Joker just won best film at the Venice film festival.
Happy dances
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Iām surprised there was no thread about this
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joins in on the happy dance
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Just read an article, next stop for Joker is the Toronto International Film Festival! DC making history yāall! 
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This is how it endsā¦
What ends
Good superhero movies.
Whatās that supposed to mean??
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That superhero movies are supposed to be in general fun, escapist, nonsense. If I want deep and meaningful I go read Chekhov or Ibsen.
Heroes are the goof guys and girls, villains are the bad guys and girls. Itās really pretty simple.
The big danger is to the Joker himself. We do not need a deeply scared and tragic figure. We need a complete sociopath who if you met him on the street might give you $1000 or might kill you. Heāll probably kill you, but you can never be sure. The Joker actually having an origin is just a bad idea. It was when the killing joke came out and itās still true today.
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I fully agree. While I think the movie will probably be good overall, seeing so many reviewers call the Joker āsympatheticā or an āanti-heroā kinda appalls me.
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@Desade I have to disagree, I for one usually speak out against those who feel the need to condemn more light hearted superhero movies but superheroes can be all across the board. They are characters that can be interpreted in many different ways and should be. Superhero movies donāt have to all my light hearted flicks, neither do they all have to be dark and gritty. A multitude of stories can and should be told with these characters. Confining the characters to strictly light hearted adventures is just wrong to me.
Now on the note of a joker origin, as this has been established as an elseworlds one off, I see nothing wrong with. Sure the main joker has the intrigue thing to him but this isnāt a universe movie, this is just a movie about his becomings. I can understand why you wouldnāt want an origin but that to me just comes down to preference.
Also, I donāt believe sympathy and condoning are necessarily attached, you can have sympathy and still feel the action was wrong. The movie would probably show that to the audience. Plus, weāve had many tragic villain origins on screen yet still accepted them as villains, I donāt see why this would be any different
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A few things to note:
- This is going to be a very loose adaptation of the character. Iām mostly excited to see it because it looks like itās going to be a good film, regardless of whether itās true to comics.
- Comic book characters are and always have been celebrated by their adaptability. The Joker has been around for 80 years now, so heās been through many iterations, all of which have added to the characterās deep history, and none of which have been diminishing of the character.
- When I go and see this movie, I am basically not going to think of this as the literal Joker character, rather, Iāll see it as a character that was inspired by the comic Joker. The Joker central gimmick of the Joker we know and love is his relationship with Batman. Without Batman, there is no Joker. Whatever clown we see in this new movie will not be THE Joker in my eyes, and thatās totally fine with me. For all intents and purposes, Iām thinking of it as an homage to the comic book Joker we know.
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I agree with DeSade-acolyte.
Joker is a scum bag. He murders people for laughs. He tries to corrupt and abuse everyone. Heās dropped buildings on children for laughs. Glorifying/romanticizing him as a misunderstood hero is annoying. Heās charismatic so people want to make him sympathetic. Heās not.
Just my prediction
I think Zazie Beetsā character will play the role you guys I think youāre alluding to. Iām guessing at first Jokerās motives will be strictly revenge but as he goes down the rabbit hole she will check him and convey the audienceās same notion that he is wrong and is on his way to becoming a monster, but heād ignore this and continue anyway hence fully becoming a villain and causing the audience to lose the sympathy they once developed for the character.
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Thereās, comics fans know itās an elseworld, Iām not so sure the general theater going public will.
Even if Joker willingly jumps head first down the rabbit hole to pure villainy, there will always remain a germ of compassion for him. āYes he went totally evil, but if it hadnāt been for that one bad day, or so-and-so hadnāt died he wouldnāt have gone their in the first place, poor man. If f X hadnāt happened he would never be that way.ā It gives him and the audience perfect cop out for his behavior.
As opposed to āthis dude is messed up, straight up evil and he enjoys it. Revels in it.ā
The former plants the seed that no matter how bleeped up the Joker is, he is still redeemable. That diminishes the Joker. It diminishes his true evil nature.
Is it a great character study and a great character for an actor to play, and a great premise for a stand-alone, elseworld? Sure. Does it do the Joker as a character benefit? Absolutely not.
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@DSA
I understand your concern about what the general populous thinks about the character vs what comic book fans think about the character. Honestly though, it just doesnāt matter to me. The filmās already coming out, thereās nothing to stop that, and it looks like itās going to be phenomenal, so Iām not going to let my own personal preconceptions of the Jokerās character get in the way of my enjoyment of the movie.
I think weāre probably saying the same thing here, I just thought Iād weigh in on my take.
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I agree with @TheLegndKillerX and @YoYoFroYo earlier post. Hereās an interview from the Los Angeles Times, by Josh Rottenberg
Staff Writer (interviewed Todd Phillips before the Venice win):
āIt really came from this idea: What if you just did a comic-book movie differently?ā he explained. āWe all grew up on these character studies, and theyāre few and far between nowadays. So it was like, āLetās do a deep dive on one of these guys in a real way.ā No one is going to fly in it. No buildings are going to collapse. Itās just going to be on the ground, so to speak.ā
āThatās the fun thing about these characters. In a way, comic books are our Shakespeare, and just like there are many versions of Hamlet and Macbeth, theyāve done four or five versions of the Joker in the last 25 or 30 years. So why not do another one thatās wildly different?ā
Iām down for something different. Instead of the same repetitive junk. I donāt think this movie will diminish the Joker. Itās a different version and itās so cool that you can do this with DC characters. Todd and his ppl already said (canāt find the quote) that Comic book fans are not gonna like this movie.
Now, does it glamorize and give sympathy to the Joker? I donāt know. I do know itās creating healthy dialogue about film/character studies and mental illness.
So, another interesting quote from the interview:
āAt one point during the development of āJoker,ā he proposed to Warner Bros. executives that they create a separate offshoot label called DC Black as a kind of laboratory for what he calls āindependent-minded films about these characters.ā (āTheyāre like, āCalm down with the label ā how about you do one movie?ā ā Phillips said with a dry laugh.)ā
Not sure when that conversation happened but is this how we got DC Black Label prints? Someone from DC was in that meeting too. Also, I have a feeling weāre gonna get more āDC Blackā films! Yāall know the Execs are rethinking that proposal now after the Venice win.
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@DeSade
Comics characters can benefit from movies. Prime example is MCU. Iron Man, Thor, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Captain America are more popular than Superman. A talking raccoon and a tree(!!!), who would have thunk. We are living in a world where Avengers is more popular than the Justice League and X-Men because of their movies.