![]() ![]() Jack Nicholson was nominated for a Bafta and a Golden Globe. Heath Ledger won an Oscar posthumously for playing Joker. In the final reel, though, there is some angry monologuing, and some of those “Nobody cares!” talking points come through, but the writing is too vague and incoherent to really land a point. It’s more of a generic “My life sucks!” cry than an “Our life sucks, brothers!” He isn’t really railing against PC culture or how he’s owed anything, like a guy who won’t stop talking about Jordan Peterson. Wait, I know that sounds like it is sympathy for the incel, but Fleck’s anger, for most of the movie, stays rooted in his own circumstances. It’s really just a drama about a mentally ill man with no friends who is targeted by bullies, lives with his mother, is ignored by the attractive woman down the hall and only finds purpose in mass murder. Is this movie really just the biggest-budget Ben Shapiro video? To what extent will misogynistic creeps “feel seen” in this film? Well, for most of its run time, it isn’t quite the alt-right manifesto some of the pre-release discourse suggested. Photograph: Allstar/DC Comics/Warner Bros Triggers … most of the character’s anger is rooted in circumstance. (In a nice spin, they are still outside a theatre showing Zorro, but it’s the dopey 1981 comedy Zorro, the Gay Blade.) Sympathy for the incel As the dispossessed citizens of Gotham City rally around Joker as some sort of political hero, it’s just some random thug in a clown mask who kills the famous zillionaires, not Joker himself. In some of these tellings ( notably Tim Burton’s version) culpability is laid at Joker’s feet. That’s right – an ur-Bat Pole! (Note: this is just about the only moment of levity in the entire picture.)ĭuring the big climax, we see, once again, Bruce’s parents get killed. This turns out to be a red herring, but not before Arthur heads up to Wayne Manor and makes contact with the young Bruce Wayne … who playfully slides down a pole at some point. For a stretch it is suggested that Thomas Wayne might actually be Arthur’s father. The more exciting connections come with the Wayne family. Arthur Fleck (which is what the Joker is named in this version) pays a visit to Arkham State Hospital, a tweak on the Arkham Asylum from the comics. It isn’t about special effects.Ĭomic book enthusiasts will still, however, find a few examples of their beloved DC lore. This is a dark and (eventually) gruesomely violent drama that is nihilistic and performance-driven. While Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck does paint his face, and eventually masks do come into play, there are no costumes and certainly no stylised slugfests. Even the so-called “grimdark” superhero movies like Batman v Superman or Watchmen feel like an entirely different genre. This is lightyears away from zippy, agreeable fare like, say, Ant-Man and the Wasp or Thor: Ragnarok. So the question is: is this movie really that different? He’s cited movies by Martin Scorsese and (surprisingly) Chantal Akerman as influences. “Let’s make a real movie with a real budget and call it fucking Joker,” he continued. ![]() ![]() This does not sound like someone who is particularly enamoured of the genre. Todd Phillips, who is as crafty with the press as Mr Terrific is with T-Spheres, has said that he convinced Phoenix to appear in his supervillain origin story by suggesting they would “sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic-book film”. ![]()
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