JOKER (2019) Discussion Thread Starring Joaquin Phoenix (Update 9/12/19) Leaked Footage.. GOOD GAWD
- Thread starter fonzerrillii
- Start date
Movie was solid
Overhyped though.
Not my idea of joker.
Imo joker is a lot smarter than this guy
Overhyped though.
Not my idea of joker.
Imo joker is a lot smarter than this guy
Shit had nothing to do with race or white terrorism.
has more to do with occupy Wall Street than white terrorism. It was the underclass rising against the upperclass.
any movie with a gun you can say it can spark something.
Movie was cool and I like the tie-ins. Will say more later.
I liked it, I didn't love it. As a movie it was a good movie, outside of being a "comic book" movie.
but it dragged at times for me.
I liked the reimagining...comic books do it...and the same shit over and over can get old.
It was a whole hell of a lot better than Venom as far as trying to have a dark movie.
but it dragged at times for me.
I liked the reimagining...comic books do it...and the same shit over and over can get old.
It was a whole hell of a lot better than Venom as far as trying to have a dark movie.
It has more realistic violence, because Rambo makes this look like a PG movie.
Zazie and Bob Deniro were there to show how crazy he was.
Shes a cutie
How Joker Became the Most Hated, Loved, Obsessed-Over Movie of 2019
By Chris Lee
“It’s been a leading, trending story for about six weeks now, and that’s a lot more spotlight and attention than a normal film could count on getting.” Photo: Warner Bros.
When Joker hits 4,300 theater screens across North America on Friday, it will arrive cloaked in the kind of buzz that a studio distributor like Warner Bros. would surely prefer to avoid: concern that the gritty drama will inspire people who perpetrate gun violence in America. The Todd Phillips–directed, R-rated Batman spin-off provides an elaborate origin story for the Dark Knight’s most famous antagonist, with Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix portraying the titular Gotham-menacing clown. The movie — which is, yes, violent — has been broadly described as “incel-friendly” and “dangerous.” But it’s the film’s tenuous association with the 2012 shooting massacre in Aurora, Colorado — when James E. Holmes shot into the audience of the Century 16 movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 70 during a midnight screening of writer-director Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises — that’s posing a more specific disquiet for some. In a later-debunked report, Holmes was said to have told law-enforcement officers he “was the Joker.” Now, three national theater chains as well as authorities in several American cities have gone on high alert, lest Joker prompt similar bloodshed.
For their part, the filmmakers maintain their movie has nothing to do with the national debate surrounding gun violence and hope viewers will evaluate Joker accordingly. “The thing is to be daring and bold and different — anything you can make that is unique coming out of the comic-book space into films and TV is important,” Joker producer Michael Uslan told Vulture earlier this year. “The Joker movie, Todd Phillips’s vision for it, is so different. Nobody’s ever seen a comic-book movie like this before. I’m sure there will be people who love it and people that hate it. But it’s like watching a Martin Scorsese, lower-budget crime drama. It is going to be a very unique experience.”
Meanwhile, prerelease tracking estimates indicate the movie could pull in $155 million over its opening weekend in theaters — with a surprisingly strong $80 million projected in North America alone. “The whole film has this edgy profile that breaks through the clutter and gets your attention in a way that another superhero movie might not,” says Richard Rushfield, editor of the entertainment-industry newsletter The Ankler. “Between the real-life warnings and the intensity of the way the promotional stuff has come out, it grabs you by the neck.”
So how did the film become something audiences seem to be simultaneously scared of and clamoring to see? Herewith, a timeline of Joker, fall movie season’s most controversial movie:
August 2017
Warner Bros. reveals its intention to mount a movie detailing the origins of Joker — not the Joker, thank you very much — hoping to enlist Martin Scorsese as an executive producer and to entice Leonardo DiCaprio to slather on grease for the titular role. But when Jared Leto, who portrays the Joker in 2016’s Suicide Squad and is contractually obliged to reprise the character in another DC Universe spin-off sequel, learns of the rival Joker project, he’s caught off guard. The Academy Award–winning Dallas Buyers Club actor reportedly makes his unhappiness with the idea of multiple Jokers abundantly clear to his agents at the Hollywood powerhouse Creative Artists Agency and weaponizes that concern to take meetings with rival agents at William Morris Endeavor.
Also during that month, producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff admits the production hit some turbulence in its attempts to convince the studio to take an edgy gamble with valuable IP. “This is a very gutsy move for Warner Bros. and I commend them,” Koskoff told the Los Angeles Times. “There were some hiccups trying to get the green light, and there were some concerns about the content. But once we locked and loaded our budget, they really gave us a tremendous amount of space to do what we do.”
September — December 2018
According to a New York Times interview with Phillips that picked up significant traction on Movie Twitter last month, Phoenix consistently baffles his co-stars during principal photography, losing his composure on set and bailing out mid-performance without a word of explanation. “In the middle of the scene, he’ll just walk away and walk out,” the director said. “And the poor other actor thinks it’s them and it was never them — it was always him and he just wasn’t feeling it.”
August 11, 2019
A draft of Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver’s shooting script leaks online, causing widespread hand-wringing. Dated April 13, 2018, the screenplay sparks outrage for its sympathetic take on the Arthur Fleck backstory — portraying the villainous character as a victim worthy of compassion, a victim of a society gone mad. (In the comics, the Joker’s behavior has been historically linked to criminal insanity and, across the decades, the character has offered scant justification for his evildoing.) Later, Phillips confirms the draft’s authenticity but also refutes that it characterizes the finished film, explaining Joker’s plotting has gone through numerous changes since spring 2018.
Note: One day before the script leaked, Universal announced that The Hunt, a movie about a group of Americans who are kidnapped and dropped off in a rural area in Europe to be hunted for sport by rich people, would be indefinitely shelved following its own cycle of controversy.
August 28
The final trailer for Joker drops, depicting a pitiable man suffering with mental illness who is ostracized by a corrupt society and forced to fend for himself in poverty. Compared to its Marvel superhero-movie brethren, it’s clear Joker will substitute action and special effects for pathos — and a lot of it.
August 31
Joker’s premiere at the 76th Venice International Film Festival draws an eight-minute standing ovation for Phillips and Phoenix, along with a critical outpouring of praise for the actor’s performance as Fleck, a mentally ill sad sack and aspiring comedian who remakes himself as an icon of violent societal overthrow. Initial shock that Warner Bros. would deem the film worthy of placing it in competition at such a prestigious awards season subsiding, the conversation around the film quickly turned to its prospects for Academy gold. “Absolutely. It will be in the running,” Venice director Alberto Barbera told Deadline.
Joker goes on to claim the Golden Lion, the festival’s top prize.
Amid the Venice praise, however, comes full-fledged, pointed criticism, too. “In America, there’s a mass shooting or attempted act of violence by a guy like Arthur practically every other week,” Stephanie Zacharek wrote for Time. “And yet we’re supposed to feel some sympathy for Arthur, the troubled lamb; he just hasn’t had enough love … the movie lionizes and glamorizes Arthur even as it shakes its head, faux-sorrowfully, over his violent behavior.”
Joaquin Phoenix as Joker. Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
September 9
Making its North American touchdown at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film triggers fresh rounds of dissection and discussionin stark contrast to its rapturous reception in Venice. Reviews out of the Canadian metropolis are decidedly mixed, with many critics pondering Joker’s potential to inspire acts of domestic terrorism.
September 20
A visibly agitated Phoenix storms out of an interview with U.K.’s The Telegraph after being asked if he was worried Joker “might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results.”
“Why? Why, would you …? No, no,” the actor reportedly stammered before exiting.
September 23
Five family members and friends of the 12 people killed during the Aurora shooting send a letter to Warner Bros. chief executive Ann Sarnoff reminding that a “tragic event, perpetrated by a socially isolated individual who felt ‘wronged’ by society has changed the course of our lives,” adding, “When we learned that Warner Bros. was releasing a movie called Joker that presented the character as a protagonist with a sympathetic origin story, it gave us pause.” The letter goes on to urge the studio to withhold campaign contributions to political candidates who accept money from the NRA, to use its political clout to lobby for gun reform, and to help fund gun-victim charities and gun-violence intervention programs.
Also that day, the U.S. Army Base at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, sends a memo to commanding officers, warning of a “credible potential mass shooting to occur at an unknown movie theater” screening Joker. Citing an intelligence bulletin posted by the sheriff’s office in Travis County, Texas, working in conjunction with local FBI operatives, the intelligence bulletin does not say where the violent attack by “incels” is set to occur. Only that the discovery is based on “disturbing and very specific chatter on the dark web.”
“Commanders need to be aware of this threat for Soldier and family safety and to increase situational awareness should they choose to attend the release of this movie,” the memo says.
September 24
The theater chain Cinemark and Warner Bros. announce that Joker will not be screened at the Century Aurora theater — formerly the Century 16, where the gun rampage occurred — or the Century XD.
firmly worded statement. “Gun violence in our society is a critical issue, and we extend our deepest sympathy to all victims and families impacted by these tragedies,” it reads. “At the same time, Warner Bros. believes that one of the functions of storytelling is to provoke difficult conversations around difficult issues. Make no mistake: Neither the fictional character Joker, nor the film, is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind. It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers, or the studio to hold this character up as a hero.”
September 25
On the heels of recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; and Gilroy, California, the country’s largest theater chain, AMC, issues a statement reiterating the enforcement of its policy forbidding masks, face paint, or objects that conceal a person’s face. “AMC does not permit weapons or items that would make other guests uncomfortable or detract from the movie experience.”
September 26
Landmark, the country’s largest independent-theater chain, announces it will extend its usual ban on masks and toy guns to prohibit all costumes during Joker’s theatrical run.
As evening descends on Hollywood, the Los Angeles Police Department issues a statement that there are “no credible threats” associated with the Sept. 29 Joker Americanpremiere at the TLC Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Nonetheless “the Department will maintain high visibility around movie theaters when it opens.”
September 28
Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, a 40-location theater chain, announces it will beef up security specifically for Joker screenings over the movie’s theatrical debut. “[We] will have additional security personnel present at each location for the comfort of our staff and guests,” Alamo says in a statement.
In an effort to thwart the rising din of questions from the press, Warner Bros. decides to scotch all broadcast and print interviews on the “green” carpet at the film’s premiere at the TLC Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The studio limits the appearances of Phillips, Phoenix, and co-stars including Zazie Beetz and Marc Maron to what basically becomes a glorified photo op.
Inside the theater, Phillips skips the usual drill of introducing his cast and producers, telling the audience: “If you like the movie, tell a friend. We haven’t gotten enough press.”
September 30
Not to be outdone by their L.A. counterparts, New York Police Department chief of patrol Rodney Harrison orders all the city’s precincts to provide police coverage at New York City theaters showing Joker. Coverage by uniformed officers is “until further notice, so every showing time at each theater will be covered until we are directed to stop,” a high-ranking police source told the New York Post. Officers “should be standing in high visibility at the main entrances.”
October 1
Warner Bros. announces it is also restricting access to Joker’s stars and filmmakers at its New York Film Festival premiere on Oct. 2, repeating the Hollywood premiere M.O. of photographs only. “A lot has been said about Joker and we just feel it’s time for people to see the film,” a studio spokesperson told Variety.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Oct. 1, Phoenix is seemingly ambushed when Kimmel confronts him on-air with a behind-the-scenes Joker clip featuring Joaquin in the midst of an expletive-laden rant. Done up in his character’s signature green hair and grease paint, an aggrieved Phoenix tells cinematographer Lawrence Sher to “shut the fuck up” and finds fault with the “constant whispering” on set. In response, Sher refers to the actor as “Cher” apropos his divalike behavior.
“This is so embarrassing,” Phoenix says on the show. “That was supposed to be private … I’m sorry you guys had to see that!”
News outlets deliver rat-pack coverage of the outtake, jumping at this latest opportunity to characterize the actor as a mercurial and thin-skinned artiste. The next day, however, Phoenix’s publicist tells EW the reel “was a joke outtake” and his stunned reaction to its reveal was all staged.
October 2
Notified of numerous threatening posts on social media that call for “unspecific mass shootings” connected to Joker, the FBI breaks with the standard practice of keeping quiet about its operations to announce that it is now coordinating with other branches of law enforcement and private-sector partners to deal with potential violence surrounding the film. Furthermore, an intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News details an apparently new subset of the involuntary-celibate community who’ve found solace in Joker’s angry-loner-clown plotline: “clowncels.” “While many Incels do not engage in violence, some within the community encourage or commit violent acts as retribution for perceived societal wrongdoing against them,” the bulletin says, according to ABC. “Some Incel attackers have claimed inspiration from previous mass shooters.”
In the end, neither cascading security threats, myriad controversies, nor the $55 million film’s hard-R rating manage to squelch enthusiasm for Joker, with Deadline reporting tracking estimates of earnings around $155 million globally. At the domestic box office, the film could pull in more than $80 million over its first three days to potentially surpass Sony’s Venom ($80.25 million) as the top opening October movie of all time.
“It’s been a leading, trending story for about six weeks now, and that’s a lot more spotlight and attention than a normal film could count on getting,” says The Ankler’s Rushfield. “It barely even looks like a superhero movie. In the marketing, it looks like an urban revenge drama. You see a little bit of the makeup, but you don’t see any capes or super powers or using X-ray vision. They’re playing it as an intense drama with a superhero world backdrop. It’s been pretty effective.”
By Chris Lee
“It’s been a leading, trending story for about six weeks now, and that’s a lot more spotlight and attention than a normal film could count on getting.” Photo: Warner Bros.
When Joker hits 4,300 theater screens across North America on Friday, it will arrive cloaked in the kind of buzz that a studio distributor like Warner Bros. would surely prefer to avoid: concern that the gritty drama will inspire people who perpetrate gun violence in America. The Todd Phillips–directed, R-rated Batman spin-off provides an elaborate origin story for the Dark Knight’s most famous antagonist, with Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix portraying the titular Gotham-menacing clown. The movie — which is, yes, violent — has been broadly described as “incel-friendly” and “dangerous.” But it’s the film’s tenuous association with the 2012 shooting massacre in Aurora, Colorado — when James E. Holmes shot into the audience of the Century 16 movie theater, killing 12 and injuring 70 during a midnight screening of writer-director Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises — that’s posing a more specific disquiet for some. In a later-debunked report, Holmes was said to have told law-enforcement officers he “was the Joker.” Now, three national theater chains as well as authorities in several American cities have gone on high alert, lest Joker prompt similar bloodshed.
For their part, the filmmakers maintain their movie has nothing to do with the national debate surrounding gun violence and hope viewers will evaluate Joker accordingly. “The thing is to be daring and bold and different — anything you can make that is unique coming out of the comic-book space into films and TV is important,” Joker producer Michael Uslan told Vulture earlier this year. “The Joker movie, Todd Phillips’s vision for it, is so different. Nobody’s ever seen a comic-book movie like this before. I’m sure there will be people who love it and people that hate it. But it’s like watching a Martin Scorsese, lower-budget crime drama. It is going to be a very unique experience.”
Meanwhile, prerelease tracking estimates indicate the movie could pull in $155 million over its opening weekend in theaters — with a surprisingly strong $80 million projected in North America alone. “The whole film has this edgy profile that breaks through the clutter and gets your attention in a way that another superhero movie might not,” says Richard Rushfield, editor of the entertainment-industry newsletter The Ankler. “Between the real-life warnings and the intensity of the way the promotional stuff has come out, it grabs you by the neck.”
So how did the film become something audiences seem to be simultaneously scared of and clamoring to see? Herewith, a timeline of Joker, fall movie season’s most controversial movie:
August 2017
Warner Bros. reveals its intention to mount a movie detailing the origins of Joker — not the Joker, thank you very much — hoping to enlist Martin Scorsese as an executive producer and to entice Leonardo DiCaprio to slather on grease for the titular role. But when Jared Leto, who portrays the Joker in 2016’s Suicide Squad and is contractually obliged to reprise the character in another DC Universe spin-off sequel, learns of the rival Joker project, he’s caught off guard. The Academy Award–winning Dallas Buyers Club actor reportedly makes his unhappiness with the idea of multiple Jokers abundantly clear to his agents at the Hollywood powerhouse Creative Artists Agency and weaponizes that concern to take meetings with rival agents at William Morris Endeavor.
Also during that month, producer Emma Tillinger Koskoff admits the production hit some turbulence in its attempts to convince the studio to take an edgy gamble with valuable IP. “This is a very gutsy move for Warner Bros. and I commend them,” Koskoff told the Los Angeles Times. “There were some hiccups trying to get the green light, and there were some concerns about the content. But once we locked and loaded our budget, they really gave us a tremendous amount of space to do what we do.”
September — December 2018
According to a New York Times interview with Phillips that picked up significant traction on Movie Twitter last month, Phoenix consistently baffles his co-stars during principal photography, losing his composure on set and bailing out mid-performance without a word of explanation. “In the middle of the scene, he’ll just walk away and walk out,” the director said. “And the poor other actor thinks it’s them and it was never them — it was always him and he just wasn’t feeling it.”
August 11, 2019
A draft of Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver’s shooting script leaks online, causing widespread hand-wringing. Dated April 13, 2018, the screenplay sparks outrage for its sympathetic take on the Arthur Fleck backstory — portraying the villainous character as a victim worthy of compassion, a victim of a society gone mad. (In the comics, the Joker’s behavior has been historically linked to criminal insanity and, across the decades, the character has offered scant justification for his evildoing.) Later, Phillips confirms the draft’s authenticity but also refutes that it characterizes the finished film, explaining Joker’s plotting has gone through numerous changes since spring 2018.
Note: One day before the script leaked, Universal announced that The Hunt, a movie about a group of Americans who are kidnapped and dropped off in a rural area in Europe to be hunted for sport by rich people, would be indefinitely shelved following its own cycle of controversy.
August 28
The final trailer for Joker drops, depicting a pitiable man suffering with mental illness who is ostracized by a corrupt society and forced to fend for himself in poverty. Compared to its Marvel superhero-movie brethren, it’s clear Joker will substitute action and special effects for pathos — and a lot of it.
August 31
Joker’s premiere at the 76th Venice International Film Festival draws an eight-minute standing ovation for Phillips and Phoenix, along with a critical outpouring of praise for the actor’s performance as Fleck, a mentally ill sad sack and aspiring comedian who remakes himself as an icon of violent societal overthrow. Initial shock that Warner Bros. would deem the film worthy of placing it in competition at such a prestigious awards season subsiding, the conversation around the film quickly turned to its prospects for Academy gold. “Absolutely. It will be in the running,” Venice director Alberto Barbera told Deadline.
Joker goes on to claim the Golden Lion, the festival’s top prize.
Amid the Venice praise, however, comes full-fledged, pointed criticism, too. “In America, there’s a mass shooting or attempted act of violence by a guy like Arthur practically every other week,” Stephanie Zacharek wrote for Time. “And yet we’re supposed to feel some sympathy for Arthur, the troubled lamb; he just hasn’t had enough love … the movie lionizes and glamorizes Arthur even as it shakes its head, faux-sorrowfully, over his violent behavior.”
Joaquin Phoenix as Joker. Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
September 9
Making its North American touchdown at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film triggers fresh rounds of dissection and discussionin stark contrast to its rapturous reception in Venice. Reviews out of the Canadian metropolis are decidedly mixed, with many critics pondering Joker’s potential to inspire acts of domestic terrorism.
September 20
A visibly agitated Phoenix storms out of an interview with U.K.’s The Telegraph after being asked if he was worried Joker “might perversely end up inspiring exactly the kind of people it’s about, with potentially tragic results.”
“Why? Why, would you …? No, no,” the actor reportedly stammered before exiting.
September 23
Five family members and friends of the 12 people killed during the Aurora shooting send a letter to Warner Bros. chief executive Ann Sarnoff reminding that a “tragic event, perpetrated by a socially isolated individual who felt ‘wronged’ by society has changed the course of our lives,” adding, “When we learned that Warner Bros. was releasing a movie called Joker that presented the character as a protagonist with a sympathetic origin story, it gave us pause.” The letter goes on to urge the studio to withhold campaign contributions to political candidates who accept money from the NRA, to use its political clout to lobby for gun reform, and to help fund gun-victim charities and gun-violence intervention programs.
Also that day, the U.S. Army Base at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, sends a memo to commanding officers, warning of a “credible potential mass shooting to occur at an unknown movie theater” screening Joker. Citing an intelligence bulletin posted by the sheriff’s office in Travis County, Texas, working in conjunction with local FBI operatives, the intelligence bulletin does not say where the violent attack by “incels” is set to occur. Only that the discovery is based on “disturbing and very specific chatter on the dark web.”
“Commanders need to be aware of this threat for Soldier and family safety and to increase situational awareness should they choose to attend the release of this movie,” the memo says.
September 24
The theater chain Cinemark and Warner Bros. announce that Joker will not be screened at the Century Aurora theater — formerly the Century 16, where the gun rampage occurred — or the Century XD.
firmly worded statement. “Gun violence in our society is a critical issue, and we extend our deepest sympathy to all victims and families impacted by these tragedies,” it reads. “At the same time, Warner Bros. believes that one of the functions of storytelling is to provoke difficult conversations around difficult issues. Make no mistake: Neither the fictional character Joker, nor the film, is an endorsement of real-world violence of any kind. It is not the intention of the film, the filmmakers, or the studio to hold this character up as a hero.”
September 25
On the heels of recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio; El Paso, Texas; and Gilroy, California, the country’s largest theater chain, AMC, issues a statement reiterating the enforcement of its policy forbidding masks, face paint, or objects that conceal a person’s face. “AMC does not permit weapons or items that would make other guests uncomfortable or detract from the movie experience.”
September 26
Landmark, the country’s largest independent-theater chain, announces it will extend its usual ban on masks and toy guns to prohibit all costumes during Joker’s theatrical run.
As evening descends on Hollywood, the Los Angeles Police Department issues a statement that there are “no credible threats” associated with the Sept. 29 Joker Americanpremiere at the TLC Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Nonetheless “the Department will maintain high visibility around movie theaters when it opens.”
September 28
Texas-based Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas, a 40-location theater chain, announces it will beef up security specifically for Joker screenings over the movie’s theatrical debut. “[We] will have additional security personnel present at each location for the comfort of our staff and guests,” Alamo says in a statement.
In an effort to thwart the rising din of questions from the press, Warner Bros. decides to scotch all broadcast and print interviews on the “green” carpet at the film’s premiere at the TLC Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The studio limits the appearances of Phillips, Phoenix, and co-stars including Zazie Beetz and Marc Maron to what basically becomes a glorified photo op.
Inside the theater, Phillips skips the usual drill of introducing his cast and producers, telling the audience: “If you like the movie, tell a friend. We haven’t gotten enough press.”
September 30
Not to be outdone by their L.A. counterparts, New York Police Department chief of patrol Rodney Harrison orders all the city’s precincts to provide police coverage at New York City theaters showing Joker. Coverage by uniformed officers is “until further notice, so every showing time at each theater will be covered until we are directed to stop,” a high-ranking police source told the New York Post. Officers “should be standing in high visibility at the main entrances.”
October 1
Warner Bros. announces it is also restricting access to Joker’s stars and filmmakers at its New York Film Festival premiere on Oct. 2, repeating the Hollywood premiere M.O. of photographs only. “A lot has been said about Joker and we just feel it’s time for people to see the film,” a studio spokesperson told Variety.
Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Oct. 1, Phoenix is seemingly ambushed when Kimmel confronts him on-air with a behind-the-scenes Joker clip featuring Joaquin in the midst of an expletive-laden rant. Done up in his character’s signature green hair and grease paint, an aggrieved Phoenix tells cinematographer Lawrence Sher to “shut the fuck up” and finds fault with the “constant whispering” on set. In response, Sher refers to the actor as “Cher” apropos his divalike behavior.
“This is so embarrassing,” Phoenix says on the show. “That was supposed to be private … I’m sorry you guys had to see that!”
News outlets deliver rat-pack coverage of the outtake, jumping at this latest opportunity to characterize the actor as a mercurial and thin-skinned artiste. The next day, however, Phoenix’s publicist tells EW the reel “was a joke outtake” and his stunned reaction to its reveal was all staged.
October 2
Notified of numerous threatening posts on social media that call for “unspecific mass shootings” connected to Joker, the FBI breaks with the standard practice of keeping quiet about its operations to announce that it is now coordinating with other branches of law enforcement and private-sector partners to deal with potential violence surrounding the film. Furthermore, an intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News details an apparently new subset of the involuntary-celibate community who’ve found solace in Joker’s angry-loner-clown plotline: “clowncels.” “While many Incels do not engage in violence, some within the community encourage or commit violent acts as retribution for perceived societal wrongdoing against them,” the bulletin says, according to ABC. “Some Incel attackers have claimed inspiration from previous mass shooters.”
In the end, neither cascading security threats, myriad controversies, nor the $55 million film’s hard-R rating manage to squelch enthusiasm for Joker, with Deadline reporting tracking estimates of earnings around $155 million globally. At the domestic box office, the film could pull in more than $80 million over its first three days to potentially surpass Sony’s Venom ($80.25 million) as the top opening October movie of all time.
“It’s been a leading, trending story for about six weeks now, and that’s a lot more spotlight and attention than a normal film could count on getting,” says The Ankler’s Rushfield. “It barely even looks like a superhero movie. In the marketing, it looks like an urban revenge drama. You see a little bit of the makeup, but you don’t see any capes or super powers or using X-ray vision. They’re playing it as an intense drama with a superhero world backdrop. It’s been pretty effective.”
@fonzerrillii @ViCiouS @largebillsonlyplease
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why the 'Joker' Gun Violence Protests Miss the Mark
6:30 AM PDT 10/2/2019 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Warner Bros. Pictures
Though supportive of their goals, the Hollywood Reporter columnist (and gun owner) argues that survivors of shootings are targeting the wrong film with the wrong strategy, "setting a bad precedent for all activist groups."
In Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel, Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker justifies his psychopathic behavior by philosophizing that every human being is just "one bad day away" from rejecting the polite veneer of civilization’s morality in the face of an indifferent universe. To him, we are all amoral sleeper agents awaiting the secret code word to awaken us to selfish violence.
Yet, even if the universe is indifferent, most people are not.
We share each other’s grief and try to lighten each other’s burdens caused by that "one bad day." And so we continue to grieve with and support the survivors and victims’ families like those of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 and wounded 70 others. But, while their campaign against Joker and Warner Bros. may evoke our sympathies, it is counterproductive to their goal as it sets a bad precedent for activist groups trying to define the boundaries between free speech, hate speech and violence-promoting speech.
The Aurora group, Survivors Empowered, have made it clear that they aren’t asking the studio not to release the film, nor are they promoting a boycott. Instead, they asked Warner Bros. to donate to groups that help victims of gun violence, to “end political contributions to candidates who take money from the NRA and vote against gun reform,” and to “use your political clout and leverage in Congress to actively lobby for gun reform.” Despite being a gun owner myself, I fully support the Aurora group’s goals of promoting aggressive gun reform by pressuring the members of Congress who are generous with “thoughts and prayers” but miserly with actions that might actually curtail the epidemic of mass shootings — especially when they’re getting millions of dollars in political contributions from the NRA and gun manufacturers.
One can only imagine the intensity of the anger and frustration of the Aurora people to see seven years pass with very little change except the body count. So far in 2019 alone, as of Sept. 24, there have been 334 mass shootings (1.24 per day) with 377 dead and 1,347 injured. In just nine months.
However, though I am supportive of their goal, this is the wrong movie and the wrong strategy to promote the fight for gun control because it creates a diversion. First, the strategy is wrong because it feels uncomfortably close to passive extortion. Even though there is no call to boycott, they have cast a pall over the film that is meant to be damaging. No matter how Warners reacts, the damage has already been done. Even if Warners complied with their demands, the movie has been tainted in the eyes of the average moviegoer. A photo of a Warner Bros. executive handing them a large check wouldn’t change that. There’s therefore no incentive for the studio to comply. In fact, according to a Warner Bros. statement in response: “Our company has a long history of donating to victims of violence, including Aurora, and in recent weeks, our parent company joined other business leaders to call on policymakers to enact bipartisan legislation to address this epidemic.”
Second, Warner Bros. and Joker are the wrong focus of attention, which further compromises the group’s goal. Despite their claim that “we support your right to free speech and free expression,” launching this campaign around a movie — especially one like this that strives to be more artistic than exploitative — can have a chilling effect on free expression. Especially when one of the writers of the letter described the film as a "slap in the face”: "My worry is that one person who may be out there — and who knows if it is just one — who is on the edge, who is wanting to be a mass shooter, may be encouraged by this movie. And that terrifies me.” Her emotion is understandable, but her reasoning is not. And since she is using her reasoning to persuade the rest of us, it needs to be examined.
Though movies (Taxi Driver for John Hinckley Jr., would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan), books (The Catcher in the Rye for Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer) and songs (“Helter Skelter” for Tate-LaBianca murders mastermind Charles Manson) may articulate specific criminals acts, they don’t inspire the person’s desire for violence. Science has proven that in numerous studies. It’s tempting to blame movies, video games and rap music because they often express humanity’s worst impulses, but impulses are not actions for most of us. And for the mentally ill seeking violence, anything can set them off. Alek Minassian, the self-described incel (involuntary celibate) who deliberately drove his van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people, said he was motivated by his resentment toward women for having sexually rejected him in favor of giving “their love and affection to obnoxious brutes.” Should we then demand that studios producing romantic comedies and publishers of romance novels be shamed into contributing to anti-incel causes? The 2017 Las Vegas shooter killed 59 and injured 851 during a country music festival. Should country music bear some responsibility?
I stand with Survivors Empowered and other organizations fighting for gun reform. And I’ve been a strong supporter of controversial activist strategies over the past 50 years. But we need to be effective so that we change the country for the better without curtailing the legitimate rights of others. As I have learned the hard way, social change is exceedingly slow and cautious, and moves at all only because we continually prod it to do so. We all seek peace, but as W.B. Yeats wrote, "Peace comes dropping slow."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an NBA Hall of Famer and contributing editor at The Hollywood Reporter.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why the 'Joker' Gun Violence Protests Miss the Mark
6:30 AM PDT 10/2/2019 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
- EMAIL ME
Warner Bros. Pictures
Though supportive of their goals, the Hollywood Reporter columnist (and gun owner) argues that survivors of shootings are targeting the wrong film with the wrong strategy, "setting a bad precedent for all activist groups."
In Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel, Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker justifies his psychopathic behavior by philosophizing that every human being is just "one bad day away" from rejecting the polite veneer of civilization’s morality in the face of an indifferent universe. To him, we are all amoral sleeper agents awaiting the secret code word to awaken us to selfish violence.
Yet, even if the universe is indifferent, most people are not.
We share each other’s grief and try to lighten each other’s burdens caused by that "one bad day." And so we continue to grieve with and support the survivors and victims’ families like those of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shooting during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 and wounded 70 others. But, while their campaign against Joker and Warner Bros. may evoke our sympathies, it is counterproductive to their goal as it sets a bad precedent for activist groups trying to define the boundaries between free speech, hate speech and violence-promoting speech.
The Aurora group, Survivors Empowered, have made it clear that they aren’t asking the studio not to release the film, nor are they promoting a boycott. Instead, they asked Warner Bros. to donate to groups that help victims of gun violence, to “end political contributions to candidates who take money from the NRA and vote against gun reform,” and to “use your political clout and leverage in Congress to actively lobby for gun reform.” Despite being a gun owner myself, I fully support the Aurora group’s goals of promoting aggressive gun reform by pressuring the members of Congress who are generous with “thoughts and prayers” but miserly with actions that might actually curtail the epidemic of mass shootings — especially when they’re getting millions of dollars in political contributions from the NRA and gun manufacturers.
One can only imagine the intensity of the anger and frustration of the Aurora people to see seven years pass with very little change except the body count. So far in 2019 alone, as of Sept. 24, there have been 334 mass shootings (1.24 per day) with 377 dead and 1,347 injured. In just nine months.
However, though I am supportive of their goal, this is the wrong movie and the wrong strategy to promote the fight for gun control because it creates a diversion. First, the strategy is wrong because it feels uncomfortably close to passive extortion. Even though there is no call to boycott, they have cast a pall over the film that is meant to be damaging. No matter how Warners reacts, the damage has already been done. Even if Warners complied with their demands, the movie has been tainted in the eyes of the average moviegoer. A photo of a Warner Bros. executive handing them a large check wouldn’t change that. There’s therefore no incentive for the studio to comply. In fact, according to a Warner Bros. statement in response: “Our company has a long history of donating to victims of violence, including Aurora, and in recent weeks, our parent company joined other business leaders to call on policymakers to enact bipartisan legislation to address this epidemic.”
Second, Warner Bros. and Joker are the wrong focus of attention, which further compromises the group’s goal. Despite their claim that “we support your right to free speech and free expression,” launching this campaign around a movie — especially one like this that strives to be more artistic than exploitative — can have a chilling effect on free expression. Especially when one of the writers of the letter described the film as a "slap in the face”: "My worry is that one person who may be out there — and who knows if it is just one — who is on the edge, who is wanting to be a mass shooter, may be encouraged by this movie. And that terrifies me.” Her emotion is understandable, but her reasoning is not. And since she is using her reasoning to persuade the rest of us, it needs to be examined.
Though movies (Taxi Driver for John Hinckley Jr., would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan), books (The Catcher in the Rye for Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer) and songs (“Helter Skelter” for Tate-LaBianca murders mastermind Charles Manson) may articulate specific criminals acts, they don’t inspire the person’s desire for violence. Science has proven that in numerous studies. It’s tempting to blame movies, video games and rap music because they often express humanity’s worst impulses, but impulses are not actions for most of us. And for the mentally ill seeking violence, anything can set them off. Alek Minassian, the self-described incel (involuntary celibate) who deliberately drove his van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people, said he was motivated by his resentment toward women for having sexually rejected him in favor of giving “their love and affection to obnoxious brutes.” Should we then demand that studios producing romantic comedies and publishers of romance novels be shamed into contributing to anti-incel causes? The 2017 Las Vegas shooter killed 59 and injured 851 during a country music festival. Should country music bear some responsibility?
I stand with Survivors Empowered and other organizations fighting for gun reform. And I’ve been a strong supporter of controversial activist strategies over the past 50 years. But we need to be effective so that we change the country for the better without curtailing the legitimate rights of others. As I have learned the hard way, social change is exceedingly slow and cautious, and moves at all only because we continually prod it to do so. We all seek peace, but as W.B. Yeats wrote, "Peace comes dropping slow."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an NBA Hall of Famer and contributing editor at The Hollywood Reporter.
Last edited:
Fuck what you heard. Great movie. Great actor.
Meant to send this earlier, glad it saved and didn’t lose everything. Right on HNIC.
This movie made Joker seem like he could definitely be a real person. I like that level of realism, if DC can pick up and run with this and apply it to other characters the dark edge that dc came in with can definitely propel it to stronger heights. It would change the DCU and make it a better more realistic version of super heroes and villains than say the Unbreakable, Split, Glass trilogy.
They did a good job of pacing with this movie, establishing the Jokers life and circumstance before he became the Joker. It lends so much more to the character and sets us up nicely for the birth of the Joker. Then they tied it in to the Batman man’s inception nicely.
This is a character driven movie more so than a plot driven movie or heist movie. I anticipated (tho I wanted a heist movie) that coming in so my expectations were already tempered and my patience was in place to receive the performance. They delivered. You can slowly see his unraveling with each incident from the beginning of the movie to the culmination of who he becomes. Incident after incident and this movie explains his psychosis and why he belongs in Arkham Asylum his love for anarchy and murder, that’s his stage.
What I don’t like is the self pitying tone of the movie, society was mean to me so I had lash out at all the mean people. Seems kinda short-sighted and simple not very sophisticated for the character of Joker as we know him in the comics. But this is an origin story so I guess it fits.
This movie made Joker seem like he could definitely be a real person. I like that level of realism, if DC can pick up and run with this and apply it to other characters the dark edge that dc came in with can definitely propel it to stronger heights. It would change the DCU and make it a better more realistic version of super heroes and villains than say the Unbreakable, Split, Glass trilogy.
They did a good job of pacing with this movie, establishing the Jokers life and circumstance before he became the Joker. It lends so much more to the character and sets us up nicely for the birth of the Joker. Then they tied it in to the Batman man’s inception nicely.
This is a character driven movie more so than a plot driven movie or heist movie. I anticipated (tho I wanted a heist movie) that coming in so my expectations were already tempered and my patience was in place to receive the performance. They delivered. You can slowly see his unraveling with each incident from the beginning of the movie to the culmination of who he becomes. Incident after incident and this movie explains his psychosis and why he belongs in Arkham Asylum his love for anarchy and murder, that’s his stage.
What I don’t like is the self pitying tone of the movie, society was mean to me so I had lash out at all the mean people. Seems kinda short-sighted and simple not very sophisticated for the character of Joker as we know him in the comics. But this is an origin story so I guess it fits.
Damn
I didn’t think about that but I can definitely see this movie serving as a sympathetic tool to those incel overlooked beta male types. I guess you can say this is essentially the type of movie for them. Picked on, overlooked and when they finally stand up for themselves they go extreme.
Film Review: ‘Joker’
Joaquin Phoenix is astonishing as a mentally ill geek who becomes the killer-clown Joker in Todd Phillips' neo-'Taxi Driver' knockout: the rare comic-book movie that expresses what's happening in the real world.
By OWEN GLEIBERMAN
Owen Gleiberman
Chief Film Critic@OwenGleibermanFOLLOW
Owen's Most Recent Stories
CREDIT: YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT
Director:
Todd Phillips
With:
Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Zazie Beetz, Brett Cullen, Brian Tyree Henry, Marc Maron, Dante Pereira-Olson, Douglas Hodge, Sharon Washington.
Release Date:
Oct 4, 2019
Official Site: https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/joker
Audiences, as we know, can’t get enough of a great bad guy — the kind we love to hate. The worse he acts, the more we stare. Of course, the fact that we relish a villain doesn’t mean that we’re on his side; getting off on the catchy, scary spectacle of bad behavior isn’t the same as identifying with it. But in “Joker,” Todd Phillips’ hypnotically perverse, ghoulishly grippingly urban-nightmare comic fantasia, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the mentally ill loser-freak who will, down the line, become Batman’s nemesis, stands before us not as a grand villain but as a pathetic specimen of raw human damage. Even as we’re drinking in his screw-loose antics with shock and dismay, there’s no denying that we feel something for him — a twinge of sympathy, or at least understanding.
Joker” tells the story of Arthur’s descent (and, in a way, his rise), but it’s clear from the outset that he’s a basket case, a kind of maestro of his own misery. He would like, on some level, to connect, but he can’t. He’s too far out there, like Norman Bates; he’s a self-conscious, postmodern head case — a person who spends every moment trying to twist himself into a normal shape, but he knows the effort is doomed, so he turns it all into a “joke” that only he gets.
Arthur’s response to almost everything is to laugh, and he’s got a collection of contrived guffaws — a high-pitched delirious giggle, a “hearty” yock, a stylized cackle that’s all but indistinguishable from a sob. In each case, the laughter is an act that parades itself as fakery. What it expresses isn’t glee; it expresses the fact that Arthur feels nothing, that he’s dead inside. He’s a bitter, mocking nowhere man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
For all two hours of “Joker,” Arthur, a two-bit professional clown and aspiring stand-up comic who lives with his batty mother (Frances Conroy) in a peeling-paint apartment, is front and center — in the movie, and in our psychological viewfinder. He’s at the dark heart of every scene, the way Travis Bickle was in “Taxi Driver,” and “Joker,” set in 1981 in a Gotham City that looks, with uncanny exactitude, like the squalid, graffiti-strewn, trash-heaped New York City of the early ’80s (you can feel the rot), is a movie made in direct homage to “Taxi Driver,” though there are other films it will make you think of. As the story of a putz trying to succeed as a stand-up comedian, it evokes Scorsese and De Niro’s satirical riff on “Taxi Driver,” “The King of Comedy.” There are also elements lifted from “Death Wish,” “Network,” “V for Vendetta,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Shining” and “The Purge.”
Sponsored by ALACER CORP
Sponsored Video
Watch to learn more
SEE MORE
More than that, though, the whole movie, in spirit, is a kind of origin-story riff on Heath Ledger’s performance in “The Dark Knight”: the comic-book villain as Method psycho, a troublemaker so intense in his cuckoo hostility that even as you’re gawking at his violence, you still feel his pain.
Phoenix’s performance is astonishing. He appears to have lost weight for the role, so that his ribs and shoulder blades protrude, and the leanness burns his face down to its expressive essence: black eyebrows, sallow cheeks sunk in gloom, a mouth so rubbery it seems to be snarking at the very notion of expression, all set off by a greasy mop of hair. Phoenix is playing a geek with an unhinged mind, yet he’s so controlled that he’s mesmerizing. He stays true to the desperate logic of Arthur’s unhappiness.
You’re always aware of how much the mood and design of “Joker” owe to “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy.” For a filmmaker gifted enough to stand on his own, Phillips is too beholden to his idols. Yet within that scheme, he creates a dazzlingly disturbed psycho morality play, one that speaks to the age of incels and mass shooters and no-hope politics, of the kind of hate that emerges from crushed dreams.
Arthur and his mother sit around after hours, watching the late-night talk-show host Murray Franklin (played, by De Niro, as a piece of old-school Carson vaudeville), and as much as we think Arthur should move out and leave his mommy behind, we hardly know the half of it. When he gets fired (for revealing a handgun during a clown gig at a children’s hospital ward), there’s a suspense built into everything that happens, and it spins around the question: How will someone this weak and inept, this trapped in the nuttiness of his self-delusion, evolve into a figure of dark power?
At night, on the subway, Arthur, still wearing his clown suit, is taunted and attacked by three young Wall Street players. So he pulls out his gun like Charles Bronson and shoots them dead. The case becomes tabloid fodder (“Killer Clown on the Loose”), and the sensation of it is that the denizens of Gotham think he’s a hero. That sounds like a standard comic-book-movie ploy, but the twisted commitment of Phoenix’s performance lets us feel how the violence cleanses Arthur; doing tai chi in a bathroom after the murders, he’s reborn. And we believe in his thirst for escape, because Phillips, working with the cinematographer Lawrence Sher (who evokes “Taxi Driver’s” gray-green documentary seaminess), creates an urban inferno so lifelike that it threatens to make the film-noir Gotham of “The Dark Knight” look like a video game.
Of course, a rebellion against the ruling elite — which is what Arthur’s vigilante action comes to symbolize — is more plausible now than it was a decade ago. “Joker” is a comic-book tale rendered with sinister topical fervor. When Arthur, on the elevator, connects with Sophie (Zazie Beetz), his neighbor, the two take turns miming Travis Bickle’s finger-gun-against-the-head suicide gesture, which becomes the film’s key motif. It’s a way of saying: This is what America has come to — a place where people feel like blowing their brains out. The relationship between Arthur and Sophie doesn’t track if you think about it too much, but it’s a riff on one that didn’t totally track either — the link, however fleeting, between Travis and Cybill Shepherd’s Betsy in “Taxi Driver.” Arthur, in a funny way, hides his brains (they’re revealed only when he passes through the looking glass of villainy). He’s got a piece missing. But what fills the space is violence.
Many have asked, and with good reason: Do we need another Joker movie? Yet what we do need — badly — are comic-book films that have a verité gravitas, that unfold in the real world, so that there’s something more dramatic at stake than whether the film in question is going to rack up a billion-and-a-half dollars worldwide. “Joker” manages the nimble feat of telling the Joker’s origin story as if it were unprecedented. We feel a tingle when Bruce Wayne comes into the picture; he’s there less as a force than an omen. And we feel a deeply deranged thrill when Arthur, having come out the other side of his rage, emerges wearing smeary make-up, green hair, an orange vest and a rust-colored suit.
When he dances on the long concrete stairway near his home, like a demonic Michael Jackson, with Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2” bopping on the soundtrack, it’s a moment of transcendent insanity, because he’s not trying to be “the Joker.” He’s just improvising, going with the flow of his madness. And when he gets his fluky big shot to go on TV, we think we know what’s going to happen (that he’s destined to be humiliated), but what we see, instead, is a monster reborn with a smile. And lo and behold, we’re on his side. Because the movie does something that flirts with danger — it gives evil a clown-mask makeover, turning it into the sickest possible form of cool.
Joaquin Phoenix is astonishing as a mentally ill geek who becomes the killer-clown Joker in Todd Phillips' neo-'Taxi Driver' knockout: the rare comic-book movie that expresses what's happening in the real world.
By OWEN GLEIBERMAN
Owen Gleiberman
Chief Film Critic@OwenGleibermanFOLLOW
Owen's Most Recent Stories
- New York Film Review: ‘Born to Be’
- New York Film Review: ‘Oliver Sacks: His Own Life’
- Netflix, You Have a Problem: ‘The Irishman’ Is Too Good (Column)
CREDIT: YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT
Director:
Todd Phillips
With:
Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Frances Conroy, Zazie Beetz, Brett Cullen, Brian Tyree Henry, Marc Maron, Dante Pereira-Olson, Douglas Hodge, Sharon Washington.
Release Date:
Oct 4, 2019
Official Site: https://www.warnerbros.com/movies/joker
Audiences, as we know, can’t get enough of a great bad guy — the kind we love to hate. The worse he acts, the more we stare. Of course, the fact that we relish a villain doesn’t mean that we’re on his side; getting off on the catchy, scary spectacle of bad behavior isn’t the same as identifying with it. But in “Joker,” Todd Phillips’ hypnotically perverse, ghoulishly grippingly urban-nightmare comic fantasia, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the mentally ill loser-freak who will, down the line, become Batman’s nemesis, stands before us not as a grand villain but as a pathetic specimen of raw human damage. Even as we’re drinking in his screw-loose antics with shock and dismay, there’s no denying that we feel something for him — a twinge of sympathy, or at least understanding.
Joker” tells the story of Arthur’s descent (and, in a way, his rise), but it’s clear from the outset that he’s a basket case, a kind of maestro of his own misery. He would like, on some level, to connect, but he can’t. He’s too far out there, like Norman Bates; he’s a self-conscious, postmodern head case — a person who spends every moment trying to twist himself into a normal shape, but he knows the effort is doomed, so he turns it all into a “joke” that only he gets.
Arthur’s response to almost everything is to laugh, and he’s got a collection of contrived guffaws — a high-pitched delirious giggle, a “hearty” yock, a stylized cackle that’s all but indistinguishable from a sob. In each case, the laughter is an act that parades itself as fakery. What it expresses isn’t glee; it expresses the fact that Arthur feels nothing, that he’s dead inside. He’s a bitter, mocking nowhere man on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
For all two hours of “Joker,” Arthur, a two-bit professional clown and aspiring stand-up comic who lives with his batty mother (Frances Conroy) in a peeling-paint apartment, is front and center — in the movie, and in our psychological viewfinder. He’s at the dark heart of every scene, the way Travis Bickle was in “Taxi Driver,” and “Joker,” set in 1981 in a Gotham City that looks, with uncanny exactitude, like the squalid, graffiti-strewn, trash-heaped New York City of the early ’80s (you can feel the rot), is a movie made in direct homage to “Taxi Driver,” though there are other films it will make you think of. As the story of a putz trying to succeed as a stand-up comedian, it evokes Scorsese and De Niro’s satirical riff on “Taxi Driver,” “The King of Comedy.” There are also elements lifted from “Death Wish,” “Network,” “V for Vendetta,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Shining” and “The Purge.”
Sponsored by ALACER CORP
Sponsored Video
Watch to learn more
SEE MORE
More than that, though, the whole movie, in spirit, is a kind of origin-story riff on Heath Ledger’s performance in “The Dark Knight”: the comic-book villain as Method psycho, a troublemaker so intense in his cuckoo hostility that even as you’re gawking at his violence, you still feel his pain.
Phoenix’s performance is astonishing. He appears to have lost weight for the role, so that his ribs and shoulder blades protrude, and the leanness burns his face down to its expressive essence: black eyebrows, sallow cheeks sunk in gloom, a mouth so rubbery it seems to be snarking at the very notion of expression, all set off by a greasy mop of hair. Phoenix is playing a geek with an unhinged mind, yet he’s so controlled that he’s mesmerizing. He stays true to the desperate logic of Arthur’s unhappiness.
You’re always aware of how much the mood and design of “Joker” owe to “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy.” For a filmmaker gifted enough to stand on his own, Phillips is too beholden to his idols. Yet within that scheme, he creates a dazzlingly disturbed psycho morality play, one that speaks to the age of incels and mass shooters and no-hope politics, of the kind of hate that emerges from crushed dreams.
Arthur and his mother sit around after hours, watching the late-night talk-show host Murray Franklin (played, by De Niro, as a piece of old-school Carson vaudeville), and as much as we think Arthur should move out and leave his mommy behind, we hardly know the half of it. When he gets fired (for revealing a handgun during a clown gig at a children’s hospital ward), there’s a suspense built into everything that happens, and it spins around the question: How will someone this weak and inept, this trapped in the nuttiness of his self-delusion, evolve into a figure of dark power?
At night, on the subway, Arthur, still wearing his clown suit, is taunted and attacked by three young Wall Street players. So he pulls out his gun like Charles Bronson and shoots them dead. The case becomes tabloid fodder (“Killer Clown on the Loose”), and the sensation of it is that the denizens of Gotham think he’s a hero. That sounds like a standard comic-book-movie ploy, but the twisted commitment of Phoenix’s performance lets us feel how the violence cleanses Arthur; doing tai chi in a bathroom after the murders, he’s reborn. And we believe in his thirst for escape, because Phillips, working with the cinematographer Lawrence Sher (who evokes “Taxi Driver’s” gray-green documentary seaminess), creates an urban inferno so lifelike that it threatens to make the film-noir Gotham of “The Dark Knight” look like a video game.
Of course, a rebellion against the ruling elite — which is what Arthur’s vigilante action comes to symbolize — is more plausible now than it was a decade ago. “Joker” is a comic-book tale rendered with sinister topical fervor. When Arthur, on the elevator, connects with Sophie (Zazie Beetz), his neighbor, the two take turns miming Travis Bickle’s finger-gun-against-the-head suicide gesture, which becomes the film’s key motif. It’s a way of saying: This is what America has come to — a place where people feel like blowing their brains out. The relationship between Arthur and Sophie doesn’t track if you think about it too much, but it’s a riff on one that didn’t totally track either — the link, however fleeting, between Travis and Cybill Shepherd’s Betsy in “Taxi Driver.” Arthur, in a funny way, hides his brains (they’re revealed only when he passes through the looking glass of villainy). He’s got a piece missing. But what fills the space is violence.
Many have asked, and with good reason: Do we need another Joker movie? Yet what we do need — badly — are comic-book films that have a verité gravitas, that unfold in the real world, so that there’s something more dramatic at stake than whether the film in question is going to rack up a billion-and-a-half dollars worldwide. “Joker” manages the nimble feat of telling the Joker’s origin story as if it were unprecedented. We feel a tingle when Bruce Wayne comes into the picture; he’s there less as a force than an omen. And we feel a deeply deranged thrill when Arthur, having come out the other side of his rage, emerges wearing smeary make-up, green hair, an orange vest and a rust-colored suit.
When he dances on the long concrete stairway near his home, like a demonic Michael Jackson, with Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2” bopping on the soundtrack, it’s a moment of transcendent insanity, because he’s not trying to be “the Joker.” He’s just improvising, going with the flow of his madness. And when he gets his fluky big shot to go on TV, we think we know what’s going to happen (that he’s destined to be humiliated), but what we see, instead, is a monster reborn with a smile. And lo and behold, we’re on his side. Because the movie does something that flirts with danger — it gives evil a clown-mask makeover, turning it into the sickest possible form of cool.
Man that woman fucking beautiful
Got the pleasure of meeting her and I’m not the type to fan out but I was at a loss for words for a few seconds then I had to play it off cool.
Last edited:
You shoulda shot your shot but she only lets cacs get the pussy
Yea I should have but I ain’t going to front she caught me off guard like a muthafucka
I’m the last guy on earth to ever pay attention to a bitch eyes but she got some pretty ass eyes. It’s something about her face
S/n I can’t believe she seriously Fuxk with that nerdy looking ass white dude (I’m h8ting)
One of the cohosts gives his favorable Joker review at the start of the most recent podcast episode. No spoilers.
https://omny.fm/shows/680-cjob/bret...d-sti?in_playlist=680-cjob!the-couch-potatoes
https://omny.fm/shows/680-cjob/playlists/the-couch-potatoes
https://globalnews.ca/winnipeg/program/couch-potatoes-cjob
https://omny.fm/shows/680-cjob/playlists/the-couch-potatoes/embed?style=artwork
https://omny.fm/shows/680-cjob/bret...d-sti?in_playlist=680-cjob!the-couch-potatoes
https://omny.fm/shows/680-cjob/playlists/the-couch-potatoes
https://globalnews.ca/winnipeg/program/couch-potatoes-cjob
https://omny.fm/shows/680-cjob/playlists/the-couch-potatoes/embed?style=artwork
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/r...-39-9-Million-Opening-Day-Record-October.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7540901/Joker-viewers-globe-WALK-movie-theatres.html
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Joker-is-a-super-dangerous-movie:2793232
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Legit-Anxious-about-Watching-Joker:2793268?pc=61
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Bad-Joker-reviews--legit:2793114?pc=69
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7540901/Joker-viewers-globe-WALK-movie-theatres.html
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Joker-is-a-super-dangerous-movie:2793232
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Legit-Anxious-about-Watching-Joker:2793268?pc=61
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Bad-Joker-reviews--legit:2793114?pc=69
Damn people are weak. Ban the movie? What dumb fuck goes to see a movie about the fucking joker and complains about violence and other morbid shit?https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/r...-39-9-Million-Opening-Day-Record-October.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-7540901/Joker-viewers-globe-WALK-movie-theatres.html
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Joker-is-a-super-dangerous-movie:2793232
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Legit-Anxious-about-Watching-Joker:2793268?pc=61
https://www.mixedmartialarts.com/forums/OtherGround/Bad-Joker-reviews--legit:2793114?pc=69
Let's be real, anyone who goes to a fucking dark movie about the Joker and complains about the violence or tone might just be mentally ill themselves. Ain't like going to see Frozen 2. I swear people ain't shit.
You know what's sicker than the Joker movie? The fact that some people are probably upset that there hasn't been a mass shooting tied to it. They got their articles and tweets already written.
And the Joker is supposed to be the sick character.
Damn people are weak. Ban the movie? What dumb fuck goes to see a movie about the fucking joker and complains about violence and other morbid shit?
Let's be real, anyone who goes to a fucking dark movie about the Joker and complains about the violence or tone might just be mentally ill themselves. Ain't like going to see Frozen 2. I swear people ain't shit.
You know what's sicker than the Joker movie? The fact that some people are probably upset that there hasn't been a mass shooting tied to it. They got their articles and tweets already written.
Good points. Agreed re: the last paragraph. Almost like they are awaiting chaos/tragedy as a chance to be the first to say "See, I told you!" in typical attention whore fashion. Anything for likes, retweets, or trending/viral opportunity. Pretty disgusting for real.
