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

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

Literally turned my car around en route to the theater today when I learned that it’s a musical. I even like musicals but don’t want this to be that. I just want another second rate Scorsese thing like the first time.
Folie à Don’t!

It didn't really feel like a musical to me. A film with lots of fairly short musical interludes that failed to stay in my head is much closer.

what's funny is I wasn't as neg on Joker as many on this board, but I was definitely not someone who wanted to watch it again either with how 'too close to home' some of the shit at the end was, but I had a pair of friends who were convinced they'd seen Gunga Din, and neither of them have any desire to see this.

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'

― a photographer, satanist and ukip voter (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 3 April 2019 14:10 (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

does this happen y/n

I really hope every single number is a patter song

looks like it's going to make something like 6 mil in its second weekend, lol and RIP

Warner Bros’ second weekend of Joker: Folie à Deux is posting a -82% freefall with around $6.7M-$7M per industry estimates — that’s the absolute worst hold for a DC character movie in the history of the brand on the big screen. Triple note, James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios did not steer or shepherd Joker 2. The Joaquin Phoenix-Lady Gaga R-rated musical is even getting kicked out of No. 2 by a cartoon robot, DreamWorks Animation/Universal’s Wild Robot ($13.5M third weekend) and also out of third by Warner Bros’ own Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (estimated $7.3M sixth weekend). This drop isn’t a shocker as we saw Joker 2 doing worse than the second frame of Marvel Cinematic Universe’s The Marvels (-78%) which was the worst hold for that Disney label’s movies.

Joker 2‘s second weekend drop is steeper than the previous worst drop for a DC character movie, summer 2023’s The Flash (-73%). It’s also more severe than the second weekend of 2021’s The Suicide Squad (-72%) which remember had a theatrical day-and-date release with HBO Max; those dynamic distributed titles always tumbled in their second weekend. The only nice thing to say here about Joker 2 is that it’s second weekend is more than Wonder Woman 1984‘s second weekend ($5.4M) which of course was due to theater closures during Covid, and it’s better than the second weekend of Jonah Hex ($1.6M) which owns the worst opening ever for a DC movie at $5.3M.

RIP woke killed Joker

Woker

Go Joke, Go Broke?

I liked the first one--parts of it a lot--and wanted to like this one; the trailer piqued my interest because of the great Burt Bacharach song. I assumed that was an isolated scene, though; finding out it was in fact partly a musical was puzzling, to say the least.

I ended up liking some of the musical bits ("To Love Somebody" the best--very The Sonny & Cher Show), but overall, so ponderous. The Joker's in jail, an admirer latches on to him, they go to trial...I won't say any more, but the rest is a big nothing. I mentioned on an ILM thread that Phoenix sings a Daniel Johnston song over the end credits.

Big Cineplex, holiday Monday, and I think there were seven other people in the theatre.

Saw an afternoon performance in a cineplex in Hanoi with 3 other people. Didn't hate the first one but my god this was one of the most ponderous and uncompelling films I have seen in years. Not sure if Pennies From Heaven was an influence but if it was it was really poorly served.

Gaga was a thoroughly unengaging presence and so uncharismatic . Was pretty shocked.

And god did it go on and on and...

Should of done a Paul Schrader and left after 10
minutes.

Having said that I know people who loved it. Just weird.

it's funny that like, outside of this thread, people I knew almost unanimously loved teh first Joker (I liked it, but found it flawed and too unpleasant to rewatch), but none of those people have seen the sequel or have any desire to. like normally wouldn't you be keyed up to see a sequel of the initial movie you loved?

Having said that I know people who loved it.

Judging by the numbers, maybe you know all of them.

My dad and sister are massive musical fans...never thought I'd ever utter this phrase but kinda wish Ken Russell would of been around to have a hand in it...rong I know but at least I would of had some kind of reaction to it

i think the biggest issue is even though the first film did well, it's just not fun, and while every other Joker is a demented prankster, this guy is just an extreme version of Crazy Joe Davola.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USKQ8sSNjMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cpA1yzEcVk

yeah the last 10 minutes of Joker felt a little too close to home w/ the political climate in the US, it's when I decided I couldn't watch it again.

even though of course Phillips tried to frame it like Occupy Wall Street-esque people were the terrorists because of course

occupy did give us many Joker types on top of the relatively sane protestors. some are stars of the conservative mediasphere now!

97% of the people who loved the first Joker wanted a version of The King of Comedy for dummies and didn't realize it.

Second part of the Megalopolis Zoomcast I posted a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6dyEmCfPKI

Prison, trial, prison, trial--that's all we came up with for Joker: Folie à Deux.

Random thoughts, with spoilers:

As bad as this movie was at home streaming, I can only imagine the angry/mocking/scoffing reactions in a crowded theater would have made it into something much darker and worse.

The fantasy musical sequences have a confusing status within diagetic reality. We get the "Cut back to the beginning of the sequence and have someone ask 'Well? Aren't you going to say anything?'", we get the "Cut to a live TV feed showing what's really going on during the fantasy sequence," but we also get a singing-in-the-rain escape attempt that we are I think supposed to take at face value?

A cigarette makes an appearance in almost every scene (can't remember if they were anywhere near as prominent in the first), and their sheer omnipresence seems like a kind of nihilism.

I wouldn't read as much into it if the movie didn't explicitly focus attention on the smoking. Arthur's first spoken line, iirc, is "Can I have a cigarette?" His legal counsel tells him not to smoke in a TV interview because "It makes you look too cavalier. We need people to see you as human." He blows smoke through the bars into his lover's mouth after the guard does the "No touching!" thing that has been permanently ruined for me by Arrested Development. The credits even include, alongside the standard "no animals harmed" and "made possible by a generous grant from", a disclaimer I don't recall seeing before: No promotional considerations were received from tobacco manufacturers in exchange for depictions of tobacco use.

One thing I will give the movie credit for is not glamorizing smoking. It doesn't make it look cool or assertive, but gross and weird and compulsive, about as satisfying as picking a scab. (There are exceptions, but those shots are few and far between.) Lee is even smoking in the scene where she reveals she is pregnant!

There is a sort of tragic irony in the way that innocent people around Arthur keep getting hurt: his incarcerated supporters are beaten and choked out by the monstrous COs; his one-time friend and coworker Gary Puddles now suffers from PTSD and insomnia; the car bomb that explodes in the crowded street outside the packed courthouse presumably kills untold numbers of Joker stans.

To the extent that the movie has any point, I think it is somewhere in between those last two paragraphs. It's about Arthur's self-destruction, and the forces willing to aid in that self-destruction (prison, media stardom, a certain idea of romantic love). And ultimately, Arthur is supposed to be the good guy. Because when the people cheering for him to self-destruct, the people who support his mythic alter ego without really seeing or caring about him as a person, when those people fall for the myth and get blindsided by the reality, crushed by the even greater destructive forces of the inhuman system outside of Arthur that he's been struggling against all along... he at least feels bad about it?

Also full disclosure, I walked out of the first movie halfway through (I was on a date and we both agreed that anything else would be more fun) and never felt any desire to revisit it. My favorite moment of that one was in the opening minutes when a radio announcer mentions a garbage collection strike, briefly getting my hopes up for a subplot about municipal services.

Is there a Gotham villain called the Trashman?

God I wish

Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dahdah

TRASHMAN