I'm writing this post because it's getting very low ratings. From the reviews that I read, many people say it doesn't meet their expectations of what a superhero movie should be.
I'm not a capeshit enjoyer. I chose to see Joker 2 because Joker 1 had vague themes of "defunding welfare programs is bad". In the first movie, Joker loses access to his mental illness medication because the politicians defund the welfare programs and that leads Joker to start doing crimes.
What I liked about Joker 2 is that everyone around him wants to make him miserable, but instead he chooses to be happy. In my opinion, it is the most pure example of absurdity. The whole world wants to make Joker miserable and he is powerless to change other people, but he can deny giving the world what they want so he chooses to laugh. I find that to be entertaining.
The movie was about 60% musical. Whenever Joker starts to hallucinate, everyone starts singing. I think it was okay, but other people did not like that. You probably won't like the movie if you are expecting it to follow the superhero movie formula.
Fuck sweaty nerds who wanted yet another "le epic clown man does crimes I can live vicariously through since IRL the joker would probably shoot me". What made the first movie good was exactly that, that it wasn't epic clown man doing crime, until the last minutes of the film. It was a pretty honest take on what it's like to be poor and neurodiverse in the imperial core.
until the last minutes of the film
Other than
, wasn't most of that just a delusion? They went pretty ham-fisted with the "unreliable narrator" trope at the end.spoiler
The new one clarifies that he did kill his chud coworker, the wallstreet bros, the cop and his mom in additional to
Gaga is a good actor.
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Throughout the movie, we learn that Harley Quinn is interested only in the Joker alter ego and not Arthur himself. She even tells Arthur to put on the Joker makeup when they have sex. She tells Arthur that if he stops being the Joker, then she isn't interested in him. This hurts Arthur quite a lot.
spoiler
I'm really glad they did that, because I've always felt that the Harley Joker romance was inherently abusive, because even if the Joker loves and respects Harley, she is literally his doctor. It's one of the little explored realms of the Joker and I'm glad that they are taking time to get into it. I will definitely see this movie now.
spoiler
The conclusion of the movie is that Arthur Fleck is not The Joker. The Joker/Harley relationship that you know is from fiction that isn't about Arthur Fleck.
I hate capeshit and only watched gave Joker a try because /r/ChapoTrapHouse was very positive about it. I found it a really powerful and moving story about a person being systemically oppressed, stigmatized, and criminalized by a brutal and evil system when he just needed a loving supportive caring Communist state to help him instead, and then striking back as a result. It was cathartic and it was deeply moving because I have known and cared for people like that.
And then I guess they threw in like 5% of capeshit shit but I almost entirely didn't need to know or care about that stuff. It felt like someone had tricked capeshit directors into letting them make a movie that was about systemic oppression under the guise of "yeah it'll totally be about your stupid superhero franchise!" when it really wasn't.
I liked that it didn't have the stupid frivolity and silliness of the 1st christopher nolan batman movie. I liked that it didn't have the shitty Joss Whedon one-liners and pro-military shit of the Marvel movies. I liked that it didn't have the pro-fascistic bent of the 2nd christopher nolan batman movie.
I wasn't planning to watch Jonkler 2 because the 1st movie ends with Arthur's transformation into Jonkler and I was afraid that meant a sequel would go hard into capeshit shit.
I tend to dislike musicals but I will sometimes enjoy one.
Based on the above, do you think I should give it a try or skip it?
if your concern was joker 2 would be capeshit then i can say pretty confidently that that's not very relevant to it. i think you should give it a try, i thought it was fine too.
Wasn't Dark Night antifa? I mean Batman lost his best ally because they took the moral high ground and resigned when he hacked everyone's phone "for the security of the people"
Yeah but as I remember it he accepts to do the surveillance job to find Joker before resigning and then he has to press a button that unbeknownst to him makes the system explode, so it was "fine" in the end and he doesn't resign.
I havwnt seen it in 14 years so Im fuzzy on the detaila but when I watched it it seemed very pro surveillance state in a war on terror way to me.
You're misremembering.
The movie showed scenes of the possibility to exploit mass dragnet surveillance "for security" by targeting cell phones.
It was especially remarkable because it shows this in 2008, 5 years before we learned (from the Snowden revelations) that the NSA was doing this "for security".
But the film didn't champion it, it made it clear that doing it was unethical, and it condemned it. It painted Batman as a villan because he chose to harm innocent civilians in his increasingly maddening obsession to get revenge against the Joker.
The movie wasn't subtle about this. When we learned how batman hacked into the phones of everyone at Gotham, Morgan Freedman's charscter said "this is wrong" and then he resigned.
Edit: the clip of this dialog is on YT https://youtube.com/watch?v=0Yb7Ps2gA0w
I like the part where the clown commits crimes instead of telling jokes.
Also saw it yesterday, great movie
Made for a fun first date but she didn't like the movie as much as I did
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I think that his speach in the courtroom about how there is no Joker and he's just himself was meant as a homage to the speach Chaplin made in The Great Dictator
There was also a Chaplin poster earlier in the film
I have other thoughts but I loved it
I wish people loved musicals. I feel like they somehow became “cringe” to a vast majority of Americans, and if I were smart I’d make this a much bigger post about consumerism and alienation.
I like musicals but only if they're also comedies. It just a personal preference cuz something in my noodle gets taken out of the immersion when a dance number starts but for comedy the absurdity is fine.
I don't dislike musicals as a rule, but I feel musical has gone beyond being a medium and now more closely resembles a genre insofar as most musicals are just super campy and the music has a particular feeling.
I'd be more interested if I felt the music was more differentiated or more to my tastes. I like concept albums that tell a story over the whole album. That's basically a musical, but I actually enjoy the music.
I’ve thought a lot about this and yes. I want musicals to be made about times that would actually feel appropriate for song and dance. So modern viewers can get their “grit and realism” the desire from every single genre. A Joe Hill movie specifically comes to mind.
Like "Once"! That movie was definitely a musical but every song had a reason to be there in that time.
I don't care for music as an art form, I can't stand musicals, and I loved Once. Didn't even realise it was a musical until reading up on it later.
"Once" was so amazing to me cuz of how it shows me that a musical can integrate into a story seamlessly. Well and also the music was dope and i like romance a lot
I don't like musicals because most of the songs just annoy me. Heavy Metal (1981) was partially a musical and is one of the best movie soundtracks of all-time. Shame it's so problematic that even contemporaries ripped into it.
Sound and the Fury by Sturgil Simpson is like a better, improved Heavy Metal but only features one artist. Luckily he's great and decided to get weird, making up like 7 new genres of music nobody's heard before.
I think musicals are fine, but the music has to be genuinely very very good. You can make a mediocre movie and still have it be somewhat enjoyable. I can't listen to mediocre music and feel the same though.
I also just think they come across better on a stage than in a movie. It feels so weird to me sometimes for a movie to have this incredibly close in depth feeling to it, just for it to zoom out to a cast of people dancing and singing and shit.
They were always cringe. Disney was the only thing that makes them even partially appealing to people and people like me still hate and hated them.
Being cringe is being human.
You only see musicals as cringe through the modern eye, someone who can pull up any song on Spotify, or learn new dance moves on Tik Tok. We live our life terrified of being recorded on camera being cringe, or doing something cringy. Musicals were popular in the era of packed theaters and experiencing something new together.
Calling musicals cringy is presentism.
Gotta' love having the most pretentious and annoying conversations on here.
Log off, touch grass, git gud, etc
Posting should be banned anyway
And the jazz covers of the Sound Of Music songs, I guess.
There's very few I like. Sweeny Todd and Bigger Longer Uncut were great.
I have pretty low expectations but I'll watch any movie with hot clowns in it
gonna wait for a webrip tho
Have you or someone you're not wiling to disown ever liked a piece of entertainment that was considered bad, toxic, or just cringe? What about something made by a problematic person?
Well, I'm sorry, but you're no longer woke or antifa. Go down to the secret GAY AND TRANS ALLIANCE Headquarters in your town, located in either the backroom of a craft store or else a study room in a public library and turn in your woke card. Then go to the nearest gun store or church and talk to the man there to enroll in membership to the alt-right.
But on a serious note
I liked the first Joker movie. Nothing incredible, but a decent movie, relaxing way to kill an afternoon. I'll probably see Joker 2. I've seen some very negative reviews from people I follow on Twitter, but that's not necessarily damning. I follow a lot of, not necessarily film snobs, but people who have watching films as like their main hobby, and many of them are amateur film critics. I saw a lot of those people say Joker was too-closely aping Scorsese's King of Comedy and Taxi Driver but despite loving Scorsese's post-80s body of work I still haven't seen many of his older films, those included.
Most damning review I saw was from someone who felt about the same about Joker 1 as I did. It was something like "Joker may not have been the greatest movie ever made, but it was never boring. Folie à Deux misses the mark set by the first film."
But as I say, I still intend to see it. I went into Joker 1 kind of expecting it to be terrible, and was pleasantly surprised it wasn't. Going to try to approach 2 the same way.
Sorry to necropost, but now I have seen Joker 2 and I liked it a lot. Just a fun, hilarious movie.
I think the Joker movies don't do well because everyone has their own idea of who these characters should be.
Go into it just expecting to see a story, with no preconceived notions of these characters, and you'll see a film with beautiful shots, dramatic use of light and shadow, excellent use of music, and interesting performances.
A lot of people didn't like it, but a lot of people are idiots who miss all subtext.
Go see it for youself as a fan of films, and don't try to compare to whatever head canon for your version of the characters.
