It's not a bad movie, but it's overrated

Rating: 6/10 (27 October 2019)

I went to see this in the cinema and wasn't blown away as many seem to be. I think this is one of those cases where people jump on the bandwagon and praise a movie mostly because it's been receiving a lot of praise. I didn't see that much value in it.
The movie isn't bad at all, and Phoenix does a very good job as Joker, but that's about it. The movie doesn't really offer anything new that would be noteworthy and the tone of the entire movie is very dark and sad and desperate. These are the conditions Joker finds himself in, which isn't unexpected in the least, but then at some point in the movie we find out that Joker has lost his mind because he was imagining some of the things we had seen. This, to me at least, defeats the purpose of the setting of the movie (a city in ruin), because it's revealed that Joker is insane and the woman that adopted him was insane, as well.
So, the grim landscape, garbage everywhere, the economy, Joker's sad life, all of this is meant to show us how a monstrous society created one of the most well-known villains of all time. But then the movie also tells you "Oh btw, he's crazy whatever which way you turn it." This, then, leads me to think the entire movie is overdone and certain aspects don't make too much sense or are not really needed. Because for me personally, it would have been more chilling if Joker had been living in normal conditions and his insanity still shone through and made him what he is. That would have struck more cords as it would emphasize the aspect of the Joker that makes him what he is - his lack of mental health.
I suppose it's inevitable to compare this to Ledger and The Dark Knight. Not doing this to wind anyone up, as I can see many people are passionate about claiming Phoenix's superiority over Ledger for this role. I think Ledger is still unmatched and I don't think this is particularly close. The reason for this is that Ledger's Joker seems far more intelligent and his lunacy appears more real and more pronounced, whereas I have the feeling Phoenix's Joker is timid, shy, afraid and confused and ultimately snaps due to a mixture of frustration and insanity. But I don't feel as if Phoenix's Joker is a character that can/will develop into Ledger's Joker, it seems like a big leap and I see a lack of some common traits between the two. In a sense, I think this is an attempt not to tell us the story of how the Joker came to be, but to create a different Joker, which in the end turns out to be an inferior character to the Joker that made the supervillain famous.
Also, for me The Dark Knight develops the character of the Joker more than the movie centered around Joker, which is saying something. The most striking part of the character for me (in Batman) were the nuances and subtleties of what Ledger showed us, just small details that add to the tone of the character. Ledger had this ability to show at the same time how his character was incredibly intelligent and devious and also crazy and just generally unstable and messed up. This is not present in Phoenix's portrayal. There are no scars on the Joker's mouth, there's no "Why so serious?". What little we got about the character's backstory in The Dark Knight was more telling and more chilling than the entire plot of Joker.