The Dichotomy Of Phoenix's Joker

Rating: 5/10 (18 October 2019)

I went in to this movie with high hopes. I'm not an avid reader within the comic/graphic novel series of DC/Batman/Joker historically, but I've seen all of the previous films, the animated series, and had more than a handful of discussions with friends in the past related to those topics. Coming out of this movie with a friend our collective reaction was largely "what did I just watch?". To be fair, Joaquin Phoenix had one of the best dramatic performances I've ever seen. Nearly unequalled in how phenomenal he was. However, in the larger scheme of things this portrayal did not seem like the Joker & his story I've witnessed at any point in my almost 30 years of watching the battle between the Dark Knight and his maniacal & scheming foe.
This comes across as an every man who has had a horrible life in pretty much every way imaginable. At multiple points during the film it was near impossible to not feel genuinely sorry for what Arthur Fleck was experiencing. In the end, the feeling both myself and my friend had was that of sorrow, empathy, and confusion.
Unlike Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight who is masterful in manipulating situations, people, and timing to his whim, Phoenix's joker is a simple man who merely exists while society laughs at him and tears him down bit by bit. While this may be an origin story, I fail to see how any element of this character could conceivably integrate to the Batman world, or the DC world at large. Bruce Wayne would very easily out maneuver Arther Fleck without much too much effort. If the intent is to make Fleck/Joker into a wild card who is nothing but unpredictable, that could be believable, but barely so.
Granted, some could reasonably argue that the trait was present but never shown during this movie. I don't see it that way. If this is the telling of where he came from, what life events turned him into who he is, then the element of being strategic should have been shown now because that's not something that someone just suddenly develops. Even the ability for this character to understand how to make a simple bomb would be too challenging for his aptitude to be able to achieve.
In the end this portrayal of Joker to me was far too close to the portrayal of a person on Making A Murderer, as opposed to the real life version of a comic book character. In my almost 40 years of life and several thousand movies watched, I've never had a cinematic experience like Joker. However, I've never seen a movie where my feeling of deliberately choosing to never see it again is as strong as it is with Joker. I've seen plenty of really bad movies which I would not want to watch again. But this Joker, I would go out of my way to deliberately avoid. Moreover, I would not recommend someone go see it.