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

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.