Unconfirmed. If there is a part 2, they'll probably cover it.
JOKER (2019) Discussion Thread Starring Joaquin Phoenix (Update 9/12/19) Leaked Footage.. GOOD GAWD
- Thread starter fonzerrillii
- Start date
Who knows. Remember he only killed people who wronged him in the film, so I'm guessing they (her and her daughter) are okay.
In all honesty, I haven't seen Taxi Driver. I've seen parts of King of Comedy but not all the way through. All good though.
This was a masterpiece.....
I loved Batman Begins.. but this was a masterpiece.
I do agree with another poster... It followed alot of Beats from Network and the King of Comedy...
but the way it showed mental illness and trauma on a person was brilliant.
There were so many brilliant things about this movie that were in the details... that people would easily have missed.
Like the fact that I kind of believe that there is strong evidence that this entire movie was completely inside Arthur Fleck's head.
The first time he talked to his therapist we find out that he "was just released from a mental institution"... but they never say for what reason and why he was released...
We just assume it...
Then in the end he is in a mental institution... talking to a woman that looks almost like the therapist that he was talking to in the beginning and he was laughing at a joke that he said she wouldn't get...
It's that type of ambiguity that I love in fucking movies. It's what I loved about Identity and the show Mr. Robot..
I love movies that make you leave the place wondering if what you saw was real.
I knew that Scene in Joker looked Familiar....
Good movie. Could have gone for 10-15 more minutes of the actual Joker. A little screen time goes a loooooong way for the Joker.
Joker going to be a senior citizen by the time Bruce becomes batman.
Joker going to be a senior citizen by the time Bruce becomes batman.
this is a elsewords story fam....
It's a different take on the Origin of the Joker...
For all we know.... This Joker could be the inspiration for the Joker batman faces or
This entire movie could have been in the head of Arthur..
That's what makes it so good...
You have no idea because Arthur was the narrator
What if got out of this movie was that this entire fiasco was a figment of Arthur's imagination. The Joke/twist was that the Joker fooled the audience into believing his world of chaos and destruction is something that would actually take place a movie/real life.
Had the audience known this was all a hallucination of Authur while he was chilling in the Arkham Insane asylum high on 7 meds the story loses its shock value.
The ironic humor I found is that it kind of shits on my all comic book movies for the stupid leaps of faith they make the average watcher believe in. Not to say there aren't crazy people in this world. There clearly are enough of those but the assumption of any plot like the Joker as well as any comic book movie on a belief system that only
While I was watching the movie, certain parts I thought to myself, you gotta be kind of off too believe some of this shit. Like the black chick be cool with being followed to work then being perfectly fine with this same due randomly knocking on her door and kissing her out of no where.
I got the same feeling with some of the mob violence and Arthur's mother's random blabbering about Thomas Wayne. The kind man she claimed Wayne was, wasn't shit like the guy they keep showing on screen. I got the feeling that alot of the characters weren't who they appeared to be.
It think when he walked in the black chicks house unannounced and she was shocked he was in her apartment was the start of his imaginary crashing around him. The dream within the dream was slowly withering away as the effects on his meds were kicking in or wearing off.
When he was hsck finally in the insane asylum alone with the last doctor I figured it was all dream of Arthur's. No doctor is going to be left alone with a psychotic mass killer like the Joker for "therapy" purposes.
The real Arthur you saw at the beginning was a punk ass wuss who wouldn't buss grape. That's the"real" Arthur Fleck but in his head he was the Joker just like his mother thought she was Thomas Wayne's lover. It really doesn't matter what took place in that movie because it was all a vision in a crazy dudes head.
If you want to take anything constructive out of that movie it would be it's commentary on mental health. It doesn't fit in the MCU because a lot of the "plot" was just BS in Fleck's head. If you bring him into the MCU then the entire universe would evovle around if this is "real' or something in the Joker's head.
It's best to view this as a stand alone. I would hope any Riddler movie could be done this way as well with as little of the Wayne family as possible. Thomas and Bruce served their purpose this film but in the future the focus will have to be on the "villian" or central character(s?) for it to be a good follow up to this. Catwoman could be done in a dark f too if done in the correct tone/light.
I won't get heavy into any social commentary because the essence of the story is about the delusions of a mentally ill person. But I give Hollywood credit for taking the King of Comedy (you see Deniro got his check, you ain't jacking his movie for free) and combining it with a comic book flick. The Gotham back ground was 70s 80s NYC grimey X2 which set for a somewhat believable decent into the hell that is the mind of Arthur. Can't complain considering it could have been a flop if they didn't do this right.
Had the audience known this was all a hallucination of Authur while he was chilling in the Arkham Insane asylum high on 7 meds the story loses its shock value.
The ironic humor I found is that it kind of shits on my all comic book movies for the stupid leaps of faith they make the average watcher believe in. Not to say there aren't crazy people in this world. There clearly are enough of those but the assumption of any plot like the Joker as well as any comic book movie on a belief system that only
While I was watching the movie, certain parts I thought to myself, you gotta be kind of off too believe some of this shit. Like the black chick be cool with being followed to work then being perfectly fine with this same due randomly knocking on her door and kissing her out of no where.
I got the same feeling with some of the mob violence and Arthur's mother's random blabbering about Thomas Wayne. The kind man she claimed Wayne was, wasn't shit like the guy they keep showing on screen. I got the feeling that alot of the characters weren't who they appeared to be.
It think when he walked in the black chicks house unannounced and she was shocked he was in her apartment was the start of his imaginary crashing around him. The dream within the dream was slowly withering away as the effects on his meds were kicking in or wearing off.
When he was hsck finally in the insane asylum alone with the last doctor I figured it was all dream of Arthur's. No doctor is going to be left alone with a psychotic mass killer like the Joker for "therapy" purposes.
The real Arthur you saw at the beginning was a punk ass wuss who wouldn't buss grape. That's the"real" Arthur Fleck but in his head he was the Joker just like his mother thought she was Thomas Wayne's lover. It really doesn't matter what took place in that movie because it was all a vision in a crazy dudes head.
If you want to take anything constructive out of that movie it would be it's commentary on mental health. It doesn't fit in the MCU because a lot of the "plot" was just BS in Fleck's head. If you bring him into the MCU then the entire universe would evovle around if this is "real' or something in the Joker's head.
It's best to view this as a stand alone. I would hope any Riddler movie could be done this way as well with as little of the Wayne family as possible. Thomas and Bruce served their purpose this film but in the future the focus will have to be on the "villian" or central character(s?) for it to be a good follow up to this. Catwoman could be done in a dark f too if done in the correct tone/light.
I won't get heavy into any social commentary because the essence of the story is about the delusions of a mentally ill person. But I give Hollywood credit for taking the King of Comedy (you see Deniro got his check, you ain't jacking his movie for free) and combining it with a comic book flick. The Gotham back ground was 70s 80s NYC grimey X2 which set for a somewhat believable decent into the hell that is the mind of Arthur. Can't complain considering it could have been a flop if they didn't do this right.
This is why I love this movie... There's so many ways to interpret it.
Everyone of us.. Can watch this movie and come away seeing it differently..
Like you.. i also think the entire movie was in his head..
but there is also a part of me that thinks that the entire movie is a memory that he was thinking about while talking to the therapist at the end... Like a Flashback mixed with his delusions.
It is definitely a movie that demands rewatching...
Joker’s Movie Theater Attendance Records Are More Than a Box Office Win
By Chris Lee@__ChrisLee
Photo: Warner Bros.
Joker is laughing all the way to the bank. Over its opening weekend in theaters, the R-rated, superhero-adjacent crime drama over-performed prerelease financial expectations, taking in $93.5 million at the domestic box office to obliterate the October earnings record of $80 million, set by Venom last year. Although the FBI, the Army, and police departments in Los Angeles and New York remained on heightened alert for violent moviegoers — who they feared would be inspired by the Batman spinoff’s tenuous connection to the 2012 shooting massacre at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado — Joker managed to avoid any outbreaks of violence while packing in viewers. (In Chicago, two 23-year-old men were arrested without incident for smoking and causing loud noises in a theater showing Joker, and an audience self-evacuated at a Long Beach, California, screening of the film after a man was acting “suspiciously.”)
The gritty, Joaquin Phoenix–starring film premiered in competition at the Toronto International Film Festival last month and claimed the Golden Lion for best film at the Venice International Film Festival in August. (It received an eight-minute standing ovation in Italy.) Globally, Joker dominated the international movie marketplace this weekend, nabbing $140.5 million in 73 territories to become something of a unicorn. It stands as the rare comic-book adaptation to roll out in the middle of prestige movie season, rack up awards bona fides and harvest money like an event movie — not just in spite of, but likely because of its notoriety as a film.
The film stoked myriad controversies en route to the multiplex: the threatening reports of planned “incel” activity at theaters, the leaked script, the journalist-less red carpets, the staged “outtake” featuring a profanity-laden tirade by Phoenix on set. Family of the individuals killed in the 2012 Aurora shooting sent a letter to Joker’s distributor, Warner Bros., requesting that the studio lobby for gun reform and help fund gun-victim charities and gun-violence intervention programs. Lesser fiascos have effectively derailed other movies — in August, Universal made the decision to yank The Hunt (which follows a group of American “deplorables” who are kidnapped and hunted for sport in rural Europe) from its release schedule after its violent plot was met with a storm of criticism from all sides. So how did Joker sidestep its crescendo of bad buzz to become a hit?
Despite the fact that the Joker character has appeared in no fewer than three other live-action Batman iterations — Jack Nicholson portrayed him in 1989’s Batman, Heath Ledger played him in 2008’s The Dark Knight (for which the Australian actor won a posthumous best supporting actor Oscar), and Jared Leto took on the role in 2016’s Suicide Squad — he remains one of pop culture’s most beloved bad guys. Never mind that Leto’s embodiment of the character receded from the multiplex less than three years ago, audiences have shown an astonishing absence of Joker fatigue.
“If a film is good, then there could be three Joker movies a year,” says Erik Davis, managing editor of Fandango. “One of the biggest critiques of Suicide Squad was that we didn’t get enough of the character in the film.”
Combine the preexisting enthusiasm for the IP with the promise of novelty from writer-director Todd Phillips: His origin story — in which Joker is Arthur Fleck, a professional clown and wannabe stand-up comedian who lives with his mother and fares poorly under Gotham’s sub-par mental-health services — is the first film to attempt to explain the character’s affiliation with both comedy and intended societal overthrow. (The influence of Martin Scorsese on Phillips is well-known by now.)
“Not only is the comic-book genre the most popular genre for big screen entertainment right now, but when you do something different — when you make one of these films R-rated, when you take a risk, take a big swing that isn’t necessarily being taken from other films — then that is going to raise awareness,” says Davis.
In various interviews, Phillips has emphasized what he sees as his unique treatment of Joker’s story. “I was going through [the script] and I realized, I said, ‘Well, why would we make something, like, where you sympathize or empathize with the villain?’ It’s like, because that’s what we have to do,” he told Vanity Fair. “People are interested in a film that puts the villain front and center,” Davis adds, “and people have been very interested in comic-book movies crossing over as awards contenders.”
Indeed,the $55 million movie’s studio distributor Warner Bros. strenuously positioned Joker as prestige product, premiering it at fall film festivals singularly associated with awards season and marketed it as a dark, edgy drama quite outside the template of other DC Extended Universe films such as Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice and Aquaman. Its marketing campaign kicked off with a vague shot of Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck posted to Phillips’s Instagram account, followed by a barebones trailer that similarly focused on the lead actor — it was noticeably lacking any caped crusaders or special-effects sequences. Further differentiating the movie from its comic adaptation brethren, Warner opted not to produce any consumer products related to the film, The Hollywood Reporter notes.
Even as concern about the film’s ability to entice potentially violent theater patrons grew, Warner did not alter and decrease its promotion of the film. As a result, despite increased police presence at screenings in Los Angeles and New York, audiences across the country showed up en masse to see the movie that had captured the attention of the media, fans, and law enforcement alike for the last six weeks.
“We’re living in a post-9/11 society that has become accustomed to not let anything get in the way of people living the lives they want to live,” says Davis. “Every theater is, of course, taking whatever precautions that are warranted. But more generally, if a movie comes out [people] want to see, they’re going to see it. They’re not going to let articles or anything else interfere with what they want to do. There is a bubble on the internet that may make things seem like a much bigger deal than it is.”
By Chris Lee@__ChrisLee
Photo: Warner Bros.
Joker is laughing all the way to the bank. Over its opening weekend in theaters, the R-rated, superhero-adjacent crime drama over-performed prerelease financial expectations, taking in $93.5 million at the domestic box office to obliterate the October earnings record of $80 million, set by Venom last year. Although the FBI, the Army, and police departments in Los Angeles and New York remained on heightened alert for violent moviegoers — who they feared would be inspired by the Batman spinoff’s tenuous connection to the 2012 shooting massacre at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado — Joker managed to avoid any outbreaks of violence while packing in viewers. (In Chicago, two 23-year-old men were arrested without incident for smoking and causing loud noises in a theater showing Joker, and an audience self-evacuated at a Long Beach, California, screening of the film after a man was acting “suspiciously.”)
The gritty, Joaquin Phoenix–starring film premiered in competition at the Toronto International Film Festival last month and claimed the Golden Lion for best film at the Venice International Film Festival in August. (It received an eight-minute standing ovation in Italy.) Globally, Joker dominated the international movie marketplace this weekend, nabbing $140.5 million in 73 territories to become something of a unicorn. It stands as the rare comic-book adaptation to roll out in the middle of prestige movie season, rack up awards bona fides and harvest money like an event movie — not just in spite of, but likely because of its notoriety as a film.
The film stoked myriad controversies en route to the multiplex: the threatening reports of planned “incel” activity at theaters, the leaked script, the journalist-less red carpets, the staged “outtake” featuring a profanity-laden tirade by Phoenix on set. Family of the individuals killed in the 2012 Aurora shooting sent a letter to Joker’s distributor, Warner Bros., requesting that the studio lobby for gun reform and help fund gun-victim charities and gun-violence intervention programs. Lesser fiascos have effectively derailed other movies — in August, Universal made the decision to yank The Hunt (which follows a group of American “deplorables” who are kidnapped and hunted for sport in rural Europe) from its release schedule after its violent plot was met with a storm of criticism from all sides. So how did Joker sidestep its crescendo of bad buzz to become a hit?
Despite the fact that the Joker character has appeared in no fewer than three other live-action Batman iterations — Jack Nicholson portrayed him in 1989’s Batman, Heath Ledger played him in 2008’s The Dark Knight (for which the Australian actor won a posthumous best supporting actor Oscar), and Jared Leto took on the role in 2016’s Suicide Squad — he remains one of pop culture’s most beloved bad guys. Never mind that Leto’s embodiment of the character receded from the multiplex less than three years ago, audiences have shown an astonishing absence of Joker fatigue.
“If a film is good, then there could be three Joker movies a year,” says Erik Davis, managing editor of Fandango. “One of the biggest critiques of Suicide Squad was that we didn’t get enough of the character in the film.”
Combine the preexisting enthusiasm for the IP with the promise of novelty from writer-director Todd Phillips: His origin story — in which Joker is Arthur Fleck, a professional clown and wannabe stand-up comedian who lives with his mother and fares poorly under Gotham’s sub-par mental-health services — is the first film to attempt to explain the character’s affiliation with both comedy and intended societal overthrow. (The influence of Martin Scorsese on Phillips is well-known by now.)
“Not only is the comic-book genre the most popular genre for big screen entertainment right now, but when you do something different — when you make one of these films R-rated, when you take a risk, take a big swing that isn’t necessarily being taken from other films — then that is going to raise awareness,” says Davis.
In various interviews, Phillips has emphasized what he sees as his unique treatment of Joker’s story. “I was going through [the script] and I realized, I said, ‘Well, why would we make something, like, where you sympathize or empathize with the villain?’ It’s like, because that’s what we have to do,” he told Vanity Fair. “People are interested in a film that puts the villain front and center,” Davis adds, “and people have been very interested in comic-book movies crossing over as awards contenders.”
Indeed,the $55 million movie’s studio distributor Warner Bros. strenuously positioned Joker as prestige product, premiering it at fall film festivals singularly associated with awards season and marketed it as a dark, edgy drama quite outside the template of other DC Extended Universe films such as Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice and Aquaman. Its marketing campaign kicked off with a vague shot of Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck posted to Phillips’s Instagram account, followed by a barebones trailer that similarly focused on the lead actor — it was noticeably lacking any caped crusaders or special-effects sequences. Further differentiating the movie from its comic adaptation brethren, Warner opted not to produce any consumer products related to the film, The Hollywood Reporter notes.
Even as concern about the film’s ability to entice potentially violent theater patrons grew, Warner did not alter and decrease its promotion of the film. As a result, despite increased police presence at screenings in Los Angeles and New York, audiences across the country showed up en masse to see the movie that had captured the attention of the media, fans, and law enforcement alike for the last six weeks.
“We’re living in a post-9/11 society that has become accustomed to not let anything get in the way of people living the lives they want to live,” says Davis. “Every theater is, of course, taking whatever precautions that are warranted. But more generally, if a movie comes out [people] want to see, they’re going to see it. They’re not going to let articles or anything else interfere with what they want to do. There is a bubble on the internet that may make things seem like a much bigger deal than it is.”
Honestly,
I was feeling a bit of the same.
For years actually.
But that song is used at so many events,
Especially Sporting ones,
That to Me,
It's become another symbol of White Hypocrisy.
Especially in light of all the R. Kelly and Michael Jackson hate these days.
The Movie itself though...
Yeah.
Practically A...MASTERPIECE!!!
A few minutes after Fleck leaves Sophie's apartment, and enters his,
You can "hear" someone banging and screaming on Sophie's door from Fleck's apartment.
It's pretty faint though due to the music and his manic laughter.
At least that's what I heard while watching.
I'm sure they're both dead.
I came to that conclusion when Fleck tells Gary, his former dwarf co-worker that he was the ONLY one who liked him.
And that the "relationship" with Sophie was all in his head.
Notice her response when she found Fleck in her apartment?
Indeed. Definitely a well-known song. I wonder if Todd Phillips and company had any immediate pushback from others working on the film when that song was selected. Especially with all the people involved behind the scenes.
Looking forward to checking out the movie - haven't seen it yet. Also looking forward to El Camino, Ford V Ferrari, The Irishman, and 1917 from Oct - Dec.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildur_Guðnadóttir
Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir (born 4 September 1982) is an Icelandic musician and composer. A classically trained cellist, she has played and recorded with the bands Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Múm and Stórsveit Nix Noltes, and has also toured with Animal Collective and Sunn O))).
In 2006, she released a solo album under the name Lost In Hildurness, Mount A, on which she attempted to "involve other people as little as I could."[1] It was recorded in New York City and Hólar in the north of Iceland. 2009 saw the release of her second solo album, Without Sinking, on the UK-based audio-visual label, Touch.
As well as the cello, Hildur also sings and arranges choral music, once arranging a choir for performances by Throbbing Gristle in Austria and London. As a composer she has written a score for the play Sumardagur ("Summer Day") performed at Iceland's National Theatre.[2] She has also written the score for the Danish film Kapringen (2012),[3][4] Garth Davis' 2018 film Mary Magdalene (in collaboration with Jóhann Jóhannsson),[5] Stefano Sollima's Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018), and the 2019 Chernobyl miniseries. She wrote the score to the 2019 film Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and directed by Todd Phillips, for which she won the Premio Soundtrack Stars award at the 76th Venice International Film Festival.[6]
Hildur Ingveldardóttir Guðnadóttir (born 4 September 1982) is an Icelandic musician and composer. A classically trained cellist, she has played and recorded with the bands Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Múm and Stórsveit Nix Noltes, and has also toured with Animal Collective and Sunn O))).
In 2006, she released a solo album under the name Lost In Hildurness, Mount A, on which she attempted to "involve other people as little as I could."[1] It was recorded in New York City and Hólar in the north of Iceland. 2009 saw the release of her second solo album, Without Sinking, on the UK-based audio-visual label, Touch.
As well as the cello, Hildur also sings and arranges choral music, once arranging a choir for performances by Throbbing Gristle in Austria and London. As a composer she has written a score for the play Sumardagur ("Summer Day") performed at Iceland's National Theatre.[2] She has also written the score for the Danish film Kapringen (2012),[3][4] Garth Davis' 2018 film Mary Magdalene (in collaboration with Jóhann Jóhannsson),[5] Stefano Sollima's Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018), and the 2019 Chernobyl miniseries. She wrote the score to the 2019 film Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and directed by Todd Phillips, for which she won the Premio Soundtrack Stars award at the 76th Venice International Film Festival.[6]
He didn't kill the little dude after he stabbed the the fat guy in his apartment. Arthur kissed him on the head and told him that he was always nice.
That fucked me up. I was like "oh shit he imagined an entire relationship, date, and her comforting him when his mom was dying." I need to see it again during a matinee because I went at 6pm on Saturday and it was infuriating to be surrounded by people that had to be part of the movie or couldn't care less that other people may have been trying to enjoy the film.
Reread what I wrote.
I listened to a podcast interview with her in recent months. She seems like cool people. I'll see if I can find it for you. An interesting listen.
It's called the Behind the Screen podcast from The Hollywood Reporter. Have checked out around 7 - 10 episodes in recent months.
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/behind-the-screen/hildur-guðnadóttir-chernobyl-9SsRejBoDuv/
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...inspiration-a-radioactive-power-plant-1228682
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...influences-controversy-antihero-movie-1244755
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...-gu-nad-ttir-wins-emmy-hbos-chernobyl-1237885
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...mposer-featured-behind-screen-podcast-1230483
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
On this week's episode, Carolyn sits down with composer Hildur Guðnadóttir to discuss her innovative score for the HBO mini series, 'Chernobyl'. She shares her techniques used to capture the sounds of a nuclear power plant and build digital instruments out of the field recordings. Also discussed is her work on the upcoming Todd Phillips film, 'Joker'.
In this podcast series, Carolyn Giardina, Tech Editor for The Hollywood Reporter, extends her coverage of the filmmaking crafts. She will be talking with the cinematographers, editors, production designers, composers, visual effects supervisors, and other leading artists that bring the magic of motion pictures to theaters. Subscribe now to receive episodes of this inspired new series that shines a light on the artists that spend most of their time behind the screen.
https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/7...in-scorsese-marvel-movie-mishegas-big-picture
Todd Phillips’s Joker is one of the year’s biggest hits and most controversial films. Chris Ryan joins Sean and Amanda to talk about the film’s success and whether all the hubbub was worth it (1:07). Then they take a close look at Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar chances, the Best Actor race, and Martin Scorsese’s comments about Marvel movies (32:20). Then, Sean is joined by The Ringer’s Shea Serrano to talk about his new book, Movies (and Other Things) (55:08).
Todd Phillips’s Joker is one of the year’s biggest hits and most controversial films. Chris Ryan joins Sean and Amanda to talk about the film’s success and whether all the hubbub was worth it (1:07). Then they take a close look at Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar chances, the Best Actor race, and Martin Scorsese’s comments about Marvel movies (32:20). Then, Sean is joined by The Ringer’s Shea Serrano to talk about his new book, Movies (and Other Things) (55:08).
https://www.theringer.com/2019/10/3/20897866/a-joker-deep-dive-spoilers
https://www.theringer.com/podcasts
https://www.theringer.com/movies
Todd Phillips’s Joker, a gritty homage to ’70s films like Taxi Driver, has become one of the year’s most anticipated and controversial movies. Sean and Jason Concepcion explore the long history of the Batman supervillain, in comic books and on screen (1:30). Then they take a close look at the new Joaquin Phoenix–starring movie, its societal ramifications, and what it means for the superhero movie genre at large (41:20). Finally, Sean is joined by writer-director Noah Hawley to discuss his feature film debut, Lucy in the Sky (75:18).
Host: Sean Fennessey
Guests: Jason Concepcion and Noah Hawley
https://www.theringer.com/podcasts
https://www.theringer.com/movies
Todd Phillips’s Joker, a gritty homage to ’70s films like Taxi Driver, has become one of the year’s most anticipated and controversial movies. Sean and Jason Concepcion explore the long history of the Batman supervillain, in comic books and on screen (1:30). Then they take a close look at the new Joaquin Phoenix–starring movie, its societal ramifications, and what it means for the superhero movie genre at large (41:20). Finally, Sean is joined by writer-director Noah Hawley to discuss his feature film debut, Lucy in the Sky (75:18).
Host: Sean Fennessey
Guests: Jason Concepcion and Noah Hawley
So I saw it.
I enjoyed it a lot. I figured out some of the tropes but it didn't make it less effective.
The performance was the 2nd best joker of all time.
I loved the final act
There's layers upon layers in this film
My only complaint is that we didn't get to see the true MANIA that is him
They nailed the mannerisms perfectly they didn't nail the terror but that's ok.
The terror is why Heath's Joker is still #1
I enjoyed it a lot. I figured out some of the tropes but it didn't make it less effective.
The performance was the 2nd best joker of all time.
I loved the final act
There's layers upon layers in this film
My only complaint is that we didn't get to see the true MANIA that is him
They nailed the mannerisms perfectly they didn't nail the terror but that's ok.
The terror is why Heath's Joker is still #1
I liked that they went there mentally with the way things kept crashing down around him whether they were real or not
I did like the positive things were def not real and we saw them reveal themselves to not be real towards the end
Like when they showed up his delusion of dating the broad but then we see it was a delusion but we should've known it wasn't real because it was a good thing in his life.
I did like the positive things were def not real and we saw them reveal themselves to not be real towards the end
Like when they showed up his delusion of dating the broad but then we see it was a delusion but we should've known it wasn't real because it was a good thing in his life.
They had opportunities to make him scary too smh.
On a side note: this movie was also real nostalgic too. I’m thinking the time period was supposed to be the early to mid 80s.
Let’s Talk About the Ending of Joker
By Nate Jones@kn8
Isn’t it rich? Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
For its first two acts, Todd Phillips’s Joker is a social-realist drama that just so happens to be set in Gotham City. It’s the story of a troubled working-class man who crumbles under the depredation of an uncaring society, a plot inspired more by Martin Scorsese and Paddy Chayefsky than Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher. Of course, movies like that rarely make $93 million in their opening weekends, so the third act dutifully chronicles exactly how aspiring comedian Arthur Fleck becomes the green-haired supervillain of DC Comics lore. However, along the way, there’s a twist: Arthur has a severe mental illness, and over the course of the film the audience gradually learns that many things we thought we were seeing were not actually happening. Still trying to sort through it all? Let’s discuss which parts of the film we think were “real,” and which were delusions.
Arthur’s romance with his neighbor Sophie.
We’ll start with the most obvious one: If Sophie’s confusion upon seeing Arthur in her apartment didn’t catch you onto the fact that their relationship was all in his head, the movie helpfully flashes back to show us that Arthur was imagining her presence the whole time! (Bless this movie for swerving around one hoary romantic trope and plowing straight into another.) After Arthur’s reveries during the Murray Franklin show, the Sophie revelation confirms that even the movie’s supposedly straightforward scenes must not be taken as objective reality, and introduces us to the parlor game of guessing what else in the movie might be a fantasy. If you’re curious, this was also the scene that inspired the whole incel mishegoss: In the early version of the script that leaked online, Sophie’s interactions with Arthur were real but platonic, and he flew into a rage after seeing her have sex with another man. Cutting that out was one of Phillips’s rare acts of restraint.
Arthur walks out of Sophie’s apartment, seemingly without incident.
This one is less a question of whether we can believe what we’re seeing, and more a question of what we can infer from what we didn’t see. After a frightened Sophie asks Arthur to leave her living room, the film cuts to a shot of him walking back to his own apartment. We never see Sophie again after that, leaving some viewers to infer that she was one of Arthur’s many victims. I’m not sure I buy it, but the ambiguity does fit the film’s penchant for having it both ways — the movie gets to raise the specter of Arthur doing something terrible to Sophie, without having to deal with the consequences of showing him actually do it.
After unveiling his new persona as Joker on the Murray Franklin show, Arthur is taken away by the police, but escapes when his acolytes plow an ambulance into the cop car. Once freed, he exults in their adulation.
Talk about send in the clowns! Although in this case, ought there to be clowns? There’s no explicit indication that Joker’s moment of triumph is anything other than what it seems, but some viewers have seen what they think are hints that it should not be taken at face value. As the character’s grand apotheosis, it’s exactly the same sort of wish fulfillment as Arthur’s other delusions, and if the clown protesters are bound and determined to keep Joker out of jail, how come he’s in Arkham Asylum in the very next scene?
The final scene in Arkham
After I saw Joker, I was convinced that the movie’s final scene was a flashback to Arthur’s first stint in Arkham — showing that he was a violent threat even before the events of the film, and putting to lie all of his talk about being driven to evil by society, man. Admittedly, this hunch was based on little more than the fact that Arthur’s hair was black, not green, in the scene, and my powers of observation were dulled somewhat by the fact that I was packing up my things to go and not really paying attention. But still, think about it! Unfortunately, when I attempted to explain this fan theory to my co-workers, David Edelstein reminded me that the therapist in Arkham mentions the death of Thomas Wayne, which means it can’t be a flashback. Oh well. I guess I have a lot to learn about hair dye.
Everything after the fridge scene.
In the world’s most unexpected callback to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, late in the film Arthur becomes so distraught that he climbs into his own fridge. The Ringer’s Andrew Gruttadaro proposes that everything after this point is “a near-death hallucination” brought about by the lack of oxygen inside the appliance. It’s an interesting theory, but it comes with an unexpected wrinkle: If you make a movie about Joker, but the part where he becomes Joker is all a dream, did you really make a movie about Joker?
The entire third act of the movie.
Not to be outdone, there are those who consider the entire last half-hour of the movie to have taken place entirely in Arthur’s head. However, as my colleague Bilge Ebiri pointed out, this would mean that Arthur had a delusion of Sophie inside his existing delusion. Still, I don’t want to rule this one out entirely — if you’re already cribbing from the masters, what’s one more Chris Nolan movie?
By Nate Jones@kn8
Isn’t it rich? Photo: Niko Tavernise/Warner Bros.
For its first two acts, Todd Phillips’s Joker is a social-realist drama that just so happens to be set in Gotham City. It’s the story of a troubled working-class man who crumbles under the depredation of an uncaring society, a plot inspired more by Martin Scorsese and Paddy Chayefsky than Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher. Of course, movies like that rarely make $93 million in their opening weekends, so the third act dutifully chronicles exactly how aspiring comedian Arthur Fleck becomes the green-haired supervillain of DC Comics lore. However, along the way, there’s a twist: Arthur has a severe mental illness, and over the course of the film the audience gradually learns that many things we thought we were seeing were not actually happening. Still trying to sort through it all? Let’s discuss which parts of the film we think were “real,” and which were delusions.
Arthur’s romance with his neighbor Sophie.
We’ll start with the most obvious one: If Sophie’s confusion upon seeing Arthur in her apartment didn’t catch you onto the fact that their relationship was all in his head, the movie helpfully flashes back to show us that Arthur was imagining her presence the whole time! (Bless this movie for swerving around one hoary romantic trope and plowing straight into another.) After Arthur’s reveries during the Murray Franklin show, the Sophie revelation confirms that even the movie’s supposedly straightforward scenes must not be taken as objective reality, and introduces us to the parlor game of guessing what else in the movie might be a fantasy. If you’re curious, this was also the scene that inspired the whole incel mishegoss: In the early version of the script that leaked online, Sophie’s interactions with Arthur were real but platonic, and he flew into a rage after seeing her have sex with another man. Cutting that out was one of Phillips’s rare acts of restraint.
Arthur walks out of Sophie’s apartment, seemingly without incident.
This one is less a question of whether we can believe what we’re seeing, and more a question of what we can infer from what we didn’t see. After a frightened Sophie asks Arthur to leave her living room, the film cuts to a shot of him walking back to his own apartment. We never see Sophie again after that, leaving some viewers to infer that she was one of Arthur’s many victims. I’m not sure I buy it, but the ambiguity does fit the film’s penchant for having it both ways — the movie gets to raise the specter of Arthur doing something terrible to Sophie, without having to deal with the consequences of showing him actually do it.
After unveiling his new persona as Joker on the Murray Franklin show, Arthur is taken away by the police, but escapes when his acolytes plow an ambulance into the cop car. Once freed, he exults in their adulation.
Talk about send in the clowns! Although in this case, ought there to be clowns? There’s no explicit indication that Joker’s moment of triumph is anything other than what it seems, but some viewers have seen what they think are hints that it should not be taken at face value. As the character’s grand apotheosis, it’s exactly the same sort of wish fulfillment as Arthur’s other delusions, and if the clown protesters are bound and determined to keep Joker out of jail, how come he’s in Arkham Asylum in the very next scene?
The final scene in Arkham
After I saw Joker, I was convinced that the movie’s final scene was a flashback to Arthur’s first stint in Arkham — showing that he was a violent threat even before the events of the film, and putting to lie all of his talk about being driven to evil by society, man. Admittedly, this hunch was based on little more than the fact that Arthur’s hair was black, not green, in the scene, and my powers of observation were dulled somewhat by the fact that I was packing up my things to go and not really paying attention. But still, think about it! Unfortunately, when I attempted to explain this fan theory to my co-workers, David Edelstein reminded me that the therapist in Arkham mentions the death of Thomas Wayne, which means it can’t be a flashback. Oh well. I guess I have a lot to learn about hair dye.
Everything after the fridge scene.
In the world’s most unexpected callback to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, late in the film Arthur becomes so distraught that he climbs into his own fridge. The Ringer’s Andrew Gruttadaro proposes that everything after this point is “a near-death hallucination” brought about by the lack of oxygen inside the appliance. It’s an interesting theory, but it comes with an unexpected wrinkle: If you make a movie about Joker, but the part where he becomes Joker is all a dream, did you really make a movie about Joker?
The entire third act of the movie.
Not to be outdone, there are those who consider the entire last half-hour of the movie to have taken place entirely in Arthur’s head. However, as my colleague Bilge Ebiri pointed out, this would mean that Arthur had a delusion of Sophie inside his existing delusion. Still, I don’t want to rule this one out entirely — if you’re already cribbing from the masters, what’s one more Chris Nolan movie?
99% of Batman's enemies always either escaped from or got put away inside of Arkham INSANE ASYLUM
but suddenly NOW it's a problem?
lmaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
just look at who’s saying it, prob some pink pussy hat wearing male feminist who hated chapells stand up lol
HE went WAY left and I completely disagree with his premise that it is a NEGATIVE to make the villian sympathetic
that is absurd and patently BAD WRITING.
cause he OBVIOUSLY never seen THIS...
https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/05/revisiting-batman-animated-series-heart-ice/
HOWEVER...
I kinda sorta see the issue with making the Joker TOO GROUNDED.
He is an agent of chaos a god of disorder.
So yeah to kinda SIMPLY that to him JUST being "crazy" would be a little lazy.
But I STILL have not seen this film for myself.