Current Events > Saw Joker last night. It was alright - didn't love it, didn't hate it (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

80/80

It was a bit long, and the advertising hype wore off because my town only started screening it on the 1st of November. But this is exactly what DC should have been doing from the start.

Joaquin Phoenix did a great job, especially with the laugh. The difference between the Fleck laugh and the Joker laugh was particularly good - the miserable, mirthless laugh of Fleck honest to god changed when he started killing people. That's good acting. And he looked so fucking sick, Christ.

The Sophie twist was spoiled by one of my friends, which sucked. But I liked how they handled that. I actually asked myself who was taking care of her daughter while she was out with Arthur, and it was answered later in the movie - she wasn't actually out with him.

I was a bit bored by the end of the movie though. It was a bit too long, but I didn't mind holding on for a while. I was hoping for a bit more action - everything from the chase to the talk show was solid. I walked into the movie hoping for a more personal, slow-paced movie, but by the end I was hoping for a reprieve from the movie's relentless misery.

I get that the movie was meant to be awkward as fuck, but the laughing scenes really tested my patience. I get that it was the movie's intent, but it was legitimately hard to sit through them. I also had a hard time whenever Arthur acted like a nutcase, like with the Arkham hospital clerk.

One thing I really liked about this Joker was the influences behind it. Joaquin Phoenix's Joker undeniably had elements of Cesar Romero's portrayal, but it also had strong shades of the Heath Ledger interpretation. The design was really strong. Can you believe they went with that grill-wearing chud Joker in Suicide Squad? They really corrected course with this movie.

Overall, I liked Joker. I didn't love it like I thought I would, but it was very well made and it was a welcome breath of fresh air. The closest parallel to this movie would be Logan, and Logan was undoubtedly a better movie in its franchise - but saying that, Joker was a great experiment in that style, and I'm honestly just glad that something like this exists after BvS, Suicide Squad and Justice League. This movie felt like it was set in a real, cohesive reality, not a puppet show by some kid with a bunch of hokey action figures their mother bought from the flea market.

Prior DC movies from Man of Steel onwards feel like movies in that everything about them feels manufactured by a single defining movie formula. You could see the seams - things happened at certain parts of the movie because it's conventional knowledge that those sorts of things are meant to happen at that part of the movie. Oh no, Steppenwolf is going to get what he wants and we can't stop him! Oh no, Zodd has his terraformers going and has successfully fooled Superman! Joker feels like a movie in the sense that it has a story to tell.

Trying to copy Marvel has been Warner Bros.' biggest mistake this last decade, because everything they turned out was a lifeless husk that existed to check boxes on a form. Joker is a new direction, and I'm glad to see it. With Joker and Titans, it feels like DC is getting back on top - and I'm glad to see that, instead of pumping out turd after turd to chase stale trends. Even then, Joker feels like a direct response to the R-rated superhero movie trend - but the difference between this attempt at following a trend and all of their other attempts is that this attempt was actually fucking interesting and watchable.
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