The "Joker" Movie and Why I Found It Awful.
I'm going to start this off by congratulating Joaquin Phoenix on his Oscar win last night. Although what I'm about to type is a negative opinion on the movie, he still deserved his win and I think he is a wonderful actor for what he could accomplish within the movie. Please keep in mind everything that I write is subjective and if you enjoyed the movie then that is all that matters. I do have a few points to touch on as I go, so I will be numbering them as I go down to keep things organized. This will contain spoilers so please refrain from reading if you don't want it spoiled.
1. In the movie, you see poor Arthur Fleck, he's a disadvantaged man with several mental health problems living in what one can assume is a poverty-stricken Gotham city. As the movie progresses you see people in poverty as "clowns" or even violent people. As someone that lives in a poverty-stricken city and is even in poverty themselves, I find the representation of people to be awful. Just because people are not in the best financial state it does not make them animals or make them violent, the movie made it seem like just because some of these people came from high crime and high poverty area that they're more prone to violent outburst, which although true in some cases, it's not as broad as the movie makes it seem. Half the people in my old part of the city were older people, retirees, who were struggling along just like the rest of us.
2. A second point to make is that it makes mental health become a joke. I'm diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bi-Polar w/ Psychosis, and a slew of other things, so I'm no stranger to how mental health and even therapy functions. The movie made it seem like a bad thing to go to therapy and that most therapists will ignore you or won't take your problems seriously. I can tell you that some will, they're few and far between, but there's also good therapists and finding the right one takes time. From what I gathered in the film he was on seven different medications, while I am someone who needs medication, at this point they should've done some kind of testing or experimenting with medication to find just one or two, not the seven that he was on. And it made him seem like a pill seeker and that it would make it all go away as soon as he got them. This isn't an accurate or even appropriate look on medication for mental illness.
3. The third one I have to make is how much it messes with the storyline of DC. When watching the film, and maybe I missed it, but I didn't see the DC logo anywhere, so I understand that this isn't directly influenced by DC or even associated with anything other than the characters. However, the film makes it seem like the Joker came before Bruce became Batman. However, it's shown in many films that Batman is the one who indirectly creates the Joker by dropping him into the vat at Ace chemicals. This is more of a pet peeve thing, but Joker didn't cause Batman to become an orphan like the movie makes it seem. It also made Thomas Wayne seem like a d*ck when he definitely wasn't. Thomas Wayne cared about people and wanted Wayne Industries to be the company to improve people's lives, but instead in this film, it makes it seem like he doesn't care about people, calling the people of Gotham "clowns" and ultimately that's what lead to his death. A huge thing I ultimately hated here was that this movie made the Joker look like a crybaby, he finally snaps because he was made fun of? That's definitely not the Joker we're all used to.
In conclusion, I personally think that Joker paints some negative images of several serious topics and even messes with the character's backstory almost to a point that it isn't Joker anymore.
1. In the movie, you see poor Arthur Fleck, he's a disadvantaged man with several mental health problems living in what one can assume is a poverty-stricken Gotham city. As the movie progresses you see people in poverty as "clowns" or even violent people. As someone that lives in a poverty-stricken city and is even in poverty themselves, I find the representation of people to be awful. Just because people are not in the best financial state it does not make them animals or make them violent, the movie made it seem like just because some of these people came from high crime and high poverty area that they're more prone to violent outburst, which although true in some cases, it's not as broad as the movie makes it seem. Half the people in my old part of the city were older people, retirees, who were struggling along just like the rest of us.
2. A second point to make is that it makes mental health become a joke. I'm diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bi-Polar w/ Psychosis, and a slew of other things, so I'm no stranger to how mental health and even therapy functions. The movie made it seem like a bad thing to go to therapy and that most therapists will ignore you or won't take your problems seriously. I can tell you that some will, they're few and far between, but there's also good therapists and finding the right one takes time. From what I gathered in the film he was on seven different medications, while I am someone who needs medication, at this point they should've done some kind of testing or experimenting with medication to find just one or two, not the seven that he was on. And it made him seem like a pill seeker and that it would make it all go away as soon as he got them. This isn't an accurate or even appropriate look on medication for mental illness.
3. The third one I have to make is how much it messes with the storyline of DC. When watching the film, and maybe I missed it, but I didn't see the DC logo anywhere, so I understand that this isn't directly influenced by DC or even associated with anything other than the characters. However, the film makes it seem like the Joker came before Bruce became Batman. However, it's shown in many films that Batman is the one who indirectly creates the Joker by dropping him into the vat at Ace chemicals. This is more of a pet peeve thing, but Joker didn't cause Batman to become an orphan like the movie makes it seem. It also made Thomas Wayne seem like a d*ck when he definitely wasn't. Thomas Wayne cared about people and wanted Wayne Industries to be the company to improve people's lives, but instead in this film, it makes it seem like he doesn't care about people, calling the people of Gotham "clowns" and ultimately that's what lead to his death. A huge thing I ultimately hated here was that this movie made the Joker look like a crybaby, he finally snaps because he was made fun of? That's definitely not the Joker we're all used to.
In conclusion, I personally think that Joker paints some negative images of several serious topics and even messes with the character's backstory almost to a point that it isn't Joker anymore.
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