I just watched the movie yesterday and it seems to me that DC has developed this bad habit of screwing up its live action movies and the potential of its characters by not using them properly (not gonna talk about others on this one; they are messed up in a different way) so I really felt the need to write a myTake on this one. My opinion might be highly unpopular but it's open for discussions. I went through the reviews online and surprisingly, people found the movie to be a lot disturbing! I dunno where did that come from. The movie could've been a lot better if the following points were taken care of (that's just my opinion). Let us begin.
1. Inappropriate storyline
The movie only revolves around the Joker struggling to pull of a job for his livelihood: failing to do stand-up comedy, being bullied on the street for advertising whilst dressed as a clown and getting fired for carrying a gun to infant hospital. There have been slight changes in the story of the Joker in every movie (whether animated or live action) but the main idea of him doing stand-up comedy in this one was taken from Batman: The Killing Joke (there's an animated movie by the title) in which the Joker goes through many hardships, unlike in this movie.
Hot off the release of his acclaimed Watchmen graphic novels, DC’s golden boy of the post-Bronze Age, Alan Moore, adapted the 1951 Red Hood story for his own take on the Joker mythos in a one-off graphic novel The Killing Joke. In Moore’s seminal version, the Joker was a mild-mannered engineer who quit his job at a chemical plant to pursue his dream of stand-up comedy. After failing miserably at comedy, he decides to help some criminals break into the chemical plant so that he can make some money for his pregnant wife, Jeannie. While planning the crime, Jeannie and their unborn child die in an unspecified accident, and later, at the chemical plant, Batman scares the engineer (now the Red Hood — keeping up?) into the plant’s chemical waste catch basin. A pipe sweeps him outside, where he finds his appearance altered by the chemicals. That transformation and the grief over his wife’s death drive him to become the Joker.
Imagine putting all that^ in the movie with some reasonable addition and cinematic exaggeration.
The actual struggle of the Joker was way more than that shown in this one. He had no wife, no unborn child who died after an accident, rather, an 'insane' mother who didn't do anything suspicious (other than being delusional of having Arthur as the son of Thomas and her, yet another pointless way of filling up the story) while she was on the screen. The only thing which was shown to us to believe that her mother was mentally ill were the reports. Other than that, her mother was all quiet, peaceful and calm who seemingly possessed sense as she pointed out that her son needed to be funny to do stand-up comedy.
2. Unnecessary twisting
Why the hell was the Joker's mother shown to be working for Bruce's father? That aside, why was she shown to be delusional of having a son with Thomas? Out of all the stories I have known, Joker came into existence after Batman's origin but according to this movie, Batman will not have to worry about the Joker's menace as he grows up, because the Joker then would think twice before getting up on his crackling knees.. or he just won't get up lol.
3. The absence of scars
Where is the wife who tells the Joker that he worries too much and that he oughts to smile more, who gambles and gets in deep with the sharks? Where is the father who says 'why so serioussss? Let's put a smile on that face xD!'
You just can't draw it out on your face with the nosebleed you got when you got hit by an ambulance while being in the back seat of a police car. No, no sir, CARVE THEM OUT! or stick a razor in your mouth.
4. The hopeful Joker
With all the opportunities they had, while they still had to cover up a lot of ground, the Joker was shown to be hopeful till the end; like if someone talked to him nicely, he'd melt away and start crying. Okay, I get it, it is an origins story, you do need to show how many disasters and disappointments he has been through while he was still an aspirer, but in the end, he has to reach a point of no return, where he can never be his former self, where public support doesn't matter to him at all, just chaos and insanity all over as he vanishes in the dark. But that smile in the end told something different. Throughout the movie, the Joker was swinging between goods and bads which apparently debarred him from going beyond the limit.
Concluding thoughts
Phoenix did an excellent job while acting for this role and managed to come near Ledger but Ledger had an advantage of excellent scripting which really re-defined the Joker I had ever known. The Joker is a super villain dammit, whose superpower is his ability to cause chaos and anarchy on unimaginable levels and spread insanity. He is definitely gonna be beyond a normal human's capabilities and hence more disturbing so we can put the argument of 'how can a person be so bad?' to rest. Why not take him as a character who exists in a fictional world like others whose life has been exceptionally carved out to make him what he is? Just enjoy the show.
I guess that will be all.
Thank you for reading it. Your thoughts are welcome.
~ItsTheNephilim
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