Movies JOKER v.3 (Dragonlord's Review)

[Hogey]

I carry a small backpack when I go to the theatre. I use it to store my phone, wallet and anything else I might need. In the UK, no one has a problem with this. A few times I've taken my sports bag with me, because I'm gone to the gym after seeing the movie.

Are you describing a purse?

I know you europeans are pretty progressive

Also taking your stinky ass clothes to a movie theater is gross. I would be highly suspicious of the stinky ass dude that decided to go the movies with a backpack

 

[Amerikuracana]

I saw this movie a second time the other day. It was a little less fun, and Fleck was kind of more of just an a-hole like many others. It was still very, very good. I didn't like how he completely got away from telling the truth about the train atrack. He didn't kill them because "they were awful," he shot all 3 out of complete self defense, and then probably would have got a man-slaughter for finishing the last guy off.

The movie went by very fast for being just over 2 hours. It's the same length as Pans Labyrinth, and it felt shorter. It just flowed well for me. I disliked the Murray scene less on second viewing.

 

[TheRuthlessOne]

If I'm DC/WB I call up Todd Phillips and JP and offer them all the money in the world to make a sequel

If JP declines, I would let Todd pick any DC comics character to make a solo film of

Mr Freeze or whoever

 

[LEWIS540]

If I'm DC/WB I call up Todd Phillips and JP and offer them all the money in the world to make a sequel

Yeah flog it until it's dead!

Would be so much more admirable to leave it alone, as originally planned. They hit gold with an iconic character, and succeeded against all odds. Why ruin it / dilute it?

I look forward to 2022's Penguin and 2026's Joker III: Batman's Revenge.

 

[TheRuthlessOne]

Yeah flog it until it's dead!

Would be so much more admirable to leave it alone, as originally planned. They hit gold with an iconic character, and succeeded against all odds. Why ruin it / dilute it?

I look forward to 2022's Penguin and 2026's Joker III: Batman's Revenge.

JP said a couple of days ago that he talked to Todd about a sequel

Said that there was much more to explore

 

[KnightTemplar]

Are you describing a purse?

I know you europeans are pretty progressive

Also taking your stinky ass clothes to a movie theater is gross. I would be highly suspicious of the stinky ass dude that decided to go the movies with a backpack

Unlike you Colonials, we don't have to worry about mass shootings. And so far the Religion of Peace has confined itself to tube trains and concerts. So no one panics if I rock one of these,



As to your second point: do you even Lift, bro?

 

[KnightTemplar]

Pheonix was phenomenal. Even his body was fucking creepy.

The rest of the film was not. Great example of a bunch of dark events that don't really disturb because of the failure to establish real dramatic meaning behind them.

Glad Taxi Driver has come up in this thread because it's about 1000x more patient and subtle and a much higher quality film as a result.

I was relieved to see how superficial the political angle was. Much ado about nothing - which is how it should be.

Agreed. He was so skinny the scenes of him shirtless bordered on Uncanny Valley

 

[KnightTemplar]

Here in the US our pants have these things called pockets. They are small but compact slots where you can store things like wallets and cell phones.

Given the size of the average American, is, "small and compact" really an accurate description about any item of clothing you wear?

 

[LEWIS540]

JP said a couple of days ago that he talked to Todd about a sequel

Said that there was much more to explore

Suppose a big pile of money is more important than artistic integrity, even for a hippie like Joaquin.

 

[minute bull]

I'm just pleasantly surprised. Normally people talking for this long about a movie are usually putting it through the Wheel of Disrespect. It's nice to see people going on and on about something that really entertained them for a change.

 

[EL CORINTHIAN]

If I'm DC/WB I call up Todd Phillips and JP and offer them all the money in the world to make a sequel

If JP declines, I would let Todd pick any DC comics character to make a solo film of

Mr Freeze or whoever

I think Black Mask would be a fantastic character to reinvent. I think the theme should remain in the realm of realism and he seems to be one of the more realistic characters out there that hasn't been done yet.

 

[method115]

Apparently Phoenix wont do a sequel? That sucks but that guy has always been really weird about shit and the kind of person I would never want to work on a project with. He's just to unreliable.

 

[Big Brown Clown]

Just a backpack? When you go to the movies you should have an AR hanging across your body openly for all to see. Not only is it your 2nd amendment right but it makes people around you feel safe. They know if anything goes down you got them covered.

Remember when this movie was supposed to cause mass shootings? Instead it's on it's way to making a billion in about 10 days from now. LOL

 

[Torrid]

I know I'm late to the party, but holy shit did that ending suck.

Had me completely on board throughout the whole film, then the ending just ruined it for me. The line where he literally says, "what do you get when you cross a mentally man with a society that treats him like shit", c'mon - that was such a poorly constructed line. It's doubly unfortunate because Phoenix delivered everything so well, but what can he do with something like that?

Then they treat him like clown jesus and hamfist the Wayne parents death in there - nah. Sorry, but nah. 9/10 until the last 20 minutes, then just, I don't know, it was bad after that bad.

 

[Dragonlordxxxxx]

Update: November 6, 2019

JOKER Director Todd Phillips Reveals Arthur Fleck Did Not Kill Sophie in the Movie

The debate over Zazie Beetz’s fate in Joker came to an end last month when cinematographer Lawrence Sher said her character, Sophie, was not killed by Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur. Director Todd Phillips keeps Sophie’s fate purposely ambiguous in the movie. After Arthur enters her apartment and it’s revealed she does not know him (their relationship in the film has, up to this point, been Arthur’s fantasy), Phillips cuts to Arthur walking away in the hallway. The cut has left fans wondering whether or not Arthur killed Sophie.

“Todd makes it clear she wasn’t killed,” Sher said about the mystery. “Arthur is killing people who’ve wronged him in a certain way, and Sophie never wronged him.”

IndieWire recently asked Phillips about Sophie’s fate during a video interview with Anne Thompson, to which the director doubled down on the answer that Sophie is alive at the end of “Joker.”

“He doesn’t kill her, definitively,” Phillips said. “As the filmmaker and the writer I am saying he doesn’t kill her. We like the idea that it’s almost like a litmus test for the audience to say, ‘how crazy is he?’ Most people that I’ve spoken to think he didn’t kill her because they understand the idea that he only kills people that did him wrong. She had nothing to do with it. Most people understood that, even as a villain, he was living by a certain code. Of course he didn’t kill this woman down the hall.”

The apartment scene is the last time Zazie Beetz is seen in Joker, but Phillips revealed there was an additional beat planned for the film that would have not left Sophie’s fate up for debate. The director said the script included a cutaway moment during Arthur’s interview with Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) that showed Sophie watching the discussion on television. The shot would have confirmed outright that Arthur did not kill Sophie. Phillips cut the moment because he only wanted the movie to be told from Arthur’s point of view, and cutting to Sophie would have disrupted the film’s narrative structure.

https://www.indiewire.com/video/todd-phillips-cut-zazie-beetz-joker-scene-fate-1202187212/

 

[minute bull]

but what can he do with something like that?

YA GET WHAT YA FUCKIN DESERVE!!!



Seriously, that line is hilarious. Just the way he loses his shit as he says it. At this point he's just barely made the decision to kill MurRAY, and it's all just pouring out of him and then afterwards he has no fucking idea what to do with himself and then kinda fake-pretends nothing's happened.

 

[Deadwing88]

 

[clutchCAT420]

A good review by my friend's daughter who is a writer at the Stanford Daily.

Thursday night. I’m tucked in the back of theater, wrapped in a fleece jacket, my eyes glued to the screen as Arthur Fleck chases a man down the pristine white halls of Arkham Hospital, leaving a bloody trail of footprints along the immaculate floor. Suddenly, the words “The End” appeared. For a moment, it seemed like the audience was silent. It was as if we were confused about what we just witnessed. Some of us began clapping, others mouthed a singular “what’” in verbal perplexion.
The character of Arthur Fleck likely takes after the concept of the unreliable narrator chronicled in the William Riggan’s novel “Picaros, Madmen, Naifs and Clowns: The Unreliable First-Person Narrator,” a novel coincidentally published in 1981 — the same year that “Joker” takes place. In the novel, Riggan discusses the types of unreliable narrators within fiction, particularly the Clown and the Madman. The Clown is unreliable because he toys with the audience and twists the story into something colorful and less serious, while the Madman cannot be trusted because his senses are erratic and reckless. Both of these unreliable narrators are reflected in “Joker”and are relevant to Arthur’s active imagination.
For instance, take his falsely envisioned relationship with neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz), who he first meets on the apartment elevator accompanied by her son. We see them smile at one another and gesticulate shooting themselves with an imaginary gun. We see him barge into her apartment in the middle of the night and kiss her. We see them at the comedy club and a diner and at the hospital after his mother suffers a stroke. For such a limited timeline, we might wonder how their relationship escalated so quickly. Quickly that is, until we see the distraught and frightened look on Sophie’s face upon finding Arthur in her apartment. If that wasn’t enough to convince us that it was all an illusion, the film takes us back to the moments to show us that Arthur was, indeed, alone the whole time.

So what does this mean for the rest of the film? Are we supposed to believe the events that transpire next? If Arthur can’t be trusted, what’s fact and what’s fiction? At the end of “Joker” it seems that even the “Batman” super villain himself doesn’t know what’s real. Has he actually been imprisoned for murdering Murray Franklin on live television and subsequently inciting anarchic violence throughout the Gotham streets? Or is he merely recounting to the Arkham social worker (and to us) his own distorted version?

An underlying clue that hints at the answer to this question lies in the setting of Arkham State Hospital itself. Toward the middle of the film, Arthur ventures into Arkham to verify the medical records of his mother. In this scene, Arkham State Hospital is depicted as gloomy and squalid with dun-colored walls. However, at the very end of the film, Arkham looks much different: bright and spotless with clean white walls.

Sitting across from the social worker, Arthur begins to laugh. He tells her that he was thinking of a joke, but that she “wouldn’t get it.” At the beginning, Arthur shares the fact that he has “negative thoughts,” shedding light on why much of Gotham seems so gloomy and squalid throughout the film. Could it be that Arthur is narrating events that occurred within his head? Was everything just some sick joke? That’s a possibility. After all, both scenes have clocks that read the same exact time: 11:12. It’s also a possibility that the final scene in Arkham takes place much earlier (which becomes less likely with the mention of Thomas Wayne’s death) or much later than the other events of the film. Likewise, there’s even the chance that Arthur isn’t lying at all and that everything occurred exactly as portrayed.

Another way to look at the “Joker” ending is to compare it with Martin Scorcese’s 1976 classic “Taxi Driver,” where main character Travis Bickle, outraged by the filth of his New York City, is inspired to commit violence that he, like Arthur, is praised for. Furthermore, “Taxi Driver” ends on a similarly ambiguous note, in which Travis drops his former love Betsy home, refuses to let her pay her fare, and drives away with a smile. Despite all the sequence’s dreamlike qualities, screenwriter Paul Schrader has denied that it only occurs in the protagonist’s head. So if “Joker” also ends on a happy note (at least in Arthur’s mind, just as in Travis’s), does that mean that it truly happened as well?
While the endings of both films may be obscure, one thing is clear: The ending leaves us in the same position as Arthur and Travis, attempting to dissect truth from fiction. When it comes to these unresolved questions, it’s ultimately up to us as viewers to decide.

 

[BornOnMonday]

Update: November 6, 2019

JOKER Director Todd Phillips Reveals Arthur Fleck Did Not Kill Sophie in the Movie

The debate over Zazie Beetz’s fate in Joker came to an end last month when cinematographer Lawrence Sher said her character, Sophie, was not killed by Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur. Director Todd Phillips keeps Sophie’s fate purposely ambiguous in the movie. After Arthur enters her apartment and it’s revealed she does not know him (their relationship in the film has, up to this point, been Arthur’s fantasy), Phillips cuts to Arthur walking away in the hallway. The cut has left fans wondering whether or not Arthur killed Sophie.

“Todd makes it clear she wasn’t killed,” Sher said about the mystery. “Arthur is killing people who’ve wronged him in a certain way, and Sophie never wronged him.”

IndieWire recently asked Phillips about Sophie’s fate during a video interview with Anne Thompson, to which the director doubled down on the answer that Sophie is alive at the end of “Joker.”

“He doesn’t kill her, definitively,” Phillips said. “As the filmmaker and the writer I am saying he doesn’t kill her. We like the idea that it’s almost like a litmus test for the audience to say, ‘how crazy is he?’ Most people that I’ve spoken to think he didn’t kill her because they understand the idea that he only kills people that did him wrong. She had nothing to do with it. Most people understood that, even as a villain, he was living by a certain code. Of course he didn’t kill this woman down the hall.”

The apartment scene is the last time Zazie Beetz is seen in Joker, but Phillips revealed there was an additional beat planned for the film that would have not left Sophie’s fate up for debate. The director said the script included a cutaway moment during Arthur’s interview with Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) that showed Sophie watching the discussion on television. The shot would have confirmed outright that Arthur did not kill Sophie. Phillips cut the moment because he only wanted the movie to be told from Arthur’s point of view, and cutting to Sophie would have disrupted the film’s narrative structure.

https://www.indiewire.com/video/todd-phillips-cut-zazie-beetz-joker-scene-fate-1202187212/

Although some believe it was left open to interpretation, I thought it was pretty clear he didn't hurt her. Until the therapist at the very end, Arthur had only been hurting those who he felt had wronged him in some way. This is also why it wasn't until the last minute of the film that he became irredeemable.

 

[LockardTheGOAT]

It doesn't really matter what Todd Phillips says. If it isn't confirmed in the movie itself then it isn't canon