy of a struggling comedian getting to kill everyone who he doesn't like.

I don't mind seeing the film at some point, but morally I can't bring myself to go to the theater and pay box office prices and contribute to the film's success. If nothing else though, Phoenix's Joker sounds amazing, and I do hope to see him going forward.

[Shogunn2517]

I will say, even excluding that element, the director went into interviews where he complained about how he did this film because comedy (this is the director of the Hangover film) is too hard. There's a sense of... Entitlement in his statements that I have an issue with. Just because people didn't want to see Hangover 3 does not mean comedy is too hard, it means you made 3 of the same movie and people got tired of it. And everything I've heard about the film is that it's basically his wish fulfillment fantasy of a struggling comedian getting to kill everyone who he doesn't like.

Really? 

I dunno... I don't think I got that. Honestly talking about it with a few others who saw it, I don't think that was the impression they got. I guess more or less tragedy. Seeing what we know, seeing a broken figure break. I was honestly slightly surprised the "comedy" was that big of a part. This is the first I've heard this before.

I don't mind seeing the film at some point, but morally I can't bring myself to go to the theater and pay box office prices and contribute to the film's success. If nothing else though, Phoenix's Joker sounds amazing, and I do hope to see him going forward.

To that point, I can't see this being more than a standalone. I hope so. Still that idea of Batman beating up on a mentally ill senior citizen that's hard for me to see past. But the movie itself, it was pretty much a vehicle for Phoenix, which he used to win the Indy 500 with. I don't know what more they can do with it.

[UnkoMan]

The director does sound like a weiner, and Hangover is lame, but whatever. I can divorce creator from content.

When I said it's not quite King of Comedy, not quite Taxi Driver, I meant it is literally a less interesting mash up of those two movies.
It's the character of these films without the meat, basically. The story, without the heart.
Also, I've seen Batman as a rich, privileged guy who beats up the mentally ill (most of them are homeless too, right?) since I was a late teen, so that part is not a shock. Ha ha ha.

In the end I didn't conclude that this version of Joker was suppose to be somebody I was rooting for. He did not feel like the hero. He is just as selfish and blind as he accuses everybody else of being.
Yeah, he gets dren on and some of that is revenge, but lots of people get dren on and don't end up killing people too. I think they even say that in the movie? Am I misremembering?

Spoiler

Even the sort of justified, semi-hero worship ending that is probably entirely in the main character's mind doesn't have the same feel as the endings from the aforementioned films. And then he kills an innocent lady whose worst crime was just not listening to him whine enough.

If they had just made this as a movie and not put the JOKER name to it, or DC Comics, I don't think people would be talking about it quite as much, or acting so shocked by it.
If they had made this in the late '70s it might have even become a sort of cult classic.
As it stands, it's a big deal now, and we'll forget about it when all the new super hero movies come out next year.

[Silver Shocker]

Let's put the kibosh on that end k thx. For the sake of everyone's sanity let's leave politics out of it.

I will say, even excluding that element, the director went into interviews where he complained about how he did this film because comedy (this is the director of the Hangover film) is too hard. There's a sense of... Entitlement in his statements that I have an issue with. Just because people didn't want to see Hangover 3 does not mean comedy is too hard, it means you made 3 of the same movie and people got tired of it. And everything I've heard about the film is that it's basically his wish fulfillment fantasy of a struggling comedian getting to kill everyone who he doesn't like.

He also said he was trying to "sneak a 'real movie' into the into the studio system under the guise of a superhero movie" while Scorcese (whose films Joker is, of course, somewhat inspired by) said the MCU movies "aren't real cinema." So yeah, we definitely don't need to agree with anything the filmakers say whether we like the film or not. Some people in the entertainment industry are just prima donnas who love to sound off.

I've heard those predisposed to dislike the film (either because of its alternative grim-dark premise, being sick of darker and edgier Batman, being sick of the Joker, ect) Pick on the fact that Gotham City in this is modeled after the 80s but there's smartphones and the internet and other references to modern day, as if Tim Burton's Batman movies, Batman TAS, and who knows how many other iterations of Batman didn't do the exact same same thing (sometimes with Gotham being modeled after a different era; Metropolis too, for that matter.).

n the end I didn't conclude that this version of Joker was suppose to be somebody I was rooting for. He did not feel like the hero. He is just as selfish and blind as he accuses everybody else of being.
Yeah, he gets dren on and some of that is revenge, but lots of people get dren on and don't end up killing people too. I think they even say that in the movie? Am I misremembering?

I kinda like to think you can root for the Joker the same way you can root for Freddie or Jason or Micheal Myers or Dracula or basically every horror movie villain ever (which the Joker in general lapses into on many occasions) in that it's fun to root for them to kill people but you still recognize that they're the villain.

Even Mark Hamill described the version of the Joker he voiced in the Batman: Arkham video games as "hideous" (mostly in comparison to the kids-cartoon versions of the character he'd voiced prior) and that version, while a ruthless killer with a sense of dark humor, is still pretty tame compared to some other versions of the character.

If they had just made this as a movie and not put the JOKER name to it, or DC Comics, I don't think people would be talking about it quite as much, or acting so shocked by it.

If it wasn't an established IP like The JOKER, it probably wouldn't have made nearly as much money either. Which, really, is a big part of why this movie exists in the first place.

To that point, I can't see this being more than a standalone. I hope so. Still that idea of Batman beating up on a mentally ill senior citizen that's hard for me to see past.

That's why I think this probably shouldn't have had the Waynes in it at all. That's the one area where it kinda feels like DCWB wanted an out for franchise purposes (not sure if that's actually the case). When you have Thomas Wayne in the movie, and present him in a negative light, it kinda stacks the deck (pun not intended) in a way that feels a bit unfair.

I'm reminded of another Batman story I read recently about the Joker. The first issue of the heavily hyped AU comic "Batman: White Knight" (the first issue of which was given away for free last year for Batman Day). The premise is to make the Joker the "Good guy" and Batman the "bad guy" but it indulges in contrivances to stack the deck (the creator even said in an interview that these versions of the characters are not meant to match the characters in other iterations). The story requires Batman to have suffered a personal tragedy in order to justify him being excessively cruel to The Joker, while the premise apparently required a "Cured" Joker to have a genius-level IQ that he supposedly didn't have access to until he was "cured". It's absolutely ludicrous fantasy-logic and only exists to get to a desired outcome.

[GhostMachine]

I downloaded Batman: White Knight #1 for free, and thought it was trash. No desire to read the rest of it.

No desire to evr see Joker. I went ahead and read spoilers for it, and frankly it seems like garbage.

[Silver Shocker]

Finally watched Joker. Very much enjoyed it. Very well made film, Phoenix is very, very good in it. He just won a Golden Globe for best actor for the film (the film itself didn't win, just like the Dark Knight; I don't think it had any chance of doing so) and like Ledger before, I definitely think he deserved it. Very dark, uncomfortable film, not a "fun" film or an action movie by any stretch. I don't know if I'd ever want to watch it again unless I was showing it to a friend or family member who hadn't seen it yet.

There's definitely a lot people can read into the film and various parts of it, but I do give everyone involved credit for making a lot of it ambiguous and open to interpretation, encouraging people to have their own takes on it.

Definitely should not have a sequel, no matter how much money it made (I've read it broke records for a R-rated film, beating out Deadpool). Wouldn't put it past WB to try to make one though.

I say it and Shazam are the two best DC (theatrical, live-action) movies since Dark Knight Rises. And appropriately, Shazam and Joker are pretty much complete opposites of one another.

[SickAlice]

I liked it. It's best to separate it from well everything and watch it just as a film and actors performance imo. I think people screw themselves on enjoying films by mixing things in that aren't supposed to be there. In this case adaptation accuracy, sequel/reboot alignment and genre staples. This was distant from all that and it's own thing, clearly inspired by A Clockwork Orange. Add I saw many people checking it's obligations to public mental health. As a trained NAMI peer I say this should be dissolved always. Films should always be seen as fantasy and at best inspiration but never a writ for real life behavior. To do otherwise is just to cater to the wrong side of mental illness and just basic human cognitive bias. Good film in it's own right, VERY disturbing and difficult to watch even and not a fun superhero movie I would show the kids.