Really? The only people he killed that I didn't feel for were those Wall Street dudes. Everything else was abhorrent.
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JOKER |OT| Viviamo in una società |SPOILERS|
- Thread starter Cpt-GargameL
- Start date
Anybody else just love the "joke" that he locked the door a little bit to high for the dwarf to reach it. So cruel and evil, THAT was true Joker.
Thought this movie was really incredible.
The slow burn of Arthur's life slowly crumbling around him was emotionally exhausting stuff. So many real fears and tensions fraying away at him over time.
The class warfare stuff felt a little rushed. But all my friends thought the movie was too slow paced so I guess they had to cut for time.
After watching the movie, I can see why the media is rallying against it. The media is utterly skewered in this film. I mean its actually insane how directly relevant it is, I have to believe that this all must have started with some WB astroturfed fake controversy pieces to get the ball rolling.
Some obscenely funny moments like the little person desperately trying to escape, but all of it overshadowed (not in a bad way) by the dour nature of the film.
I really, really liked this film. That all said, I don't really see this character as "Joker" at all, and didn't enjoy the shoehorning in of the Bruce Wayne scenes. (Thomas Wayne was excellent as a foil though, a great inversion of roles.) I felt this the most when Arthur became Joker and people clapped. "Oof, please don't clap for this man's complete mental breakdown" is how I felt. I would prefer that this Joker never appear again, or at least not as part of a Batman movie. This guy isn't a criminal mastermind nor a supervillain. He's a tragic figure who was failed by everyone around him, broken and beaten down till there was only emptiness left.
The slow burn of Arthur's life slowly crumbling around him was emotionally exhausting stuff. So many real fears and tensions fraying away at him over time.
- Dealing with an aging and mentally declining parent
- Being professionally unsuccessful
- Losing access to medications
- Seeking romantic connection
- Being unjustly fired from your job
- Inability to relate to or understand social cues
The class warfare stuff felt a little rushed. But all my friends thought the movie was too slow paced so I guess they had to cut for time.
After watching the movie, I can see why the media is rallying against it. The media is utterly skewered in this film. I mean its actually insane how directly relevant it is, I have to believe that this all must have started with some WB astroturfed fake controversy pieces to get the ball rolling.
- After the triple homicide, the news peddles a "Killer Clown!" based off only eyewitness reports and nothing else. The narrative of "poor vs rich" is invented by the media and only becomes a thing once the mayor answers a reporter's question about it.
- When Joker is on the late night show, the producer tells Murray to cut the show once Joker confesses to the triple homicide. Murray refuses and keeps the interview going for the content.
- When the interview is cut short and the channel goes off the air, all the other channels start reporting the interview, some playing the interview uncut and uninterrupted, spreading it like a virus.
Some obscenely funny moments like the little person desperately trying to escape, but all of it overshadowed (not in a bad way) by the dour nature of the film.
I really, really liked this film. That all said, I don't really see this character as "Joker" at all, and didn't enjoy the shoehorning in of the Bruce Wayne scenes. (Thomas Wayne was excellent as a foil though, a great inversion of roles.) I felt this the most when Arthur became Joker and people clapped. "Oof, please don't clap for this man's complete mental breakdown" is how I felt. I would prefer that this Joker never appear again, or at least not as part of a Batman movie. This guy isn't a criminal mastermind nor a supervillain. He's a tragic figure who was failed by everyone around him, broken and beaten down till there was only emptiness left.
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I can't go through all the pages but I saw this movie tonight. I liked it as an Arthur Fleck story, I never expected a whole movie of Joker or even a story about the birth of Joker. So I didn't get either one. The Joker's iconography and brand felt like window dressing and a marketing ploy by Todd Philips to get approved by WB to do...whatever it is he wanted to do in this film.
Which, again I liked pretty well but Joker it is not. It's a decent flick about a mentally ill man but it uses the Batman mythos to give attention to it and spark more "ooo" and "ahh" than there otherwise would be. my 2/c
Which, again I liked pretty well but Joker it is not. It's a decent flick about a mentally ill man but it uses the Batman mythos to give attention to it and spark more "ooo" and "ahh" than there otherwise would be. my 2/c
Agreed, and I think the film should have leaned more into the mentally ill man and have less of the Batman mythos.
Like I said, outside of that little casting joke, talk show host charisma is very much outside DeNiro wheelhouse these days.
This movie is what the average joe thinks an "arthouse european movie" is: long, boring and in your face. The fact that europe is praising it is incredible to me.
I got the same vibe from it.
It was almost annoying seing Mike who obviously enjoyed a shiton the movie having to try to agree on something with Jay lol
When people come out of this movie this critical and wanting to see this Joker go head to head with Batman then I've got to wonder if there was any point in you seeing this movie at all. It clearly wasn't for you. I didn't go into this movie expecting that, if anything I was surprised there was any Wayne stuff in it at all as it was totally unnecessary.
I watched it because I was interested, what a ridiculous attitude.
As others have said before me, it's just another sort of taxi driver/beatdown white guy with a gun, without the joker stuff. The movie as a thing has no point without it as other movies have done this sort of thing before and much better.
I think that was just to build tension, wonder more if Joker was going to kill the guy or just some dark comedy for the movie itself and not particularly associated with Arthur.
Did anyone else have someone in the cinema who was 100% convinced they were here to see a full on comedy? Dude next to me laughed out loud at every bit that could be even remotely conceived as funny. Meanwhile there's me staring at most of those moments in horror. D:
This was certainly how the scene felt to me.
That's the thing. We're not shown that he spared her like the other times.
In his state of mind, her rejection and fear of him could cause him to think she's an asshole as well
Considering the leaked script, it wouldn't really be surprising if they edit around it to avoid making the Joker not look sympathetic.
I'm not sure. He looks at her threateningly, fake shoots his own head, then there's a VERY loaded cut to him just leaving their apartment. I wouldn't be surprised if a murder scene was cut from the movie because it just crossed a line with the audience
TIFF?
I liked the movie but I agree the music editing really took the wind out of some sails. There were moments where nothing particularly bad is happening then - oh, here comes the intense string section, some violence is about to go down!
On the whole I think the movie dodged those problems well but there were two or three bits where it didn't work.
You know what that person means, don't be facetious. Almost every murder in the movie is self-defence, be it retrospective or not. 3 guys beating him to a pulp. The guy who sabotaged his job and was now practically threatening him, his mother who allowed him to be abused and lied to him for decades.
More importantly, the film is so purely focused through Fleck's lens that it paints his light as totally sympathetic
It's only in the final 25 minutes that he becomes the truly malicious killer we know in the comics. The talk show host murder is where he crosses the line, and realises he likes it. Then he kills the psychologist at the end.
See:
Yeah, the final scene where he's laughing at a joke he says the shrink woman wouldn't get, it's clear that he's finally beginning to connive and scheme on the level we're familiar with from the comics and movies. You can see he has real images of chaos and deconstruction in his eyes. Killer ending.
We were thinking the same about him not even being the actual Joker as we know him, but a predecessor. The guy who kills Wayne in the alley could be the real Joker. Or anyone else.
"The Joker" is essentially an anti-establishment symbol above all else, and the movie really perfectly captured that with Gotham's descent.
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This sort of thing will have been focus tested and internally discussed to hell. The whole tone of the scene might have been wrong, or it might have broken the flow of the narrative. Leaving it up to the viewers discretion is OK but a hint at whether it happened or not would have been nice.
I don't think it was ambiguous at all. The assistant who calls Arthur straight-up says that they're reaching out because of the "positive reaction" they got from Murray's audience after seeing Arthur's stand-up routine. I'm sure you realize this already, but Murray's viewers were laughing at Arthur, not with him.
Even if you think Murray was trying to extend an olive branch somehow (and I'm not sure why you would think that), he instantly loses the benefit of the doubt the moment he introduces Arthur. Before the guy even steps on stage, Murray turns to his therapist/ psychiatrist guest and says something like "it's a good thing you're here because our next guest needs a lot of help! Ha ha."
I thought the film made it crystal clear he's a cruel, exploitative scumbag who's only interested in ratings.
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I'm sure we'll find out eventually, the director seems open to talking about what actually happens sometime in the future. Personally, I don't think he killed her.
The movie makes it a point to say the 3 guys didn't do anything to him. He imagined them being rough on him. He confesses to Murray that he killed them because he wanted to.
Ehhh I don't think there is any stock in this theory, he said that because after the assault he did want to kill them, it's why he went out of his way to persue the last guy and gun him down, he easily could have just let him go, but he wanted to kill him. There are certainly scenes that are encouraged to be interpreted differently, don't think this is one of them though.
Just because Arthur says that line doesn't mean it didn't happen the way it was shown, because this is the kind of "twist" that doesn't even change the context of anything prior. We already knew he wanted to kill them, you see it in his actions on the subway clear as day, so that line of dialogue isn't some revelation, it's reiterating what the audience should already know.
Ehhh I think you're misreading that line. He doesn't mean it didn't happen, that they didn't attack him- it did happen, he just wanted to kill them anyway - just like how he wants to kill everyone who wrongs him.
I'm not. I don't think any of his kills were justified, besides maybe the 3 guys in the subway. Even though we don't know if that's even actually how it went down. And even if it did go down like that, hunting down and killing the last dude was way fucked up.
It just got worse from there. Killing his mother was extremely fucked up, no matter their past (which we don't know is real or not). I took it that it was implied that he killed his "girlfriend" after entering her apartment and possibly even her child, considering that it cuts to him back at his apartment laughing hysterically shirtless with ambulance lights in the background, and we never see her again, which is ULTRA fucked if if that's the case.
Him killing his work buddy that "fucked him over", which we're not even sure happened like that at all. The whole interaction with the guy giving him the gun was super weird, and reminiscent of his interactions with his "girlfriend". Him and Gary seem to really want to be there for Arthur when they come over, and Gary seems 150% caught off guard by the murder. Of course it's murder....that will catch anyone off guard, but his reactions to me made it seem like the dude had done nothing whatsoever to potentially deserve that. "Why would you do that Arthur?!?"
Then of course the Murray stuff which is just completely inexcusable even if you're going purely off of the story being presented. So no, none of these kills are justified at all to me. If you're going off what the movie's presenting, there may be some that are easier to let slide than others, but that in my opinion is kind of the point of the movie. Arthur is justifying this stuff in his own way. If we go off of his narration, there's no telling what seeds were planted throughout this movie and his mind for him to be able justify going down this path. When he's still trying to fit in somewhat, but his mind is still completely frayed. Not to mention less than halfway through the movie he comes off of all his medication. It's not until he's fully Joker, when he's on the Murray show at the end, that completely clear what his motivations are. Because that's when his mind is the clearest.
I think even with Arthur's more sympathetic towards himself (or whatever character he's actually talking about) narration, he still can't help but slip in some shit that hints at his true nature. Hence hunting down the subway guy, the whole interaction with Gary after murdering the other co-worker, ect. He's the Joker, and he can't help it.
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I think this was a good movie, very well made. The point it tries to get across is clumsy, overly simplistic, and almost juvenile though.
It felt like the nature vs. nurture debate in movie form, at the end of which the movie gets on an almost literal soapbox and screams "IT'S NURTURE, YOU ASSHOLES".
Interesting take, but I'm unconvinced to say the least. The movie's obsession with its own "SOCIETY IS THE REAL VILLAIN" theme is taken to an extreme that becomes detrimental to the overall message, and to the character of the joker himself. The joker in this was solely portrayed as a victim of society, which I'm not sure is something I personally liked.
Beautiful cinematography, incredible score, amazing acting, and interesting ideas for sure, though.
It felt like the nature vs. nurture debate in movie form, at the end of which the movie gets on an almost literal soapbox and screams "IT'S NURTURE, YOU ASSHOLES".
Interesting take, but I'm unconvinced to say the least. The movie's obsession with its own "SOCIETY IS THE REAL VILLAIN" theme is taken to an extreme that becomes detrimental to the overall message, and to the character of the joker himself. The joker in this was solely portrayed as a victim of society, which I'm not sure is something I personally liked.
Beautiful cinematography, incredible score, amazing acting, and interesting ideas for sure, though.
When I say "justified", I kind of mean justified in the context of the character, his mind/mental health, and how it's all presented in the movie.
Of course in real life terms none of it is justified whatsoever.
People have referenced Thomas Wayne writing on the picture of his mom to support the idea that he really was the father. I'm thinking maybe that's why there was the line about Thomas always signing autographs for people? If it just started as an autograph and the mom built an imaginary relationship, like Arthur and the neighbour.
edit: sorry for the double post
This is a really interesting leak to look back at from someone who had the script. Looks like there was a cut scene of his mother's funeral where he first wears the red suit. The scene with him letting himself into Sophie's apartment isn't there, and he leaves a bouquet of flowers at her door telling her to watch the Murray show. Pretty sure both scenes are in the trailer.
This is a really interesting leak to look back at from someone who had the script. Looks like there was a cut scene of his mother's funeral where he first wears the red suit. The scene with him letting himself into Sophie's apartment isn't there, and he leaves a bouquet of flowers at her door telling her to watch the Murray show. Pretty sure both scenes are in the trailer.
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Bruh. what if the joker movie was just a front to infect audiences with the joker toxin and now we all sympathize with the joker because we all are joker.
OP
OP
This is why I can't dismiss the film as meaningless or without any message, it deserves more critical thought. The shot of all the TV screens reporting on the Murray Murder is absolutely critical towards its overall message regarding the media and the narratives they create. Arthur's Joker is shaped by the media's depiction of him. It's the media that creates the Joker more than anything else.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this when watching that scene. When I saw all the TV stations reporting on the murder and replaying it, the direct parallel that immediately came to mind was the medias response to the film itself and their responsibility in creating a monster.
Another great parallel is the nightmare we're all living through right now. That being....Trump would not be POTUS right now if not for the media and how they irresponsibly helped create him for the sake of ratings.
Another thing I just realized - Murray directly accuses Arthur of being responsible for everything. The media deflecting responsibility. And Arthur tells him to his face that he has nothing to do with it, but the narrative has already been written, and is fulfilled in the end.
saw joker earlier and i was so bored for most of it. some parts were interesting and joaquin was good which bunked the film into ok territory.
i can't see the masterpiece most people are saying it is and its a one and done for me.
i can't see the masterpiece most people are saying it is and its a one and done for me.
Really enjoyed the film:
A few things:
* The "His relationship with Zazie isn't real" twist is way too predictable, but i really wanted it to be real.
* The film doesn't go overboard in adding nods to the DC universe. Like, in a story about the joker and class warfare, of course the Wayne's need to be there, but i was happy not to hear any speakers calling out "Dr. Hugo Strange" or "Dr Quinzel" or maybe, after the two cops were beaten up, or some "well, Gordon, you're on the case now!"
* The balance between the Joker being a tragic product of a broken society, while at the same time also having a deep rooted evil within, i think the movie really got that one right.
* I'm not opposed to the origin story of The Joker being him being more of a 'symbol' for an uprising, and not a supervillain per se. Though i wonder how this concept would have any legs once we introduced "the world's greatest detective" to the story.
Like, Arthur's not a 'criminal mastermind' to match Batman's wits.
Though i wonder if "Joker", 'unshackled' by not longer being on his meds, might be some kind of criminal 'savant'.
* Am i misreading things, or did the movie hint at the whole Wayne / Penny affair maybe being true after all (the photo of a young Penny having "love your smile. T.W." written on it) - i really don't care for the Austin-Powers-esque idea of Batman and the Joker being half brothers.
I really really hope this is a one-and-done thing. Please don't try to make it a franchise.
Bonus points for explaining who came up with the name "A.Fleck"... Is that some really mean mean nod to sad batman?
A few things:
* The "His relationship with Zazie isn't real" twist is way too predictable, but i really wanted it to be real.
* The film doesn't go overboard in adding nods to the DC universe. Like, in a story about the joker and class warfare, of course the Wayne's need to be there, but i was happy not to hear any speakers calling out "Dr. Hugo Strange" or "Dr Quinzel" or maybe, after the two cops were beaten up, or some "well, Gordon, you're on the case now!"
* The balance between the Joker being a tragic product of a broken society, while at the same time also having a deep rooted evil within, i think the movie really got that one right.
* I'm not opposed to the origin story of The Joker being him being more of a 'symbol' for an uprising, and not a supervillain per se. Though i wonder how this concept would have any legs once we introduced "the world's greatest detective" to the story.
Like, Arthur's not a 'criminal mastermind' to match Batman's wits.
Though i wonder if "Joker", 'unshackled' by not longer being on his meds, might be some kind of criminal 'savant'.
* Am i misreading things, or did the movie hint at the whole Wayne / Penny affair maybe being true after all (the photo of a young Penny having "love your smile. T.W." written on it) - i really don't care for the Austin-Powers-esque idea of Batman and the Joker being half brothers.
I really really hope this is a one-and-done thing. Please don't try to make it a franchise.
Bonus points for explaining who came up with the name "A.Fleck"... Is that some really mean mean nod to sad batman?
he always asumed he had issues just because, but in reality everything wrong with him is the fault of her mom not caring about him at all.
i think thats why he kills her, because he could have been someone "normal" someone that is not sad all the time, someone who doesnt laugh uncontrollably, but he was denied all that by his mom.
and she is not even his mom
Eh, it felt more like something the director threw in because he thought it would be funny than it did a Joker move.
Arthur's adopted mom abused him as a child and because she wasn't all there, she believed that Thomas Wayne was Arthur's father. Arthur really did have severe mental illness, which could be argued happened because of his abuse. Arthur was really only lied by omission about Thomas Wayne, however, his mom was so out there that she really didn't realize that she was withholding something from Arthur that wasn't even true.
i think that it was put there to show the audiences that arthur was planing something bad.
the aftermath was something that ocurred naturally
penny's boyfrien was who abused Arthur.
It also added an extra layer of tension to the scene 'cus you, just like the little person, didn't know if Arthur was going to kill him.
But yeah, there's just some really funny about someone asking a murderer if they can please open the door so they can leave.
Why not just lock the deadbolt then? The chain doesn't make much sense to me outside of making a joke at the expense of Charlie (I think that was his name?), which felt par for the course coming from the guy who also directed the Hangover.
Does the guy who interviews her make it clear that it was only the boyfriend who abused Arthur? I'll have to watch the movie again but I was under the impression that they were both at fault.
Now that I'm thinking about it, though. That does make sense since I was wondering why they left Arthur with her. If it was just the boyfriend then they probably didn't have a reason to remove Arthur from her.