Just from watching the adverts I was not convinced about this movie. Joaquin Phoenix can do weird and crazy well but there is another side to the joker as well that just seemed to be missing from the trailers. The Joker is the one character who seems to make a new appearance on the superhero/villain scene with a new actor every five years or so. The question that I felt needed to be asked is "do we really need another interpretation of the Joker"? Especially considering that this movie was a DC movie and by definition, the best they can be is 'decent'. Looking back over the movies that they have made since 'The Dark Knight Rises', 'Superman: Man of Steel' was a good movie, 'Batman Vs Superman' was shocking, 'Suicide Squad' was a total flop, 'Wonderwoman' was actually decent, 'Justice League' was so terrible that I turned it off after ten minutes and I haven't even bothered to watch Aquaman. That's two decent movies out of the last six which is very poor considering that 'the lego batman' movie was better than any DC film featuring Batman since the Christian Bale series.
In this stand alone movie, The Joker is revealed to be called Arthur Fleck. My problem with naming the Joker and giving him a real back story is that there isn't much substance to support it. From the first introduction of this villain in the very first issue of Batman, he had no explanation and no back story. He was given no name and no parents. In 'The Dark Knight', Heath Ledger's Joker gives three different reasons as to how he got his scars, one of which involved his father and another involving his wife. He doesn't name them and because he gives multiple stories you don't believe that any of them are true. In Tim Burton's movie in 1989, Tommy Lee Jones portrays a character called Jack Napier who then becomes the Joker through the same methods described in the comics. In the Netflix series 'Gotham' the Valaska brothers are modelled on 'The Joker' and in this movie, Arthur Fleck is revealed to be 'The Joker'. My first issue with this is that if you are going to do a back story then use a name which has already been used. No one knows the real name of the Joker so why not try to use the same name and make the audience connect the characters in their heads?
In this movie, Arthur is a guy who isn't good at education. His writing is readable but not great, his speech is a little interesting and he doesn't come across as a guy who has an interest and talent for Chemical Engineering. In this movie he is a weird guy, suffering from mental health issues who doesn't eat, dances around, has no friends and works as a clown whilst living with his mother. You don't look at this guy and think that he is going to become potentially the worlds biggest super villain. No way can you look at this guy on the screen and think that. He's delusional, he thinks about killing himself and he kills people because he is crazy but he doesn't seem like a criminal mastermind who has thought out everything. I have to agree with the review in the Guardian. After he kills three boys on a train you lose interest in the movie. I felt like I was watching a history documentary where the murder of three innocent people triggered riots and revolts across the city. That is pretty much what happened in this movie and it just wasn't interesting. There wasn't any real action in this movie and it made it really hard to enjoy the movie. Joaquin Phoenix was good but he has given better performances.
This movie is an interesting interpretation but it is very personalised in many ways and I highly doubt that it will become a box office hit just because it isn't the type of movie that you would go and see again with your other friends who didn't make it the first time around. Honestly, I don't even think that it is the type of movie that you can enjoy with your friends. It didn't trigger anything inside of me, I wasn't bored but I wasn't engaged. I wasn't angry, I was more just wondering why this movie was made. In this movie they hint that Arthur Fleck could be the son of Thomas Wayne, which would make him the brother of Batman but I can't recall ever reading about it in the comics or seeing that mentioned anywhere else so I wonder why they did it? The end of this movie also removes the league of Shadows from 'Batman Begins' and ruins the start of that movie, they don't follow on from each other but this one is trying to lead in to it and failing. I hear rumours that Robert Pattinson has been cast as Batman, which will be shocking, so maybe they will re-do all the movies and make them more terrible than some of them already are which means that this movie would finally fit in somewhere.
I would be interested to know if there is any original material out there, as in, material from the start when the Joker was just kicking off or was originally developed, that suggests his relationship with Thomas Wayne or his name? I'd like to know where the script writers got this idea from.
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