Joker Review & Discussion

I really, really want to like Joker. I want to join in with the groups of friends and public discussion I’ve seen that has been unabashedly praising this movie, but I just can’t. This movie is so deeply problematic that I can’t bring myself to recommend anyone see it.

"Send in the clowns," the movie says, letting Todd Phillips take the realm.

I’ve previously stated that I don’t like giving spoilers in my reviews if I can avoid it. Generally, my goal is to encourage people to go and see a movie for themselves. But when it comes to this mess, I’m willing to make an exception to spare all of you. I will open with a spoiler-free section to discuss my general problems if you’re still on the fence, but my honest take away from this movie is you should not go out and support it, and you’ll see why when I hammer this thing apart in depth.

…alright, let’s get into this.

So, Joker is Todd Philipp’s 2019 reimagining of the classic Batman villain, played here by the legendary Joaquin Phoenix. The initial news for this movie absolutely stoked me. The idea, principally, was a fresh take on the Clown Prince of Crime, separate from any existing cinematic universe or any specific comic background. In a post-Endgame, this was beyond exciting. With Marvel, we’ve essentially seen a cinematic universe begin and end successfully. And it seems that studios are starting to back away from just repeating the same model, and are looking to do new and interesting things. Marvel is included in that; the slate for Phase 4 includes some weird outliers and risky prospects. Joker seemed to be in a lot of the same vein. After the lukewarm reception to Justice League, it seems that DC is doubling down on weird single-installment titles, which I am all for. I like the idea of stepping away from the formula Marvel perfected and into bizarre, artistic visions from developed directors. Joker offered just that, a Scorsese-influenced crime piece interested more in psychology and social structures than grand heroics within tight three-act regulations.

Arthur Fleck trying to learn what 'funny' is seems oddly reflective of the movie as a whole

For all of these reasons, Joker was a movie that piqued my interest from the very beginning. Naturally, I kept a close eye on it. I raved about to anyone who would listen. Imagine my surprise when Joker premiered at the Venice Film Festival – to lukewarm response. A few people were commenting on the movie being ‘transgressive’ and the like, but a lot of the people I followed weren’t really interested in it. ‘Alright,’ I figured. ‘That’s them, I’ll see it for myself.’ Then the weeks passed by, and director Todd Phillips went to the internet to complain about society. His big statement was to Variety, where he complained that he felt he couldn’t make comedies like The Hangover anymore, because ‘woke culture’ meant his content wouldn’t be accepted as ‘funny’ anymore. This statement riled a lot of people, with the general sentiment being along the lines of: you can be funny without being blatantly offensive, and later this month a satire about Hitler is coming out so… maybe Phillips just isn’t as funny as he thinks he is? His statements continued, and a lot of people began to temper their anticipation of the movie. Not me, however. I said to myself, ‘you know what, maybe the director is just crazy. The movie can still be good apart from his opinions.’ Lastly, the news picked up on the threat of incel culture surrounding this movie. After the Aurora, Colorado shooting in 2012 at the screening of The Dark Knight Rises, there’s been a lot of discussion of self-repressed people latching on to the iconography of the more sympathetic Joker in this movie, and reacting violently. The news seemed desperate for something to happen. Antipathy for the movie was reaching a fever-pit, but I was still hopeful. While most of my major critics were saying that this movie wasn’t really that exciting or interesting, I held my ground. I wanted to see Joker, and I still had hope for it to be the weird, art-film comic book movie I was hoping for.

Joker fulfilled my expectations, but in the same sort of way hiring a teenager to paint your house fulfills your expectations. Like, the job got done, the house got painted, and pretty well exactly how you wanted, but what the heck happened.

"All I have are negative thoughts" - Me, trying to talk about my feelings on this movie

Part of the reason I’m so unconcerned with spoilers in this movie is because every damn thing is so predictable. After the first twenty minutes, the movie gives you all the information you need to figure out how the next hour and a half will go, almost beat-for-beat. It’s exactly the movie you expect it to be, and you wish it were more. We’ll get to spoilers later, I just feel the need to iterate how dully straightforward this movie is. If you think something will happen, it probably will, and in the least interesting way possible. As a whole, Joker plays out like a lesser version of all of its influences. If you want to watch a movie about the psychology of a villain, watch Taxi Driver or Nightcrawler or something. If Joker was just a lesser attempt to be artistic, that would be one thing. But unlike those other movies, I can’t help but get the sense that Todd Phillips wants us to agree with the Joker. A climactic scene has Joker giving a speech that basically echoes all of the backward things Phillips has been ranting for the past month. More often than not, the film celebrates his violence rather than condemns it. It sees him as a justified social revolutionary rather than an understandable yet evil criminal scorned by the world. In order to get him to that point, the movie reduces all opposing forces – the rich, the police, etc. – to braindead caricatures. Rather than being the gritty, realistic drama it promised, Joker uses strawmen to try to justify the violence of its main character and agree with his absurd attempt at social commentary. This is all irksome, but not as irksome as the fact that Joker throws the mentally ill under the bus as well. All the mentally ill in this movie are criminal and insane, destined towards violence. And I could go on and on with all the disgusting things this movie does. It reduces its entire female cast to either objects of attraction or burdens of society. It reduces the poor to angry, savage masses waiting for the right spark to ignite into war. Everything about it is reductive, and nowhere near the biting social commentary it promises to be. Joker is tiredly familiar and exhaustingly outdated.

A caption of me desperately wanting to enjoy this movie... the jokes here really write themselves.

My final non-spoiler take is this: This movie isn’t worth it. See something better. Joaquin Phoenix gives an incredible performance, and the cinematography is gorgeous, but that’s legitimately all this movie has to offer. There are other movies that tackle the same themes as Joker without having to create reductive strawmen arguments, and without trying to make you believe that its psychotic protagonist is right about society.

But I’m not satisfied with vague critiques when it comes to this movie. Because after only talking about this movie with friends for an hour or so, I was already tired of this movie, and I want this to be my final word on the subject. So, strap in, we’re going deep. Spoilers are free game beyond this point.

This cinematography is so much prettier than anything that's come out of the MCU. It deserves a better movie.

The movie is vaguely framed around Arthur Fleck, ‘Joker,’ reflecting on his crimes. If this were Mark Hammill, this framing device could provide some fun and twisted meta-commentary, but it’s basically ignored beyond the opening and ending. The movie tells us we are in 1981, a date that sort of matters, but also doesn’t at all. It matters because it’s nodding to Scorsese, not because the movie utilizes it’s setting well. This movie wants to be a period piece but also wants to comment on modern issues. It wants to utilize a 1980s approach to mental health, but also never seems to grow beyond that. Given Phillips' recent comments, it seems that he’s just nostalgic for a time when he was allowed to be more crass. Relatedly, in Fleck’s aspirations to be a stand-up comic, we listen to snippets of a few different stand-up sets. They’re all really bad and not funny? Like, I’m not sure whether or not they’re intentionally bad, because they’re all stupidly crude and misogynistic, but Fleck is also writing down notes about them in order to be a better comic. It seems like Phillips is using them to insert comedy into the script, but none of them are actually good jokes. But I’m getting ahead of myself – the setting is Gotham, 1981. Gotham is a literal dumpster pile, the film makes it clear right off the bad that there’s some sort of ‘garbage crisis’ and so there’s just piles of trash covering the streets of Gotham. I think the root cause is supposed to be unemployment, like the garbage workers were all laid off or quit or something, but the movie also wants to say that there’s no job market. Does nobody want to be cleaning garbage? Is Gotham just okay with there being literal trash in the streets? They don’t want to hire people? O-okay. This garbage crisis goes literally nowhere, except that a news report later announces that the presence of garbage has led to ‘super rats’ in Gotham. They literally use the words ‘super rats.’ And this plotline goes nowhere and, to my awareness, means nothing. The fact that people are taking this movie as a serious drama is beyond me.

I want to emphasize the garbage crisis and the super rats because it immediately tips off what kind of movie this is going to be. It wants to look like a legitimate commentary on social issues, but it has to invent insane, senseless problems to get there. The garbage crisis is a crutch to cover up a million legitimate reasons for Gotham’s division. Social stratification, systems of discrimination, whatever. The movie expects us to believe that Gotham went to hell overnight because garbage is everywhere. Or because a few garbage workers quit. In any case, it denies any of the intrinsic structural issues that lead to mass poverty, or that lead to stratification. The garbage crisis is just as much of a strawman issue as the other political problems in this movie. Thomas Wayne features as a major figure, someone who vows to help the poor and clean up the city. But, every time he makes that promise, he manages to insult all the poor in the promise. He directly offends his voting base. The thrust is supposed to be, like, ‘look how rich and ignorant Thomas is! Multiple perspectives!’ but in the end, Thomas Wayne just looks like an idiot. Murray, a talk show host Fleck admires, winds up being dressed up the same way. After hearing and mocking Fleck’s awful stand-up routine, Murray invites Fleck on the show explicitly to mock him. It’s just pointlessly, laughably cruel. Murray is a bad rich man who laughs at people for no reason. You’re going to hear a lot of praising for how sympathetic Phoenix makes Fleck, but a lot of it relies on every other character being a needlessly mean idiot. That way, when Fleck makes his big thesis at the end of the movie about how bad the rich are, it’s justified – but not because of legitimate issues with society or the way we treat the poor or the mentally ill. It’s justified because every other character is insanely stupid. Rather than actually provide a nuanced critique of society, Joker creates a bunch of strawmen it can yell it to prove its points.

So, the setting is intrinsically broken. We’re off to a good start.

Arthur Fleck legitimately has one bad stand-up show in 1981 and somehow someone was filming it and it went viral. The more I think about this movie the more fundamentally bonkers it is.

Arthur Fleck lives in this garbage crisis dump in a shoddy apartment with his senile mother. She’s the only person who Fleck has any actual relationship with, and who seems to actually care about Fleck (Yes, she dies at the end of the second act of this movie. Yes, it seems strange that Todd Philipps is portraying women in a positive light. Just wait). As he cares for his mom, they watch the talk show with Murray Franklin. Fleck fantasizes being on Murray’s show, and the host being some sort of loving father figure to him. Fleck’s mom keeps writing letters to Thomas Wayne, but getting no reply. She says that she used to work for Wayne and that he’s a nice man who will surely help their family. Fleck seems suspicious. When he’s not helping his mom, Fleck works as a clown for a company that rents out clowns. Nobody really likes him, partially because of his mental condition where he laughs spontaneously at inappropriate times. This inappropriate laughter is going to be the primary excuse the movie uses to get Fleck into trouble. Anyway, after Fleck gets beat up on the street, one of his coworkers gives him a gun – partly for self-defense, but partly so that Fleck can owe him later. Fleck is hesitant, as their boss doesn’t want them to have guns, but the coworker insists that it won’t be an issue (Yes, it becomes an issue). There’s also a dwarfish person in the clown group, who is the butt of all sorts of weird, Todd Phillips dwarf jokes. Meanwhile, Fleck builds up a report with his neighbor, Zazie Beetz, who appears to be a single mother. She gives him love and support and encourages his career and goes to his awful stand-up routine and loves it (Yes, she is also a fantasy, and their interactions are mostly Fleck’s hallucinations). By this point, we’re maybe at the end of the first act, and you can put most of the movie together from here. I’m not joking, it’s that structured.

This movie has a lot of pretty imagery that doesn't seem to actually mean anything.

Fleck brings his gun to an act at a children’s hospital and promptly gets fired. Sad, he jumps on a subway home, where three rich snobs are coming on to a very disinterested girl. Here I thought, ‘oh, the movie’s going to do something interesting! Fleck is going to try and stand up for this girl and be interesting.’ Nope, Fleck ignores the whole thing and does nothing. Rather, he has an episode and starts laughing uncontrollably. This attracts the attention of the guys, who go to beat him up while the girl runs off. She is never mentioned again. The moment he gets a chance, Fleck pulls his gun and shoots two of them, and hunts the third one down until he can kill him on the steps of the train station. None of this is witnessed, that we can tell. Yet, in time, news reports start going out about a masked clown killing three rich students from Wayne’s school (Fleck wasn’t masked at the moment, just in full make-up. I can’t decide if this is clever misinformation or a pointless twist that doesn’t add anything). The poor take this up as a rallying point against the rich class. Wayne goes on the television, stating something along the lines of ‘yeah, whoever kills someone in cold blood sure is a clown, and so is anyone who supports him,’ all while trying to gain the support of the poor because he wants to run for mayor and help them clean up. It’s… very tone-deaf and a very dumb political move, and he’ll only double-down on it. In any case, the disenfranchised are starting to gather clown masks and form rallies. Detectives begin to explore the case on the subway and begin asking Fleck questions, which he brushes off.

Fleck's responses to his actions are so all over the place. The script can't decide if he's afraid of what he's doing, is proud of it, or is largely indifferent. It seems to change depending on the scene.

About this time, Fleck decides to peak at one of his mom’s letters to Thomas Wayne. It says something along the lines of ‘please support me and your son.’ Fleck asks his mom and she talks about how she had a fling, and they had to hide it to keep Wayne’s image. And here I go, ‘oh, okay. This could be interesting.’ It’s a very neat direction, finally something that actually feels fresh and new. So, naturally, it doesn’t last. Fleck marches to Wayne Manor, and spies on little Bruce playing around in a playground. He tries to entertain Bruce a little bit, and some buff guard who I hope is Alfred shows up to scold him. Fleck mentions who he is, and who his mom is, and ‘Alfred’ kind of laughs him off and says ‘oh, you’re Penny Fleck’s kid. Yeah, your mom is crazy.’ It’s at this point where I realize that, not only is this movie going to double back on the single interesting creative decision it made, it’s also going to end with Joker being responsible for Thomas and Martha’s murder (which, essentially, yes). Heading back home, Fleck learns that the detectives went to his mother, and she had an episode and is in the hospital. There, he watches Murray Franklin with his mom and learns that Murray has been mocking his stand-up on live television (Like, why? I have so many questions about this subplot. Why do you track down D-list comics who don’t have gigs, and why would you dedicate a whole bit to mocking them?) Meanwhile, Fleck tracks Wayne down to a theatre (natch) and introduces himself in much the same way. Wayne says, again, ‘yeah, your mom is crazy, and also you’re adopted. She didn’t tell you that? Yeah, we put her in Arkham because she couldn’t function. In either case, I’m not your dad, so stop whatever this is.’ Distressed, Fleck begins to laugh uncontrollably, and Wayne gets weirded out and beats him up. Fleck goes to Arkham and learns, sure enough, his mom is mentally ill and let her boyfriend abuse Fleck at a young age. Immediately after we learn of her mental illness, she’s criminalized. Words don’t express how much this movie frustrates me. In a rage, he goes back to the hospital and smothers his mother, all while ranting about how his life is a comedy now.

These stairs are practically a character unto themselves. ...They probably get more screen time than any of the female characters.

We’re getting into the third act now. Murray calls up Fleck and asks him to come on the show – because that is the sort of thing that needlessly sadistic rich people do, I suppose. Distressed, Fleck breaks into Zazie Beetz's apartment to get comfort from her. Todd Phillips gives us a laughable flashback montage spelling out how Zazie Beetz has been a hallucination until now for anyone who didn’t figure it out before this point. The scene ends with uncomfortable ambiguity, and then Fleck’s old coworker buddy and the dwarf show up to his house to support him after hearing of his mother’s death. Fleck, however, is not distressed – he feels more confident after killing his mother, and proudly announces how he’s stopped taking his medication. Fleck mentions how the coworker tried to frame him with the gun and then proceeds to brutally murder him. This is, like, the one thing that Fleck does that the film seems to dress as horridly reprehensible. And still, it lingers on the murder for a long time. He lets the other guy go, but not after another dwarf joke or two. This murder is never mentioned again. Fleck dresses up and marches to Murray’s show. The detectives see Fleck and begin to pursue, but the clown riots are starting up and Fleck evades them. They are killed in the chaos.

Getting ready for the show, Fleck speaks in the back to Murray. He has his gun with him. Murray asks why he is dressed as a clown amid what’s going on in the streets, but Fleck insists that ‘he isn’t political.’ Murray’s coworkers aren’t impressed, saying something along the lines of ‘there’s going to be outrage if we put someone like him on the screen!” And this is where I realized that the entire movie was falling apart. Until now I had like, hope that the last act was going to go off and tie all these weird loose ends and unite everything. But with the cast all but winking to the camera saying ‘we’re making a movie that’s going to be controversial!’ all of that hope drained away. Fleck asks Murray to announce him as ‘Joker’ when he walks out on stage, which is supposed to reference what Murray called him when he was mocking him earlier (to be totally honest, I have no memory of Murray calling him that. I assume it was something like ‘get a load of this joker’ which is an absurdly weak chain to hang the name of your villain and your movie on. This is Solo all over again). Joker is announced, and he struts out on stage, full of confidence now that he’s a murderer who isn’t taking drugs. Don’t take drugs for mental illness, kids, you’ll feel better!

The saddest part is I genuinely love this Joker get-up. Phoenix's take is theoretically great in these closing scenes. He could have been such a definitive take on this character. But everything he says is such garbage.

The scene that followed took an eternity. ‘Joker’ sits down next to Murray, and they begin to converse. He tells some morbid jokes, which the studio doesn’t appreciate. And then, I kid you not, he begins to rant about how humor is subjective. Todd Phillips puts his rant in the movie – but spoken by the Joker. And while he’s talking about all this, he announces how he’s the one who killed the guys on the train, and he’s proud of it. And then… then Joker complains about how the rich are always pushing down on the lower class, and how nobody listens to anybody. The movie all but halts to let him have this big speech about how society is bankrupt. And everyone listens. Nobody calls the police or anything. Because Todd Phillips wants you to hear this rant. And I am convinced it’s because he agrees with it. I am convinced this movie thinks this rant is some brilliant critique of society, and that Joker is so right for saying it. But the entire movie has relied on hackneyed stereotypes and broken strawmen arguments to get there. None of what he says is based in reality, it’s based in this weird garbage crisis Gotham, where super rats reign and Thomas Wayne is an idiot. Where the poor all unite in massive rebel causes and all the mentally ill become criminals. And this speech ends with Joker saying, and I quote, “What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you f*****g deserve!” and he shoots Murray in the head.

…Words don’t express how much this movie frustrates me. These climactic words are essentially the thesis statement of the movie. Like, it reads like a thesis statement, which is a clunky thing to have in your film, but nothing else so far has exhibited tact, so. The thesis is ‘the mentally ill are destined to kill people who oppress them, and that’s what they deserve.’ It’s ‘society is oppressive, so we should rise up.’ The next part of the movie has Joker carted away in a police car that suddenly appears, and then being freed by the rioters, all decked in clown costumes. Thomas and Martha are shot and killed by other rioters. The mob put Joker on top of a car, and he dances in front of an adoring audience of thousands. Everybody loves Joker, and everybody loves his hateful crimes. The End.

You see how cold and calculating he looks in this shot? How perfectly he seems to blend the humorous class and the mob leader intelligence? Yeah none of those qualities actually appear in this movie.

That- that’s the end of the movie. There’s a brief epilogue cutting to him in Arkham… where he murders someone and escapes. And it’s played off as a goofy ‘oh, there he goes killing again!’ Because this incel fever dream of a character deserves to get off scot-free without any moral judgment. No one in this movie has any leg to stand on. Either you’re a decently complex character played by Joaquin Phoenix, who is supposed to be sympathetic despite being also an awful person, or you’re a rich strawman who hates people. Or maybe you’re a woman without a character. If you’re lucky, you’ll be someone Joker kills. I… I can’t stand this movie. I can’t stand how this movie mishandles its central themes, its central topics. It could have been an interesting discussion on society, on mental illness, on corruption, politics, psychology, the comic book genre, anything. It doesn’t do anything exciting, or interesting, or new. It just hates the rich, hates the poor, hates women, hates the mentally ill. It’s wrapped in such a thick layer of hate and it’s disgusting. Instead of being a breath of fresh air, an intriguing new take, it’s hackneyed, predictable, stereotyped, unoriginal, and mostly just boring. It’s uncomfortable for two hours and then it ends. Joker is not transgressive. It’s just dull.

Co-starring all of Phoenix's cigarettes

I really wanted to like this movie. But I don’t. I wanted this to be a compelling new direction for superhero films. But it isn’t. The fact that it’s getting so much love baffles me because of how deeply flawed it is. It feels eerily like Todd Phillips just ranting about a world that's matured beyond him. It feels like it's celebratory when it should be condemnatory. You can have a sympathetic villain who is still broadcasted as clearly evil - but Joker doesn't accomplish that, and it seems like it's because Phillips agrees with him. But I suppose I forecasted it. I’ve talked previously about how we shouldn’t rail movies for being ‘political,’ for forwarding ‘SJW agendas.’ And if we’re going to be more arthouse, if we’re going to be more political, we’ll have the bad come in with the good. Along with the movies speaking to diversity and wholeness, we’ll have movies speaking to absurd violence and segregation. I think what rattles me the most isn’t that it’s political – I wanted something political. But it’s that it’s poorly political. Its points are built from reductive arguments and backwards views of the world, and all the sorts of things I’ve already said. Mostly, Joker is just exhausting. And in writing, my hope is that I’ve fully expressed all of my feelings on Joker – so that I can now set it down and never think about it ever again. I’m so incredibly done with this movie. And maybe that feeling expresses more than this article ever could.