This movie is kinda all over the place.

Rating: 6/10 (8 October 2019)

The first act of this movie is an absolute mess. When you give a character every mental illness in the book, the result is a character that can act completely sporadically and no one can question their motives. We are shown a character who is depressed, clearly on the spectrum, disassociative, is prone to vivid hallucinations, has ptsd from abuse as a child, and so on. All of these ailments stack up, one at a time, whenever it's convenient for a plot point. For example, Arthur feels no remorse after killing the wall street guys on the train. This would make sense if Arthur had exhibited any kind of psychopathic behavior leading up to that point, but he doesn't. It only makes sense because the audience knows that the Joker is a remorseless killer, and Arthur will eventually become the joker. It's backwards storytelling. If this movie wasn't an origin story to a supervillain, the character development would be total nonsense.
This leads me to my next point. The character development for the supporting characters is almost non-existent. Arthurs mother at the very least has a few interesting details to uncover. I was very interested in her story about Thomas wayne, and it was satisfying to learn about her troubled history through the records office. EVERY other character in the movie is utterly one-dimensional. His boss is a typical New York boss archetype, Thomas wayne is the big rich meanie archetype, the cops are cops, the wall street guys are wall street guys, the TV host is a TV host. The world feels remarkably dead. We almost have an interesting character in Arthur's hallucinated girlfriend, but all of her development is thrown out the window when we find out Arthur was hallucinating.
My final complaint is more trivial, I'll admit. The joker at the end of the movie is completely incapable of being the criminal Mastermind joker that we love in The Dark Night. First and foremost, the Joker is an intelligent antagonist. The Joker is ALWAYS one step ahead of the police, the gangs, and Batman. His ability to anticipate and predict situations is his most important character traits, and it's not developed in this movie at all. I understand that this joker is different, and that's fine. I respect this movie as a stand alone story, but come on. This joker could never be the antithesis to Batman. He's dumb and impulsive.
These complaints aside, this movie does not fail as an entertainment piece. The third act specifically is thrilling, to say the least. Phoenix did an incredible job bringing a half-baked character to life. The shots were pretty, and the closing scenes were very satisfying. At the end of the day, this movie uses our knowledge of the Joker as a crutch far too often. I wanted something more profound, but I was entertained anyway.