In The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler writes that “every villain is a hero of his or her own story.” This is also true for Joker. The most important character of the Batman mythos is arguably not Batman or the villains. Rather, it’s the city of Gotham itself. In Joker, society at large is the villain. Here, Joker is the victim.

We needed a fresh take on the character for it to feel, well… fresh. This version is detached from the superhero universe, and like a pig, this movie enjoys rolling in the dirt. The grimy streets of Gotham are infested by super-rats, and there are heaps of garbage in just about every exterior shot.

Great expectations

I walked into the movie with very high expectations. Everyone I’ve talked to who’ve seen it loved it, have called it their favorite film of the year. After all the buzz and the ludicrous “controversy” surrounding the movie, I can say that it’s overhyped. That doesn’t mean that it’s a bad movie by any means, but it’s not the masterpiece that some claim it is.

Is it more complex than most superhero movies that dominate the silver screen? Oh yeah. But once you scrape the surface, there really isn’t that much to the story. It all hinges on the character Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and boy does he deliver.

The movie’s first half is a slow burn, simmering in the gutter that is Gotham and Arthur Fleck’s depressing existence. Let’s just say that he takes quite a few beatings, and Todd Philips sets you up to root for him. It kind of works, though the movie is heavy-handed at times. The second half is where the movie takes a turn and the eponymous character makes an entrance.

Sound and vision

This is all held together by Hildur Guðnadóttir’s score, which fantastically haunting and somber. She also did equally impressive music for the great follow-up Sicario: Day of the Soldado and Chernobyl. The movie boasts a good choice of music as well, with two songs sung by Sinatra, and one by Jackson C. Frank. (“My Name is Carnival” here even getting referenced by the character since his clown name is Carnival. Another Jackson C. Frank song, his cover of “Blues Run the Game,” was also used to great effect in The Last Gentleman. I digress.)

It’s also a great-looking movie with lighting that enhances the story, and some striking uses of color. I could do away with some of Phoenix’s dancing and some stylized slow-motion shots, however.

The Scorsese connection

I feel like the comparisons to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy have been played up. Sure, they’re definitely there and the movie takes a lot of cues from what’s come before, but it also knows that it’s not those movies. The ambition for something greater might be there, but there’s still the Batman framework.

If you want Joker to be the Taxi Driver of our generation, you will be sorely disappointed.

There are hints of Friedkin’s The French Connection with tense senses on a subway. Phoenix’s character reminds me of his role in You Were Never Really Here, where he also played a loner beset by trauma that lives with his mother. Another class act from Phoenix in that one.

Having DeNiro in the role as the talk show host is a nifty trick; it’s a nice call-back to his role in The King of Comedy, and by doing so, the movie becomes more of an homage. Plus, I think DeNiro does a good job here.

A lesson in character

In the video essay Why I Want MORE Movies Like JOKER, the user Browntable encapsulates many of my feelings about the flick, and also brings up Nightcrawler (a movie I absolutely love), arguing that you root for that protagonist since he is charismatic, hard-working and driven.

Arthur Fleck is a more depressing character. Where Nightcrawler was about a sociopath climbing the ladder of success and not apologizing for it, Joker acts more like a cautionary tale; “this is what might happen when the disenfranchised rise up.”

If you want Joker to be the Taxi Driver of our generation, you will be sorely disappointed. There’s nothing new under the sun here, even though the acting, set design and music are pretty much phenomenal. But when you look at it as something existing in the same realm as Justice League, it’s an Oscar-worthy character study.

The mental illness aspect could’ve been handled better and with more nuance. This also applies to the social issues that the movie tries to broach. It’s basically the rich versus the poor. But the film is not too interested in doing a deep dive into these issues as its more concerned about Phoenix’s character. Its themes are overt, but then again, it’s not a movie concerned with subtlety.

Who’s the Joker?

Is Arthur Fleck THE Joker that is destined to become the one we’ve seen in all those other movies? Hardly. Not only because Joker is a standalone movie, but also because it makes little sense for the haphazard Arthur to become the criminal mastermind that is the Joker character.

I’m interested in the schism: Heath Ledger’s Joker was a force of nature; chaos and anarchy personified without any background and trauma to point to. It wasn’t important. Here, he is a victim of an uncaring society, and far from the one we know from the comics.

In that regard, it’s hard to compare Phoenix to Ledger, since the characters they inhabit are so different. Phoenix does a terrific job at making Arthur Fleck both sympathetic and vile. He sneers, he laughs, he cries. His physical transformation doesn’t need any makeup. It’s hard to fill Ledger’s clown shoes, but Phoenix takes on another mask entirely, and he does it beautifully in all its squalor.

Another aspect that I like about the movie is that it dares to portray Thomas Wayne as an A-grade douchebag. Here, he’s no longer the benevolent millionaire that cares deeply for the city. Instead, he’s a bully that doesn’t think twice about calling the people of Gotham “clowns.”

In his podcast, Bret Easton Ellis called it ”Todd Philips’ most accomplished movie to date,” and he thinks that Warner Brothers deserve props for making this. However, he also calls it simplistic, repetitive and overly familiar. Ellis feels like the character of Arthur Fleck is already too unhinged from the get-go. He’s not a regular guy. He says that there are “no traces of normalcy to eradicate here,” and I agree, though I think I liked it a little more than he did.

A far cry from Marvel

Joker doesn’t feel like another DC or Marvel movie. And thank God for that.

Finally, something that doesn’t look and sound like it’s been spat out by the never-ending Disney movie machine.

It’s a movie with a vision. A goddamned vision, which seems to be exactly what some studies wish to eradicate when they hire bloodless directors for movies that should appeal to everyone. Joker is a far cry from Marvel’s 22 installments long movie series where everything is interconnected. The Batman connections are there, sure, but they’re kept to a minimum.

I can’t decide if it’s a good thing that Todd Philips managed to sneak this psychological drama into the DC universe, or if it could’ve worked better as its own movie. I think it’s the former. Without that connection, the movie certainly wouldn’t have received the same buzz. It’s almost like a Trojan horse.

Todd Philips has said that he saw the movie as “a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film.”