Get outta here Ad Astra!

Rating: 9/10 (18 October 2019)

I was excited about seeing this movie. And this movie exceeded my expectations. I did have my concerns. One of them being the very existence of the film. If you told me 5 years ago that joker would get his own solo movie without batman in it I wouldn't believe you. Another concern was that the reason Joker the best superhero villains, comic book villains, and just one of the best villains ever is you DON'T know his backstory or why he's crazy, so making an origin story about may imply that the studio doesn't understand the point of the character. And don't tell me that Jack Nicholson was a good Joker and he had a backstory. Because yes he was a good Joker but Tim Burton just made stuff up for the movie, it worked for 1989 but half the stuff in that movie isn't from the comics. And I'm not saying it's a bad movie because of that. Anyway that discussion is for another time. My final concern before seeing the film was, that all the other supervillain esc movies that came out before Joker were all bad and made the villains into heroes and save the world from blowing up, and it's a dumb blockbuster. For example: Venom and Suicide Squad. In Suicide Squad they end up saving the day and becoming the F list Avengers. Same thing with Venom except it's only one guy.
While Joker makes you feel sympathy for the character and explain why he's insane you're not pro Joker by the end of it, you don't support him when he kills someone. This film does not portray him as hero, which I respect. This film is also exceptional at the bare essentials for a film. It has good writing, editing, direction, acting, tone, makeup, costume design, cinematography, plot and it had something to say. Joaquin Phoenix is the heart and soul of this movie and without him this film wouldn't have been nearly as good. I can't imagine someone else playing Joker in Phoenix's position. Another thing I should mention is this movie was so good it made me lookup interviews. The only other film I can think of where I looked up interviews recently was Thor: Ragnarok and I guess Stranger Things 3. I'm trying not to spoil all that much, but I can't not talk about the spoilers so if you haven't seen the movie yet then don't scroll down.
SPOILERS
The twist that Arthur Fleck's (Joker's) mom said that Thomas Wayne was his son but it was later revealed that she was dilosinal was interesting. It was a little unnecessary but I thought it was clever. There is also political commentary on the lower class and higher classes of society and how they play into mental health. How they feel or don't feel about mental health. And near the end of the film you see Bruce Wayne and his parents run out the theater and one of Joker's followers has a gun and follows them to an alleyway.... I think you know the rest of the story. Now I want to talk about the steps by Arthur's apartment. Every time we see Arthur walk up those steps something bad happened before hand. We always see him walk up the steps carrying something using a fair amount of force. And at the end when he becomes The Joker, he is armed with this new confidence that he is never seen having before the film. And this time he's walking down the steps smiling and dancing, (the scene from the trailer) he found happiness. Throughout the film you see Arthur struggle constantly, so when you see him walking down the steps without a care in the world, in a strange way, you feel good for him. Another thing that happens around the second act of the film is Arthur gets invited to go on The Murray Franklin Show. Arthur has watched Murray for years and looks up to him because Arthur wants to be a comedian. And obviously Arthur is not mentally stable. So when he goes to this stand up show and watches other people do stand up, he's laughing at the wrong parts and has a weird sense of humor. (Nice touch guys.) Off screen Arthur gets invited to do stand up there and he didn't do good at all. In fact, he was so bad Murray Franklin made fun of him on the show. So when Arthur gets invited to go on Murray's show he practices how he's gonna come on and he also practices killing himself on the show. When he enters onstage however he doesn't enter how he practiced. When he was practicing he assumes the audience would like to hear a joke the joke being him killing himself. When the audience actually wants him to tell a joke he doesn't kill himself, instead he gives a monologue about previous events and kills Murray (Robert De Niro.) And in the end his followers are surrounding him and he feels loved and happy after all this time and you don't know what to think. I like Joaquin's subtleties in terms of his mental condition. Like he moves his leg aggressively and fast. He also has a condition were he has uncontrollable laughter and when he is laughing he adds this cough to it as if he's in pain. Back to the whole stairs idea, Arthur also has these very slow, disturbing dance scenes and when he has that confidence, as I mentioned before, he's going all over the place and doing crazy dance moves. And the best part about all this symbolism is you can take whatever you want out of it. Personally I think this is how far someone will go just to be loved. It's a comment on; politics, political corruption, mental health, depression, crime, neglection, and stuff like Chicago in the 1930s-50s, New York and Detroit now.
Overall, Joker is a clever and well-made character study and you should definitely check it out if you can. Look forward to my reviews of Gemini Man and the first 3 Scream movies!