Why So Serious?

*spoilers ahead*

The concept of “Joker” is pretty straight-forward.  Todd Phillips wanted to show how evil is often shaped by a person’s circumstances.  Arthur Fleck is a child of abuse, grows up in a broken home with a delusional mother, suffers from delusions and a few other mental illnesses himself but can’t get them treated due to a lack of a civic support system for the mentally ill, and is doing all this while trying to get by in the notorious cesspool that is Gotham City.  Between being beaten up, losing his job, being confronted with an apparent lie about his parentage and then the actual truth about his parentage, lashing out with a vigilante attack, and then being mocked by a TV talk show host, Arthur finally snaps, and the Joker as we (sort of) know him is created.  If Arthur just snaps, he becomes one of, sadly, thousands of semi-anonymous people who commit awful deeds on a near-daily basis.  But because his path leads him to becoming the Joker, it underlines how everyday evils can give birth to a terrifying, world-threatening kind of evil.

It’s an interesting premise, and somewhat of a different one for a “comic book movie” (though Joker has none of the trappings associated with your normal Marvel or DC movie) beyond just the fact that a movie focused entirely around the villain is unusual enough.  So, the question is, why did I dislike this film?

In short, it’s a classic case of an interesting premise on paper not translating into a particularly interesting movie.  Joker is a tough watch — the one “comic book movie” trope it does adopt is carrying the “grim-dark” nature of a Zach Snyder DC movie to an extreme.  Obviously any film with such a heavy message is under no obligation to be light, and frankly, having many light moments or even dark comic moments would’ve been even more off-putting.  But the issue is, the movie’s tone and overall direction is so apparent even five minutes in that it left me just dreading a slog for the next two hours, and it was a slog I received.  If you’re wondering if there are at least a half-dozen music cues of songs about laughter or clowns scored to melancholy or violent moments, you are correct!

I don’t mind a tough watch if a film has something unique to say, but while that interesting premise I mentioned earlier is “somewhat different” for a full movie, it’s not exactly new to the world of comics in general.  Probably a good three-quarters of all comic villains already have an established tragic backstory — even among Batman villains alone, Mr. Freeze and Two-Face are on the Mount Rushmore of comic villain origin stories.  Ascribing such a background to the Joker seems almost unnecessary, since the Joker quite famously doesn’t have a set origin* and more or less seems like Phillips had Arthur become this specific villain because the Joker is the most famous one around.

* = of course, we already got a canon-busting Joker origin in the original Tim Burton Batman movie, and the comics have never really done anything to entirely bust up the old continuity of the Joker being a criminal known as the “Red Hood,” who has a header into a vat of acid during an encounter with Batman.  And, Phillips kind of hedges anyway about the “validity” of the entire movie by establishing that Arthur is delusional, so it’s possible the whole thing could basically just be the version that he sees in his head, or the one that that he’s telling to the Arkham psychiatrist at the end.

The other problem I had with the film is that in trying to humanize the Joker, I feel it goes too far in trying to sympathize or even excuse him.  To use the inevitable comparison to The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger’s Joker was an agent of pure chaos within what he felt was a chaotic system that deserved to be overthrown.  Yet that film, and Ledger’s performance, never let us forget that Joker was malevolent.  He’s fine with destroying everything and everyone for his own amusement, whereas in Arthur’s case, both his actions and the whole Joker movement for lack of a better term are presented as being borderline justifiable.  The Joker isn’t supposed to be a violent Robin Hood — while the Joker may be selective in his specific targets, his overall target is just “everyone.” 

Contrast this to Arthur, who only lashes out at those who have wronged him.  The goons on the subway, his co-worker, his mother, and Murray Franklin* all “have it coming” to some extent.  We aren’t shown what Arthur did to Zazie Beetz’s character and her kid, and leaving it ambiguous is a bit of a copout move on Phillips’ part since a definitive answer helps the narrative either way.  If Arthur leaves them unharmed, it shows he hasn’t entirely yet gone around the bend; if he does harm them, it shows he is ultimately evil, which better enforces the whole point of the movie. 

* = by the way, I shouldn’t say that this movie is entirely humourless, since the unintentional comedy of legendarily grumpy late-night talk show guest Robert De Niro playing a late night talk show host is off the charts.  Especially since his big comic catchphrase is, simply, “that’s life!”  Even Jay Leno would find this guy too much of a hack.  By the way, De Niro was cast as an homage to his role in ‘The King Of Comedy,’ but actually having De Niro there probably pushes the homage into straight ripoff territory.  The line between homage and ripoff, by the way, is called the De Palma Threshold.

Not giving us an answer either way strikes me less of Phillips wanting to create some mystery, and more not wanting to have the audience turn on Arthur — except, by this point we should be turning on Arthur because HE’S THE JOKER.  I mentioned earlier about how so many comic villains have tragic origins, and probably at least half of that number manifest that past into some type of a code of ethics.  Again, looking at Batman villains alone, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Harley Quinn, Catwoman wouldn’t have killed Zazie and her youngster; Riddler or Penguin probably not; hell, even Two-Face would spare them if his coin flipped the right way.  Adding the Joker to the list of “villains with ethics” is the only real breach of comics continuity that I have an issue with, since it goes against one of the fundamental aspects of what the Joker is all about.  To him, there’s no such thing as “they had it coming” since in his view, everyone is inherently corrupt and thus has it coming sooner or later.

My other hot take about the film is, and I have to be quiet if any angry Academy voters see this….

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┻┳| •.•) psst….
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┻┳| •.•) …this isn’t a very good Joaquin Phoenix performance.
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Phoenix, usually a reliably great actor, isn’t bringing anything new to the table in his portrayal of damaged Arthur Fleck, or even how he shifts into fully-formed Joker mode by the end of the film.  Arthur seems like a poor man’s version of Freddie Quell, a much better Phoenix character from “The Master.”  As for Jokerized Arthur, even accounting for the fact that he’s still in the embryonic stages of his criminal form, there isn’t the sense of controlled menace that should be surrounding the Joker at all times.  It doesn’t help Phoenix that Ledger’s performance is still so fresh in everyone’s mind, and I don’t at all think Phoenix deserves a Best Actor Oscar for this (though it would be classic Academy to award a seemingly overdue performer for a lesser role rather than one of their headline performances).

“Joker” is an interesting movie, hence all my words about it, but I hesitate to call it an actual good movie.  I don’t know if this specific kind of story needed to be told about this specific character, and even if so, I’m not sure Todd Phillips is the director to make it.  But hey, this movie is set to make over a billion dollars, so what do I know?  To quote legendary TV funnyman Murray Franklin, that’s life.