Joker (2019)

New page, new update:

As promised, Joker (2019) is rated R for "Strong Bloody Violence, Disturbing Behavior, Language and Brief Sexual Images"

That's cool. A good comic book movie doesn't matter whether it's R or PG-13 though. Dark Knight vs Logan is a great example.

True, but it's not like they could do justice to the concept of a solo Joker movie in the restraints of a PG-13 rating.

With the Romero Joker, maybe they could.

Sure they could. Joker isn’t a particularly R-rated character - he’s scary and does horrific things, but rarely in a gruesome, risqué or profane way. The trend of making him more gruesome is a comparatively recent thing, and comes off as kind of try hard sometimes (“this week, the Joker’s wearing his own face! Edgy!”).

I hope this ends up feeling more like Deadpool 1 or Jessica Jones, where the R rated stuff flows well from the story, and not like Deadpool 2 or Luke Cage where the R rated stuff came off as superfluous and felt like they were reaching for the rating.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 22nd 2019 at 7:24:44 AM

You can certainly do a PG-13 Joker well, as Nicholson and Ledger have shown in the past.

And you know, Mark Hamill. The Joker and Deadpool doesn't need to be R-rated.

The Arkham game series did that as well - the backstory is how Joker and Harley butchered a kindergarten and stitched the bodies back together as a way of luring Robin in.

TBH it felt off - as the Joker is mad and has an obsession BUT that just doesn't strike me as a modus operandi he'd do. There's a scene in a comic where a kid is terrified of him and the Joker comes across as scarily sane when he says it wouldn't be actually funny to kill the kid. There'd be no POINT.

He does big elaborate setpieces and all that, but as I said, it felt weirdly OOC from the way the Hamill Joker is portrayed.

The Joker is a true comedian, he’s very particular about his humor.

Which is kind of a failing with the modern portrayal of him. They are lazy comedians.

The Joker is just not funny any more. He's just an inhuman monster as commonly depicted nowadays.

That's why I still think DCAU Joker is still the best Joker. DCAU Joker is a monster, but he is still human. DCAU Joker can be beaten. He can be humiliated.

DCAU Joker can be tricked and threatened by a regular schmuck.

He's caught with his pants down and can't take it when other people are laughing at him.

He is afraid of the IRS.

Terry McGinnis can heckle the hell out of him.

DCAU Joker is a fun character. He's a competent and threating villain but he's not a Boring Invincible Villain like Modern Comic Joker. You can't do anything to win a victory against Modern Comic Joker, because Modern Comic Joker is just a monster who gets off on murder and causing misery who doesn't care about anything else.

Edited by Nightwire on Aug 23rd 2019 at 5:37:48 AM

They're not even comedians at all, they just keep portraying him as some angry misanthrope that got driven insane by society, when the actual Joker didn't have that as his motivation at all. Not Nolan Joker, not this Joker. It's one of the main reasons that I'm decidedly unimpressed with this movie. The Joker's not someone you feel sympathy for.

Edited by theLibrarian on Aug 23rd 2019 at 9:52:48 AM

I didn't feel sympathy for him when I read the script. He's basically a killer incel.

I think writers forget that Joker’s MO is based on irony, not just killing people. He doesn’t just kill everyone he meets: he targets and exploits the false senses of security, he forces people to pay attention and then mocks them for doing so, he toys with expectations and flips them on their head.

It’s still awful and murderous, but it’s a distinction that forms his whole personality. Without it, he loses what makes him interesting.

One of my favorite Joker stories is the one where he crashes a game show and plays with the contestants, poking at the fact that they all clearly expect him to start killing people at any second. The whole thing was a trick to ruin the execs who tried to use his appearance to spike ratings and mock he audience for being captivated by it, and he doesn’t kill a single person.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 23rd 2019 at 9:31:32 AM

(x4) The best Joker to me has always been the '66 Joker, but he's not exactly intimidating. He's not supposed to be.

The DCAU one is probably the best version of Joker who kills. The series being so constrained by regulations let them get away with a lot of good, more subtle stuff.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Aug 24th 2019 at 5:52:29 AM

There’s also when DCAU Joker truly went too far that was the last straw & why he died.

Yeah, but it's also the Joker that went the hardest past the Moral Event Horizon, what with the torture of Tim Drake and the implied pedophilia with Ace.

Edited by HailMuffins on Aug 24th 2019 at 2:55:46 PM

That wasn't so much implied as it was Batman making Harley think that was the case to trick her into leading him to where Joker was.

Really? I don't remember it like that.

Well, not that it makes it much better, he was a horribly abusive person either way.

True.

New trailer Wednesday[1] plus short clips cut together.

Send in the clowns...

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Aug 28th 2019 at 6:03:43 AM

Well, that makes it look like a very different kind of movie. It looks like it could be a trailer for a bio-pic of a real life entertainer.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 28th 2019 at 9:32:36 AM

Oh hey, a comic book movie trailer that doesn't spoil the whole goddamn movie, for a change.

Edited by Lyendith on Aug 28th 2019 at 7:47:49 PM

I find it kinda amusing that neither trailer has yet shown him doing anything really bad, so if one doesn't know who The Joker is, it just looks like trailers about a really sad guy who dresses like a clown.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Aug 28th 2019 at 10:49:40 AM

Maybe he doesn't actually turn bad, who knows. At this point it almost feels like this started as a completely original IP on which they slapped the "Joker" title at the last minute before submitting the script.