Joker (Todd Phillips, October 4, 2019) Movie • Page 14

Yes. Precisely.

 

This film may be 8/4/2 chan’s calling card. Good reviews will influence them and bad reviews will enrage them.

 

Not worth it.

 

I agree that we don't really need any more woe is me from cis hetero white men but also are we supposed to feel bad for The Joker, I'm not sure we are

 

can't wait till he releases a manifesto

 

Yep more bad feels for this ‘genre’ than I know what to do with. Very dangerous in this climate.

 

That's what we are all waiting for to be answered. I don't want the film to attempt to make the audience sympathetic.

 

The trailer seems to lean that way. But the movie could go a different way.

 

Yeah the Joker is a bad guy. He’s a villain in every telling of his story. I’m not sure how much the movie will ask us to agree with his perspective. Then again I think Todd Phillips often thinks his movies are smarter than they are and misses what he’s trying to satirize.

 

Man all the Twitter hot takes about this movie becoming an alt right icon are just fucking outrageous.

Trashy weirdos loved the joker before the movie, they’ll continue after. I seriously doubt it’s going to end up anywhere near as annoying as neckbeards running their “why so serious” lines on YouTube in shitty makeup.

As for the movie potentially causing harm? Well, if it’s a genuinely good movie, there will always be assholes to misconstrue its themes and messages. Dipshits watch Gran Torino cause the character is racist but miss the entire point. Same with American History X. It’s inevitable.

If it sucks? Alt right nerds will move on.

 

that implys that this demographic is smart enough to understand

hell id argue that unless this film somehow manages to be thoughtful, that the entire premise of this film was written by someone who doesnt understand

 

Sign me up!

 

I agree with Gran Torino. It’s a film that is about overcoming racial stereotypes and some people have used quotes or gifs from the movie to promote their racism.

 

or r/libertarianism completely missing the joke of ron swanson is a total idiot and that their ideaology is buffoonery

 

At least Joker is a clear villain vs all the racist cops and neckbeards who identify with Punisher because he can be construed as good by some. But yeah I see the problematic nature of the trailer that people are calling out.

 

I was enraged that he kept saying how “War Dogs” was a satire when it was clear he thought those guys were super cool.

 

I mean, discussing the optics of a film & what it seems to glamorize is a good, valuable, important conversation. We can't just throw up our hands & say none of this matters.

 

Fair point, no doubt. But I don’t think outright dismissing the film based on some trailers is reasonable. And I don’t think censoring what will almost certainly be a relatively benign two hours is fair.

Not saying you were doing that but it’s all I’ve seen on Twitter today. About half of it is rooted in the weird MCU vs DC shit, IMO. I guess all I’m saying is the armchair criticism getting directed at it before anyone has even seen it is pretty outrageous. Then again, Twitter is a fuckin cesspool.


Basically, fuck any notion of the movie somehow pandering to an alt right audience. The neckbeards don’t get to misappropriate what will almost assuredly be a masterclass performance from Joaquin as a meme or a mascot.

 

I think the issue is it’s difficult to make a mainstream movie where the audience isn’t moved to sympathize at least somewhat with the protagonist because the protagonist is the character that gets an arc. In most movies the Joker is a villain with no reliable backstory, so he gets to just be a force of nihilism, which is effective but also easier from a writing perspective.

Since it’s hard to make a successful mainstream movie where your main character doesn’t have any arc, they’ll have to create one for Joker which will most likely paint him as more of a tragic character, which makes some audience sympathy unavoidable whether it’s appropriate or not. The question is how thoughtful the film will be about this, which to your point, Phillips doesn’t have a great track record of.

 

”how do I find the perfect balance between defending what may embolden alt right nuts and criticizing sane people with well founded concerns”

 

"Censorship" is another word that should probably get thrown on the pile of "overused/misused to the point it no longer has any meaning"

 

Scorsese, Krzysztof Kieslowski, and Mary Harron, among others, have told stories about reprehensible people that give them arcs but don’t sympathize with their outlooks or making them tragic figures, at least in the sense of we root for them (they may still have classically “tragic” downfalls, but their origin isn’t borne out of sympathetic tragedy)

But yeah Todd Phillips is no Scorsese, much as he wishes he were