f13.net

Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlF8tPYi2zE)

I am optimistic, this one looks way better than that ... last one.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Joker_%282019_film%29_poster.jpg)

The only thing more boring and unnecessary than the origin story of a hero is the origin story of a villain. Secondly, if I want to watch the descend of average white angry dude into madness there's also a host of other movies to choose from, like Taxi Driver or Falling Down.

I don't really get the point of doing a Joker movie

Simply put, the market is all about the comic book movies right now. That's why we get these movies. And the Joker is the most iconic comic book villain, so that adds to the power of it. Personally I don't really care at all about this movie, but I see the market value.

The appeal of The Joker as avillain comes from him being enigmatic, stark raving mad and also being the Ying to Batman's Yang.
The worst thing you can do is remove the mystique of The Joker as a character, because you remove his biggest appeal.

Oh I agree with you, but hollywood is about fucking the money making bloated dead horse.

This looks fucking great. Period.

It really does.

I'm getting a serious Scorsese vibe.  Like King of Comedy but with more menace.  Which is fitting considering De Niro is in it.

It feels like an Oscar bait movie - if it wasn't about a comic book character, I'd think Phoenix is going to win an Oscar for it. He still may but it'll be a hard sell.

For whatever reason, The Joker is a character a lot of really great actors are drawn to play.  Even Cesar Romero, way back on the original tv show, was awesome for his time.  The only low point I can think of was Jared Leto...

The Joker, Hannibal, etc. These are our great villains. Shame Spader will never lose the weight to get at The Joker before he's dead.

I bite my thumb at this movie! It offends every single one of my hyper-sophisticated artistic sensibilities.

If it can be reasoned (perhaps falsely) that comic book movies are in fashion right now because the super nerds of our own generation are in charge of producing, marketing and/or consuming them....then what do we have to look forward to in 10 years or so when the super nerds of our children's generation is at the wheel?  We'll still be here at F13, having rousing discussions about the merits of a Team Rocket back story movie and who should play the role of Meowth, that's what.

Melwth should clearly be Ewan McGreggor

I would have to disagree.

There are a fairly decent number of villains in comics that could stand on their own as the focus of a movie.   I would kill to get Chris Nolan to direct a Mr. Freeze movie set in his batman universe.   Similarly I think there is incredible merit in the idea of Disney introducing the Fantastic 4 into the marvel universe by using a movie built around Dr. Doom as the main character as the "origin story" vehicle.

In the end though, it all comes down to how you want to treat the characters.  The problem with most comic book villains in movies is that they never get as much attention as they should, because they are almost always intended to be the "villain of the week" kind of disposable appearance in the movies (ie, they only last through a single movie, then it is on to the next one), since the movies are about the heroes.   They get better treatment in the Comics and TV because the extended serial nature of them allows you to spend more time developing the villain.

I mean, take Batman and Joker.  NONE of the movie universes have ever had a Joker that lasted longer than a single installment.  That means you never really get to properly explore how those two characters constantly play off of one another, and while some of the movies do a really good job at cramming as much into the characters as possible in the little time they have, they just never do them as much justice as having a proper, re-occurring villain in the movies would allow.

Well, if Ryan Reynolds is Pikachu, we're already halfway there.

I'm also disappointed this movie was subtitled Joker: How I Got These Scars

Trailer looks great.

Yup, this is where I'm at. In theory the idea sounds retarded but that trailer is something I want to watch.

Yeah, I got two things from the trailer.

1. The movie will probably be fantastic.

2.  I really don't want to see it.

Felt the same way about the Us trailer.

Some thoughts:

Joker isn't a great character, because there generally isn't much of an actual character there beyond being a psychopath. He's an iconic character, I'll say that. Part of what works for him is that the lack of solid definition leaves room for a lot of great interpretations. I don't think the character needs an origin story but I'm fine with a movie attempting one because it's not like any future iterations of the Joker are going to have to adhere to it.

After the trailer, I'm more optimistic about the movie than I was before. The main reason behind my pessimism is due to the fact that Todd Phillips doesn't have a stellar filmography. Maybe Hollywood just wasn't letting him write/direct anything other than R-rated comedies after Road Trip and Old School and maybe he actually has the chops for a dark drama like this.

Or maybe it will be terrible and it's just a really well put together trailer.
 

Honestly I have a hard time imagining leaving the theater after this, even if its good and feeling like I've enjoyed my 2 hours. I never get a big kick out of watching how X mass murderer had it rough as a kid. Fiance loves true crime shit, so I've had more instances to examine these feelings than I would like. It doesn't look like it will be fun or funny or zany. So yeah I bet Joaquin will act the fuck outta the role, but what's the payoff exactly? I'm not an acting coach. I have no burning curiosity towards a dark interpretation of how the Joker became the Joker. Its probably better left unsaid unless we were dealing with some very goody/paladin style Batman and we needed to drag him down a bit. But guess what? We aren't. Batman isn't even in this and the Batman of 2019 is a pretty not-nice guy who doesn't need Joker humanized to make the character have more depth / work better.

So yeah awesome trailer. But unless Harley is in it played by some uber hot and talented someone.... What the fuck do I get out of seeing this beyond unnecessary confirmation that Joaquin Phoenix is really fucking good at this whole acting thing?

That's a very weird take.

It's weird that watching two hours of "how society made me become a psychopathic mass murderer, please empathize" might not be all that great even if Joacquin Phoenix plays it?

You don't want to empathize with the troubled people in society?

If by troubled you mean a fictional comic book character that dresses like a clown and whose only purpose it is to act as a foil for the hero then: probably no?

There's also a difference between "troubled people in society" and literally Hitler.

The Joker is nothing like Hitler. He hates Nazis.

(https://i.imgur.com/LZDMC3o.jpg)

Touché.

I still fail to see what would make a Joker origin story be interesting and not devolve into yet another "woe is me: why the plight of middle aged white guys drives them to kill" incel wish fullfillment. Even if it is well shot and features Joacquin Phoenix.

I get where he's coming from. This is why I didn't watch the Hannibal movie or read the novel. Troubled people sure. Psychopaths, not so much.

Hannibal is incredible. So is American Psycho.

I much prefer psychopaths to "redemption for the drug user" stories. Or "look how hard life is" stories.

How about none of the above?

I'm not a huge fan of Phoenix, but this role should work well for his style. Given the glimpses that back that up pretty well, and the cinematography looking on point...yeah, this looks cool.

If they follow the Alan Moore blueprint from Killing Joke, the character is actually a husband trying to provide for his pregnant wife as a comedian and failing, so he joins a gang called the Red Hood as a patsy where Batman knocks him into a vat of goo that both fucks up his skin and drives him cray cray. If they go with the New 52 origin, he's just another crazy psychopath as the leader of the Red Hood gang who gets dropped in the goo. The Killing Joke version was at least a compelling character. The New 52 version is better seen as a mysterious force for chaos. It looks like the take is going to be more Alan Moore than Scott Snyder.

Killing Joke is about the only decent take on a Joker origin story which doesn’t say much.

American Psycho is a great movie. Silence of the Lambs was great I never watched Hannibal though not for any reason beyond lack of interest. There was another one? Red Dragon or something I swear and it was just a cash grab that took away from the mystique of the first one. That's probably why I never saw it.

I'm pretty positive this origin story isn't going to involve goo. If it does the entire thing is stupid. If it doesn't the entire thing is just sort of gross? The thing is I liked that Nolan had replaced the goo with Batman himself. The existence of Batman being all dark dangerous and elemental had led to criminals getting weird and Joker was at the forefront of that. That's the best origin story for Joker for me and is another reason I just don't get why this is a movie without Batman.

Sometimes the goal is to make a good movie. Batman movies don't lend themselves to that. Joaquin Phoenix movies do though.

Also, largely Batman in movies has been comically awful, really only Bale has done a good job. Jokers (excepting Nicholson) have been generally good. Leaving out the bat makes sense, it could only turn things into a farce unless they magically found the second decent batman ever.

Killing Joke is a standout for being one of the few decent DC comics outside the horror/war stuff and a few rando issues of Detective Comics where the bat actually detected rather than supered.

In general, the less DC-like it is, the better.

Look, Bale was good, but you are saying that Keaton was not a good Batman? Forget the fact that the movie doesn't quite hold up as well after the Nolan stuff, but Keaton was a good Batman. Affleck was a good Batman, he just happened to be in almost completely shitty movies - but he and his portrayal of the character was not the problem with those movies at all.

Even Bale has been mediocre. It's only compared to other Batmen that he's even remotely good.

If I had to rank live action Batmen it'd be:

Keaton
Affleck
Adam West
Bale

Bale was generally just boring as Batman and Bruce Wayne and his scratchy voice turned the character into a caricature.

This movie looks good but DC marketing has fooled me before. *cough*SuicideSquad*cough*

I am really not into comic-adaptions, so I watched this trailer like, well, like a trailer for a film and it looked good.

Not quite sure what your issues here are.

As far as I can tell, the Internet is terribly concerned that right-wing incels will enjoy this movie too much, so much so that it may be a moral imperative for right-thinking people to NOT enjoy it. 

Take the Joker out of it (or hell, don't) and the movie could easily be called "Diary of an Incel."

I can't even tell anymore if I'm being trolled or if our culture wars have reached a new depth of stupidity.

IF this movie aims to using realistic psychological/socio-economic etc. create a fictitious life that might lead someone to become a killer clown guy and nothing else... THEN this is a dumb fucking idea for a movie. That plan is dumb enough that it invalidates any reason to watch said movie regardless of quality. If I need a dose of terrible things can turn human beings into terrible people. I don't need to seek out my local cinema for help with that.

I mean, I'm not especially optimistic either...

But tragedy has been a staple of the performative arts for most of recorded human history.

So I don't think 'story about society breaking a guy' is exactly plumbing new depths.

Yeah, I mean, Taxi Driver is considered a classic, and there have been a lot of movies like it since.  And now this.

If incels want to think of themselves as the fucking Joker, like, whatever. Ok.

That's a retard slapfight if ever there was one. I'm just going to enjoy the movie because there's a very high chance it'll be good.

Hopefully it is a good as "You Were Never Really Here" which is recommending viewing.

So this latest trailer dropped and I can't really see why anyone is terribly interested in this film.

Help ?

This looks fucking great.

Well, that settled it.

Why so fucking be there?  :why_so_serious:

I don't know, I'm thinking I'm with schild on this one. It looks great and I didn't know that Deniro was going to be in this one. I still don't understand why it exists, but it does look like it's a top-notch performance.

De Niro looks to be playing the Jerry Lewis character in King of Comedy while Phoenix plays the role De Niro originally did in that film.

Could be interesting to see the parallels between the two. Other than that...meh.

Darth Vader didn't need a backstory.
The Xenomorphs from Alien don't need a backstory.
The Joker sure as fuck doesn't need a backstory. It was handled perfectly in the Dark Knight.


Along with him just making up stories about his past. That's all we need.

Trailer looked meh. Pass.

If this were being made as a popcorn movie with a shitty comic movie actor, it would be shitty.  The fact that it's Joaquin Phoenix makes me interested.

Note that, like schild, I enjoy movies that make me viscerally uncomfortable.  There's a good chunk of people who watch comic movies to feel good and this will Not Be That, I'm pretty confident.

I'm looking forward to it, too.

Still squarely in the I don't understand the audience for this at all camp. I agree that it looks like they are putting real talent in a position to seriously try to...   create a quasi-realistic humanizing origin story for the joker? the fuck? did we want that?

Maybe the WB execs were jealous of the #thanosdidnothingwrong memes/hashtag?

Yeah, that's my point too Hoax.

Ok, fair enough, it might be an ok Movie, though the trailer personally leaves me cold as a stone, but what the fuck is it actually all about ?  It just seems hugely 'for the sake of it' and I don't get it.

Who knows, it might be the next Logan, but.... I dunno.  Not feeling it at all.

I thought it looked fun.

….

Ok.

Fun? Nah. Tragic, horrifying, yes.

I think this will be a good movie but I have almost no interest in watching it. I guess it's because I'm not really interested in a Joker origin story. The Killing Joke was awesome but I think part of what makes it great is the Joker himself isn't sure what really happened to him.

I’m torn.  I agree with the above sentiment.  OTOH, it looks compelling.

if you give a single shit about comics and characters in comics, this movie is just not for you

Uh.

That’s.....a bit extreme.

What if I only care a smallish amount?

sounds like you don't really care then

Possibly, but I don't exactly follow the reasoning. I'm fine with different takes on characters (well, normally speaking; I like Chris Pratt in the MCU, as long as I think of him as playing Chris Pratt and not SL).

One interesting thing is as of right now there's no evidence that this Joker is a mass murderer. Maybe he's more of an anarchist than a supervillain. I can dig it. I just don't necessarily want to see it, if that makes sense.

No, you do get it. It's a character study that the director wanted to do and somehow, he convinced Warner Bros. execs to fund it. I don't know what the WB execs were thinking when they greenlit it, but it really only exists because someone wanted to do it.

This has a chance to be one of those slow roasters that will develop a cult following in a decade.

It's Joaquin Phoenix, if it gets a cult following it's going to get one like after the first showing.

It's going to be really shit.

Jaoquin Phoenix going insane is a well established genre of its own.

But I didn't get much 'Joker' from the trailer.

Ok, so the thing is, when I see this I don't see a Batman/Joker/Comic book movie.  It looks so far outside of any of that.  Its Jaoquin Phoenix playing a man going insane.

Could end up being good (looks pretty great to me) could be bad (trailers often fool me).  But this looks entirely like a stand alone movie.  The guy in the trailer going insane just happens to coincidentally look like a guy who is also a villain in a comic book series, and I think that's what Schild was getting at before.  People viewing this through any kind of comic book lens or prejudice seems really odd.

Might not work out that way.  Maybe they'll fuck it all up and somehow try to make it a comic book tie in?  Doesn't seem like that from the trailers though.

Agree. Have not watched the trailer but the lack of backstory is best backstory for this character. He is the embodiment of chaos. It has existed since the dawn of the universe and will be with us until the end.

I think it's more that no matter what backstory you come up with, it diminishes the character by making his schtick merely or banally psychological, a response to circumstance. It's why almost all writers who've worked on the character have understood that the "dumped in a vat of industrial waste, hair goes green and skin goes white" can't even begin to explain what's going on with him, whether's it's the homicidal Joker or just the wacky-capers Joker. (Kinda the way that even Silver Age writers knew that Luthor losing his hair due to Superboy stopping a chemical fire was in no way a sufficient explanation for his vendetta unless you understood it as a metaphor for something way deeper.)

That's even true for heroes really--the only superheroes where a single event (more or less) is an adequate story engine for them are Batman and Spider-Man. Everybody else needs a lot more of a fleshed-out life to make them work--the Fantastic Four aren't reducible to their origin; Captain America isn't reducible to his origin; Superman's origin only makes him what he is in combination with being raised by Ma and Pa Kent, etc. (This is also why Wonder Woman is such a confused character: because she comes from a situation that's nearly wholly imaginary, and so it's hard to think about what kind of person she really is and what kind of motivations she really has).

The Joker is really an extreme case, though: everything that makes the character an effective villain will be radically diminished by trying to root it in a specific origin narrative. Alan Moore is the closest anyone's ever going to get to something interesting and even he knew to steer clear of saying it was the way it actually happened. (Same with Moore's really smart idea about who the Phantom Stranger actually is--it's best if it's not ever fully settled.)

I think if this wasn't about the Joker it'd be much more intriguing to me. The commercial looks good and the movie looks well made. I just don't want to know the Joker's tragic backstory or whatever. I'll probably rent it for $4 on Xbox sometime when my dad comes by and wants to watch a movie but that's about the only way I imagine myself watching it.

They've said over and over that this Joker movie is not connected to Batman or any comics universe in any way, shape or form.

I've been trying to figure out why people were talking about this as some sort of canon for a whole now. It's clearly not. It's just a movie

The Killing Joke was not meant to be canon either. The fans basically made it canon after the fact through sheer bloody mondedness. Thats one of the reasons why DC were happy to let Barbera Jordon be mutilated, as well as good old fashioned Mysoginy.

That was one of the few things the New 52 got right for DC, it brought Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl.

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/joker

Time Magazine though, lol

GOD-DAMN.

Watching the trailers my impression is: A well made film with a great performance by Phoenix, that I have no interest in watching. I mean that's OK, but I am struggling to see what the intended target audience is.

2) It sort of looks like it should be a "normal" film that got shoved into a comic book universe for the sake of getting funding.

I will see it if and when it happens by my Netflix queue or whatever, but I feel kinda the same.  I appreciate what they are doing here, but without the ‘he seriously fucks up Batman’ payoff, I don’t find it super compelling.  Not enough to go to the theater, that is.

I'm finding it wild that so many here keep thinking this is a comic book/batman movie.  It's a tragic story about a guy having a mental breakdown.  He's also a comedian and a clown, and this leads to some familiar parallels to a popular comic book franchise, but this has obviously nothing to do with it.  You may as well be saying you hated Taxi Driver because it was a shit origin story for Two Face and didn't have enough batman in it.

As for the audience, stories entirely about tragedy befalling the main character have been around longer than Ancient Greece.  I mentioned Taxi Driver above, but TV and film series about people who's lives go to total shit has been a mainstay of popular entertainment for a very long time.  You might not like watching them (honestly, I have a hard time with them myself), but this isn't' a niche genre.

That's the fault of the title. Sorry, but Joker is iconic and tied to the Batman franchise. Same thing with Nightcrawler but on a lesser scale. Use a different name for your title.

I get what you're saying to an extent, but really you're finding it "wild" that WB/DC are making a movie called Joker that takes place in Gotham City featuring a guy in clown makeup and people think it's a comic book/Batman movie?

This.   I mean, literally the ONLY thing the movie is actually missing is Batman, which makes sense, since this takes place before the guy in clown makeup shoots the guys parents.

The film not only takes place in Gotham, the Waynes are named in it, etc. Of course people are going to judge it as being about *that* Joker, because it is.

The Joker is defined heavily by Batman. If they wanted to make a 'Joaquin Phoenix plays a clown who goes crazy' they could have named it Clown or John Wayne Gacy or something. You don't get to use the name and the universe while also trying to avoid being comic-book-like; being ashamed of their source material has been DC's whole problem with movies post-Nolan.

Even discounting Batman it's not really interesting to me. Joker as a human being (Killing Joke aside) I really don't care about. I guess I think of him more of a force of nature than man. If it was Doom, Thanos, or really pretty much any Marvel (talking comic not MCU in case that matters) villain I'd care more. Lex Luthor I'd be interested in. Which reminds me I saw a video where basically John Byrne said he modeled his take on Luthor on Trump. I don't know if that's revisionist or not but I found it funny.

I guess I feel that whatever problems DC have with their heroes (in terms of being relatable and not seen as gods) they have the same issues with their villains. I like what Moore did and to some extent what Miller did with Joker in TDK but I can't think of another DC villain I care enough about. Maybe Mordru when the Beirbaums were writing Legion of Super-Heroes but it's been awhile since I read that series so I don't know how well it stands up.

Luthor is a DC villain.

Actually DC heroes have some pretty good villains. At least Batman and the Flash do. Superman's are a mixed bag, Wonder Woman has never had any villain worth a shit for complex reasons.

Heck, I thought the Aquaman movie even found a way to give Black Manta something like a motivation (though way back in the day, DC did something pretty edgy by suggesting he was a black separatist who wanted to found an all-black nation under the ocean where folks would have gills. But they did that an issue after he was responsible for murdering Aquaman's toddler son for no particularly specific reason, sooooo not all that complex.)

Marvel doesn't really have that deep a bench of interesting villains either really.

 I should have rearranged my sentences. I know Luthor is a DC villain although it may not look like I'm including him in the 2nd paragraph.

I'm not saying they aren't good villains. Joker is a great villain, I just don't care about him as a human, but as an obstacle the hero has to overcome (physically and emotionally/psychologically). 

There have been specific stories where DC made their villains interesting on a human level but from my experience there have been few examples. I mentioned the ones I could think of and that's from the comics I've read from late 60s to late 90s. Admittedly from the late 80s to present I've read more Marvel than DC.

Now that I think about it I liked Miller's Two Face as well.

As for Marvel I think it's really up to the writer. For example I think Claremont really made Mystique and Magneto interesting characters (I'm not counting Rogue because she only became interesting when she became a hero). I think Lee wanted Doom to be a 3 dimensional character and Byrne (and to some extent Hickman) pushed that further. Kingpin had a really great story in Spider-man before Miller turned him into a Daredevil villain. As an aside I think that story is a basis for the Spider-Verse movie (Kingpin's wife threatens to leave him if he doesn't quit crime).

Elektra during the original DD run was great.

Going back to Byrne I think he made both the Puppet Master and Dr. Octopus sympathetic villains.

Superior Foes, a 21st century series is great (basically Spider-man's Sinister Six as the protagonists, but not the most recognizable members like Dr. Octopus).

I hear  the newer version of the Secret Six (DC) is good but I never read it.

Any time either company publishes a book where the villains are the protagonists, they instantly get more interesting--Thunderbolts, Suicide Squad, Secret Six, Secret Society of Super-Villains (though that one snuck a hero into the mix). As soon as you have to tell a story where those characters aren't just motivated by beating the hero up, you have to make them more human, more rounded, more complicated. Think about Deadshot--he goes from being one of the innumerable "shadow Batmen" in Batman's history (a guy kind of like Batman who has villainous motives, like Killer Moth) to being out for revenge with a GREAT costume make-over but still being pretty simplistic, to being a super-complicated and interesting assassin with a really rough family background.

It's what superhero films are going to have to do more consistently in a much more constrained time frame. But I'd still say Joker is one of the few characters where you *don't* want to do this to him--he's better if we really don't get a privileged look into how he thinks or why he is the way he is.

So many positive reviews flowing in I might change my mind.

One of the best living character actors fully taking on one of the more loved villains in his own movie was only going to get good reviews.

There was basically never a second it was going to be bad. Maybe hard to watch, but never bad.

So I went and saw this today. For those of you wondering why it exists, trust me, watching the entire movie from start to finish will not give you any more clarity on that subject. I know why it exists and I still left the theater feeling ambivalent and confused.

Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant (but we knew that). Visually, it is a stunning homage to Martin Scorsese's version of 1970's New York. The soundtrack and score is really good (also loud). It is a movie that is a love letter to Scorsese AND a pretty scathing treatise on how we as a society treat mental illness.

It just should never have been a Joker movie. The Joker, like any iconic character, creates expectations and this movie could not fulfill those expectations while also doing the two things I mentioned above. It is long and hard to watch and I think it IS worth watching if for no other reason than Phoenix's performance. But man it felt like a wasted opportunity. You never really get to see him be THE JOKER for more than a few seconds at a time. He doesn't get to be the balls out manic clown prince of crime - he's just a dude in clown makeup with serious mental issues who gets violent. I'd really have loved to see Phoenix get to play that fully formed Joker character because I think he'd have rivaled Heath Ledger's performance. But the story never let him do that. It felt like there were a number of avenues they could have explored (delusions, hallucinations, violent mania, the desire to "eat the rich" or just burn the whole system down) but they didn't go far enough with any of them.

The more I think on it, the more disappointed I am in it as a movie, apart from the direction and the performance by Phoenix.

It’s the Joker as Travis Bickle. Some scenes are more or less shot for shot remakes.

It’s a movie for people who like Fight Club or Falling Down because they think the protagonists are heroes and don’t get the deeper message.

One other thing, I think I'll agree with Khaldun (I think that's who said it) that the Joker as a character suffers when you humanize him. The Joker's entire thing is built on lacking character growth, like he's stuck in some adolescent phase where he just wants to see destruction and chaos, and he works well as that, especially as a contrast to Batman's obsessive need to enforce order on the world. Without the contrast with Batman, he's just a sad, violent, depressing guy.

I like this movie but I'm also glad that this is a stand alone. Like this movie will only be deep if your 12-16 years old. The director behind this wants to sit on top of his soap box and declare he made a "real movie" because something something 'comic book movies are bad'. And to that I say "fuck you".

Has anyone called this Falling Clown yet?  Because I think we should.

I've never been so appalled at anything I like this much.

I salute you, Phildo

Going by the comment sections of various sites the 4chan, "woe is me" "PoLiTiCaL CoRrEcTnEss gOne MAD!!!111" incel crowd is hearing the underlying message from Phillips loud and clear.

Phoenix might have done one of his finest performances to date but Joker was clearly written and made by someone with a huge persecution complex and more than one axe to grind and it resonates quite well with a certain crowd of men.

Not that the incels have any sort of grasp on reality whatsoever, but they are reading a fuckload into the message of the movie that was not even remotely there if that's their takeaway. The character literally hallucinates a girlfriend and decries everyone being so rude to everyone else.

(https://i.imgur.com/kWKYuZC.jpg)

Needs a briefcase and a shotgun, but that's a great start.

Well that might be skirting close to copyright infringement. Maybe a stapler and a pair of coke-bottle glasses.  :why_so_serious:

Yeah, I haven't seen this yet, but these chucklefucks find meaning in shit they shouldn't.  They also glorify the Joker in The Dark Knight.  Do you think Nolan made it because he had "a huge persecution complex and more than one axe to grind"?  Not going to judge it based on how that crowd reacts to it.

I liked it.  It's a pretty obvious movie, it doesn't surprise but doesn't really suffer for that.  It is of course well acted, and well made. 

Not being a comic book reader I don't have that attachment to the prevalent idea that the Joker works best without a backstory.  I certainly liked the Ledger take and the idea of the mysterious force for chaos, but this take also works well for me.  The only flaw really is that while you get a lot of the crazy, there isn't really any indication of genius.  It is hard to picture this version as a criminal mastermind.

I do like the social commentary, as obvious as it was, I would like to see more in this vein.  A follow up Batman years later that challenges his noblesse oblige and how he uses his wealth versus the chaos of criminals whose main crime is poverty in a shitty uncaring world would interest me.  It's not very comic bookish though and would probably be hated so, I wont hold my breath.

Joker doesn't have no backstory.

He has dozens.

This added yet another.

I don't even understand why that would be a problem or why people bring it up.

He really doesn't. Not that this should prevent anyone from trying.

The basic story is that he was the Red Hood, he fought Batman, he fell into chemicals, he went nutso.

But his name, how he got into the Red Hood, all that? The only person who really wrote into that space was Alan Moore in The Killing Joke, and he was at some pains to suggest that maybe the Joker is misremembering or has other backstories etc.

The first modern Batman movie went a different way and had the Joker being a prominent gangster who also happened to be the guy who killed Batman's parents. The comics have occasionally played around with that--DC went out of its way a while back to try and cast doubt on the "it was Joe Chill who killed Batman's parents" thing, but since then Chill's been reinstalled as the one who did the deed.

That's about it except for various Elseworlds, etc.

I'm on the side that says the joker has no real origin. Alan Moore killing joke is effectively cannon because of Barbara Gordon becoming Oracle. But considering that specific origin never gets expanded upon by later writers I think the general DC census is that the Joker just 'is' and any attempt to explain him, while not a bad thing, can be written over by different artist over time because the point is that "the joker is crazy" and not "he is a product of X".

I guess my point is that people thinking continuity between batman stories is important are wrong.

Joker can reimagined endlessly.

And this is reasonably normal thing in most forms of story telling. People get fussy around comics for some reason.

The official guidance by DC is that the Joker doesn't have a canonical origin and that authors are free to come up with something they like or to ignore his origin at all.

That's what having 80 years with a character will do - the character and his surrounding mythos become icons and have all the properties of commercial brands. People got real pissy when they changed the flavor and packaging of Coca-Cola for much the same reason. It changed something fundamental to their pasts.

Grant Morrison's take is that all versions of the Joker are real and in continuity--he's suggested alternatively that either the Joker is more than one person or that the Joker periodically reinvents himself completely and that's part of his mental state--that he's got no real fixity and maybe no real memory of a pre-Joker self.

People get fussy about all sorts of adaptations; even canon sequels can piss people off (hai2u Last Jedi).

I love when nerds pretend their not nerds
"Well I don't care about continuity! STFU"

Comic book characters have 80+ years of history but that just means that at any give decade or adaption spawns a new era of fans who ferociously defends "their version" of batman or whoever because that's the best version of batman and of course the last 8 decades supports that view. Its part of the culture, otherwise no one would care about a Joker movie. There is a reason why no one liked the Suicide Squad version of the Joker, no one in 80 years of batman history could reconcile that depiction to anything remotely familiar. Its not that people carry the entire history of a character with them, people cherry pick the lore they want and discard the rest and that goes especially with comic books. Nothing is truly cannon if it sucks. People will drop a series or wait until someone else reinvents. 

Arguing over which version was the worst pretty much requires reinterpretation.

It's by design. Writers reinvent characters in order to draw attention to their work and attract new fans. Otherwise no one would care about Alan Moore or Frank Miller.

You are wrong and HOLY SHIT you are wrong.

Reinventing characters isn't drawing attention to work, it is the actual work.

Espeicially in this case.

Haemish - I'd like to hear why you think characters are reinvented - both as to why the artists/writers want to do it and as to why the company agrees to produce it.

I think there are as many times that the business has driven a reinvention ("Bob, give us your take on Captain Enema - nobody likes anything that has been done with him recently, but he has a lot of name recognition.  We want to better monetize that recognitiion.") as there have been times that an artist had an idea that they convinced the suits to allow them to release.

What you are describing is a business driving a commission.

I mean sure, but the other half of that thought is usually 'and we think that will produce art good enough for people to want to pay for it' not just 'MUHAHAHAHAHA! The fools will be forced to pay us for this sacrilege! <twirl moustache> <snort coke off of hooker>'.

Characters get reinvented for all sorts of reasons - at places like DC and Marvel especially, I'd wager it's usually a business decision first and an individual writer's decision second. Now if the writer is a superstar in comics or is a big name in movies/fiction/tv, then it might be based on that writer's choice but only because the business side of editorial thinks "hey Joss Whedon on an X-Men book might expand comics beyond our normal nerd audience." Reinvention among Marvel and DC especially will happen because they need to boost a character's flagging sales but the character is important enough that they don't want to just shitcan the character. See countless changes with Superman such as red/blue Superman, Batman gets his back broken and gives the mantle to Azrael, Flash gets rebooted as Wally West because Barry Allen Flash had poor sales, Green Lantern Hal Jordan turns evil leading to Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, etc. The most input a writer who isn't a superstar gets in their choice of reinventing a character is "we need a Capt. Shmoopy book, who wants to take him?"

Speaking as a writer myself, I'm one who would try to maintain some respect for the source material especially if you are talking about iconic characters owned by long-term publishing ventures. You'd never see me do stories like making Gwen Stacy have love children with Norman Osborn because it's just ridiculous on its face. For characters that are part of larger universes where continuity is pretty strong, I wouldn't want to do something that so completely went against that character's brand as to render his past stories moot unless it was part of some universe line-wide reboot like New 52. There's nothing whatsoever wrong with just writing good Batman stories that don't significantly alter the status quo. If you take on that character as a writer in the present, accepted continuity (and not some special one-shot or limited series), then you do owe the character's history some sense of verisimilitude.

Just as an example, I kind of like Brian Michael Bendis when he's good, but he really grated on me more than normal when he tried writing Doctor Doom, because he really just did not 'read in' on the character at all. He wrote his dialogue like he was a kind of bitchy gangster rather than a grandiose, pretentious, somewhat chillingly Machiavellian figure. It's ok if you want to write someone confronting Doom saying "you're just a gangster, stop the pretense", but not if you write Doom as if he's already what you imagine someone saying he is. It's either lazy or tin-eared. Either is bad creatively.

If you're inventing a character, it's all on you. If you're handling a character that precedes you, it's not. If you decide to write a new Oz book in the style of L. Frank Baum, you have to respect Baum's whimsical tone, otherwise why bother? If you decide to write a subversion/corruption of the Oz books, then you're still a bit tethered to Baum's style--otherwise, what's the point? Write something completely new. Any adaptation or homage has a responsibility to pay attention to its source material.

Brian Michael Bendis has one character voice, and he hammers it over and fucking over again. When it works (like on his Daredevil work, or Miles Morales, or his original indie crime stuff), it's great. Every other time, it is shit of the highest order because every character sounds like they are out of Seinfeld. His Avengers work was godawful. His Doctor Doom as Iron Man series was better than it should have been - he actually was able to calm down his normal voice so that Doom didn't sound as bad as he normally does.

The Grouch skit was great. SNL nailed it.

This movie was downright amazing.  I can't remember a movie that made me feel this uncomfortable before from start to finish.  It was pretty epic from start to finish.  This is one movie I will own.  My only criticism is that this incarnation of the joker doesn't inspire any thoughts of maniacal genius, I can't see this joker engineering his way out of a plastic box let alone coming up with ingenious schemes to alleviate his boredom.

I think the film was terrific as well. Excellent cast.  And maybe the ending could hint at the whole film being nothing more than a joke (nobody would understand), highlighting just how much is actually true or not..

The whole movie is filled with "unreliable narrator" moments. Batman has been rebooted in film and TV versions more times than any other hero I can imagine.

And for the people bitching about comic continuity and canon being important to films like this. Answer me these couple of questions:

1) How old are the in-universe characters of Spider-Man/Peter Parker and Batman/Bruce Wayne? (approx ages are fine, ie mid-thirties, mid-forties, etc)

2) What year in-universe is it right now in inside their current continuity? Is it 2019?

3) What year was it (in-universe) when they first took up the mantle of the Spider/Bat Vigilante?
3a) Where did Tony Stark get that shrapnel in his chest?

4) Wait, how fucking old are they supposed to be again?


Worrying too much about canon when it comes to comics/comic characters is ...just stupid given the timelines and how many retcons happen. How many tiumes has Hawkeye died now?
It's a fucking standalone film, and a good one. Getting upset because certain media outlets and/or twitter fuckheads are telling you to get worried about incels is fucking stupid. Batman has been reinivented that many times it's fucking stupid to get upset about the same happening to the Joker.

5) And for good measure, old is Maggie Simpson now?

Only thing that kind of bugs me is Arthur's age.    I mean, yes, I get that Joker was already an adult when he killed Bruce's parents in the normal narrative, but I always kind of put that down as "Bruce was around 10, Joker was around 20, maybe mid 20 at the absolute latest.   In this thing, it is VERY hard to get past the fact that Joaquin is playing Arthur, because Joaquin is 45, and Arthur looks it.   It is practically impossible for me to imagine Joker as being a villain who regularly gets in physical altercations with batman when my mind tries to process that this guy is likely pushing 70 by time Bruce Wayne is old enough to be Gotham's most eligible bachelor and be Batmanning around the city.    Suspension of disbelief gets kind of difficult when I look at the guy and go "I could much more easily imagine this guy being Bruce's father, than his "much older" brother"....

Well depending on the narrative you want, normally it was not the Joker who killed Batman's parents. It was some guy called Joe Chill I think.

Ya it was in the first Tim Burton Batman film, and it made sense in the narrative that the film portrayed, but Joker did not personally fight Batman in that film either.

The age thing does bug me a bit but I was more disappointed that this version of the Joker didn't really 1) get to wild out and be that manic Joker for more than a few seconds at a time and 2) didn't appear to have the kind of "insane genius" that the Joker is known for - he was just a dude that went from emotionally damaged to murderously crazy.

Finally had a chance to see this - a comedy of errors kept me from it until now.  On HBO.
He has been shown a variety of ways - For the limited run where I read Batman in the 80s, he was just insanely lucky and was wandering into "good" outcomes.  That was in line with the movie. 

Great movie, though.  Excellent timing.  Not a lot of surprises, but everything was well executed.  I'd like there to have been a bit more during the post credits - photos perhaps - that sort of finished the evolution of the character and showed how he'd go from the Clown of Crime to the Clown Price of Crime.

I did not enjoy this movie, it was well made and well acted but to me that just means a wasted opportunity to do something amazing that I might enjoy.  Desperate grab at a comic book tie in to a dark and disturbing film.  I would have had more respect for it (but still not enjoyed it) if it didn't even try to tie in to a Joker origin story.   That said I'm a pretty low brow kind of person when it comes to movies and watch them to be entertained I have very little interest in giving them credit for artistic value if they don't entertain me.  I'm about the escapism and not looking to escape into a story that only leaves me depressed as fuck.  I also felt like it was a bit derivative of the Penguin origin story in Gotham which I think did a much better job at this sort of thing but it has been more than a few years so maybe I am recalling that incorrectly.

That said many people did enjoy it so yay for that, just not my thing.