I dare you to anticipate Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips's JOKER (now with something that may or may not be a SPOILER)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t433PEQGErc

https://frinkiac.com/img/S04E22/411026.jpg

very rude to stick Zazie Beetz and Bill Camp in this

just... why

It's like portraying Hamlet, every actor gets a turn eventually regardless of whether anyone asked for it or not.

all i want from this movie is that the first thing joaquin does after suffering his catastrophic breakdown is put on the makeup and go straight into a full-scale busby berkeley number where he and hundreds of dancers stage an elaborate performanec for the entire running time of the steve miller band's 'the joker'

https://pics.me.me/scott-aukerman-scottaukerman-follow-scottaukerman-theres-almost-something-chilling-about-24198437.png

I came upon a subway train surrounded by Jokers during the shoot

didn't get cast as an extra alas

The most intensely challenging, daunting role that any actor can play is that of the clown who fights Batman.

— 𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖊 𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞 𝕯𝖆𝖞 (@NickPinkerton) January 22, 2016

I came upon a subway train

tmi

wokkawokkawokka.gif

tbf it would seem to nix your chance at being cast

c/d: making bad jokes in a movie about a sad clown

I’m perversely interested in this, as a fan of movies about Joaquin Phoenix’s gorgeous catastrophe of a face

yeah the weird thing is that i'd totally be down to watch a taxi driver-inspired movie about joaquin phoenix descending into madness but... does it have to be about the joker ffs

a taxi driver-inspired movie about joaquin phoenix descending into madness

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/7151VW52LPL._SL1500_.jpg

exactly!

ive no problem with this

should poll which is gonna score higher on RT: JOKER or IMPRACTICAL JOKERS

This at least has a chance of being good. Nothing about the trailer struck me as being obviously terrible.

Not gonna lie, this looks interesting.

Now where’s my gritty Crazy-Quilt biopic?

was ready to snark but I'm kind... of liking the look of this? (<3 Joaquin, what a weirdo)

This one's gonna be completely carried by Phoenix, amirite? Taking bets. Because that director...yikes.

ive no problem with this

― fremme nette his simplicitte (darraghmac), Wednesday, April 3, 2019 7:47 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

From my perspective, as a guy who hates superhero movies, I think this was made for guys like me to say "as a guy who hates superhero movies, this doesn't look bad..."

Nothing about the trailer struck me as being obviously terrible.

The digital coloring was nauseating but that problem is certainly not limited to this movie

what I like about that trailer is that it seems really off-putting and downbeat, and not necessarily in the usual crowd-pleasing twisty ways that genre films have been either of those things.

irredeemable schmuck becomes violent clown

Looks identical to the Suicide Squad trailer, but maybe that's just how these things are marketed.

From my perspective, as a guy who hates superhero movies, I think this was made for guys like me to say "as a guy who hates superhero movies, this doesn't look bad..."

The last Superman kind of did the same thing - based on the first two thirds of the trailer, it could have been a Terrence Malick ripoff.

Wow, October, how will we make it?

Todd Phillips sucks.

This at least has a chance of being good. Nothing about the trailer struck me as being obviously terrible.

Huh. I thought this entire thing looked really, really dumb.

Why has the Joker character taken on this Incel/burgeoning serial killer antihero thing lately? Fuckin sick of seeing joker memes all over the place with that 'when nice guys lose their patience the devil shivers' crap on them.

Probably because people have either actively forgotten that The Joker is the personification of chaos with no actual code of ethics or reason, or because people are actively, willingly embracing evil in an attempt to make themselves feel powerful and in control.

Between Todd Phillips as director and Joaquin Phoenix in the lead, there's at least a chance we'll get to see the Joker take a shit on the ground and throw it at people.

Dan - thats a depressingly good point.

For reasons I can't quite pin down, the vibe of the trailer felt very

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLWKQ0eU2E4

I watched the trailer with the sound off, and I'm sure it added value.

I really hope that the trailer accurately reflects what will be in this movie and that there aren't a ton of effects shots and fights against batman that aren't ready yet or something

xp trayce probably, there were some words in v.o. and they didn't seem to mean anything

gang weed has flipped joker memes into weird meta-memes so completely at this point that they're inscrutable tho

(many xps to the joker memes convo)

gang weed? is that some kind of shitposting thingy. /old

very much so

this is actually a decent synopsis of gang weed

Kind of a weird revival of Godspell, but ok.

Kinda hoping Phoenix's character is driven to madness by watching Eddie Murphy's Delirious on tv and realizing all he knows are vaudeville jokes

so why exactly is DC making movies outside the DC Extended universe featuring characters that are in its extended universe.

are they going to see how it does and then decide whether to fire Leto as the Joker in the actual EU? cos I think that's a decision that can already be made.

I came upon a subway train surrounded by Jokers during the shoot

Expecting Leto Nicholson Gorshin cameos at the end of this

Why does DC have a popular Flash TV show and then make a Justice League movie featuring someone completely different as the Flash, why does DC make 80% of the decisions it makes? My unsubstantiated guess is 'rampant late-stage syphilis' but who can say, really.

Most of their decisions can be attributed to the fundamental po’ faced absurdity DC specializes in.

the DCEU has been unofficially scrapped

they're moving forward with tonally varied standalone movies (this, Shazam, Matt Reeves' Batman solo pic) while retaining some of the things that people liked - Gal Gadot, Margot Robbie, probably Momoa too now I guess

so why exactly is DC making movies outside the DC Extended universe featuring characters that are in its extended universe.

Teen Titans GO! To The Movies and The Lego Batman Movie are the only worthwhile DC-related movies in the last quarter-century

counts back a quarter fucking century, loses track of the point while realising that he can now do so, fuck this

I have some uh intel on the finer points of this movie's plot and it sounds very very bad.

and i was so hyped :(

Posted elsewhere, here's director Todd Phillips discussing his approach to this popular character with almost eighty years of history from which to draw:

We didn’t follow anything from the comic books, which people are gonna be mad about. We just wrote our own version of where a guy like Joker might come from. That’s what was interesting to me. We’re not even doing Joker, but the story of becoming Joker. It’s about this man.

it's about, like... this man

Outrageous to just ignore the history of the jokester

What if you adapted The Wonderful Wizard of Oz into a film and just made it a movie about one of the Washington Wizards learning to play basketball in Australia, people would like that, right?

okay let's map out the process here:

1) take one of the most recognisable characters in pop culture, who has had numerous widely-acclaimed screen translations already
2) prevent yourself from telling any stories about him doing any of the supervillainous stuff he's known for
3) don't include any of his supporting cast or anyone else from the wider creative universe he functions in
4) write a story about his origins which is entirely separate from any of the multiple origins he's been given so far
5) ???
6) profit

I'm down with this approach, although I have little interest in DC cannon

that dc cannon in full

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Fe%2Fe0%2FLoosecannondcu0.jpg&f=1

xpost And, well, that's kinda the rub. The question then becomes: who the fuck is this for?

Anyone who might theoretically be interested in some wild take on a DC character with no reverence to the subject matter probably wouldn't be interested in reality because it's still a DC movie.

it doesn't even look wild, though! it's just reheated taxi driver!

Also worth noting that...they just did this a few years ago ('this' being a cinematic presentation of the Joker which didn't resemble the character in any meaningful way) and the reaction was a resounding 'nope'.

So it's more of a story about the man behind the grease paint.

It's rare that you get enough heads up on a car crash that you're actually able to set up some lawnchairs on the sidewalk, maybe get some corn poppin'. It's a nice change of pace.

'this' being a cinematic presentation of the Joker which didn't resemble the character in any meaningful way

tbf there's not really anything in the trailer which suggests this won't meaningfully resemble a plausible origin story for a character who's had numerous origin stories, it's just... who gives a shit? his origins are the least interesting thing about him ffs

What I want to see is the Joker's infancy. When did he learn to crawl? What was his favorite flavor of baby food? Did he wear disposable or cloth diapers?

one things for sure

those nappies were twisted

He was born 35 years old

they just did this a few years ago

I mean,,,,,,, yeah

Someday we’re gonna get the Joker/John Wayne Gacy blend we deserve.

I’m perversely interested in this, as a fan of movies about Joaquin Phoenix’s gorgeous catastrophe of a face

― moose; squirrel (silby), Wednesday, April 3, 2019 7:30 AM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

This remains the case. The definitive version of the Joker is from B:TAS anyway, I don't care if this movie doesn't really have anything to do with the famous clown we all love. Pure cinema.

Phoenix would be the reason to see this yeah. I didn’t clock that Philips was the director, I don’t like his work at all iirc

TBF my dour preconceptions of this film wrt Phillips at the helm have been based upon the bulk of his career but there's always a slim chance that we'll be gifted with something that hearkens back to his Hated roots.

Looking at his filmography I don’t mind some of his earlier comedies, i was thinking particularly of war dogs which I absolutely hated

Someday we’re gonna get the Joker/John Wayne Gacy blend we deserve.

Joker vs. Gacy

i'd forgotten phillips made hated, this can all be redeemed if phoenix shits on the stage of a comedy club while in full joker makeup

We’re gonna see the Joker’s dick

— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) July 11, 2018

joker’s poker

lmbo

just groaned aloud at the discovery that the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie did not come and go like 2 years ago and in fact hasn't even been released yet

— Albert Burneko (@AlbertBurneko) August 23, 2019

If the spoilers that appear downthread here are accurate (and tbh they *seem* right) I can absolutely guarantee this movie will be cited in mass shooter manifestos over the next few years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DCEUleaks/comments/bwh1gu/joker_spoilers/

It all connects. Joaquin. Wakeen. Walking. We do that with legs.

Legs. We know how to use them. ZZ Top. Beards.

Beards signify wisdom. Wise. Why's?

Why....is?

What spoilers could possibly exist?

"The Joker kills people, eventually"?

The specific formulation described would flatter the sensibilities of the kind of incel chuds who feel that the weight of the world compels them to shoot up movie theaters and schools.

the honkler meme has been going for a while now so i’m kinda amazed we’re not already inundated with joaquin-faced honklers

jokestrap

Très Pupkin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=144&v=zAGVQLHvwOY

Whoops - here's the right link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAGVQLHvwOY

just... why

― a photographer, satanist and ukip voter (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 3 April 2019 13:30 (four months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've had a sudden brilliant brainstorm: thinking of existing movies that, with no alterations except the digital superimposition of Joker makeup onto the face of a/the main character, would make for Joker movies I'd rather see.

First candidate: Heidecker in The Comedy

a serious man

Yeah I'm in the tank for this dumbass piece of shit

- Peter Travers

Yeah this still looks to be handsomely shot reactionary garbage

Zoolander
Mandy
Gran Torino
The Hitcher
Lethal Weapon
...

Kids

this looks quite a bit better than I was expecting.

enchanted

^ while I’d watch a version with Sevigny in the makeup, it would 100% work with Casper being Jokerised

xposts

no, xpost denied, you said it its done

playing the NYFF as a Special Event!

hard pass

Joker gets friendzoned

Hoping the De Niro character is actually Rupert Pupkin 39 years later, a Leno who has lost touch with his roots.

Whereas I'm hoping this is a stealth sequel to Dirty Grandpa.

Jokey Brown

Analyze Bat(man)

Mean Streets (of Gotham City, Where Batmans and Jokers Live)

Taxi Adam Driver

The Wolf of LOL Street

GoodFellols

I remain somewhat cautiously optimistic that this will maybe be not horrible

Your position requires more qualifiers before I can cosign.

It will be the better of this season’s stupid clown blockbusters at least

I am at least reasonably certain that It won't glorify an incel terrorist

It will probably be fine

this will be shit

Oh I think they’ll both be shit but this looks like it might not be boring. I’m contractually obliged to see it tho and I won’t see this

it will be bad because ive decided something aboit politics

Wait by it do you mean it or the joker

Third base!

Also when you typed aboit did you mean to type about or was that a contraction of about it and if the latter by about it did you mean about it or about joker

im trolling u

See, society is already deteriorating thanks to this movie's twisted influence

listen if online idiots start wearing clown masks instead of V for Vendetta masks because of this movie I think that's at worst a neutral impact

trying to come up with the number for what i would need to be paid to see this. i can tell you it's solidly in the triple digits.

Oh, this is beyond "you'd have to pay me to watch it" - this goes all the way to "If you speak positively about this, I will never listen to your opinions about culture again for as long as either of us lives."

Hyperbole thread is attaway

I will watch taxi joker when it arrives on hbo. It looks entertaining.

https://media3.giphy.com/media/l0HlR8p1q3JS06EaA/giphy.gif?cid=790b7611c3e2738c3996e36d8f509c41e1b4118aa3d25124&rid=giphy.gif

I'll watch the Maron / DeNiro scene when it arrives on youtube

Seems Joker robs a bank and spends the next 90 minutes trying to find the Brooklyn Queens Expressway [SPOILER].

— Michael Sicinski (@msicism) August 29, 2019

Screened at Telluride, so reviews are on the way...

idk, i am interested in this but mostly bc i’ve had a crush on Phoenix for as long as i can remember
it looks bizarre & ott & i am curious enough to maybe see it in the theater

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EDS0DS4XUAUNU-d.jpg

I don't know, it just seems so edgy and extreme and full of rage.

Ehrlich: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/08/joker-review-joaquin-phoenix-1202170236/

Dead link?

It worked fine nwo

maybe they were slammed? sure likes calling the movie dangerous.

It’s exhilarating in the most prurient of ways, a snuff film about the death of order, about the rot of a governing ethos. But from a step back, outside in the baking Venetian heat, it also may be irresponsible propaganda for the very men it pathologizes.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/08/joker-review-joaquin-phoenix

A ton of reviews out there, though all by white dudes.

even the most repulsive of mid-budget character studies can be massive hits (and Oscar contenders) so long as they’re at least tangentially related to some popular intellectual property. The next “Lost in Translation” will be about Black Widow and Howard Stark spending a weekend together at a Sokovia hotel

Reminds me of hearing an interview with Christopher Nolan circa Dark Knight about how his big influences were supposedly Friends of Eddie Coyle and French Connection and all that, and he was like "I wanted to make a movie like that, and figure out the least I could do to make it a 'superhero film'." Like, oh, so making films like that without a superhero is just completely off the table at this point then... I see.

Phoenix would be the reason to see this, it’s hilarious that this particular role has become the Everest for male actors wanting to prove their actorly intensity tho especially when you go back to the pre-ledger ones

Politics seem as bad as yer dtv garbage starring Mel Gibson (which can be quite entertaining), I guess there’s a particular objection here because of the higher budget and extended reach for a susceptible demo?

I might watch this movie with headphones on blasting brown noise.

The jokester strikes again

the clown prince of blockbuster reviews has struck again

Crowd at #Venezia76 went absolutely ballistic for #JOKER. Film is dark, sick, twisted. I’m with a crowd of fellow critics right now, running through the streets of Venice just screaming. Hollering. My legs are tired. We’ve been doing this for hours. Joaquin is an Oscar contender

— Ben Mekler (@benmekler) August 31, 2019

#JOKER will change superhero cinema forever. Sure to be controversial. The film is a literal riot. I just flipped a car with two of the guys from IndieWire. A Guardian reviewer fell down and we all kept running. I stepped on his hand. REALLY impressed with Todd Phillips

— Ben Mekler (@benmekler) August 31, 2019

Actually took me a sec to realise that was a pisstake, having seen some of the genuine tweets

Lmao Glieberman's rave for Variety is such horseshit

this is a regular thing for Mekler - within the hour Indiewire, Slashfilm, IGN and C/Net had quoted him straight-faced, and Warner Bros Worldwide Picture Marketing sent him a release form requesting permission to quote him in all media in perpetuity

lol @ those Mekler tweets

it’s hilarious that this particular role has become the Everest for male actors wanting to prove their actorly intensity tho especially when you go back to the pre-ledger ones

The most intensely challenging, daunting role that any actor can play is that of the clown who fights Batman.

— ℑ 𝔇𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔅𝔩𝔞𝔪𝔢 𝔜𝔬𝔲 (@NickPinkerton) January 22, 2016

the clown prince of blockbuster reviews

Hmmm, kinda reminds me of somebody.

And behold, the ONLY WOC review I've seen. https://t.co/Uw5DZ8aeqv

— Yolanda Machado (@SassyMamainLA) August 31, 2019

we can "joke" but the Joker is such an intense character to play that it killed Heath Ledger via the most diabolical weapon of all, method acting.

please stop making fun of the joker itt. when you laugh at the joker, you are just feeding into his insane plan.

good review

love the bathos of the editorially demanded "B+" at the end tbqh

When fight club came out the reviewer in my local paper wrote the most hilariously ott hook-line-and-sinker review, like “this film will change America forever, within 6 months there will be fight clubs like this in every city and town, everything you thought you knew is about to change.” Some of the reviews remind me of that, like “will America be able to handle the edgy truths that this film is about to redpill us all with?”

If that movie does well, I guess we can expect 'Network' starring the Riddler, 'Serpico' with Bane and 'Persona' starring Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Who says they aren't making original movies for grown ups anymore?

— Alex Winter (@Winter) September 1, 2019

excellent!!

It’s a movie from the director of The Hangover and Road Trip, featuring the guy with the lisp from Gladiator, as a character from Suicide Squad. Colour me excited

has anyone seen it yet

wonder if it might be good, like

a good movie

watch the trailer. the movie is a longer version of it.

this is one f*cked up clown

this clown is insane, and this time...he has a posse

violent j(oaquin) IS the joker

big reveal is that wacky Joe Kerr from down the block has a funny side
and you wouldn't like him when he's funny

It’s a movie from the director of The Hangover and Road Trip, featuring the guy with the lisp from Gladiator, as a character from Suicide Squad. Colour me excited

I _really_ liked two of the documentaries he made: Hated and Frat House. Old School and The Hangover are also good.

Is there any comic stuff in this? For example, Batman?

I’ll have you know Batman is very serious

y so?

I for one am excited to finally at long last learn the origins of the joker, which up to now have been kept secret and shrouded in mystery

Wait, so this is supposed to be the same character from the Batman universe? Whoa. Now you have my attention, Johnny Cash.

Holy shit I just thought this was about the Steve Miller Band song.

It's about the pompitous of love and the havoc it wrecks on the forgotten man.

and the CROWN prince of CRIME heehehehehehheehheeahahahahahahhHAHAHA!

I really think everything about this movie is enraging horseshit.

We do not need to humanize the goddamned fucking Joker.

It's just a clown.

Like literally give me a movie of Jared Leto's Joker from Suicide Squad stomping on puppies for 2.5 hours over this nonsense

At what point do the majority shareholders of WB begin questioning the wisdom of their portfolio, is a question I occasionally find myself asking

This joaker is one twisted mf and that's no 'joke'

We do not need to humanize the goddamned fucking Joker.

this is what was so good about the "Did I ever tell you how I got my scars?" bit in the Ledger movie: the first time you hear it, you're drawn in -- you want to humanize the Joker, he's there to help you do that. and then when he tells a different story the next time, you as the viewer are supposed to go "oh lol @ me, this guy is obviously a sadistic asshole, do not try to get the 'two sides to every story' bit on him"

It's just... The Joker isn't a sad character. He is not a character that should be pitied or identified with. He is not a downtrodden soul bent and misshapen by a cruel, uncaring world into a vengeful monster. He's a vengeful monster because he wants to be one. He destroys things because he can. He hurts and kills because it's fun. He is screaming, unchecked id driven by cunning and malevolence, which is why Ledger's version worked so well. Turning him into a sad little man with so many problems and setbacks and issues that he couldn't help but turn into a monster in response is not only a fundamental misunderstanding of the character; it lets him off the hook by inviting you to rationalize why he became what he is and allows you to think that it's possible to redeem him.

I don't care how Comic Book Guy I'm coming across as here because every review talking about how this movie is likely to be an incel rallying cry resonates strongly with every vibe I've picked up off this movie from the trailers and, given where the entirety of western civilization has been going over the past 5 years, I do have some actual, legitimate concerns about whether shit like this will make the world worse for me and my kids.

xp: YES EXACTLY JCLC

I've seen it suggested in several reviews that there's a satirical undercurrent to the film. The problem being that we're living in a post-satirical world filled with people who lack the critical faculties to differentiate satire from a call to arms.

xpost JCLC otm

It's funny how they pulled that "naughty liberals hunting down MAGA chuds" movie in case it was a bad influence but this is like "here you go scumbags knock yourselves out"

Every review I've read of this has not mentioned satire and in fact has said the movie's lack of a clear POV seriously undermines whatever positives the movie has.

I've seen it suggested in several reviews that there's a satirical undercurrent to the film. The problem being that we're living in a post-satirical world filled with people who lack the critical faculties to differentiate satire from a call to arms.

I mean, people took Natural Born Killers at face value; we've been in a post-satirical world for at least the entirety of my adult life

I'm just so fucking tired of comic book movies

i'm wondering what the movie-themed beer at the local brewhouse/cinema will be. a sour would be truly twisted

https://d27dyaf1itptjc.cloudfront.net/brews/joker-ipa/_brew_portrait_large/JOKER-IPA-WEBSITE_180704_171455.png?mtime=20180704171455

https://i.imgur.com/b4inf0n.jpg

A N A R C H Y G R A P H I C S

WEISS SO SERIOUS

at this point 'the joker' as a character no longer exists in any meaningful way, its a costume

just like masculinity

i have a sinking feeling that some nutbag is going to use the opening of this film to shoot up a movie theater again.

arent there celebrated graphic novels with joker origin stories just as described

and it doesn't need saying but ppl are shooting up every conceivable venue in the states regardless of a joker movie or not

Lest we forget, one of the most infamous mass shootings was at a Batman screening.

not forgetting it at all, we had a thread recently asking pretty much the explicit question. you have a guy with a history of dissociative mh issues and worrying behaviour able to get a shitload of automatic weapons and a culture where for whatever reason the desire is bubbling up more and more to utilise those weapons against massed bunch of strangers.

maybe the "whatever reason" is characters in movies, to some extent, is this now an open opinion? at what stage (and look i know its a trope sorry) are you charlton heston, but for free?

what's this about my issues

Would be pretty funny if all these lads turned up tooled up to the same cinema at the same time

People on the edge can be nudged by the slightest of breezes. The Joker movie isn't going to make a mass shooter of anyone who wasn't already careening headlong in that direction and just looking for something to blame it on.

Not that (assuming the reviews accurately reflect the film's content) releasing this thing at this point in time isn't pretty goddamn irresponsible.

I'm not of the opinion that it should be banned or anything, just that it was a bad idea in the first place

on the bright side, some kids might end up watching The King of Comedy

on the other hand, we might create a new generation of Scorsese dudes who have Taxi Driver posters on their walls

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ea/6b/d1/ea6bd1a934d27512ea7208f5bac9d9aa.jpg

ridle me this jokeman

imo he should have kept the mustache from Her and, when he dons greasepaint, covered it Cesar Romero-style

The plot twist in this is that the Joker...is all of us

Hope Maron gets in a "So who were your guys, Joker? Alice Cooper?"

Wonder if he's going to eat China in this

you cannot marry an OS, jokeHer

Yeah so I'm going to come right out and say that as a black man, I feel like things like this explicitly put a target on my back and my family's backs and I already have enough of them, thanks. This is particularly true for me in a way it is not for most, if not all, of you, and your glib nonsense can eat my entire black ass.

another thing annoying about this -- maybe a centrally annoying thing -- is that the Joker already has a canonical origin story. (fell into a vat of acid while trying to rob his employer; emerged disfigured. was already criminal. there are other origin stories, of course, the comics do that.) the "he tells the story differently" thing, I've learned this morning, also began in the comics -- Batman observes at one point that, as a comedian, the Joker uses whatever material works for him.

but in almost every version with a fleshed-out story -- in every version other than ones just narrated by the unreliable Joker -- his criminality precedes the transformation. this is important, because the very people whose existence ensures that I wouldn't see this in the theater even if I'm certain I'd enjoy Phoenix's performance a lot are people who believe that the world owes them some form of restoration for their grievances. "If people had been nicer to the Joker, he wouldn't have had to kill all those people" is a particularly dangerous thesis to be presenting in 2019. Barring some "this is the story as he's telling it; none of it is true" revelation in the film, this thing looks pretty fucking irresponsible.

Also the Taxi Driver comparisons are feeling a little off since one thing about that film is that it had people surrounding Travis Bickle who were—despite his clear social awkwardness and weird tendencies—very decent to him, but he couldn’t overcome his issues and occasionally gave into his violence before he totally snapped (he killed a guy who was sticking up a bodega, and it’s hinted that maybe he did it because he was just a bit racist maybe). He didn’t have guys bullying him.

Joker movie feels like the gritty version of the Crazy Joe Davola clown episode from Seinfeld.

(In case it doesn't read clearly enough, my read above is in support of brigadier pudding's concerns. the "imagined grievances" of the Joker as seen in the trailer & described in reviews are the grievances of entitlement, specifically white male entitlement, which has always been violent but which, under the current admin & in the current climate, is surging. A movie that lends support to the grievances of white entitlement -- that nurses "white guy gets violent revenge for not getting what he wants" narratives -- is dangerous, especially to black people in the US in 2019.)

"I wanted people to take my posts seriously so I chose the screen name 'brigadier pudding'" - me in 2019

thank you for your service to the crown

(In case it doesn't read clearly enough, my read above is in support of brigadier pudding's concerns. the "imagined grievances" of the Joker as seen in the trailer & described in reviews are the grievances of entitlement, specifically white male entitlement, which has always been violent but which, under the current admin & in the current climate, is surging. A movie that lends support to the grievances of white entitlement -- that nurses "white guy gets violent revenge for not getting what he wants" narratives -- is dangerous, especially to black people in the US in 2019.)

I do think people regardless of skin color are entitled to not getting beaten up for twirling a sign but I don't think everyone is entitled to bone Zazie Beets

I mean, people took Natural Born Killers at face value; we've been in a post-satirical world for at least the entirety of my adult life

should have cast this guy as the joker:

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZmEwZWY2MzItYWQwZi00Nzg3LTg1MTYtMWZmZWM2MTNlMmI5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjI4OTE1MTA@._V1_.jpg

arent there celebrated graphic novels with joker origin stories just as described

no afaik btw

Surprised this is going to show in 70mm at my city’s main arthouse theater (the Music Box).

Good review:

From Venice: JOKER gives us the first incel folk hero. https://t.co/9wtCTKpS9a

— Stephanie Zacharek (@szacharek) August 31, 2019

not surprised that joaquin would be involved with a bad idea like this. he's the guy who spent 2 years pretending to be retarded because ben affleck's brother asked him to.

Aren't all the criticisms that are being leveled at this equally true of Taxi Driver? I mean maybe Taxi Driver deserves the same criticisms, IDK.

I'm p sure Taxi Driver at least has a better score/soundtrack

they should reuse the version of "Mad World" from Donnie Darko in this movie, ideally in every scene

there are like 8 donnie darko threads, I don't know which one to bump to shitpost in

Aren't all the criticisms that are being leveled at this equally true of Taxi Driver? I mean maybe Taxi Driver deserves the same criticisms, IDK.

I haven't seen Taxi Driver so I don't know. I just know what the Joker is like as a character and this version of him is fundamentally flawed in a way that a story about an original character wouldn't necessarily be.

Travis iirc is lauded as a hero at the end of the movie, but that's couched in some degree of irony. In this one, as I understand that, he becomes a hero to other like-mindeds, or so all the people with joker costumes and signs and stuff in the trailer will have me believe.

Travis iirc is lauded as a hero at the end of the movie

eh common reading is that the post-shootout scenes are all delusions/in Travis' head

I'm less concerned with fealty to the Joker character and more just with not starting to label art "irresponsible" when it may have ambiguities that could be perceived as feeding into some current problematic narrative, especially based on a trailer.

tbf most art is irresponsible

I think as far as moral seriousness is concerned the guy who made Road Trip should be given the benefit of the doubt

it is an interesting exercise to try and compile a list of films (altho I suppose other media could be included as well) that contain both an explicit political agenda and the potential to incite political or violent action. I don't think it's a super long list but there are various obvious candidates - Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind spring to mind. I don't think Taxi Driver qualifies. No idea about this movie, since it looks so unbelievably fucking stupid I have no interest in seeing it.

trailer gave me kind of a "what if the main character of red dragon was the red dragon" vibe

xp: I don't know, when we watched Gone With The Wind in high school it mostly incited extreme belly laughs

oh it looks dumb as shit now but the political context of its original release was p similar to Birth of a Nation: rehabilitate the reputation of the South and its "peculiar institution", its basically an ode to white supremacy.

it is an interesting exercise to try and compile a list of films (altho I suppose other media could be included as well) that contain both an explicit political agenda and the potential to incite political or violent action. I don't think it's a super long list but there are various obvious candidates - Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind spring to mind. I don't think Taxi Driver qualifies. No idea about this movie, since it looks so unbelievably fucking stupid I have no interest in seeing it.

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 September 2019 17:56 (twelve minutes ago) link

I kind of feel this way about Death Wish, which just strikes me as pure racial revenge porn. That said, I think the actual "danger" posed by such movies is pretty limited.

as recently noted in a WaPo article about the recent lynching memorial/monument in DC:

“Gone with the Wind” repeated the story about carpetbagger misrule and black insubordination during the Reconstruction era, directing viewers to sympathize with Southern white “victims” like Scarlett O’Hara and Ashley Wilkes. Even in its Hollywood form, the story had political consequences. “Whatever sentiment there was in the South for a federal anti-lynch law,” NAACP leader Walter White supposedly said, “evaporated during the ‘Gone with the Wind’ vogue.”

As long as Americans remained enamored with a “Gone with the Wind” version of history, the real history of racial brutality, including any awareness of the true extent of racial terror lynchings, will be buried beneath a myth about the “shackles of Reconstruction.”

White really hated the movie, went after Hattie McDaniel (not very successfully afaict) as well.

ooh Death Wish is def a good candidate imo. It doesn't have any of the ambiguity or discomfort of Taxi Driver.

xp

Inspired by JOKER, here is a complete list of movies that have actually caused tangible societal harm:

✓ Birth of a Nation (revived the KKK)
✓ A Better Tomorrow (inspired Hong Kong teenagers to wear trenchcoats in the sweltering heat)
✓ Avengers (led to the Disney monopoly)

— Will Sloan, the 6ix Dad (@WillSloanEsq) September 3, 2019

xpost Would the same go for any revenge exploitation movie? Or is the target of vengeance a key distinction?

Deer Hunter reportedly inspired a spate of copycat Russian Roulette (which the movie invented?).

idk if the need to play stupid suicidal games was really a broader social trend that one could accuse Deer Hunter of exploiting and perpetuating

you could maybe argue that about Jackass tho lol

Oh, you're looking for movies that exacerbate existing conditions?

I guess? seems like irresponsibility requires there to be something already extant to be irresponsible about.

like, exploiting a developing or already existing political trend/strain

idk I'm just spitballing here

Falling Down is pretty bad

I mean, did Bernie Goetz inspire copycats?

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/2005/joe_blu-ray_/poster_joe_blu-ray01.jpg

Surely many pearls were clutched upon the release of A Clockwork Orange?

Gone With the Wind also purports to be somewhat historical, so the harm it did seems to have been in distorting history.

Joe (1970)
R | 1h 47min | Drama, Thriller | 15 July 1970 (USA)

Two men, Bill, a wealthy conservative, and Joe, a far-right factory worker, form a dangerous bond after Bill confesses to murdering his daughter's drug dealer boyfriend to Joe.

Jesus, this is literally right wing ideology in one sentence.

I haven't seen it in forever and can't remember if it's intended satirically but my instinct is no.

I don't think so. It came up a lot in Nixonland.

it sort of sounds satirical from this, but maybe just done so hamfistedly that it doesn't read satirically? I mean the fact that he accidentally kills his own daughter at the end sounds like a trite sort of moral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_(1970_film)

Surely many pearls were clutched upon the release of A Clockwork Orange?

Wot a ninny

until recently the movies i most frequently heard condemned as irresponsible were jfk and do the right thing

Caligula

JFK *is* pretty irresponsible but idk if it really had any impact on audience actions or politics. It is also hilariously awesome, obviously.

hard disagree on DTRT tho

p sure Stone's Ukraine/Putin movie is def going to qualify

Caligula led to a spate of Emperor on Emperor violence iirc

I'm just going to take a wild guess re: the demographics of those who've deemed Do the Right Thing to be irresponsible...

common thread with Birth of a Nation, Gone With the Wind, and JFK is that they are all revisionist histories that play hard and loose with facts in service to a broader ideological agenda.

do the right thing is obviously great and lee made the same correct observation re: demographics in public at the time, but it is an example of when media conversation around a movie was cast in these terms.

hard disagree on DTRT tho

Do the Right Thing was totally (and racistly) branded irresponsible.

right, I meant I disagreed with that branding

Gotcha.

the argument at the time was that there was going to be riots because of Do The Right Thing which is just so laughable on the face of it. The thinking there was that this *film* would convince black people to get irrationally angry about racism? As opposed to, like, all the actual racism?

think of all the innocent pizza parlors throughout the nation

Poor Danny Aiello

I think the question is why would we think Joker is going to inspire a bunch of basement dwelling incels from 4chan to get violent, when they're already on 4chan.

or 8chan or whatever the fuck jesus I'm a 40-year-old dad I only pretend I know what this stuff is

Warner Bros just lookin to capitalize on that sweet incel 8chan market

I think the question is why would we think Joker is going to inspire a bunch of basement dwelling incels from 4chan to get violent, when they're already on 4chan.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, September 4, 2019 12:50 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

they're already violent, yeah

point stands that it's pouring gasoline on a fire

^^^^

Another key difference between the era of Taxi Driver, Death Wish, or even Natural Born Killers, is the socially-driven motivation of the perpetrators of these present day acts. It seems like the feedback loop from other forum members and media attention/notoriety compel these people to one-up each other. These people probably do have those old movies on high rotation, though.

I would rather see Joaquin in a live action remake of Lilo and Stitch.

In what role

both

Ms Hasagawa

stich

It probably is worth noting that spree killers and sociopathic vigilantes weren't a pervasive social ill when Natural Born Killers, Taxi Driver, Death Wish, etc. were released. This might be more comparable to the JD flicks of the '50s and '60s.

Ebert called Fight Club “the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since Death Wish.”

a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden's moral philosophy

unfortunately i don't think it worked out this way

"Warner Bros just lookin to capitalize on that sweet incel 8chan market"

it worked with deadpool

a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden's moral philosophy

unfortunately i don't think it worked out this way

Sad and true.

It probably is worth noting that spree killers and sociopathic vigilantes weren't a pervasive social ill when Natural Born Killers, Taxi Driver, Death Wish, etc. were released. This might be more comparable to the JD flicks of the '50s and '60s.

Taxi Driver & Death Wish came from the height of the NY decline/Bernard Goetz/etc. landscape and American society even during Natural Born Killers was on the whole more violent and dangerous than it is today. They're as comparable to The Asphalt Jungle as Joker is.

Warner Bros just lookin to capitalize on that sweet incel 8chan market

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 4 September 2019 19:52 (yesterday) link

Honestly they’re using the same tactic Disney used for Captain Marvel, just reversing the target of the outrage.

Captain Marvel: “All these alt-right incels are furious at this movie, so you must see it now!”

Joker: “All these uptight SJWs are mad about this movie, so you must see it now!”

It’s just a given part of the publicity cycle for these things now.

ding ding ding

landscape and American society even during Natural Born Killers was on the whole more violent and dangerous than it is today

Citation needed?

I think it's true that violent crime stats have dropped since then. You're just much less likely to know your murderer today, and your murderer is much less likely to have a coherent motive for killing you specifically.

‘Hi, welcome to the future. San Dimas, California, 2019. And I'm telling you it's great here. The air is clean, the water's clean, even the dirt, it's clean. Mass shootings are way up, violent crime stats are way down. And we have more excellent water slides than any other planet we communicate with.’

http://www.followingthenerd.com/site/wp-content/uploads/bill-and-ted-rufus.jpg

fwiw Goetz shooting was 1984, a decade after "Death Wish." "Taxi Driver," on the other hand, did come at the peak "NYC, drop dead" era.

What Natural Born Killers did sort of reflect was the hyper-tabloidization of the media landscape, and social media/internet has only exacerbated that. I don't know if people are necessarily more violent now or prone to violence, but there's never been a more readily available audience for that kind of misbehavior, even if chat rooms and forums and whatnot tend to over magnify their numbers.

The thing with Bernie Goetz, also, is that we know his name because, while I'm sure there were others who did likewise, he was pretty much an outlier rather than part of a larger vigilantism epidemic.

this doesn't go back to the 80s but
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/1999-2016_Gun-related_deaths_USA.png/800px-1999-2016_Gun-related_deaths_USA.png

Death Wish is an interesting one cause the guy who wrote the novel hated the movie -

Garfield was also unhappy with the final product, calling the film "incendiary", and stated that the film's sequels are all pointless and rancid, since they advocate vigilantism, unlike his two novels, which make the opposite argument. The film led him to write a follow-up titled Death Sentence, which was published a year after the film's release.

Shakey post it per capita you dingdong

also I would argue against the "end of Taxi Driver is a fantasy" argument - Taxi Driver feels to me like a specific reaction to Death Wish, showing us a "vigilante hero", but making it clear to the audience that he's a dangerous loony. The first part of the movie puts you on Travis's side, encourages the audience to root him on. And then Scorcese pulls the rug out, panning up to him at the Palatine rally with the shades and the mohawk, making clear that no, this guy is not a hero, he's a nut with a gun. The ending is the punchline - the vigilante hero is still celebrated by the public anyway.

Taxi Driver did notably inspire one shooting

hrrm

xpost That was always my take, but it's been a while since I saw it.

here's the image shakey was probably looking for
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/FT_19.08.14_GunDeaths_2.png?resize=640,620

Pff, you can't fool me with that shoddy sharpie work.

mh's graph is much better yeah thx

The ending is the punchline - the vigilante hero is still celebrated by the public anyway

that taxi ride with Sybil at the end though, their exchange feels so unreal and so like something out of Bickle's screwy imagination

I think it’s like how early on in the film he was able to easily charm Betsy and then a series of events caused him to slide towards violence, and now he’s had a reset of sorts and he’s back to some easy level of confidence. That final mirror shot shows he remains a ticking time bomb though.

Taxi Driver did notably inspire one shooting

hrrm

too bad he missed etc

Yeah I never bought the “everything after the shootings is in Travis’ mind” reading

With all of these, I'm always reminded of Anthony Swofford's bit in Jarhead about there being no such thing as an anti-war film - the beauty and grandeur of film still stokes the flame in the people who are going out to commit violence, whatever your intellectual takeaway is supposed to be.

To come full circle, this movie looks dumber than a bag full of breast implants

Vince Gilligan practically put an "I'm a terrible person!" sign on Walter White the last season and there are still subReddits devoted to how he is the hero

I'm always reminded of Anthony Swofford's bit in Jarhead about there being no such thing as an anti-war film - the beauty and grandeur of film still stokes the flame in the people who are going out to commit violence, whatever your intellectual takeaway is supposed to be.

thought this was Coppola's line

In conclusion, Jared Leto should be killed. Then we will call it square, Hollywood

To come full circle, this movie looks dumber than a bag full of breast implants

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Thursday, 5 September 2019 17:12 (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"...or are you just pleased to see me?"

Coppola and others have probably said the same but it's a whole thing in Jarhead (memoir not movie, though I think they referenced it there) as the Marines get ready for deployment, feasting on a steady diet of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.

Truffaut - "I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war."

I think war films from the POV of the losing side in a pointless conflict are arguably much less valorizing of the experience as a glorious one but even then the excitement factor can be present and if the usually-doomed characters go out heroically then it does glorify things.

I thought The Pacific on HBO was fairly good at depicting the terror and grisliness and inhumanity of war, and it wasn’t “rousing” in the usual sense.

Come and See is a horrific experience but it’s another type of war film entirely, from the POV of those on the receiving end of the invading German army.

I read some Coppola thing recently where this came up - his argument was that a real anti-war film would just be a rhapsodic depiction of average people living peaceful, happy lives

a true anti joker movie would just be pee wees big adventure

Apocalypse Now led to a whole generation of “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning” guys at parties.

this looks dope but i'm scared to see it in a theater

Putting aside whether the movie is actually any good or not, I found this interesting
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/joker-joaquin-phoenix-todd-phillips-venice-dc-a9088596.html

The thesis seems to suggest that if you want to make a mid-budget "serious" picture nowadays, you'd better find a superficial way to graft in a franchise superhero.

Truffaut - "I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war."

― Screamin' Jay Gould (The Yellow Kid), Thursday, September 5, 2019 12:39 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is a great quote. Similar seems to apply to mafia flicks and movies about "wall street greed." Also much the same effect with Glengarry Glen Ross inspiring a generation of asshole salesmen.

There's a reason why so many people missed the satire of "Starship Troopers."

I read some Coppola thing recently where this came up - his argument was that a real anti-war film would just be a rhapsodic depiction of average people living peaceful, happy lives

― Οὖτις, Thursday, September 5, 2019 12:48 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otfm

It is to my surprise, then, that Coppola hesitates to call the film “anti-war”. “No one wants to make a pro-war film, everyone wants to make an anti-war film,” he says. “But an anti-war film, I always thought, should be like [Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 post-second world war drama] The Burmese Harp – something filled with love and peace and tranquillity and happiness. It shouldn’t have sequences of violence that inspire a lust for violence. Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people. That’s not anti-war.”

He pitches his own alternative, by way of counter example: “I always thought the perfect anti-war film would be a story in Iraq about a family who were going to have their daughter be married, and different relatives were going to come to the wedding. The people manage to come, maybe there’d be some dangers, but no one would get blown up, nobody would get hurt. They would dance at the wedding. That would be an anti-war film. An anti-war film cannot glorify war, and Apocalypse Now arguably does. Certain sequences have been used to rev up people to be warlike.”

if you want to make a mid-budget "serious" picture nowadays, you'd better find a superficial way to graft in a franchise superhero.

Audiences at “Bonnie and Clyde” are not given a simple, secure basis for identification; they are made to feel but are not told how to feel. “Bonnie and Clyde” is not a serious melodrama involving us in the plight of the innocent but a movie that assumes—as William Wellman did in 1931 when he made “The Public Enemy,” with James Cagney as a smart, cocky, mean little crook—that we don’t need to pretend we’re interested only in the falsely accused, as if real criminals had no connection with us. There wouldn’t be the popular excitement there is about outlaws if we didn’t all suspect that—in some cases, at least—gangsters must take pleasure in the profits and glory of a life of crime. Outlaws wouldn’t become legendary figures if we didn’t suspect that there’s more to crime than the social workers’ case studies may show. And though what we’ve always been told will happen to them—that they’ll come to a bad end—does seem to happen, some part of us wants to believe in the tiny possibility that they can get away with it. Is that really so terrible? Yet when it comes to movies people get nervous about acknowledging that there must be some fun in crime (though the gleam in Cagney’s eye told its own story). “Bonnie and Clyde” shows the fun but uses it, too, milking comedy out of the banality and conventionality of that fun. What looks ludicrous in this movie isn’t merely ludicrous, and after we have laughed at ignorance and helplessness and emptiness and stupidity and idiotic deviltry, the laughs keep sticking in our throats, because what’s funny isn’t only funny.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/10/21/bonnie-and-clyde

I tried looking for guidance on this going back further than Taxi Driver, and re-reading Pauline Kael's review of 'Bonny and Clyde'. A fantastic piece if you ask me, but (from 1968!) very much of its time. The parallel I thought I'd find about how bad an influence it was drew a blank, I did not find it at all. Because 1968 is not 2019. And 'Joker' is no 'Bonny and Clyde'. Kael's musings on America make me feel how much America and the world has changed. That there was a time when "some part of us wants to believe in the tiny possibility that they can get away with it. Is that really so terrible?" was a daring stance that needed to be expressed, whereas now it's the opposite. And yes, that is really terrible. Truth has surpassed fiction, and where Kael attributed liberation to going full "stop worrying and love the bomb", against the current at the time, nowadays it's the other way around.

But people also feel uncomfortable about the violence, and here I think they’re wrong. That is to say, they should feel uncomfortable, but this isn’t an argument against the movie. Only a few years ago, a good director would have suggested the violence obliquely, with reaction shots (like the famous one in “The Golden Coach,” when we see a whole bullfight reflected in Anna Magnani’s face), and death might have been symbolized by a light going out, or stylized, with blood and wounds kept to a minimum. In many ways, this method is more effective; we feel the violence more because so much is left to our imaginations. But the whole point of “Bonnie and Clyde” is to rub our noses in it, to make us pay our dues for laughing. The dirty reality of death—not suggestions but blood and holes—is necessary.

This is both beautiful and of a completely different time. How 'far' we've come. Rubbing our noses in violence has lost all affect.

So, yeah, I tried but this really is not helpful at all. Not at trying to find a historic parallel, at least. But it is realising things have turned upside down in fifty years. And do read Kael's review, it's worth the while, regardless.

There's a reason why so many people missed the satire of "Starship Troopers."

Starship Troopers was incredible

robocop and starship troopers basically laid out the blueprint for America in 2019

otm x2

Golden Lion

I'm already dreading hearing about this film for the next six months

Starship Troopers was incredible

yes

I'm already dreading hearing about this film for the next six months

yes

I'm already dreading hearing about this film for the next six months

Glad we’re already on it

lol

Thanks, Lucretia Martel

holy fucking shit it won the golden lion

Wow

Eh, Venice is the mens club of the arthouse world. Roman Polanski won runner up award. Anyone who is surprised by this hasn't paying attention the last few years.

Their last two winners sucked so this actually makes sense

Yeah, it's become another launchpad for the Oscars + an extremely concentrated dose of Italian misogyny. This is where an attendee walked the red carpet wearing a shirt with pro-Weinstein slogans a few years back.

"You can't prove he did it!"

had no idea Martel was a hardcore misogynist!

ie stfu Fred

Cameron Bailey asked Robert De Niro a long, thoughtful question about echoes of De Niro’s past work in Joker, and got such an iconically disinterested shrug from De Niro in response that someone in the balcony yelled “Legend!” #TIFF19

— Sam Adams (@SamuelAAdams) September 10, 2019

I thought that was Tim Curry.

the last couple of decades of de niro’s career has been one long disinterested shrug tbh

apart from bad grandpa obv

Ahem DIRTY Grandpa

Came up with a rhyme to help me remember pic.twitter.com/W4nlszvkbM

— Nick Wiger (@nickwiger) June 25, 2017

Lol

Ahem DIRTY Grandpa

always knew that rhyme would come in handy

I hope I live long enough to see the release of the inevitable Shitty Grandpa.

starring TJ Miller

now more than ever we feel Olivier's loss

Lord, get ready for a sea of these masks this Halloween

Also apparently there is a movie coming out called The Death of Dick Long

Standing O at TIFF

The entire phenomenon around this movie is making me go full Comic Book Guy

everyone should be testing how “academy award winner todd phillips” sounds out loud just so we’re all prepared

— Nick Usen (@nickusen) September 10, 2019

I'm trying to think of another fictional character so thoroughly irredeemable that this type of treatment would enrage me as much and I am coming up blank. It's partially due to the nature of the Joker as an amoral agent of chaos; most other characters are written in such a manner that there is shade and ambiguity to their motivations and you could see their actions charting a spectrum that swings from "good" to "evil" but that is emphatically not the Joker. He represents the exact opposite of Batman's grim order; gleeful chaos. He exists to deconstruct; it's what fuels him. He's not tortured by what he does; he revels in it. A story where the Joker is yearning for acceptance and fighting against his destructive impulses is not a story about the Joker. That struggle doesn't exist and placing it on that character fundamentally misunderstands everything about him.

I would have much less of a problem if Phoenix's "Joker" was a copycat who used the actual Joker as a conduit for his psychosis.

the Joker is very important to the recovery community

xp DJP
SPOILERS!!!

...

I heard that's the case

okay lol, then I am not nearly as mad about this movie as I have been assuming that's true

So is this is a trend, then? Directors of dopey Hollywood comedies going Academy Award friendly? Adam McKay, Peter Farrelly, Todd fucking Phillips ...

Todd Phillips going "serious" isn't nearly as much of a surprise at the Farrelly brothers. he's made dramas. and The Hangover is great (...iirc)

It’s like how in catwoman Halle Berry is not the same catwoman from the batman movies but rather one of many catwomen that exist in that world xps

Man I hated war dogs

yes. terrible. miles teller is horrendous

The fact that this guy got his start with a GG Allin documentary has forever shaded my view of the rest of his filmography. I won’t say positively or negatively, but yeah. Penelope Spheeris thing, just you know, maybe a shittier version.

Oh man I didn’t know he did a Phish documentary too lol

Joker is a failed standup comic in this. C'mon, those guys don't do anything, take it from me.

but comedians are the philosopher kings of our time

Picturing a variation of this in which a schlubby Joker just goes around pulling his thing out and asking people if it's okay for him to jerk off in front of them.

youre thinking of the flash

heyo

The only good thing that can come of this movie is its inevitable On Cinema review.

this looks like a five bagger

"like the more recent james bond movies we get into the joker's origins, except instead of a spy he's a criminal mastermind. he'd be a formidable foe for my character in decker, kington, who's a mastermind of codes" it writes itself

“Next up we’ve got ‘The Joker’ starring Joker... uh, Jack... Joking Phoenix”

Stand-up comedy was the thing that people with little artistic talent looking for quick fame veered towards in the 80s. It was a perfect fit for The king of comedy. Today the thing would probably be youtube stardom. but i guess that wouldn't get a spooky clown movie any prestige.

skimmed the screenplay today and loooooool

Stand-up comedy was the thing that people with little artistic talent looking for quick fame veered towards in the 80s.

this has always happened and is arguably worse today

honestly just rewatch []Observe and Report[] or The Comedy

triple feature

Todd Phillips going "serious" isn't nearly as much of a surprise at the Farrelly brothers. he's made dramas. and The Hangover is great (...iirc)

Nah, the first Hangover - which Phillips, significantly, didn't write - is a very good low comedy.

(#2 is atrocious, Road Trip and Old School each have a couple of well-done set pieces but are basically reprehensible. never heard of War Dogs until this post!)
(several of the Farrelly bros films are good-ish, feel distinctly the work of specific authors, and their casting of differently-abled actors in "normal" roles ameliorates some of their other queasiness. it's only the writer of bad serious novels that directed the bad serious film from other ppl's screenplay though.)

yeah most of his comedies are good

Can't remember laughing once during any of the Hangover movies tbh.

hopefully JOKER will make up for that

I love Road Trip just because of one line "It's supposed to be a challenge, that's why they call it a shortcut. If it was easy it would just be the way."

Road Trip is so mechanically, cynically bad.

And all kinds of bad -ists, iirc.

I love Road Trip just because of one line "It's supposed to be a challenge, that's why they call it a shortcut. If it was easy it would just be the way."

“Next up we’ve got ‘The Joker’ starring Joker... uh, Jack... Joking Phoenix”

Joe... Jo-Jack... Jo ack... Phone Jack

Jaw-kin Penis...uh, Fenis. Phoenix.

Joke phone I X

Are those Cam'ron lyrics

debt to a certain Scorsese film looks obscene

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review-joker-is-a-punishingly-self-serious-mishmash-of-borrowed-parts/

so i here this has a subway scene based on bernie goetz but instead of black kids it's wall street execs harassing him

because the bad thing about the 1% is that they are always riding public transport and harassing the proles on them

Well, back in the early '80s there were no taxis or limousines, so rich and poor alike mingled freely on the subways. It was all part of the vibrant tapestry of city life, as depicted in at least three of Patti Smith's memoirs.

Was reading Ebert's review of Todd Phillips's Due Date, which sounds like a similar "homage to"/steal from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.

the Todd Phillips film i saw was a bootleg video of Frat House when i was in college iirc -- it was a very "serious" film about dumb dudes drinking beer and slapping the filmmakers across the face.

An Oscar for that film would rile up the MCU creators and its fans and that in itself might be worth it.

That is a very hot + fresh + good take.

Lol It would just mean that instead of three relatively light Marvel movies a year we would suddenly get a spate of "dark" Marvel movies.

yeah, be careful what you wish for
this winter... Marvel Dark presents... STRIKEFORCE MORITURI
actually that would be dope
MODOK UNBOUND
no that would be dope too
KA ZAR and HOWARD THE DUCK in
actually, let's try this

I assume a dark Howard the Duck would involve him confronting the evil child molester from the first movie for extra #wokeness

cannot wait for tim burtons howard the duck to reveal that his daddy wanted him to be an accountant and thats why hes so sad now

has anyone seen this movie btw

is it any good

fwiw I haven't seen any reviews calling it bad, so ...

oh it's bad alright... bad to the bone... THE FUNNY BONE HAHAHAHAHAHAHEEEHEEEHEE IT'S JOKER TIME!

fwiw I haven't seen any reviews calling it bad, so ...

David Edelstein says "it panders to selfish, small-minded feelings of resentment and as such is profoundly boring. It’s a one-joke movie"..."monotonous, unpleasant, and morally blech"..."As Hannah Arendt saw banality in the supposed evil of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, I see in Joker an attempt to elevate nerdy revenge to the plane of myth."

Glenn Kenny says "Fleck’s alienation in the early scenes evokes Travis Bickle’s, but this movie is too chicken-livered to give Fleck Bickle’s racism"..."As social commentary, “Joker” is pernicious garbage...The final minutes, which will move any sentient viewer to mutter “would you just pick a goddamn ending and stick to it?” are likely an indication of what kind of mess we would have had on our hands had Phillips been left entirely to his own cynical incoherent devices for the entire runtime."

Stephanie Zacharek says "the aggressive and possibly irresponsible idiocy of Joker overall is [Phillips'] alone to answer for. Phillips may want us to think he’s giving us a movie all about the emptiness of our culture, but really, he’s just offering a prime example of it"..."Joker — which was written by Phillips and Scott Silver — doesn’t have a plot; it’s more like a bunch of reaction GIFs strung together"..."Joker is dark only in a stupidly adolescent way, but it wants us to think it’s imparting subtle political or cultural wisdom."

oh, I've heard plenty of criticisms. But those reviews, were they entirely negative, or they did they just highlight things they didn't like that?

Reading those blurbs I get a sense they didn't like the film.

Amid calling it monotonous, unpleasant, boring, aggressively idiotic and stupidly adolescent, they did say that it had some positive aspects, yes. Feel better now?

Critics man, just like those chad finance bros kicking the shit of the poor Joker when he is down on his knees. Can't a film have his dignity.

I'll be really curious, once all the reviews show up, how the average, well, averages out.

did any of them say anything about the movie as opposed to whether they agreed with whatever theyre disagreeing is the point of the movie

Critics man, just like those chad finance bros kicking the shit of the poor Joker when he is down on his knees. Can't a film have his dignity.

By some corners you mean the Jordan Peterson subreddit? Yeah I think so too.

otm

how the average, well, averages out.

given that the average American movie critic is a tasteless shithead

from the Uhlich review that Morbs posted:

Fleck is a skeleton-thin jester who works the sidewalks and hospital wards while dreaming of stand-up stardom, and he gets viciously beat up by a group of delinquents in the film’s first scene. As he lays bleeding in a scum-soaked alley, the prop flower on his lapel drips out a pathetic, pissy stream of water. It would be funny if the direction and framing wasn’t so arrogantly humorless.

“This is serious,” Phillips seems to be saying, as if he’s prosaically altered the anarchic mantra (“Why so serious?!?”) of Heath Ledger’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Fleck, at one of his many low points, does something similar to the “Don’t Forget to Laugh” sign in his workplace, blacking out “Forget to” with a marker so that it now reads “Don’t Laugh.” His action sums up Joker itself, which is made almost entirely out of the preexisting parts of other films, the connections reworked just enough to avoid outright plagiarism, and the results then slathered in a patina of paranoiac solemnity.

ya but is it any good I'm just trying to find that out

i get that many people who get paid to write about what they think movies ought to have done or meant seem to have written snippets here and there about what they object to in the message or politics of this effort

but is it any good is it a good movie

just want it sorted yknow

i hear yiz all that its awful that it was made, like.

but i mean some of you didnt even love watchmen ffs

1. Nobody’s seen it
2. No

i'm holding out for Todd Phillips's's's Story of the Eye

ty wins

Hopefully it will run in a theater at some point that is not too far out of the way for one of us to see and report back.

I got access to the script via a hub thing and yeah fuck ever seeing this

Waiting for the surprise Beyonce soundtrack drop.

Hub thing, looking for big fun

I would have much less of a problem if Phoenix's "Joker" was a copycat who used the actual Joker as a conduit for his psychosis.

The first hour and a half depict a sullen and resentful comedian becoming increasingly obsessed with the real Joker. He learns everything he can, starts a youtube channel, starts to mimic his voice and mannerisms, has his channel demonetized, then goes on stage and delivers a Louis CK set as the Joker. Instead of Robert De Niro as Murray Franklin, it's Joe Rogan as Joe Rogan. After appearing on Joe Rogan our comedian decides that he is the Joker and that he's going to turn everyone in Gotham City into little Jokers. Then in the last ten minutes, while out clowning around he encounters the real Joker who kills him and walks away laughing. THE END. Think Single White Female but with more Jokers and no women.

might want to spoiler that eh

That is unironically a much-better sounding synopsis than the actual movie

A loser that posts to 4chan and lives with a random old lady he calls mother puts on makeup and starts stabbing people.

Runs for office one year later

have we been the victims of a crul joaq

lol

My brain just conjured an image of Phoenix in full I'm Still Here mode taking a page from Cesar Romero and slathering his Joker makeup on over a massive beard and heck maybe just right atop that pair of shades as well and now I'm having a very difficult time stifling my laughter rn.

might want to spoiler that eh

― theRZA the JZA and the NDB (darraghmac), 12. september 2019 16:19 (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, but it's already finished :(

first half hour, joaquin phoenix is john ochre, a frustrated borderline case trying to get a career off the ground as a makeup artist

as he suffers rejection after rejection at his department store stand, he gradually applies more and more greasepaint to stand out more from the other sellers (highlight of this act, a melancholy "my time of day" type musical number as he waltzes from one area of the store to the next after closing time with a mannequin who will be heavily featured in planned sequels)

second hour, heavily improvised joaquin discussion piece about idk patch-testing, the importance of a proper cleansing routine and moisturiser with the correct spf for you, nightmarish late-night tv shop footage aesthetic as the desperation pf our hero-anti-hero grows, act to close with a violent sequence of our hero horribly mauled in black friday crowds of dorises and mabels

third act is a metamorphosis reveal, our jochre, scarred inside and out by LATE CAPITALISM nurses a deep hatred of otherwsise nice old ladies who ignore queueing etiquette and hatches plans to blow up a bingo hall

Joaquin Phoenix as the failed mime who bungles his chance to perform a 75 hour-long performance piece, The Joker, at PS1. As the movie ends he's sitting on a rock in Central Park with his hand in his pants swigging from a paper bag while the theme from Arthur plays in the background.

an empty paper bag, that drifts away as we follow it into the night sky......until it takes the shape of

a joke

can't wait for the climactic scene where Phoenix stares into the camera and says "Joker? I hardly even know 'er! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

can't wait for the other climactic scene when we finally discover what "the pompatus of love" means

its a wiener iirc

There's an embargo in effect, but I hear this is about a guy that snaps and goes on a spree of knocking on doors then running away.

disgusting

can't wait for the climactic scene where Phoenix stares into the camera and says "Joker? I hardly even know 'er! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

― brigadier pudding (DJP), Thursday, 12 September 2019 15:00 (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk i just can't see phoenix having the chops for this tbh

This is two hours on the nose which is too bad, if it were longer I would’ve had a reason to decide not to see it after all

Our hero (played by Joaquin Phoenix) is an obscure failed comedian who now hosts a podcast interviewing other comedians. As his resentment about his career grows, he becomes obsessed with getting cast in a rumored upcoming Joker film being made by Todd Phillips. When he discovers that famous Hollywood actor Joaquin Phoenix has gotten the role instead of him, he lures Joaquin (played by Marc Maron) to his home under the pretense of doing a podcast interview and murders him. Our hero shows up to the Joker film set on the first day of shooting in full costume and makeup as Joaquin-as-the-Joker, convinces everyone that he is Joaquin 'getting really Method' and makes the film, fooling everyone and delivering a genius performance that takes film acting to new heights of artistry. The film gets finished, goes to Venice and wins the Golden Lion. When our hero is onstage with Todd Phillips accepting the award, GG Allin and a crew of frat guys burst into the hall and kill everyone with flamethrowers.

Mentored by a circus vet (Wallace Shawn)...

My Dinner With The Joker — "But, Wally, don't you see that comfort can be dangerous? I mean, you like to be comfortable and I like to be comfortable too, but comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquility!"

yes OEO, yes

Wait wait wait, can anyone confirm that when Joaquin is beaten in this movie he is beaten with a BAT? Because do u see? The seeds of animosity, they are planted.

Is Jason Bateman in this? Because ...

His girlfriend Laura is beaten with a bat. Minutes later he sees a picture of her and Christopher Cross's "Think of Laura" plays

Then everyone in town is killed

Showdown in the Louisville Slugger museum.

end credits: "Killing in the Name of" over a burning american flag

citizen kane but with bats intead of newspapers and jokes instead of silent resentments

Removing bookmark from this thread until I see this masterpiece

You mean Batsterpiece

flappy bird leaves thread

flappy bat appears moments later, posts about bats, leaves with dramatic flourish

flappy bird enters thread all oh whattidi miss guys

lol this is getting a 70mm release

I'm sure Joker fanboys are all gonna 70mm release in their seats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlCF7XJxlpE

^kind of how i envision "joker fans"

they should screen it in 10cc

Is it really such a crime
For a guy to spend his time
At the local dance at Arkham Asylum?

Dorm room poster ass marathon. https://t.co/LSqhmRjLXa

— 🎃🍂Gourd Man Gets Paid🍂🎃 (@c0mmunicants) September 12, 2019

going to cringingly admit I had a clockwork orange poster my first semester of college

tick.jfa

Such equivocation in the age of Trump is frankly moral cowardice, and I'd honestly have more respect for Joker if it were wholeheartedly the fascist daydream some are dreading. The guy who should've directed this is S. Craig Zahler.

― Simon H., Thursday, April 4, 2019 12:27 AM (five months ago)

although the offscreen nature of this relationship (most of Beetz's role has been obviously and unforgivably left on the cutting-room floor)

lol i somehow didn't have a clockwork orange poster, I did have a t-shirt tho. Strange to say, I wasn't as keen on real life violent street gangs

ME: "Welly well well, if it isn't the vonny bastard himself old billyboy and his droogs, prepare for a razdrazzing if any yarbles thou hast"

blank eyed guy in reebok classics: [chins me]

ME: [Crumples in to foetal position, whimpers]

It's douchey connotations aside, the clockwork orange poster is some pretty A+ graphic design IMO

lol Bananaman

Edelstein's review has some mild spoilers but is good and thorough.

hence the gimmick casting of De Niro, who doesn’t seem like a natural talk-show host

LOL, understatement of the year

It's douchey connotations aside, the clockwork orange poster is some pretty A+ graphic design IMO

― icy bike chain rain (zchyrs), Monday, September 16, 2019 6:27 AM (two hours ago)

Oh, I wish I had that. It was some generic design with a still from the movie and some text below. Typical college poster sale junk

I wonder if such poster sales still exist -- a bunch of dodgy, probably unlicensed designs sold by a vendor on campus in the first couple weeks of classes, with the idea that all the product was meant purely for dorm room walls. I'm sure there's some greeeeeeat Joker posters.

i can assure you that they do

That Edelstein review hits all the right notes, imo.

I'd forgotten until just now that I def had a Taxi Driver poster up in my room at some point during my teen years, I'm kind of astonished in hindsight that my parents never considered it a red flag, but I feel like they probably never saw the movie so maybe they didn't know what it was

The only poster I definitely remember having on my dorm wall was the Pussy Galore one that I got with the "Right Now" album because I have always been one cool mothercuddler

I think the problem with edgy teenage behavior in 2019 isn't that it exists -- it always has -- but that it's become the default tone in online interactions. When transgression becomes a norm, it loses all meaning. Teen angst about a world that doesn't understand you, that you need to challenge, only goes so far.

It's mostly a manifestation of insecurity and the realization you lack the skills to cope out in the world as an adult. It's not the world doing you wrong, it's the realization you have no idea how to deal with the world and idolizing antiheroes and outcasts is a coping mechanism.

lol NV, that reminds me of seeing Jon Spencer live a few weeks ago. he seemed paranoid that one of the posters over the merch table was going to fall down and was leaning over to affix roughly a dozen pieces of tape to make sure it stayed up

something about the boring insecurities of adulthood, posters, etc etc