Joker doesn't work for me

9.1 on IMDB, 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 8 minutes standing ovation from the premiere night, A- and Awesometacular rating on 2 of the biggest movie reviewer channels on YouTube yet it is an average movie at best for me. 

My face when watching the disappointing Joker.

Joker is a tragedy movie that loosely based on the most iconic comic book villain - the arch enemy of the famous Batman. Arthur Fleck was borned with a mental disease that makes him sometimes laugh when he doesn't mean to do so (Imagine a hick-up but laugh instead). Arthur is basically at the bottom of society: poor, has to take care of a mentally ill mom, work as a clown and get hated by everyone, has a simple dream but no skill to fulfill it... As the movie progress, we see Arthur slowly turned mad to an inevitable conclusion - becoming the clown prince of crime. My problem with this movies can be condensed to professional matters and personal preference.

I. Professional matter

The boring flow

There are 2 school of thoughts when it comes to crafting a theme for a movie: the conventional way and the unconventional way.  Conventional stories are basically boys love girls (The Notebook), a decent family attacked by a ghost (Conjuring), a hero needs to save the planet (Spider-man). On the other hand, gay love (Broke Back Mountain), a ghost tries to do some good (Death's Kiss) and a villain story (Megamind) are the unconventional kind. Unconventional movies required much more set up and build up. It's easier to show a rich kid who afraid of bats compare to how a crazy man lives in a normal society. And here's where the problem begins. 

Throughout the movies, we get beaten over the head that Joker is the victim. His laughs, his mom, his coworkers, even the random people on the street - all of them - all of the scenes only say 1 of the 2 things: Joker is crazy and society is bad. It becomes repetitive really quickly. When a scene only accomplishes what previous scenes have already done, then it started to get boring. Which also bring us to the next problem...

The none contrasting theme 

The basic of story-telling is conflict. One of the easiest way to build up conflict is the use of contrasting factors. In script class, you are even asked to come up with a list of words and then match the most contrasting pairs as a story idea crafting exercise. As I mentioned above, Joker's two themes don't contrast each other that much. On one hand you have a crazy guy and on the other hand you have the crazy society that gave birth to him. It's like a chicken and an egg kind of situation. 

The lame climax 

Every movies have a climax. Imagine climbing a mountain. You can start from the bottom and slowly work your way up (climax). Or you can start from the top and let the character (and his/her life) steadily went downhill. Climax in movie is the easiest thing to spot or even predict. The hero fights his villain in the 1-1 battle to the death. The ghost finally launches a full power attack on the family. The boy has to decide whether to move on or give up something important for the girl. And climax in Joker is shit...

Shot a host? All of that. All of that just for a strange shot to the head? I know the host is a representation of Gotham - popular (like Thomas), is a comedian (like Joker) and mean to him (like everyone else). But still, that's lame for a climax. Before you say the climax is actually when he is surrounded by the people of Gotham - no - that's an act 3 climax, not the main climax. In easier to understand term, that's too late for a climax to matter. 

The Prestige is a very similar - yet significantly better movie than Joker. 2 guys with not a lot of differences keep stabbing each other to an inevitable conclusion. The climax also comes in late but what a fucking good twist it was...

II. Personal preference

I tend to leave personal preference out when judging a movie. But Joker just has so many elements that tickle me. First of, tragedy is not my favorite genre. Watching someone slowly slumber into inevitable rock-bottom is not a pleasant feeling and you tend to want that feels-good-man at the end of a 2h long movies. Speaking of which...

The ending doesn't work at all. Joker's ending is definitely an open-ended type of movies and this pissed me off. My problem with open-ended movies is that it feels lazy. The film maker was presented with 2 options and they didn't know what would be the best choice. And the most commonly used open ending is... imagination/dream. Was it a dream or was it real? We don't know because they don't know either. Inception is a rare case of open ending being good for the movies. In the final scene, Cobb spinned the top but didn't stay to look at the result. He instead went for the kids signify that for him, it doesn't matter if it's a dream or not. Joker doesn't have that amazing subtext. 

The last thing that bothers me is how they change the Joker's origin. The biggest difference is that comic book Joker is just a normal guy who had one bad day.

"There's no difference between me and everyone else. All it takes is one bad day".

Contrasting to the comic, the movie version of Joker has numerous types of mental illnesses even before transformation. This change may not bothers other people, but it bothers me. And this Joker is way stupider compare to his comic book's counter-part or even to Dark Knight Joker. Both Jokers have a plan involving the city and the people, but one relies on planning while other relies on media spread and social frustration.

Killing Joke still has the best Joker's origin.

Is Joker a bad movie? Not at all. The acting was fantastic, the cinematography was beautiful. I just don't understand the massive praise around the movies given how much of these flaws it made. Best movies of 2019 - not even close. Best comic book movies - not even close. A decent movie that you won't regret seeing - definitely. 

Quanny Nguyen