Joker Review
The Joker is arguably the most popular villain in fiction. He's a character shrouded in mystery. He represents the worst outcome of our world. I think what works so well for this character is because of the mystery of how he becomes who he becomes. To quote The Killing Joke "If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!" When first hearing of this movie, I was very skeptical of it. I'm not a fan of origin stories let alone an origin of an elusive comic book character like the Joker. The DC movies post-The Dark Knight have been mixed to negative for the most part and Todd Phillips doesn't seem to have the best track record. Still, I was curious to see where things would go. Then the first wave of reviews hit after its festival run and now it has my full attention.
Let's try to isolate the movie from the press for the moment. You should go see it and talk about it because it somehow feels like the worst and best time to have a Joker movie right now given the current political and social climate. You should watch it and enjoy it and be critical about it. For me, Joker is a well put together film with a gorgeous presentation in IMAX and 70mm (if you can seek that out). The art production, costuming, sound design, score, editing, cinematography, and performances are top notch and highly immersive with Joaquin Phoenix chewing up every scene of the movie. It's a movie hat helps us to understand a broken person living in a broken system. Taking elements from Scorsese classics like Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy and Alan Moore's infamous Batman comic and serving that chilling cocktail to a new generation of movie goers. It's a good idea but being a movie that's a product of its influences, the message in Joker remains relatively identical to Scorsese's 1976 opus. I don't think it has anything new to say that hasn't already been said. It's a movie that's bold in tone but at the same time feels like one giant predictable cliche. It's definitely a breath of fresh air to all the other comic book movies that have been coming out but that feeling is brief after realizing that it's been done already 4 decades ago.
Joker is going to garner some extreme and polarizing reactions from people and that's what's so fun about movies. I went into it expecting to like the technical aspects of the film and I did but was let down by the been-there-done-that premise. Someone who might've never seen Taxi Driver will have a very different reaction than mine. It's a movie that I can see becoming a modern classic down the line. It's just not a movie that would ever want to watch or think about ever again.