I want to talk about Joker
If you know me, you know I can be a DC Comics apologist. When Justice League was released, I was underwhelmed but was fine with it as long as it was a starting point. Instead, it was a pivot point and alters the way it’s perceived.
When I heard in the middle of 2019 that a standalone Joker film was in the works, I was skeptical. I couldn’t recall a previous origin story for the villain and had never felt as though we needed one.
The film still didn’t feel necessary even after seeing it in theaters and yet it has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards. When the nominations news came out on Monday, I went back to revisit some thoughts I’d jotted down after its release.
(I have to be clear and separate Joaquin Phoenix’s performance from the film itself. Phoenix was great while the rest of the film underwhelmed.)
I made it a point to avoid any reviews negative or positive about Joker before seeing it. I didn’t want anyone else’s takeaways influencing my viewing and the only thing I read was Director Todd Phillips’ comments about his motivations for making the film.
“Go try to be funny nowadays with this woke culture,” Phillips told VF. “There were articles written about why comedies don’t work anymore — I’ll tell you why, because all the fucking funny guys are like, ‘Fuck this shit, because I don’t want to offend you.’’
“It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it, right? So you just go, ‘I’m out.’ I’m out, and you know what? With all my comedies — I think that what comedies, in general, all have in common — is they’re irreverent. So I go, ‘How do I do something irreverent, but fuck comedy? Oh I know, let’s take the comic book movie universe and turn it on its head with this.’ And so that’s really where that came from.”
When I read these comments, I worried that I wasn’t going to like the film. The only thing that makes less sense than Phillips’s comments was his film. Here were my problems with it.
Phillips doesn’t actually say anything with the film
If I had a dollar for every friend I have online who thought this film was some commentary on bullying or social commentary, I’d have like $7 but I also didn’t see that many personal friends post about it. But it was enough for me to roll my eyes.
See, Phillips’s pre-release comments about the film wind up instructing the viewer on how to interpret the work. Much like his rant to Vanity Fair, Phillips just wants to spend 2.5 hours using the Joker character as a medium for his misplaced rage.
Phillips never decides if his film is a social commentary piece, an addition to Batman canon, or a prequel to something. I’ll go into the latter two later on but this film winds up as zero of the three because he never commits to a singular direction.
Instead, Phillips is content waving lazily at all three while his film rakes in cash at the box office. You know why all that fear over potential violence at showings of the Joker became unfounded? Because all the incels also realized that this movie made no fucking sense and Phillips never actually says anything with his film.
“I started a joke which started the whole world crying but I didn’t see that the joke was on me”
What makes Phillips’ Joker so punchless is that the character has no real motivation for killing other than murder for the sake of it.
What has made other comic book movie villains sympathetic and stronger characters is the belief that their actions will improve society. We saw this with Bane in The Dark Knight Rises and Thanos in the MCU. While both of these characters were wrong in their actions at least we understood their reasoning.
Hell, even the Joker in The Dark Knight was a lunatic but that character believed that he was acting for the greater good. That’s the thing with the Joker, he’s a maniac but there’s usually an understandable motivation.
The motivations with these aforementioned characters might even make them sympathetic but that’s difficult-if-not-impossible to do with Phillips’ Joker. Why? Because we don’t get any real motivation from the Joker other than his feelings are hurt.
If you loved torture porn, you may have liked what Phillips’ Joker did. Phillips’ Joker essentially beats upon the people who were mean to him without any other real motivation. How anyone takes anything out of this fake-deep messaging is beyond me.
One of the Joker’s earliest kills in the film is the guys on the subway who begin messing with him for no reason. What’s clear is that this is a mentally ill man dressed as a clown who is laughing to himself on the train late at night. First off, no one is going to mess with that person, even with a group of people. Secondly, this is far from some powerful anti-bullying PSA.
We all may have coworkers we don’t like or don’t get along with, but that’s not really justification for bashing their head against the wall, even for a psychotic clown.
Again, it’s clear that Phillips doesn’t actually want to use the Joker character as a medium for pushing for societal change but for senselessly lashing out and filling his diaper for hours on end.
“Turning the comic book universe on its head”
One of the biggest concerns before the film, for me, was how a standalone Joker film works without an active Batman franchise. The two characters are inextricably linked and the Joker, no Batman combo is more questionable than Batman, no Joker.
The Joker exists in Phillips’s story as a man in approximately his mid-to-late 30s who lives with his mother who is a former Wayne Enterprises employee. When she’s ill, Joker turns to Thomas Wayne for help since his mother says that Thomas Wayne always takes care of his people.
That’s all well and good but we learn that Arthur Fleck (the name given to Joker by Phillips) may be the illegitimate love child of Thomas Wayne. The problem with this is Wayne’s son Bruce, future Batman, is about eight years old.
Phillips implies for a moment that Batman and his arch-nemesis are actually half-brothers, which is ridiculous.
What winds up sticking, however, is that Fleck is roughly 30 years older than Bruce Wayne. Did Phillips mean to imply that Batman grows up to beat on a senior citizen? Probably not but that’s what happens when you set up the back story this way.
Maybe this is why there is an unusual lack of DC Comics branding for the film considering the film is about its most-popular villain: it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.
Send in the clown
What’s ironic is that Phillips whined to Vanity Fair about how people are too easily offended for comedy today before the film’s release and attempts to recreate a classic character whose primary motive is, wait for it, hurt feelings.
It’s also easy to say you’re taking a classic character and “turning it on its head” when you don’t bother to tie the ends together.
The thing is, this film wastes a brilliant Joaquin Phoenix performance on a director who approached this idea from the wrong headspace. There was real room for this film to serve as a commentary on how uncaring the world can be or how outcasts are radicalized.
Instead, you come away feeling like you watched Phillips throwing a tantrum through a comic book villain for two hours. I hate to think of all the better films that could have received these nominations.
