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

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

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