That's right, I'm back once again with another movie take, this time on the film Joker, the controversial psychological thriller based on the classic DC Comics supervillain. As always, if you haven't seen the movie yet and you don't want it spoiled for you, then please step back from your computer or whatever electronic device you're reading this on and stop reading now. If, however, you're wise enough to know that movie reviews with spoilers are always more interesting than the ones without them...well...put on a happy face!
In 2016, director Todd Phillips pitched the idea for Joker to Warner Bros., wanting to create a more grounded comic book film. He proposed that DC Films distinguish itself from Marvel Studios' by producing low-budget, standalone films, and after the success of Wonder Woman, DC Films decided to de-emphasize the shared nature of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). A year later, Warner Bros. and DC Films revealed their plans for Joker, with Phillips directing and co-writing with Scott Silver, and Martin Scorsese co-producing with Phillips.
Warner Bros. considered casting Leonardo DiCaprio as the Joker, hoping to use his frequent involvement with Scorcese to persuade him, but Scorcese ultimately left the project due to other commitments. By February 2018, Joaquin Phoenix was Phillips' top pick for the role, who eventually signed on because the film was a standalone project, unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which would require him to appear in multiple movies.
While the film's premise was inspired by The Joker being a failed stand-up comedian in the 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Brian Bolland, Phillips and Silver chose to create their own original story that wasn't based on the comics. Instead, the film is heavily influenced by Scorcese's films Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, right down to the casting of Robert De Niro.
Joker opens in 1981 Gotham City, riddled with crime and unemployment (because hey, no Batman), leaving segments of the population disenfranchised and impoverished. We're introduced to Arthur Fleck, a long-haired nobody who struggles to get by working as a clown for hire and is beaten up by a gang of young punks in an alley. The film's unsettling, cynical tone is quickly established here, with Hildur Guðnadóttir's score haunting the entire film.
We learn Arthur leads a lonely, pathetic existence, taking care of his elderly mother Penny in a shitty apartment and depending on a social services worker for medication for his severe mental illness. In addition to suffering from a neurological disorder that causes him to uncontrollably laugh at inappropriate times, Arthur is disturbingly thin (Phoenix reportedly lost over 50 pounds for the role) and keeps a "joke book" filled with chaotic scribblings and dark thoughts in the hopes of a career in stand-up comedy. Arthur idolizes a late-night talk show host named Murray Franklin, whose show he and Penny watch together every night.
After the gang attack, Randall, Arthur's co-worker at the clown rental agency, loans him a handgun for protection, even though he's not supposed to have one. In a random elevator encounter, Arthur meets Sophie, a single mother who lives in his apartment building and smiles at one of Arthur's goofy facial expressions. Arthur invites Sophie to his scheduled stand-up comedy performance, and they begin dating. Looks like Arthur's life might be picking up, right?
Wrong. The film becomes even more unsettling and tense when Arthur's gun falls out of his pocket while he entertains at a children's hospital, but doesn't go off. Arthur is still fired, of course, and Randall lies that Arthur bought the gun himself. On the subway home, still in his clown makeup, Arthur is beaten once again, this time by three drunk Wayne Enterprises businessmen who pretty much deserve what's coming to them. He shoots two in self-defense, then chases after the third, murdering him to prevent a surviving witness. The murders are condemned by billionaire mayoral candidate Thomas Wayne (That's right, Batdad himself), who labels those envious of more successful people "clowns". Demonstrations against Gotham's rich begin, straight out of The Dark Knight Rises, with protesters donning plastic clown masks similar to Arthur's image.
We head into the film's second act, where Arthur learns that budget cuts are ending the social service program, leaving Arthur without medication to control his mental illness. Yeah, this'll turn out well. Arthur's stand-up comedy performance goes about as well as you might expect, as he experiences an uncontrollable laughing fit and has difficulty delivering any of his jokes. Murray Franklin mocks Arthur by showing clips of his bad comedy club routine on his show.
And hey, just to throw more gasoline on the fire, Arthur intercepts a letter written by Penny to Thomas, alleging that he's Thomas' illegitimate son, and yells angrily at his mother for hiding the truth. Arthur travels to stately Wayne Manor and talks all kinds of creepy to Thomas' young son, Bruce, Arthur's alleged half-brother, but runs off after being confronted by bearded (!!!) butler Alfred Pennyworth. Following a visit from two terrible Gotham City Police Department detectives investigating Arthur's involvement in the train murders, Penny suffers a severe stroke and is hospitalized.
As Alan Moore wrote in Batman: The Killing Joke, "All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man to lunacy." And here, at last, we see Arthur's one bad day.
At a public event, Arthur confronts Thomas, who explains that Penny is delusional and was a patient at Arkham State Hospital (I guess "Asylum" is a little too obvious these days). In denial over Penny's mental illness, Arthur visits Arkham and steals Penny's case file, which shows that Penny adopted Arthur as a baby and allowed her abusive boyfriend to harm them both. Penny alleged that Thomas used his powerful influence to fake the adoption and commit her to Arkham as a way to conceal their affair.
The deliberate ambiguity of which story to believe is a clever creative decision by Phillips, leaving things up to the audience to decide the truth they prefer while throwing out the possibility that Batman's dad cheated on his wife Martha and had another son, making the Joker Batman's half-brother. Arthur, as you might expect, doesn't take this information well and goes to the hospital, smothering Penny with her bed pillow.
He enters Sophie's apartment unannounced and a visibly frightened Sophie tells him to leave, revealing another twist -- Arthur's "relationship" with Sophie never happened and was just one of his delusions. We see Arthur exiting her apartment, but what happened right before that is also left intentionally ambiguous. Sophie doesn't appear in any subsequent scenes, so did Arthur murder her and her daughter before leaving? Did he spare them? That's left for the audience to decide.
In the film's third act, Arthur is invited to appear on Murray's show due to the unexpected popularity of his routine clips. As he prepares by painting his face white, symbolizing his final evolution into the Joker, he's visited by his former co-workers Gary and Randall. Arthur brutally murders Randall with a pair of scissors, but allows Gary to leave unharmed because Gary was the only one who was nice to him. Leaving his apartment for the TV studio, Arthur steps out in full Joker purple-suit regalia, fully embracing and celebrating who he has become, or perhaps who he's always been. He's quickly spotted by the two GCPD detectives, who pursue him onto a train filled with clown protesters heading for a protest rally. One detective accidentally shoots a protester and incites a riot, letting Arthur escape in the chaos.
He makes it to the TV studio and requests that Murray introduce him as Joker, a reference to what Murray called him during his mockery. The Joker walks out to a warm reception, but begins telling morbid, unfunny jokes, confesses that he killed the men on the train, and finally unloads in a rant about how society abandons the disfranchised and how Murray mocked him. Instead of killing himself on the show as originally planned, the Joker instead kills Murray on live TV and is soon arrested as riots break out across Gotham.
One rioter, presumably named Joe Chill, confronts the Wayne family in an alley as they leave a movie theater showing Zorro, the Gay Blade starring George Hamilton, a period accurate nod to the Wayne family seeing The Mark of Zorro in various versions of Batman's origin story. Wearing a clown mask, Chill predictably murders Thomas and his wife Martha, sparing Bruce and making the Joker indirectly responsible for creating Batman. Meanwhile, some other rioters driving an ambulance crash into the police car transporting the Joker and free him from the wreckage. Finding acceptance at last, the Joker dances to the cheers of the clown-masked rioters and notices that he is bleeding from his mouth, which he smears to paint a bloody red smile across his face.
In the film's closing scene, we find Arthur (or is it The Joker?) in Arkham State Hospital, where he's being evaluated by a psychiatrist about what happened. He laughs to himself, telling his psychiatrist that she wouldn't understand the joke. The last thing we see is him leaving a trail of bloodied footprints and being chased back and forth by orderlies. Did Arthur murder the psychiatrist? Was The Joker another delusion? Or was the entire movie one big joke played on the audience by Phillips?
Even though there's only one performance in this film that truly matters, here are the major characters and actors that stood out:
THE JOKER/ARTHUR FLECK -- Joaquin Phoenix proves once again that he's one of the finest actors we have right now. Everything in this film hinges on him, and after iconic Jokers played by Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger, it's amazing how Phoenix brings something completely unique and equally iconic to the role. His strong portrayal should be remembered for decades to come and while I'm not certain that Joker will get a Best Picture nomination, Joaquin Phoenix damn well deserves a Best Actor nom.
SOPHIE DUMOND -- As Arthur's love interest that turns out to be anything but, Zazie Beetz definitely steps up her game from last year's Deadpool 2. It doesn't make much sense that a woman like Sophie would fall for such a creeptacular incel like Arthur, finding him charming and quickly having sex with him, but once the delusion twist is revealed, everything falls into place. I would've liked to have seen more of Sophie, but I get the decision to make her fate vague and uncertain.
MURRAY FRANKLIN -- Robert De Niro, who starred The King of Comedy as Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring mentally unstable failed comedian who longs to appear on a talk show, gets to experience the flip side as Joker's talk show host who makes fun of Phoenix's aspiring mentally unstable failed comedian. This is the closest you'll ever see of Bobby D starring in a superhero movie, so I hope you enjoyed it as I did.
PENNY FLECK -- Frances Conroy first made my radar as the creepy older Moira O'Hara in American Horror Story: Murder House, so I was intrigued when her casting was announced. As the Joker's mom, or perhaps adopted mom, she first appears to suffer from some sort of dementia, but the implication of her being severely mentally ill gives weight to Arthur being her natural son and passing that illness onto him genetically.
THOMAS WAYNE -- As the newest Thomas Wayne, Brett Cullen's big scene is when Arthur confronts him in a restroom about being his father. For the first time, Thomas Wayne is depicted in an unsympathetic manner as a rich elitist looking to achieve power as Gotham's mayor instead of a rich doctor using his fortune to make Gotham a better place. Dirtying up Thomas' character helped to sell the ambiguity of whether Arthur is his son, but might come off as horribly out of character to diehard Batfans.
ALFRED PENNYWORTH -- Douglas Hodge turns up as the latest Alfred in the unnerving scene where Arthur shows up at Wayne Manor and meets young Bruce. Unfortunately, because Hodge looks nothing like Alfred, especially with his full beard, you can easily mistake the character for a random security guy protecting the front gate.
BRUCE WAYNE -- We have another Batman, or at least another young Bruce Wayne, this time in Dante Pereira-Olson. In the scene noted above, this still-innocent Bruce gets lured to the front gate by Arthur, and then in a really disturbing moment, forcibly made to smile when Arthur insert his fingers into the corners of Bruce's mouth. Comic book writers and artists are going to love recycling that imagery when creating future Batman comics.
MARTHA WAYNE -- Carrie Louise Putrello becomes the latest Martha to be shot dead in Crime Alley and have her pearl necklace ripped from her neck. That's it. Even though this is a film about the Joker and not Batman, would it have killed Phillips to make Martha as much of a character as Thomas?
All in all, Joker isn't a film for everyone, certainly not for young Batman fans, but it's one that gives a good look at extreme mental illness, represented by the classic DC Comics supervillain who embodies it so well. After so many comic book movies, Joker is that far-too-rare standalone comic book film that transcends shared cinematic universes and instead delivers art and a good amount of social commentary. Even better, it makes you stop and think about what you just watched, as opposed to waiting impatiently for the post-credits bonus scene that sets up the next superhero movie.
And for those who may be wondering, here's the updated list of my Top 20 Comic Book Films:
1. Superman (1978)
2. The Dark Knight (2008)
3. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
4. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
5. The Avengers (2012)
6. Batman Begins (2005)
7. Joker (2019)
8. Logan (2017)
9. Black Panther (2018)
10. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
11. Man of Steel (2013)
12. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
13. Doctor Strange (2016)
14. Wonder Woman (2017)
15. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
16. Spider-Man (2002)
17. Aquaman (2018)
18. Iron Man (2008)
19. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
20. Watchmen (2009)
