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MisterSwig

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This new Joker trailer has people talking, and I'm not surprised. It gave me chills.

https://youtu.be/_pk-qMdR9Lo

Joaquin Phoenix is an amazing actor, and it looks like he and writer Todd Phillips will bring a truly disturbing realism to the comic book villain.  

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By the way, I figured out why I got chills. It happens when the music starts to take off as Arthur is becoming the Joker. That part where he licks his paintbrush made me think of soldiers putting on war paint--only he's going to war with his own society, not a foreign one. And you are meant to sympathize with his decision. Also, those looks he gives remind me of the thousand-yard stare of an emotionally drained warrior too exhausted to care about the world anymore. He's looking at you, but his mind is trained inward, on FUBAR thoughts repeating like an unstoppable mantra. 

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10 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

How would you describe his version of the Joker? I think I saw one of the movies, but missed the TV series.

It changes from what movie it is to the series I believe.  In The Killing Joke (my favorite Batman movie) he is out to prove it only takes one bad day to go off your knockers and uses fairly extreme violence to do so.  That laugh is unforgettable, though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb8fWUUXeKM

Edited by nakulanb
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I think the reason I'm underwhelmed by this trailer is because the take on the character isn't interesting to me.  I love Hamill because he can jump from silly to lunatic in a second, his joker is so volatile.  Granted I haven't seen this film yet, and I most likely will watch it, but based upon what they have chosen to show us, I'm left underwhelmed.

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The reason I like the trailer so much is that it portrays the Joker as someone who could have become a hero in every sense of the word. The music at the beginning is really suggestive of movies that portray a character who goes through great struggle to become a heroic and admirable person in the end. That doesn't happen since he chooses to see reality as an absurd joke; he overcomes struggle by making life itself a joke. We see that he becomes more confident, more sure of himself, living by his own values, probably less altruistic. But he chooses something besides life as his standard: amusement and absurdity.

 

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

We see that he becomes more confident, more sure of himself, living by his own values, probably less altruistic.

I believe the writer gave Arthur a psychological condition to explain his weird laughter. So it's like he finally stops fighting his nature and embraces his condition by projecting it onto society. Society is a sick joke, and so the people want the Joker.

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In this case, his psychological condition is framed as his connection to reality related to how he chooses to cope. This focuses on methods of thought and thinking as a cause of one's psychological condition, and using methods of thought and thinking to create a new philosophical outlook. Or at least, if Phoenix does a good job, he won't stick to a surface level "the Joker is crazy and he embraces that and projects it onto others". 
 

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Joker won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival. It'll probably be a box office hit and do well at the Oscars, so we should expect to see this treatment with other comic book villains. But I can't think of many with enough realism and individuality to make it not seem silly. Other than more Batman villains (Penguin, Catwoman, Riddler, Scarecrow, etc.), who is there worth exploring like Joker? Lex Luthor, I guess, but he'd probably be boring without Superman taking center-stage. And most of (or all?) the great Marvel villains have supernatural abilities, making them less than ideal for a realistic treatment.

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32 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Or at least, if Phoenix does a good job, he won't stick to a surface level "the Joker is crazy and he embraces that and projects it onto others". 

Right. His character will just believe that society is an actual sick joke--and maybe it truly will be in the movie, which would make the Joker a figure of rationality. But I doubt that question will be answered explicitly. We'll be left to decide for ourselves whether the Joker is correct.

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18 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Keep in mind that this is supposed to be a more realistic, genuine origin story. Arthur isn't going to start out as a silly lunatic. He has to evolve to something like that from a less psychotic beginning.

Yes, I'm aware.  That's why I said based on what they have chosen to show us.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I saw the movie over the weekend. I'm not sure if it is a masterpiece, but it might be. There are certainly very artistic aspects to the film, in addition to the riveting performance of Phoenix. I believe it employs a kind of unreliable, psychotic narrator. Not that there is any crazy voiceover, but that the scenes and dialogue are often composed to reflect a mind that struggles with separating reality from fantasy, like Arthur's. Yet enough clues are provided so that an attentive viewer can probably figure it out. There is also the correlation between Arthur's mental struggle and Gotham's social struggle. A whole book could probably be written about the symbolism in this movie. But at the core it's about why Arthur turns into the Joker and does the things he does. The answer appears to be that his transition is a result of many factors and choices. There's his childhood trauma, his adult beliefs, his psychological condition, his treatment by others, his lack of medicine, his desire to make people happy in a world that wants to kill the rich. It might be that the movie purposely fogs up the Joker's motivations, because who can really say why a crazy person does a crazy thing. In the end, it was just the thing they felt like doing in the moment.

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