Dishonours its predecessors

Rating: 6/10 (7 October 2019)

The Joker movie makes a distinct departure from the standard formula for super hero movies. It spends two hours developing a character and barely gets into a battle. In fact, if you showed it to somebody with no knowledge of the super hero genre, they wouldn't recognise it as a super hero movie at all. For those of us who loved the Batman relaunch by Christopher Nolan, this results in glaring inconsistencies.
Firstly, the death of Bruce's parents is reversioned yet again - why? Just stick with the original. Secondly, the timing is all wrong. The joker is an old man and Bruce is a kid - why? DC is risking what we've been experiencing with Spiderman, a whole bunch of incoherent timelines, when really there was no need at all. It's absolutely not beyond the capabilities of the scriptwriters to build seamlessly on top of Nolan's work. In fact, it's a discredit to their abilities if they're not able to do it.
Lastly, all the fears about this film being a potential trigger for violence are grounded and valid. In my group, we had a troubled teenager watching with us, and she walked out with emboldened sense of affinity with the Joker. With America's growth of sporadic shootings, it's very valid to look at movies like the Joker and blame them for feeding a mindset that a difficult life can give you an escape through grievous evil. Phoenix really needs to answer the valid questions posed to him.