Fellman's Movie Reviews

JOKER

Red = Spoilers 

What’s It About? 

Joker is a 2019 psychological thriller starring Joaquin Pheonix about Batman’s nemesis and archrival, The Joker. The movie is loosely based on the character and doesn’t exactly follow DC canon, so it takes some liberties with the story on The Joker’s origin story. But it’s still an interesting take on a possible origin story of one of the comic books’ most beloved villains. It tells the story of the Joker starting from humble beginnings in Gotham City, working as a clown and living with his mother. He suffers from mental disorders and lives in poverty while taking care of her. A series of bad events continuously push him closer and closer to the edge of sanity as he becomes more and more dangerous, until finally, he snaps on live television and murders the late night TV host, Murray Franklin, live on his show. This causes Gotham City to erupt into riots, leading to the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, which, as we are all well aware, leads to Bruce Wayne eventually becoming Batman. At least, that’s how THIS particular version of the story goes… 

What’s Good? 

What I love about this movie is that it isn’t full of explosions and car chases and the things that you would normally expect to see coming from something involving The Joker. That’s not what this movie is about. What makes this movie so great is that it turns what you know into something that could have actually happened. It makes it seem almost like “yeah, that’s not THAT unbelievable…” You know it’s just a movie. But the humanity behind it and the dialogue that goes along with it makes it almost easier to turn on that suspension of disbelief. 

What’s bad? 

As a comic book nerd, I’m not a fan of movies that stray from the actual story about the characters. Especially when it’s about my favorite character. But The Joker doesn’t really have a set origin story, so it’s hard to pin down what really happened to him in the first place. So when they make up their own version of The Joker’s story, it’s only another “what if” in the long list of how The Joker could have come to have been in the DC universe. Aside from that, there’s not really anything bad to say about this movie. 

The Acting 

Joaquin Pheonix is so good in this movie, it’s (no pun intended) insane. His mannerisms and facial expressions seem like somebody drew them straight from the pages of a “Death in the Family” comic. The way he switches from laughing to straight faced, instantaneously in that dangerously insane way that The Joker does is hauntingly spot-on. And his laugh is jarring and unnerving, just as The Joker’s is. It makes you think something bad is about to happen. Because something usually is. If Joaquin Pheonix was a method actor, he would’ve killed a bunch of people for this role, because he was obviously so prepared for it. 

The effects? 

The effects are all practical. What little effects there are. He shoots a couple of guys on the subway, he kills a guy in his apartment, and he kills Murray Franklin in the end. Aside from that, the majority of the movie is dialogue. It’s not an action movie. It’s a movie about the depths of The Joker’s mind, and how all it takes is one bad day… 

Why did they take his sign? 

Those kids are real jerks. They just stole his sign for no reason. And then when he chased them and tried to get his sign back, they mugged him and stole his stuff. And they did it for no reason. He was just a dancing clown on the sidewalk. And not only that, but they did it in broad daylight, with everybody standing around watching, no less.  

That sign was really solid. 

That sign was made of plywood or something. It shattered when they hit him with it. It literally knocked him onto the ground, and then they started kicking him. That sign must have been pretty heavy to make such an effective weapon. 

They really kicked his ass. 

They mugged him pretty good, because they left him laying in a huddled heap in the middle of an alley next to his broken sign. Which, by the way, nobody seemed to notice. You’d think someone would be like “hey, is that a guy there in that alley?” But, no. Nobody noticed the guy laying in a pile in the middle of the alley in a clown suit. 

Joaquin Pheonix makes a great Joker. 

The casting for this movie is great. Comic book movies have a great habit of finding actors that look like the character they’re trying to portray. Marvel does it especially well with Robert Downey jr. as Tony Stark and Chris Evans as Captain America. They just look like their characters. Joaquin Pheonix has natural curve lines on his face that look like a smile, and it makes it even more believable for him to play someone like the Joker because it makes his smile almost sinister.  

His first question. 

Arthur’s first question in his interview with his social worker is “is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?” He’s already well on his way to insanity, he just hasn’t hit that peak yet. Things haven’t progressed far enough for him to lose everything to where there’s no reason to care anymore. 

He’s taking seven different medications. 

Arthur is taking seven different medications for who knows what. Probably depression or whatever other mental disorder he’s been diagnosed with. It’s only when he stops taking his medication that he starts to feel better and becomes the murderous Joker. 

The lady on the bus never gives the card back. 

When he hands the laminated card to the lady on the bus that tells her about his laughing condition, she never gives it back to him, despite it clearly saying “please return this card” at the bottom of it. It’s laminated and everything. That’s like handing your driver’s license to somebody and them keeping it. It’s laminated. It takes effort to laminate something. 

What are super-rats? 

What exactly are super-rats and where are they coming from? Super-rats don’t just happen. Something needs to be the impetus to turn regular rats into “super-rats”. Is it the garbage strike? If it is, that seems like a good bargaining point for the trash men. “There’s super-rats out there. If you want to get rid of them, you gotta pay us.” 

Joaquin Pheonix is emaciated. 

Joaquin Phoenix is so skinny in this movie that his bones are sticking out of his back in the scenes in his apartment. It’s like, he can’t look like that all the time. Did he lose all that weight just to play The Joker? And if he did, fat people should be like “what did Joaquin Pheonix do to play The Joker?” And then just do what he did. 

Randall gives him the gun. 

He gets his first gun from another clown that he works with. He didn’t even want it. But then, after he gets it, and uses it a couple of times, he realizes that he likes it. And that’s just another step towards becoming The Joker. 

Arthur didn’t think the midget joke was funny. 

When Randal made fun of Gary for being a midget, Arthur was only laughing to keep up appearances. He immediately quit laughing as soon as he was out of the room. He says later in the movie “you were the only one who was ever nice to me, Gary.” 

He took the gun to work. 

He takes the gun to work as a clown in a children’s hospital. I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not, but it certainly wasn’t in this case, because it got him fired. But I can see how a lot of people would get angry about something like that, because there’s a lot of things that could go wrong with that scenario. 

The three guys on the train. 

If I were those three guys on the train, I certainly wouldn’t mess with a guy, laughing hysterically, dressed as a clown, on an empty train car, in the middle of the night. Only bad things can happen. As they certainly did when Arthur kills all three of them after they try to beat him up. 

The train stop is called “Hunter’s Point”. 

The train stop that the third guy gets off at and runs away from Arthur is called “Hunter’s Point”. Kind of ironic as Arthur methodically walks after him and shoots him in cold blood on the subway stairs to finish him off. A little easter egg that comic book writers like to slip into movies. 

His zen moment. 

Arthur’s zen moment comes in the public bathroom after he kills the three guys on the train. He realizes he’s found another mental path and his personality is shifting. The awkward, weak, quiet Arthur goes away. And The Joker with the .38 comes out. 

The girl down the hall. 

He knocks on Sophie’s door in the middle of the night, grabs her, and kisses her, while dressed as a clown, after killing those three guys on the train. And she seems pretty okay with the whole thing.  

Why wasn’t the letter sealed? 

If his mom wanted Arthur to mail the letter to Thomas Wayne, why didn’t she seal the letter? Did she expect him to do it? It was just sitting there, waiting for him to read it. Why would he mail it if it wasn’t sealed?  

Why was he putting his thumbs in Bruce’s mouth. 

I don’t care who you are, that’s inappropriate for anybody, anywhere to just start putting your thumbs in kids’ mouths. And why did Bruce just stand there and let him do it? Like, how stupid is Bruce? “Hey man, get your thumbs out of my mouth…” 

What did the detectives ask his mom? 

The doctor said that his mom had a stroke. What did the detectives ask her that made her hysterical enough to go into a stroke? Were they the ones that called the paramedics? Why didn’t they stay and wait for Arthur to get back after the paramedics got there? 

He starts admitting things for fun. 

When he’s talking to the guy in the mental hospital, he admits to doing bad things and liking it. He’s starting to get into the persona of The Joker more and more as time goes on. Caring less and less about the consequences of his actions.  

How was she allowed to adopt Arthur. 

Penny’s file said that she adopted an abandoned baby. The baby, being Arthur. How was an obviously mentally ill woman allowed to adopt an abandoned baby? Is Gotham City so rundown that they’re just handing out babies to derelicts? And why was she even allowed to keep Arthur after the whole “tied to a radiator” incident? Shouldn’t he have been taken away from her? There’s a lot of loopholes in that story. 

I had a bad day. 

After Arthur finds out he’s adopted, he goes into the apartment of Sophie, the lady down the hall, and sits on her couch. When she comes into the living room to find him there, he says to her “I had a bad day.” This a reference to the Joker’s famous line “all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day…” 

He calls her “Penny” 

As Arthur is talking to his mother in the hospital, right before he kills her, he calls her “Penny” instead of “mom” because he’s accepted that he’s adopted and he doesn’t care anymore. He went there specifically to kill her. It wasn’t a snap decision.  

He locks the door. 

When Randal and Gary show up to his apartment, Arthur locks the door on purpose because he knew he was going to kill Randal, and he knew that Gary would have to ask him to unlock the door for him because he couldn’t reach the lock to unlock it himself. 

At least the Joker doesn’t kill Batman’s parents. 

In the 1989 Batman directed by Tim Burton, it was written to look like the Joker was the one who killed Batman’s parents. Another inconsistency in the Joker’s many origin stories. At least this movie doesn’t try to put that into play and has Thomas and Martha Wayne killed by some random thug on the street. 

You wouldn’t get it. 

In the final scene, Arthur is being interviewed by someone in a psychiatric hospital. He’s in handcuffs and laughing. She asks him why he’s laughing. He says “I was just thinking of a joke.” She replies “would you like to tell me the joke?” He looks at her with a sinister smile and says “you wouldn’t get it…” Who knows what the Joker was thinking at that moment. With the way the Joker’s mind works, in his chaotic and twisted sense of humor, there’s no telling what could have been going on to make him laugh. And I bet there’s no way that he could have explained it to her, even if he tried. 

How did he kill her? 

If he was handcuffed, and she was sitting across the table from him, how did he kill that psychiatrist? And why was there a large enough puddle of blood that it was all over his shoes when he walked out of the interview room? It certainly must have been messy. 

So yeah, you really should see Joker. It’s an all-around great movie with a lot of reasons to watch it. Plus, it’s about The Joker. One of the best comic book characters of all time. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…