Film Joker (2019)

[SteveJ]

That's also very true. I was actually thinking, his appearance on TV (forget the killing) would not make me want to follow him in battle even if I agreed.

I'm always in danger of over-interpreting cultural stuff while interests me but...isn't it fitting that when a theme is effectively the slow death of idealised society, the last rebel should be an apathetic, charisma-free nonentity followed by similar nihilists?

 

[amolbhatia50k]

It's a bit odd to develop your evil genius after becoming the supervillain, rather than using it to get there in the first place.

But the simplest way to get over this is to acknowledge that this isn't really the DC version of the Joker, it's something inspired by the character but the only real similarities are the clown makeup and penchant for murder.

It's certainly not odd to build on your genius after your first few acts of villaney. He's shown signs here which he no doubt goes on to display to everyone.

I really don't care which version this is. It's Joker and it's DC. That's all that matters. Comic book seems so rigid in how their characters need to be.

This would be the pre-cursor to Heath Ledger's joker if you were to make any connection between the two. Ledger's is the result of a slow descent into madness that is depicted in this film.

I also love the secondary plot points about how mental health is still looked at in the main.

I feel this is how comic book films should be done, a brilliant watch.

Seen that way, it works so well. Phoenix's Arthur who grows into Ledgers Joker. Wonderful.

 

[DatIrishFella]

Ill need to watch it again. Went to a 11pm showing but was bolloxed tired watching it.

Fun fact. The dwarf guy played Tyrion Lannister in season 6 of GoT in the Bravoosi panto.

 

[Renegade]

It's certainly not odd to build on your genius after your first few acts of villaney. He's shown signs here which he no doubt goes on to display to everyone.

I really don't care which version this is. It's Joker and it's DC. That's all that matters. Comic book seems so rigid in how their characters need to be.


Seen that way, it works so well. Phoenix's Arthur who grows into Ledgers Joker. Wonderful.

Nah I don’t buy that. Ledger’s joker seems like ex military. His too skilled tactically & with firearms.

 

[MadMike]

It's certainly not odd to build on your genius after your first few acts of villaney. He's shown signs here which he no doubt goes on to display to everyone.

I completely disagree. Do acts of villainy increase your IQ or something? Arthur Fleck displayed no signs of significant intelligence or anything of the like. In fact he was too much in the other direction, almost a "simpleton" that everyone was taking advantage of. He exhibited naive or idiotic behaviour throughout. Too much to turn around into the sort of scheming megalomaniac that is Joker.

 

[Castia]

I think the one thing that really stood out for me is that the Joker has always been described as Charismatic and nothing I saw from Arthur or “that guy dressed as the joker” was charismatic at all.

But the Joker you usually see is an insane criminal who’s been doing crazy shit for years, this is before he became that.

The more he lets the crazy take over the more charismatic he gets look at him in the last 20 minutes of the movie it’s nothing like the character we see getting beat up by kids at the start.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Nah I don’t buy that. Ledger’s joker seems like ex military. His too skilled tactically & with firearms.

He did? Didn't come across as some incredible sharpshooter in the TDK. He just knew how to use guns - something anyone can pick up.

Anyhoo I wasn't looking at it as deeply as you are. I just liked both portrayals and how each suited a different phase.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

I completely disagree. Do acts of villainy increase your IQ or something? Arthur Fleck displayed no signs of significant intelligence or anything of the like. In fact he was too much in the other direction, almost a "simpleton" that everyone was taking advantage of. He exhibited naive or idiotic behaviour throughout. Too much to turn around into the sort of scheming megalomaniac that is Joker.

Possibly correct. The again, how much of a scheming genius did Walter White appear in the first few seasons of BB? And that's by far the best transition I've ever seen

 

[VP89]

He did? Didn't come across as some incredible sharpshooter in the TDK. He just knew how to use guns - something anyone can pick up.

Anyhoo I wasn't looking at it as deeply as you are. I just liked both portrayals and how each suited a different phase.

Think there was a hint in that one scene which showed him without make up. He blended into the military march and stuff.

Would also explain how he knew how to source bombs and shit to take it to the next level. He definately wasn't just some mad man with a gun.

 

[MadMike]

Possibly correct. The again, how much of a scheming genius did Walter White appear in the first few seasons of BB? And that's by far the best transition I've ever seen

I don't think we understand each other.

You can get better at scheming the more you do it, as with anything in life. Like you can be a chemist if you want. How good you'll get will depend on your dedication but also largely on your intelligence. Walter White was an extremely good chemist and the scientific brains behind the company Gretchen and Elliot were managing. He had the raw intelligence, the show clearly emphasised that. He was just a meek pushover until cancer and fear of dying made him progressively bolder.

With Arthur Fleck there is no glimpse of an inner genius. Full stop. They just went "full retard" with him, to quote Tropic Thunder. There was nothing there to suggest he could make a super-villain.

 

[Ubik]

Nah I don’t buy that. Ledger’s joker seems like ex military. His too skilled tactically & with firearms.

I think even apart from that, Ledger's one is all nervous energy and tics, and uses the kind of self-pitying backstory displayed here as a running joke. I don't see any relation to be honest.

I liked Phoenix's take on the character itself, it had a kind of grim authority to it (when he wasn't complaining that we live in a society, at any rate) which I thought had potential. The Fleck stuff I thought was quite tiresome, looking for outright sympathy rather than empathy.

Possibly correct. The again, how much of a scheming genius did Walter White appear in the first few seasons of BB? And that's by far the best transition I've ever seen

It is great, and on a completely different level to what's in this film. Think of the first time we really see Heisenberg and what he's just done, that's surely far more compelling than running onto a crowded train?

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Think there was a hint in that one scene which showed him without make up. He blended into the military march and stuff.

Would also explain how he knew how to source bombs and shit to take it to the next level. He definately wasn't just some mad man with a gun.

He probably was at some point. Which is the point.

 

[United Hobbit]

I really enjoyed it first half hour was slightly slow but was one of those films you wanted to go on longer, I wanted to see more of him once he fully descended

Read a review in the paper before I saw it that it's one of those rare films that makes you feel sorry for the "villain" and I did actually find myself feeling sorry for him, failing after failing no one helped him you were just waiting for the final straw

Wanted him to come and sort out the 2 people behind us, they walked in late then just sat talking my glaring at them temporarily worked and I was extremely close to turning round telling them to shut the f up.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Oh my what an excellent film! Amazing performances, the score and the cinematography.

I do agree and it’s something I was thinking throughout the film that how does this joker become a super villain who Batman couldn’t touch? Seems like a big leap, but I am sure they have that planned.

Such an uncomfortable film to watch, feel like he is ready to snap any second, and with how unreliable the narrator was I can’t help but question what was real and what wasn’t?

Also, did he kill his ‘girlfriend’?

 

[100]

Oh my what an excellent film! Amazing performances, the score and the cinematography.

I do agree and it’s something I was thinking throughout the film that how does this joker become a super villain who Batman couldn’t touch? Seems like a big leap, but I am sure they have that planned.

Such an uncomfortable film to watch, feel like he is ready to snap any second, and with how unreliable the narrator was I can’t help but question what was real and what wasn’t?

Also, did he kill his ‘girlfriend’?

I don't think so.

i think they made the point with the dwarf that he was only harming people who harmed him.

 

[Berbasbullet]

I don't think so.

i think they made the point with the dwarf that he was only harming people who harmed him.

Aaah good point, I didn’t even trust the dwarf bit, such as how unreliable the narrator was, was half expecting to find out later in the film the dwarf got it.

Also just thought about it and at the end of the film the joker is singing the song that is playing, maybe that is a clue to tell you that everything we have seen or heard isn’t real and it’s all in his head, and he just wants to be the man who cause Thomas Wayne’s death?

 

[ChrisNelson]

What did you think?

I have to be honest I was rather disappointed. I expected so much more from what I’d read. It was all a bit meh in the end.

I’ve spent a lot of this year in the cinema! And I wouldn’t put this in my top 10.

Don’t get me wrong it’s well made and there are decent performances but I just didn’t feel like it really took off and I hate getting to the end of the film and thinking well is that it?

I don’t agree with the articles saying it should be banned because it’s too violent.... that was the only way a film about the Joker could be made, after all he’s pretty much a psychopath.

It’s ok I’m far from raving about it.

 

[Stookie]

I have to be honest I was rather disappointed. I expected so much more from what I’d read. It was all a bit meh in the end.

I’ve spent a lot of this year in the cinema! And I wouldn’t put this in my top 10.

Don’t get me wrong it’s well made and there are decent performances but I just didn’t feel like it really took off and I hate getting to the end of the film and thinking well is that it?

I don’t agree with the articles saying it should be banned because it’s too violent.... that was the only way a film about the Joker could be made, after all he’s pretty much a psychopath.

It’s ok I’m far from raving about it.

Fair enough, life would be boring if we all had the same opinions.

 

[ChrisNelson]

Fair enough, life would be boring if we all had the same opinions.

I know very true, films are very subjective, there’s no black and white.

For lots of people it will be their film of the year, possibly decade.

I know Green Book split opinion when it won Best Picture but for me that’s 10 times better, I thought it was a fantastic film.

 

[MrGroovy]

Spoiler

So is Arthur's dad Thomas Wayne (planted the adoption certificate)? Or the mom's delusional?

 

[van der star]

Currently rated higher than The Dark Knight on IMDB, make of that what you will.

 

[kps88]

Currently rated higher than The Dark Knight on IMDB, make of that what you will.

It'll definitely go down. The rating is usually inflated so soon after release. Even more so for a movie like this which was open for rating before its wide release. So you get a lot of devoted fans/people angered by the controversy giving out 10s without having actually seen it.

 

[Jericholyte2]

Taking Phoenix out of it, it’s an average film

Apart from phoenix acting it's a boring movie

Look, I don’t was to sound insulting or snobbish but this is the laziest comment to make about this film. This is a character study of a single character that, if it was in a theatre, would essentially be a one-man show. This is, by its very nature, Joaquin Phoenix's film.

It’s like saying Cast Away would be shit without Tom Hanks, no shit.

 

[LARulz]

I'm glad many others feel the leap we have to make for him to become the supervillain feels a bit of a stretch to say the least.

Also, whilst I don't mind it really as it wasn't that bad a thing, the age gap between Batman and Joker is insane. Batman will be trying to fight a 60 year old

 

[Oldham]

It was good, but not much more than that...

 

[Sky1981]

Look, I don’t was to sound insulting or snobbish but this is the laziest comment to make about this film. This is a character study of a single character that, if it was in a theatre, would essentially be a one-man show. This is, by its very nature, Joaquin Phoenix's film.

It’s like saying Cast Away would be shit without Tom Hanks, no shit.

It's still a boring movie. No tension, no danger to protagonist, no climax of sort, no closure, pace is too slow at times.

 

[berbatrick]

Not going to see this, mostly because i don't see anything in the theatre, but this is a fun review

Every single day, a few odd hundred thousand people stare into poisonous blue light rays and feel debilitating rage at some things that understandably prompt it and some things that do not. In any event, they will respond with a generic style of online sarcasm that’s been culled from the greatest perma-banned posters of the last decade and sanitized into nothingness. You spew out their words while you react to every macro and micro Trump scandal, watching him mostly weather each cycle not so much unscathed, but ready for a new one that will make you forget about the last one. Everyone is always having a normal one in the normal world, as we clench our teeth so hard we begin to bleed.

People aren’t complete idiots, and know that consuming and reacting to every bit of political media input in and of itself won’t change anything. But I think for some, they’re in a paralyzed state. It’s like a hangover, where any light or movement causes unfathomable pain and you’ve just got to lie in a dehydrated heap until those vapors leave your brain. You know the boring, inconclusive future, and so you have no use in imagining a better life. You just sit around reacting until the next thing.

If you’ve got into the habit of taking and spitting out everything, it’s easy to apply the same rubric to culture. That is how you get the reaction you got to Todd Phillips’s 2019 Joker. In goes a shockingly average movie that I’d probably rate under Four Brothers, out goes more fear-mongering and vociferous defense than for any movie from the past couple of years.

...
The movie had very little to do with the incel panic people built up around it. The Joker’s main antagonist is the wealthy, and for good reason. He has fantasies about women, but he doesn’t seem terribly interested in laying clown pipe. At no point does he consider getting cosmetic cranial surgery. But everyone pinning this particular set of fears on this movie was incredibly predictable, as “incel” is one of those words journalists learned a year ago and have tricked themselves into believing they’ve known it their whole lives and can deploy it fluently. People saw this and decided that a movie about an abandoned, sad, abused man was about their new favorite word, alternating between repetitive mockery and belief that they would be martyred for reviewing it. It could be one of the darkly funnier outcomes, that this unremarkable movie about a sad, fecked-up guy becomes a rallying point for incels solely because journalists decided that’s what it was about, but I suspect that like everything in our culture, this will be swept up before we notice it.

(rest of the article has spoilers: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/youre-not-going-to-remember-any-of-this-shit-joker-re-1838770612)

 

[Zarlak]

He did? Didn't come across as some incredible sharpshooter in the TDK. He just knew how to use guns - something anyone can pick up.

Anyhoo I wasn't looking at it as deeply as you are. I just liked both portrayals and how each suited a different phase.

Most people in the military are not 'incredible sharpshooters' either.

 

[amolbhatia50k]

Most people in the military are not 'incredible sharpshooters' either.

I mean, sure. Can't say this is a cricism I care much for. Seems so unimportant. The lack of charisma and powerful voice are better cricisms IMO. Like I said, he made a very good joker but definitely a step down from Ledger. Although this film wasn't about Joker but his origin.

 

[Tarrou]

Just seen it, I'd give it a solid 7.5/10.

Definitely one of the better comic book movies I've seen, if you can call it that. Be interested to see where they take it next.

 

[Rooney in Paris]

Saw it yesterday and enjoyed it for Phoenix's performance, which is excellent. I was slightly afraid of all the hype around it, but overall it holds up pretty well. It's a pretty straightforward film but carried well by the acting, cinematography and soundtrack, and time flies by. Without having amazing depth, the topic is handled pretty well and Arthur's progressive alienation from society is apparent.

As for the "controversy" around it being a film for incels or whatever, I feel it's pretty unfounded and there have been much more controversial films in this regard.

Not the most unforgettable film but very good overall.

 

[Tarrou]

Saw it yesterday and enjoyed it for Phoenix's performance, which is excellent. I was slightly afraid of all the hype around it, but overall it holds up pretty well. It's a pretty straightforward film but carried well by the acting, cinematography and soundtrack, and time flies by. Without having amazing depth, the topic is handled pretty well and Arthur's progressive alienation from society is apparent.

As for the "controversy" around it being a film for incels or whatever, I feel it's pretty unfounded and there have been much more controversial films in this regard.

Not the most unforgettable film but very good overall.

He wasn't incely at all. I guess whoever made that up hadn't actually seen it yet.

 

[Cassidy]

Thought the movie was good.

Spoiler

Although I came away thinking there was something missing from the joker where we don’t seem to see him become a genius or a mastermind criminal.

Other than that I felt it was a very strong movie

 

[balaks]

Saw this on Saturday and thought it was great. Pheonix's performance was really powerful and the movie was unsettling but engaging. I would absolutely love to see Batman in this type of movie.

It will go down as a classic I think that I'm hoping will get better with more viewings.

 

[balaks]

I completely disagree. Do acts of villainy increase your IQ or something? Arthur Fleck displayed no signs of significant intelligence or anything of the like. In fact he was too much in the other direction, almost a "simpleton" that everyone was taking advantage of. He exhibited naive or idiotic behaviour throughout. Too much to turn around into the sort of scheming megalomaniac that is Joker.

I don't think he was a simpleton at all - just somebody completely lacking in confidence and self-esteem who had clearly been extremely damaged. What the movie showed was his realisation that killing people was surprisingly easy to him and not something that bothered him in the slightest (sociopathic/psychopatic personality traits) and then his understanding that through killing he reclaimed power over his life that he never had. I thought it was great and you could see how the guy could evolve after the movie to become 'The Joker' we all know and love so well.

 

[Cloud7]

Based on this movie, besides the impulsive violent kills, it's hard to envision the transformed Arthur Fleck to be capable of masterminding, organizing and leading chaos and carnage.

This is why I felt like this particular Joker character may not be that good in a movie where he plays against Batman

 

[Cloud7]

So I have a question. Not sure if this is a plot hole or a detail I missed. Penny was apparently incarcerated in Arkham for a while, right? What happened to Arthur during this time, since he seems to have no memory of this period?

Also, was the whole adoption thing some sort of set up by Thomas Wayne? He was clearly boning Penny, as we can insinuate from the signed photo Arthur found on her dresser. Is it that he really was Arthur's father and did all this to try and exonerate himself?

One of the more interesting takes in this movie was old Thomas Wayne himself. In all the batman movies before, Thomas Wayne is always painted as this angel, a perfect, infallible man who lived for others and cared more about the people of Gotham than anything else, whereas in this movie, we get to see what he looks like from the other side, when it's not Bruce or Alfred or Lucius Fox remembering him. In this movie he comes across as a complete prick, and essentially the type of personality you would expect from the richest man in Gotham.

 

[villain]

Saw this on Saturday, and enjoyed it. The tension throughout the movie was excellent.

Some thoughts in the spoiler:

Spoiler

His laughing was just amazing, it seemed like he had 2 different types, 1 which was almost child like and high pitched when he found things actually funny, and a second which was lower and more sinister - presumably to represent the duality between Arthur & Joker?
Also it mentioned he had a condition that triggered his laughter on the bus, we're later told that his mother beat him & caused severe head trauma - is it possible that he links pain, humiliation etc with laughter - and thats why he doesn't laugh in sync with anyone else, and he has to literally write down what other comics do to get a laugh out of the crowd?
Either way it made me physically uncomfortable, out of both anxiety and empathy. When he was crying through the laughs and almost choking himself to stop I was just in awe. Phoenix did a fantastic job.

The Waynes being portrayed as villains was refreshing too, surely that's what they were to everyone else?

I also love how you're not sure whats reality, and what was delusion - I was left wondering how much of the plot actually happened
There were a few scenes that seemed like callbacks to previous Jokers too.

1 - he definitely killed his neighbour/'girlfriend' right?

2 - when he was looking through his mother's belongings & found her photo, the writing on the back initialised TW for Thomas Wayne?
Is it possible that those 2 really did have something going on & TW really hid everything? Alfred looked visibly shocked when Arthur told him who his mother was

3 - TW saying 'people who hide behind masks are cowards' was funny, because Batman

4 - the scene with the 2 guys from his old job was hilarious, especially when he put on the fake English accent to mimic Gary's accent

 

[MadMike]

Saw this on Saturday, and enjoyed it. The tension throughout the movie was excellent.

Some thoughts in the spoiler:

Spoiler

His laughing was just amazing, it seemed like he had 2 different types, 1 which was almost child like and high pitched when he found things actually funny, and a second which was lower and more sinister - presumably to represent the duality between Arthur & Joker?
Also it mentioned he had a condition that triggered his laughter on the bus, we're later told that his mother beat him & caused severe head trauma - is it possible that he links pain, humiliation etc with laughter - and thats why he doesn't laugh in sync with anyone else, and he has to literally write down what other comics do to get a laugh out of the crowd?
Either way it made me physically uncomfortable, out of both anxiety and empathy. When he was crying through the laughs and almost choking himself to stop I was just in awe. Phoenix did a fantastic job.

The Waynes being portrayed as villains was refreshing too, surely that's what they were to everyone else?

I also love how you're not sure whats reality, and what was delusion - I was left wondering how much of the plot actually happened
There were a few scenes that seemed like callbacks to previous Jokers too.

1 - he definitely killed his neighbour/'girlfriend' right?

2 - when he was looking through his mother's belongings & found her photo, the writing on the back initialised TW for Thomas Wayne?
Is it possible that those 2 really did have something going on & TW really hid everything? Alfred looked visibly shocked when Arthur told him who his mother was

3 - TW saying 'people who hide behind masks are cowards' was funny, because Batman

4 - the scene with the 2 guys from his old job was hilarious, especially when he put on the fake English accent to mimic Gary's accent

Spoiler

1. I don't think so, though it's open to interpretation. He showed by sparing Gary at the expense having the Police called on him, that he didn't intend to harm those that didn't previously take advantage of him or try to harm him. His killing was all about his perceived enemies "getting what they deserve". In this light, killing his imaginary girlfriend would be out of place.

 

[Sky1981]

Saw this on Saturday, and enjoyed it. The tension throughout the movie was excellent.

Some thoughts in the spoiler:

Spoiler

His laughing was just amazing, it seemed like he had 2 different types, 1 which was almost child like and high pitched when he found things actually funny, and a second which was lower and more sinister - presumably to represent the duality between Arthur & Joker?
Also it mentioned he had a condition that triggered his laughter on the bus, we're later told that his mother beat him & caused severe head trauma - is it possible that he links pain, humiliation etc with laughter - and thats why he doesn't laugh in sync with anyone else, and he has to literally write down what other comics do to get a laugh out of the crowd?
Either way it made me physically uncomfortable, out of both anxiety and empathy. When he was crying through the laughs and almost choking himself to stop I was just in awe. Phoenix did a fantastic job.

The Waynes being portrayed as villains was refreshing too, surely that's what they were to everyone else?

I also love how you're not sure whats reality, and what was delusion - I was left wondering how much of the plot actually happened
There were a few scenes that seemed like callbacks to previous Jokers too.

1 - he definitely killed his neighbour/'girlfriend' right?

2 - when he was looking through his mother's belongings & found her photo, the writing on the back initialised TW for Thomas Wayne?
Is it possible that those 2 really did have something going on & TW really hid everything? Alfred looked visibly shocked when Arthur told him who his mother was

3 - TW saying 'people who hide behind masks are cowards' was funny, because Batman

4 - the scene with the 2 guys from his old job was hilarious, especially when he put on the fake English accent to mimic Gary's accent

Spoiler

nah. Alfred didnt looked shocked. He can answer Arthur regarding penny, so i think she's making that up, or something more sinister in wayne using his influence to silence her up.

Even thomas isnt surprised and can explain the answer in a snap of a finger