Joker (Todd Phillips, October 4, 2019) Movie • Page 40

I say all of this as someone that kind of liked it, but it’s messy narratively and I also have issue with how they wrote the female characters. Plus the unnecessary ableism which felt like him trying to stick it to the “woke” crowd while also kind of undermining what I think he was trying to say about being civil.

 

Look, I don't know what to tell you. My previous posts make it pretty clear what my gut reaction to this movie is and why. The fact that you're even pursuing this trail of questioning is proving my point, that my feelings are being invalidated.

 

True, but I mean in the same way they especially latch onto Fight Club, V For Vendetta, etc.

 

I agree with mental health but I feel the rest are just plot points rather something he’s trying to make a statement about.

 

Where my Final Fantasy fans at

 

If there were any articles about specific posts on reddit or 4chan or wherever of incels talking about it inspiring them or even just making vague posts about them wanting to do violence then it would have been understandable, but from its inception the articles coming out were solely “This seems like a movie that *could* lead to incels doing that, and therefore that most likely *is* the case. And no I’m not going to check if that thesis matches up with reality”

 

It happened even in this thread, which I still find totally baffling. I first saw the trailer during It, thought it looked gross, came here to discuss it, found that there was already lots of critical talk about who the target market was and how unsurprising it was that it was being viewed this way, and then suddenly a bunch of people came out of nowhere to tell me I was scaremongering about mass shootings. It was honestly bizarre.

I don’t know if I can think of any recent piece of media with such a huge and yet entirely confusing social presence. The fact that it’s actually just hollow and will definitely be forgotten almost immediately only adds another layer of weird to it all.

 

It’s not scaremongering but it’s pretty damn lame. I feel like one pretentious ass think-piece got published prior to release and the entire internet leapt aboard.

No part of the movie speaks to incels. It’s a sad portrait of a mentally ill man going totally off the rails. It doesn’t justify a hatred of women or any of their other weird tenets. It doesn’t have a xenophobic message.

I’ve a group of people, who I assume all lean liberal, latch on to such a strange criticism before. Do we need to have this discussion every time a new Grand Theft Auto comes out? It’s not art’s responsibility to preach and there’s far worse examples of ‘dangerous’ movies out there.

I truly don’t understand the backlash the movie faces. It’s fine if you don’t like it, but the pearl clutching is something I assumed was relegated to conservatives stuck in 1954.

 

Yep, that’s pretty much exactly the kind of post I was talking about being so baffling before. It’s like there was a lot of thoughtful criticism and worthy discussion about the role of media in our lives in 2019 and where this story might come into play as part of such a topical issue, but one speculative piece came out and suddenly ANY of that criticism was painted with the same brush.

The contrarian urge comments earlier I think were pretty spot on, but it goes beyond even that.

 

I guess, but I would wager that the majority of the people who've seen this movie can't even name the creator, or at the very least, have no idea what he's said in the press.

 

I just make a habit of not reading reviews, or too much information about something I know I'm going to see once I've decided to see it. Learning too much about the thing, before taking in the thing, ruins it for me. I don't even watch previews for the next episode of a TV show if I'm into it.

 

I would say the legacy of this movie will be all the controversy it generated and its polarizing nature, but the friends I went to go see it with were pretty much unaware of all this online conversation, so idk.

 

Same

 

The problem, I think, is that the conversations about how this film could be problematic randomly snowballed into bonkers discussion of how there was going to be an actual shooting specifically caused by this release, in some nonsense simplistic cause-&-effect manor. So, what started as a thoughtful conversation ended up being some debate between "people are gonna imitate what they see!!" & "media doesn't ever mean anything!!" which are both pretty absurd to me.

Like, on the one end, of course consuming a ton of media that reinforces certain ways of thinking can affect people, & on the other end, of course that reinforcement doesn't work in the sci-fi brainwashing way that conservatives after Columbine thought it did.

 

Finally seeing this tonight. I’ve heard nothing but good things (not from the internet obviously), super stoked

 

If the media says, "This *insert entertainment here* could cause violence." There is a much higher risk of a mentally unstable person finding that message due to a preconceived notion.

People, incel or not, find it far easier to relate their feelings through art they consume, rather than by articulating what they are truly feeling.

 

I thought this movie was dope, didn’t love it as much as I expected to, but still super good.

Was really disappointed with the music they played while he’s dancing down the stairs. The soundtrack they have In the previews was much more affective.
Also, i could’ve done without the whole Thomas Wayne/Penny storyline, and anything with Bruce.

 

The only other song I could think of using for the stair scene is "Electric Avenue"

 

Lol. "Hey Joaquin, want to hear another joke? What do you get when you cross an overzealous method actor with a society that demands nuanced performances of iconic characters?! I'll tell you what you get, Joaquin!"

 

Just saw this. Have thoughts. A tl;dr post is on the way later tonight, but in short, yeah, this wasn't good, lol.

 

This wasn’t particularly good but it’s also far from the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Like take away a handful of particularly bad scenes and it beats the hell out of most Oscar bait. But it’s for that reason that I now get why there are people who think it’s incredible when it absolutely is not.

Also the small number of clearly comedic moments were great, like the slapstick of him picking up the gun in the children’s hospital and trying to play it off, or walking into the hospital exit door after trying to do a cool walk away. Also thought it was hilarious when he was doing the big stairway dance and then it cuts to the detectives looking at him like “the fuck is he doing...” but idk if that was intentional lol

 

I’m just gonna pretend that this moment was actually an homage to The Simpsons

 

Alright, I felt too tired last night, but now I'm ready to unpack my thoughts.

First of all, overall, this just wasn't a good movie. I liked things throughout the film that I'll get to, but as far as the sum of the parts, it doesn't work.

Some of the thoughts that popped into my mind while watching were "Serious Movie: The Movie" & "Baby's First Art Film." It felt like if the director of the Hangover movies tried to imitate Real Cinema using a comic book IP, 'cause that's what it was. Which is a bummer 'cause, honestly, there totally could've been a dope version of this, had it not leaned so heavy into surface level artsy aesthetic. (Few things are as tedious as slow burns w/out, like, some nuance or something.)

Honestly, the politics of this were accidentally halfway good, albeit not in the having anything interesting to say kinda way (yes, "kill the rich" on newspapers is broad af, lol, but that's fine for a different kind of film than this was going for). But, like, elements of this danced around accurate observations about our, ahem, society... frankly, the same way that a lot of alt right peeps will dance along actual valid critiques of capitalism, so, um, not actually a compliment, lol. Still, I thought the scene where Arthur's therapist & meds were cut off was really good, a rare case of one of the people he was frustrated w/ being humanized & shown to be a fellow victim of the system.

(One more "honestly" aside on this note, before more critique: Arthur on the show, saying he doesn't have any politics, was honestly really good, even though, yes, technically everything is political. You could easily have a truly leftist film centered around a protagonist w/ more of an alt right philosophy, & that bit there hinted at that kinda thing. And, it was accidentally a great depiction of how alienated people w/out a meaningful framework for home have latched onto the Joker character post-Ledger, into Trump's America.)

I think, outside of Todd Phillips' comments about comedy leading up to this (& some midget comedy that felt like the Hangover director's style), the most damning evidence that Todd himself would relate to the right more than the left is in the way identity politics played out. (Which also probably explains why the Chapo crew liked the film, lol.) It's wild how often the people representing the system were cast w/ POC. If it were just the therapist, who again was depicted surprisingly sympathetically, it wouldn't have stuck out. Even the guy w/ the records was almost conflicted. But, you take both of them, plus the comedy club host, plus that random angry mom, plus some of the initial people who beat him w/ his sign... It's possible that Todd, w/ his messed up view of pc culture, thought sprinkling in that "diversity" was what would keep culture off his back; he was probably so pissed at the discussions of racial politics after the second trailer. But, the ultimate result, imo, was this vague marriage of identity politics & the system alienating Arthur, not unlike how the alt right thinks.

Anyways, that's already probably more thought than anyone connected to the film put into the politics of anything, lol, & that's been talked to death, so I'll move on to something different: what I liked.

As was said above, some of the humor was genuinely great. Not sure how much was amplified by me being bored by the more tedious sequences, but like, some moments were laugh out loud funny. My favorite was definitely Arthur doing a clown dance to a bunch of sick kids, dropping his gun, & his reaction as people just stared at him. The framing, timing, physicality, etc... This is the guy who thinks it's too hard to be funny now? One of the things this film needed, honestly, is more of that. More humor. More ridiculousness.

Oops, already falling back into what I don't like. But, like, that Gary Glitter step sequence is a perfect snapshot of how Serious Movie: The Movie inclinations weighed this down. That song choice was creatively perfect (in a vacuum, though since it doesn't exist in a vacuum, finding something equivalent not made by a pedophile would be pretty cool, y'know). Especially considering the violence before it, plus the brief moment of the puzzled detectives watching him. And yet, in the middle of this wonderfully off kilter sequence, the song gave way to the same tedious score that rolled in any time Todd wanted to remind us that this is Dark. With all the films Todd was clearly inspired by, maybe someone should've given him Punisher: War Zone & Venom instead.

Yikes, this is so long already. Alright. Some quicker observations:

The Waynes dying was a highlight, not a detriment. W/out comic book elements, this is just a forgotten nothing film. Sampling that iconic moment in this new, bizarre context is one of the few interesting things about this film.

On a similar note, that last stretch was too fun to be so short. Should've cut out like half of the feigned dramatic weight in this & replaced it w/ more time in the anarchic third act.

Cutting to Arthur alone in those sequences after the girl "reveal" was such a perfect example of how this film was subtle as an atomic bomb.

The mental health depiction was bad, obviously, which was more frustrating 'cause you easily could've made the mental health struggles what humanized him (a la Kingpin in Daredevil on Netflix) instead of what othered him (a la... a lot of media historically).

Giving Arthur a literal laughing disorder was so stupid. Making it some form of, like, Tourette's from the start took away from it being a sign that he'd finally snapped.

There are good creative lessons that studios could learn from this. They will learn none of those & instead learn all the worst lessons possible.

My showing not having the Birds of Prey trailer was a lowlight. Pumped for that film.