by Tony Ruggio
The internet’s been aflush with grousing over Todd Phillips’ upcoming Joker, a boiling pot of loyal DC fanboys and girls versus cinephile crusaders. Stir the pot with critics and pundits who have read an early draft of the script (why do that?) and the discourse, pre-discourse, and twee little jokes about discourse have been headache-inducing. I don’t care so much for pearl-clutching over what the film’s worldview might be... judging films on such things, particularly before anyone has seen one minute of finished film, is unfair to art and the place it occupies in pop culture. It’s not a filmmaker’s responsibility to coddle a country or avoid uncomfortable points of view.
That being said, there are pre-existing mixed feelings, and the final trailer only exacerbates them…
YES
• “All I have are negative thoughts.” Joaquin Phoenix is one of our best working actors today and he can imbue even the most basic psychological tics and tropes with something more. And that LAUGH.
• Lawrence Sher, just off of murky Godzilla: King of the Monsters, has stepped up his game as DP and seems to have delivered a very textured, filmic canvas for Phoenix to play in, a welcome reprieve from Marvel’s grays and green screens.
• MAKEUP. The Joker that paints his face is more interesting than the Joker who didn’t choose to look that way.
NO
• The similarities to Taxi Driver and King of Comedy are no longer enticing, they’re evoking a lack of inspiration. Don’t forget Scorsese was once attached and then bailed. Not a good sign.
• Bullying, economic anxiety, mental illness, an ailing parent. I have no issue with the moral implications of Joker as protagonist resembling real-world psychos. I have an issue with turning Joker into, more or less, your garden-variety psych case of sicko.
MAYBE SO
• High possibility of psychological clunkiness. Too vague and Joker comes off underwritten. Too specific yet told in broad strokes and Joker comes off like a dimestore shrink’s idea of psychosis. Specificity is often botched (see Bullseye in Season 3 of Daredevil). Can Phillips and co. achieve the right balance?
• Is it just me or is the Joker played out? Maybe I’m just getting old, but we’ve already seen four different iterations of this character on screen, five if you count Mask of the Phantasm. There’s a limit to how many times a character should be redone or re-imagined for the movies and Jokers may have reached that limit with Jared Leto.
Final Verdict: Maybe So. We’ll see. Todd Phillips is somewhat underrated, but does he have it in him?