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 d-usa wrote:


I don’t know if it was a great Joker movie. But I do think it was a great movie that happened to have the Joker in it.

Totally agree with this assessment.

i actually think it is a horrible Joker movie, but it is a very good movie.

I have not been caught in any of the hype/controversy, haven't really read any reviews or this thread for example. For me it was just...boring. It was well made and well acted, but the subject matter left me completely emotionally flat and I did not care about anything what happened to the characters, the plot was not interesting in any way, it was not funny, not clever, not surprising, not emotionally gripping or anything. So I just tried to concentrate enjoying the depressing '80s atmosphere, which was well made, no question, but not enough to make it interesting as a movie or wanting to rewatch it again.

As a Joker movie, it is as said pretty awful. In my opinion, Joker is one of those characters which work as an absolute 'lynchpin' of sort in the setting. Whatever happens, you can count on Joker being fething evil and he will try to screw you over somehow. Similarly, I am not interested about tragic background of Sauron or Emperor Palpatine or Martha Stewart. Sometimes aura of mystery adds to the character and if you start deconstructing them the effect is lost. As a movie about psychotic spree killer Arthur Fleck it was ok but the movie lacked any kind of cleverness or surprises or punchlines - much like comedy of Arthur Fleck. I am sure that the parallel was intentional, but down side of it is that effect of watching it was much like watching comedic act of Arthur Fleck: you get few chuckles, shake your head about the weirdness and walk out wondering "now what the heck was the point of even putting that on show??"

Joker has passed Deadpool as the highest grossing R-rated film ever.

It may end up with Infinity War-level profit.

https://deadline.com/2019/10/joker-profit-global-box-office-avengers-1202767490/amp/

This is the new DC boss’s formula from his days at New Line. Good filmmaker, trust the vision, tighter budget, hopefully big profits. Also saw it with Shazam (which actually could have used more investment in advertising but whatevs), and will see it with BoP and Gunn’s new SS.

Still haven't seen it, planned to about 5 times and something keeps coming up at the last minute. I hope to next week.

Irrespective of that, I saw it reached the largest grossing R movie of all time and am well pleased by that. I'd like to see more mature comic-oriented stuff, and in general would like to see DC do better than they have - the rising tide lifts all comic book movie boats.

I just hope it doesn't mean that DC fall into the Dork Age mentality again and we still get to see a spread of films. Aquaman was a great adventure/romance movie in the vein of "Romancing the Stone" and Shazam was a superhero action comedy with a real heart to it.

 Compel wrote:
I just hope it doesn't mean that DC fall into the Dork Age mentality again and we still get to see a spread of films. Aquaman was a great adventure/romance movie in the vein of "Romancing the Stone" and Shazam was a superhero action comedy with a real heart to it.

I did not see Aquaman but couldn't resist seeing Shazam. You are spot on. Shazam was a Superhero kid's movie comedy. Quite excellent in that format. It took itself the opposite of seriously, which frankly most super hero comics should do because they are...superhero comic book movies.

 Compel wrote:
I just hope it doesn't mean that DC fall into the Dork Age mentality again and we still get to see a spread of films. Aquaman was a great adventure/romance movie in the vein of "Romancing the Stone" and Shazam was a superhero action comedy with a real heart to it.

Think they've made it pretty clear that there won't be a 'DC tone'. Each movie will have the tone each filmmaker demands. Batman will probably be a dark detective story. Birds of Prey looks to be R-rated but lighter. Black Adam will probably be your typical Dwayne Johnson vehicle. Gunn's Suicide Squad looks like it's going to be pretty comedic.

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2483218/joel-kinnaman-says-the-suicide-squad-is-like-shooting-his-first-comedy

 gorgon wrote:

 Compel wrote:
I just hope it doesn't mean that DC fall into the Dork Age mentality again and we still get to see a spread of films. Aquaman was a great adventure/romance movie in the vein of "Romancing the Stone" and Shazam was a superhero action comedy with a real heart to it.

Think they've made it pretty clear that there won't be a 'DC tone'. Each movie will have the tone each filmmaker demands. Batman will probably be a dark detective story. Birds of Prey looks to be R-rated but lighter. Black Adam will probably be your typical Dwayne Johnson vehicle. Gunn's Suicide Squad looks like it's going to be pretty comedic.

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2483218/joel-kinnaman-says-the-suicide-squad-is-like-shooting-his-first-comedy

Didn't suicide squad just come out like two years ago? And they're already remaking it?

This is why I don't see films anymore and instead look for more targeted content. It's all the same trash over and over and over again.

Well, maybe this time they'll do a good one for their fans?

To be fair, the Suicide Squad is not a set line-up. They are always recruiting and putting different villains in it to "save the world".

 Togusa wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

 Compel wrote:
I just hope it doesn't mean that DC fall into the Dork Age mentality again and we still get to see a spread of films. Aquaman was a great adventure/romance movie in the vein of "Romancing the Stone" and Shazam was a superhero action comedy with a real heart to it.

Think they've made it pretty clear that there won't be a 'DC tone'. Each movie will have the tone each filmmaker demands. Batman will probably be a dark detective story. Birds of Prey looks to be R-rated but lighter. Black Adam will probably be your typical Dwayne Johnson vehicle. Gunn's Suicide Squad looks like it's going to be pretty comedic.

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2483218/joel-kinnaman-says-the-suicide-squad-is-like-shooting-his-first-comedy

Didn't suicide squad just come out like two years ago? And they're already remaking it?

This is why I don't see films anymore and instead look for more targeted content. It's all the same trash over and over and over again.

Well, maybe this time they'll do a good one for their fans?

It's more of a soft reboot than a remake - mostly the same cast, basically ignores the first one's existence entirely, new director, new tone(it's being made from the beginning to be much more comedic, as opposed to the first film which was darkgrim-grimdark with a side of edgelord that got crudely hacked away at in editing to try for a "quippy" end result after the rest of the DCU shat itself).

 gorgon wrote:

This is the new DC boss’s formula from his days at New Line. Good filmmaker, trust the vision, tighter budget, hopefully big profits. Also saw it with Shazam (which actually could have used more investment in advertising but whatevs), and will see it with BoP and Gunn’s new SS.

I think Shazam mostly suffered from the loss of faith created from Justice League and BvS. Aquaman did well, was a ton of fun, but not.... good; at least, not in the way that makes you think everything coming off the line is gold. Shazam deserves a lot more attention than it got, but it doesn't have an obviously great premise and is tied to something still trying to earn back the trust of its audience.

I’m actually amazed by the amount of praise I see on here for Shazam. I like Zach Levy. I like the character. I was bored out of my mind during the movie. My wife begged me to wait til it came out on DVD and to rent it first, and I agreed. Thankfully, I listened to her. About halfway through, I turned to her and asked “are you as bored with this as I am?” The plot was sensible, the characters reasonable, and I like the main actor. I just yawned through it. If watching Joker was like chewing on nails that had been laced with cocaine, watching Shazam was like watching paint dry on a bedroom wall.

Subjectivity is a thing, but I still have trouble understanding it. Perhaps you would have enjoyed it more watching with a crowd who enjoyed the humor?

Me, I found all the actors compelling enough that I was never bored, even when there were no jokes or fights. I was emotionally invested enough for the missing mother subplot to hit me in the feels.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I’m actually amazed by the amount of praise I see on here for Shazam. I like Zach Levy. I like the character. I was bored out of my mind during the movie. My wife begged me to wait til it came out on DVD and to rent it first, and I agreed. Thankfully, I listened to her. About halfway through, I turned to her and asked “are you as bored with this as I am?” The plot was sensible, the characters reasonable, and I like the main actor. I just yawned through it. If watching Joker was like chewing on nails that had been laced with cocaine, watching Shazam was like watching paint dry on a bedroom wall.

I haven't seen Shazam (zero interest, honestly), but I feel the exact same way about Aquaman. I have absolutely no idea how that movie broke a billion dollars at the box office. I couldn't even finish it, and yet it's held up as some shining example of the 'new DCU'. I don't even think it was as good as Wonder Woman, and that warranted no more than a solid 7 from me. Warner Bros have poisoned the DC brand so much for me that it's just hard for me to get excited about anything they do.

I liked Aquaman. It was a fun time, and that’s what it needed to be. I mean, he’s king of the Mer-people and he talks to fish.

I got more out of it than I was expecting. The movie really embraced the comic book over the top sea battle. That spectacle alone was worth the price of admission for me. Unleash the Krakken!

And, um, this relates to the Joker movie because, um, it was the total opposite of that. Entertaining in a severely grounded sort of way.

 LunarSol wrote:
I think Shazam mostly suffered from the loss of faith created from Justice League and BvS. Aquaman did well, was a ton of fun, but not.... good; at least, not in the way that makes you think everything coming off the line is gold. Shazam deserves a lot more attention than it got, but it doesn't have an obviously great premise and is tied to something still trying to earn back the trust of its audience.

I'd say that Shazam has a pretty darn great premise, actually. Lack of familiarity with the character plus the brand issues were certainly factors. Poor performance in Asia also figured into the good not great box office (lack of spectacle and cultural challenges figuring heavily here).

Still, Marvel would have introduced the character in another film, and then probably doubled the box office for the solo film. The MCU coattails effect is strong.

Also...proximity to a certain other superhero movie was a big factor we shouldn't discount. It wasn't just Endgame raking in all the superhero dollars -- it was the way it sucked all the air out of the room. It's odd to me that they didn't explore moving Shazam once they knew they had a highly likeable film on their hands.

Yeah, Shazam was in my local cinema for 3 weeks, before it was pulled for reshowings of Captain Marvel and then Endgame.

I had like a busy weekend and a cold, then all of a sudden the movie vanished.

Anybody else see that they've already green-lit for a second one? I guess being the most successful comic-book movie ever made (cost to earning ratio) makes it pretty much a given. So long as they don't flub it like Deadpool 2*!





*Deadpool 2 being too good for the source material, they really should have striven for that '5' and not an '11' on the rating-scale. Yes, I actually said that and threw their commercial with Celien Dion back at them.

I was a big supporter of this movie, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it'd hit a billion. And without a release in China! The main thing isn't the money though, but keeping Phoenix on board. It sounds like he had a blast working with the director and on the film, so it's awesome that he's open to it. Still need a script that everyone likes, though.

I think we'll see many more of these lower-budget concept films from DC regardless. Chris McKay (Lego Batman) was attached to a Nightwing project a couple of years back. Seems like that might be a similar fit...?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I wonder if this confusion is why this movie has had critics call it:
1. Promoting violence
2. White male conservative propaganda.
3. Incel manifesto
4. promoting child abuse.

I believe that anyone who thinks even a single one of these can safely be discounted in all things moving forward.

Disagree in part, I think this film was pretty much dead-on "incel spree killer daydream fantasy". I was not "outraged" by this aspect but it was very clear. Lets look at it: a lonely troubled guy gets constantly his teeth kicked in by society and 'better-offs', then finally flips and fights back, shoots his offenders and starts a social revolution which totally redeems his actions. This is pretty much 100% what most school shooters and guys like Breivik & his copycats dream of. They did not see themselves as horrible murderers. Rather they saw themselves as justified revolutionaires who would start an uprising where 'wolves' rise up against the 'sheeps' and those who ignited the 'revolution' (ie. them) would be hailed as heroes. Climatic scenes of Joker manifest this dream.

This is why I tend to side with the theory that this was not real Joker - that was just psychotic spree killer Arthur Fleck who dreams of becoming Joker. In fact ending of the movie leaves it somewhat ambigious if all, or any, of that really happened or if it was just another one of his fantasies, like his 'girlfriend'.

Backfire wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I wonder if this confusion is why this movie has had critics call it:
1. Promoting violence
2. White male conservative propaganda.
3. Incel manifesto
4. promoting child abuse.

I believe that anyone who thinks even a single one of these can safely be discounted in all things moving forward.

Disagree in part, I think this film was pretty much dead-on "incel spree killer daydream fantasy". I was not "outraged" by this aspect but it was very clear. Lets look at it: a lonely troubled guy gets constantly his teeth kicked in by society and 'better-offs', then finally flips and fights back, shoots his offenders and starts a social revolution which totally redeems his actions. This is pretty much 100% what most school shooters and guys like Breivik & his copycats dream of. They did not see themselves as horrible murderers. Rather they saw themselves as justified revolutionaires who would start an uprising where 'wolves' rise up against the 'sheeps' and those who ignited the 'revolution' (ie. them) would be hailed as heroes. Climatic scenes of Joker manifest this dream.

This is why I tend to side with the theory that this was not real Joker - that was just psychotic spree killer Arthur Fleck who dreams of becoming Joker. In fact ending of the movie leaves it somewhat ambigious if all, or any, of that really happened or if it was just another one of his fantasies, like his 'girlfriend'.

Frankly, I wish they'd have left the what, three "scenes" with the "girlfriend" out entirely, just so this farcical "it has a lady in it, it must be THE INCEL-BOOGYMAN AT WORK!" would have been even easier to dismiss out of hand

You're just lumping together words that describe people who have nothing whatsoever in common except that they killed a lot of people. Incel killers, ideological neo-Nazi killers, and nihilistic spree killers have about as much in common with each other as they do with combat veteran soldiers(which, before some flag-waving galoot leaps in to defend Milady Thanks For Your Service's honour, is knob-all besides having killed).

Fleck is not motivated by a hatred of women, or a conviction that they "owe" him sex, or a constructed narrative based on wonky evo-psych and imageboard rantings. There's nothing "incel" about it.

The film's through line is a blatantly obvious "you reap what you sow" narrative aimed at the wealthy/small-state ideologues. It doesn't redeem his actions at all, rather it apportions the blame fairly - Fleck isn't a monster, he's a madman, but that only becomes everyone else's problem when the Thomas Waynes of the world get their way. When he got his meds and his gakky low-effort counseling sessions, he was just a weird guy who looks after his mum and wouldn't even blame the kids who beat the gak out of him because he's aware that, in the end, they're stuck in the same garbage situation he is. Even once he loses the meds, his reaction to realising his interactions with the woman down the hall were all delusions isn't to lash out at her or blame her, it's to recoil in shame. It's only when he's in a total downward spiral and Gotham keeps gaking on him over, and over, and over that he loses all semblance of reality and falls into nihilistic violence.

Joker's story isn't about "redeeming" or justifying the Joker's actions, it's about showing that society creates its own villains when it becomes callous and uncaring and miserly.

Yeah. You would have to be the kind of idiot who thinks the Joker is good and just and righteous in the movie to think the movie was daydream fantasy.

I really liked the Joker film, I'd actually recently watched The Taxi Driver for the first time before seeing it and the similarities were quite striking.
Only thing I think they could have done better was leave what was fact and fantasy a little bit more ambiguous.

Like the final scene with the lady down the hall.
Like most people, I'd already suspected that his relationship with her was more fantasy than fact. But the film felt it necessary to hit us over the head and say "this is what's going on, stupid" with that scene.

The death of the three bankers as well, how cool would it have if the police had arrested someone else for it and put the evidence on the news?
We would be left wondering if the Joker really was a powerless prole who stood up to 'the man', or if he had just inserted himself into the role of the 'hero' as part of his fantasies.

These are just minor gripes though, overall the best film I've seen at the cinema for a while.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Backfire wrote:


Disagree in part, I think this film was pretty much dead-on "incel spree killer daydream fantasy". I was not "outraged" by this aspect but it was very clear. Lets look at it: a lonely troubled guy gets constantly his teeth kicked in by society and 'better-offs', then finally flips and fights back, shoots his offenders and starts a social revolution which totally redeems his actions. This is pretty much 100% what most school shooters and guys like Breivik & his copycats dream of. They did not see themselves as horrible murderers. Rather they saw themselves as justified revolutionaires who would start an uprising where 'wolves' rise up against the 'sheeps' and those who ignited the 'revolution' (ie. them) would be hailed as heroes. Climatic scenes of Joker manifest this dream.

This is why I tend to side with the theory that this was not real Joker - that was just psychotic spree killer Arthur Fleck who dreams of becoming Joker. In fact ending of the movie leaves it somewhat ambigious if all, or any, of that really happened or if it was just another one of his fantasies, like his 'girlfriend'.

Frankly, I wish they'd have left the what, three "scenes" with the "girlfriend" out entirely, just so this farcical "it has a lady in it, it must be THE INCEL-BOOGYMAN AT WORK!" would have been even easier to dismiss out of hand

You're just lumping together words that describe people who have nothing whatsoever in common except that they killed a lot of people. Incel killers, ideological neo-Nazi killers, and nihilistic spree killers have about as much in common with each other as they do with combat veteran soldiers(which, before some flag-waving galoot leaps in to defend Milady Thanks For Your Service's honour, is knob-all besides having killed).

Fleck is not motivated by a hatred of women, or a conviction that they "owe" him sex, or a constructed narrative based on wonky evo-psych and imageboard rantings. There's nothing "incel" about it.

I'm lumping them together because they do have lot in common, even if only in general sense, detailed motivations vary. These are people who see themselves as righteous and believe that eventually they will be justified. This is much contrast with most serial killers.
I don't see term 'incel' as necessarily hating women (which Fleck doesn't seem to do). Fleck is also hardly a white supremacist as he fantasizes about having a black girlfriend. So anyone who claims that Fleck is a woman-hating white supremacist has not obviously seen the movie. But he does cross a lot of boxes in typical spree killer/"expanded suicide" -categorization.

 Yodhrin wrote:

The film's through line is a blatantly obvious "you reap what you sow" narrative aimed at the wealthy/small-state ideologues.

...which is exactly how spree killers operate. They transfer responsibility to the society/government/ruling ideology/etc. "You made me do this".

I'm not really sure why people think it needs to be one or the other.

The film's point to me was "all you need is the right combination of societal error, mental illness, casual cruelty, and self-fulfilling narcissicism. Do you want Joker? Cause that's how you get joker." Yeah, Joker is an incel spree killer daydream fantasy. Yeah the film is about how society reaps what it sows. Those narratives are not exclusive. I think the film works as well as it does is because it manages to weave such a delicate balance in painting the picture of how Joker and people like Joker are made both an an individual and a societal level. You can't separate one from the other and still get the full picture, which is why I think this film can be hard to swallow for a lot of people, because it's pointing the finger at everyone.

Backfire wrote:
I don't see term 'incel' as necessarily hating women (which Fleck doesn't seem to do). Fleck is also hardly a white supremacist as he fantasizes about having a black girlfriend.

I think we agree and disagree in part.

I disagree in that I think hating women (or at least a frustration driven by lack of access to sex) is a critical component of being an incel, and that is not present in Fleck. He's clearly sad, lonely, and angry, but his lack of access to physical intimacy doesn't drive his violence (and of course, neither at all does white supremacy, as you say). So I disagree on what you categorized as an incel but agree he isn't one, I think that's obvious to anyone who has seen the movie.

I don't think he falls into a box we have a neat label for. Just because he overlaps some categories of inceldom does not make him an incel. If anything, his rage is fueled by economic austerity than anything else.

Backfire wrote:

The film's through line is a blatantly obvious "you reap what you sow" narrative aimed at the wealthy/small-state ideologues.

...which is exactly how spree killers operate. They transfer responsibility to the society/government/ruling ideology/etc. "You made me do this".

But in this case, there's no need to "transfer" responsibility.

Fleck on meds and in counseling is a reasonably functional person who's no danger to anyone.

Fleck after budget cuts have removed his access to meds and counseling is unstable and incapable of restraining himself from becoming a danger to everybody including himself.

If the small-staters and bootstrappers never agitate to have the budgets cut his meds and counseling never go away, and he never gets put into the position to become Joker. If the city isn't run into the ground so that the Waynes of the world can have that fifteenth gold-plated ivory backscratcher they really really want, there's no crowd to riot in response to Joker's actions. If rich people didn't treat everyone else like garbage because they think they can get away with it, he never would have been put in a position where he would kill people and realise that, sans meds, doing so doesn't bother him. His obvious and serious mental health problems mean it's clearly obvious that he's not culpable for his own actions either legally or ethically.

The society/government/ruling ideology didn't make Fleck do what he did, but they are the reason he did what he did, which is the point of the narrative.

There's also his mother's obvious mental illness and the emotional trauma that wrought on Arthur, and then there's the calousness of Thomas Wayne's reaction (which was in most ways perfectly understandable in a way, but it's also inseparable from Arthur's escalating violence).

Nevermind the obvious flag-waving of how the three donkey-caves on the train were immediately treated as victims because they were young, white, and affluent despite being disgraceful human beings.

There's a lot of things in the movie that contribute to the creation of Joker and I think trying to point to any one thing as the thrust of how it happened is missing the other 95% of the movie.

I just saw it, didn’t even know there was any controversy until after seeing the movie and googling it (I don’t like reading reviews before seeing movies, prefer to read them afterwards to see what people saw that I maybe didn’t).

I thought it was an okay movie, mediocre plot, felt a bit too slow/boring/predictable at times, but really well constructed world, good soundtrack and I thought Phoenix played it brilliantly.

It’s funny, because I didn’t read any of the controversy before seeing the film my interpretation was a comment on poor treatment of mental illness, loneliness, detachment from society and generally crappy society stuff driving someone crazy enough to start executing people. He said in his first meeting with the counsellor that she wasn’t listening to him and how he was better off when he was in the hospital.

But there are a lot of overlapping themes, I think people are trying to hard to say the movie is something when that thing is just a facet of it.

Kroem wrote:The death of the three bankers as well, how cool would it have if the police had arrested someone else for it and put the evidence on the news?
We would be left wondering if the Joker really was a powerless prole who stood up to 'the man', or if he had just inserted himself into the role of the 'hero' as part of his fantasies.

I love this idea to peices, would have been great.

Backfire wrote:

I'm lumping them together because they do have lot in common, even if only in general sense, detailed motivations vary. These are people who see themselves as righteous and believe that eventually they will be justified. This is much contrast with most serial killers.
I don't see term 'incel' as necessarily hating women (which Fleck doesn't seem to do). Fleck is also hardly a white supremacist as he fantasizes about having a black girlfriend. So anyone who claims that Fleck is a woman-hating white supremacist has not obviously seen the movie. But he does cross a lot of boxes in typical spree killer/"expanded suicide" -categorization.



...which is exactly how spree killers operate. They transfer responsibility to the society/government/ruling ideology/etc. "You made me do this".

I think that a critical point, however, is that Joker doesn't have any ideology. Yeah, he sparks a movement, but he never sets out to do so. He's carrying a gun because he's afrai of being assaulted, gets assaulted, panics and shoots the guys doing it. It wasn't pre-meditated, much less ideological.

For most of the film, Fleck seems to barely have the faculties to comprehend the political fallout he's caused. He's inarticulate, scared, and increasingly inwardly-focused, as his mental health deteriorates. It's really not until the end of the movie, when he fully embraces the Joker persona and goes on television that he becomes at all outwardly political, and shifts his focus beyond himself and his domestic/financial/psychological troubles. By that point, the 'movement' is fully formed, independent of anything he may or may not believe. We're subjected to Fleck watching television far more than we are him considering the body politic. Just as he's a victim of familial and financial circumstance, he's a victim of being adopted by people railing against capitalism. Certainly, he has reason to rail, too, but his position is thrust apon him by a mass he has no control over, something I think was highlighted as his body is hauled out of that police car in the final scene, and he performs to a horde of out-of-focus anonymous rioters.
Most shooters etc. do their disgusting stuff for ideological reasons, in which they convince themselves of the infallable virtue of themselves and their ideals, before deliberately heading out intending to murder as a part of this.

I think in Joker, it's less a case of "you made me do this" as it is, "This is a series of things that just sort of happened to me". Ledger's Joker was witty, chaotic, and deviously intelligent. Arthur Fleck isn't inspirational, he's just a victim.

I think there was a great deal of media pearl-clutching about the content of this film, and while I feel like it's probably worth acknowledging a great deal of Fleck's frustrations are fronted by womenm and are catalysts for his more destructive episodes (though, again, as he's never really presented as anything other than pityable, it's hard to say this episodic violence is golrified at all), it was most likely (worked in the shady recesses of online media for a bit) some editor noticed a spike of interest in superhero gubbins after the whole Avengers thing, and decided to have people pump out a few hype/think/hysteria peices in the run up. Not all of them miss the mark, but a great deal are lacking any real substance.