DCEU: Killer Clowns from Gotham City

[polishgenius]

16 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I mean, if you want to make a female fronted comics film, maybe don't have the main characters completely overshadowed by a serial killer in lover with her rapist? Also maybe don't replace the actual leader of the team who was shot and abused by said rapist with some girl in short shorts?

 

 

I get the unsureness over a Harley-led Birds but I can deal with it. The Oracle thing was apparently a studio call coz Matt Reeve had first call on how they use Babs and hadn't decided at the time Birds needed to start filming. Looks like the team start less formal than the comic version usually is but a 'getting the gang together' story can work.

The thing I'm worried about is if the kid is indeed Cassie Cain as rumoured.

As for Harley-in-love-with-her-rapist, the title and trailer both make it pretty clear  that she isn't anymore and the film is about striking out for herself. Thinking that's also not the theme for a Birds movie is pretty justifiable, mind.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, Raja said:

I'm not an expert in mental health, which is why I'm not too harsh on my criticisms from that front but I would love to read from the perspective of patients & professionals in that field. I need to go re-read some of the stuff earlier in this thread because I think karradin touched on some of those points but I didn't read too closely.

As someone who has struggled with moderate to severe mental health issues for my entire life, even to the point of being institutionalized in a state-run hospital on two different occasions, I was not bothered at all as to how mental health is depicted in Joker, because it's a pretty fucking accurate take from my perspective.

Obviously, the vast, vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent. But, there are some patients who are violent. But that's not the important takeaway, I think.

Joker draws some (pretty obvious) conclusions about mental health that everyone seems to be missing for some reason. This movie just gets mental illness, and more specifically, the interaction of someone suffering from mental illness and how they interact with the world around them.

The second time he's seeing his counselor, when she tells him that she won't be seeing him any more, spoke to me - because I've been the person sitting across from a therapist being told that I'm no longer eligible for free counseling and having that feeling in the pit of your stomach because you're frantically trying to figure out how you're going to afford to pay for your medications.

Maybe it's the intersection between mental illness and poverty that people are missing, and that's why it's not relatable? I don't know. But I didn't feel that it treated the topic of mental illness unseriously at all.

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

I get the unsureness over a Harley-led Birds but I can deal with it. The Oracle thing was apparently a studio call coz Matt Reeve had first call on how they use Babs and hadn't decided at the time Birds needed to start filming. Looks like the team start less formal than the comic version usually is but a 'getting the gang together' story can work.

The thing I'm worried about is if the kid is indeed Cassie Cain as rumoured.

As for Harley-in-love-with-her-rapist, the title and trailer both make it pretty clear  that she isn't anymore and the film is about striking out for herself. Thinking that's also not the theme for a Birds movie is pretty justifiable, mind.

Yeah, I guess, but GOSH GOLLY ME AND MR J BROKE UP just...I dunno, that's a fucked up complicated in the comics (or it was, I stopped paying attention to DC a while ago), so I dunno. The whole thing just feels off, and forced.

[Raja]

1 hour ago, The Great Unwashed said:

As someone who has struggled with moderate to severe mental health issues for my entire life, even to the point of being institutionalized in a state-run hospital on two different occasions, I was not bothered at all as to how mental health is depicted in Joker, because it's a pretty fucking accurate take from my perspective.

Thank you for sharing that. For me, as I mentioned in my previous post, the scenes that did work were the ones with Arthur & his therapist, essentially the ones that you have highlighted. I just think the association of mental illness and violence is lazy & unhelpful and I don't really have issues with the scenes with his therapist or his co-workers, I don't really think there's an issue with relatability there?

Edit: It's not like a huge issue for me but it's certainly something that troubled me after watching the movie.

[Kalbear]

The problem I have is that this makes Joker so incredibly feeble as a villain and as anything. Having him be someone with actual mental illness who, if you gave him the right pills and counseling, would be a vaguely productive member of society is completely lame. 

Joker is a good villain because he is an embodiment of chaos and cruelty. The best example of this is from The Dark Knight, where Joker first tells his 'origin story' to someone about how his dad got to be a mean drunk and cut his face. Oh, you think, this is why he is the way he is, makes sense. But no - that was just bullshit, because later on he uses the same schtick with a completely different story. 

He just made it up. That's not why he is what he is. There is no 'why'. There isn't a need for understanding or a value in it. 

That it cheaply leans on the idea that if you have a mental illness you're prone to massive psychotic, premeditated dramatic violence is bullshit too. If you want to get someone off their meds and have them have a psychotic break, have them listening to the birds talk to them or killing random people because they thought they were demons. There are almost no actual psychopaths or sociopaths that are fixed with meds and counseling. As it turns out, they end up in business and politics instead.

So yeah, I think that the early parts of getting mental health and poverty were spot on. They did a good job of that. It's the ramifications of it that are absurd, insulting, and weak. The Joker as some kind of antihero is even worse, mind you; it's the equivalent of having a good time watching Darth Vader murder jedi younglings and saying they deserved it somehow, but the mental illness is bad because it treats it seriously and then implies this is what will happen. No, it fucking won't. 

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

The problem I have is that this makes Joker so incredibly feeble as a villain and as anything. Having him be someone with actual mental illness who, if you gave him the right pills and counseling, would be a vaguely productive member of society is completely lame. 

Joker is a good villain because he is an embodiment of chaos and cruelty. The best example of this is from The Dark Knight, where Joker first tells his 'origin story' to someone about how his dad got to be a mean drunk and cut his face. Oh, you think, this is why he is the way he is, makes sense. But no - that was just bullshit, because later on he uses the same schtick with a completely different story. 

He just made it up. That's not why he is what he is. There is no 'why'. There isn't a need for understanding or a value in it. 

That it cheaply leans on the idea that if you have a mental illness you're prone to massive psychotic, premeditated dramatic violence is bullshit too. If you want to get someone off their meds and have them have a psychotic break, have them listening to the birds talk to them or killing random people because they thought they were demons. There are almost no actual psychopaths or sociopaths that are fixed with meds and counseling. As it turns out, they end up in business and politics instead.

So yeah, I think that the early parts of getting mental health and poverty were spot on. They did a good job of that. It's the ramifications of it that are absurd, insulting, and weak. The Joker as some kind of antihero is even worse, mind you; it's the equivalent of having a good time watching Darth Vader murder jedi younglings and saying they deserved it somehow, but the mental illness is bad because it treats it seriously and then implies this is what will happen. No, it fucking won't. 

My beef with the film's existence also has to do with the idea of a Joker origin story totally failing to understand what makes the Joker so compelling. He exists because Batman exists. A further analysis of his 'character' completely misses the point. Joker doesn't have a 'character'. He's just a foil. A pure foil with no frills attached that can be whatever Batman's current arc needs him to be.

In my opinion.

[Heartofice]

3 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

My beef with the film's existence also has to do with the idea of a Joker origin story totally failing to understand what makes the Joker so compelling. He exists because Batman exists. A further analysis of his 'character' completely misses the point. Joker doesn't have a 'character'. He's just a foil. A pure foil with no frills attached that can be whatever Batman's current arc needs him to be.

In my opinion.

At no point in the movie did I feel like I was watching the origin of the Joker, which is weird as that’s what it was. I really just don’t see how you could ever really have this Joker in a Batman movie, it wouldn’t work.

[karaddin]

On 10/16/2019 at 6:45 PM, Heartofice said:

Well if you started praising Birds of Prey for its 'empowering violence' then hell yeah I'll be coming back in and talking about it. I'm quite sure the same gaggle of people will start using phrases like 'punching up, not punching down' etc and I'll be rolling my eyes at that as well, don't worry. 

It'll be interesting the movies you give a pass to, because they are 'on the correct side' but rail against because the wrong type of people like them. 

Don't worry, its unlikely I'll be making any posts saying that about BoP - I have as little interest in it at this point as I had in Joker, but I don't expect that one to be appealing to fuckwits on the internet. I'm sure I'll be rolling my eyes as much at whatever tripe you spout off at that point as you are rolling yours at my choice of wording to explain what I was talking about in 3rd party discussions of this movie. 

[RumHam]

I just read they cast Jeffrey Wright (who is awesome) as Commissioner Gordon in The Batman. So maybe they are just saying fuck the continuity and doing stand alone movies?

[Raja]

Paul Dano got cast as The Riddler too, Wright as Gordon would be excellent.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

It didn’t feel like a film about the Joker at all, more that they just called it that and threw the names Wayne and Gotham in to attract a wider audience.

 

Phoenix gave a great performance, but I didn’t find the film very satisfying, to be honest. It just felt very uncomfortable and didn’t really seem to do anything interesting in terms of plot.

[Darth Richard II]

2 hours ago, RumHam said:

I just read they cast Jeffrey Wright (who is awesome) as Commissioner Gordon in The Batman. So maybe they are just saying fuck the continuity and doing stand alone movies?

They said fuck all to the continuity a while ago. Heck I think there was a press release about it.

[The Drunkard]

On 10/17/2019 at 2:05 PM, Heartofice said:

At no point in the movie did I feel like I was watching the origin of the Joker, which is weird as that’s what it was. I really just don’t see how you could ever really have this Joker in a Batman movie, it wouldn’t work.

I think he could work in a specific, one-off confrontation with some version of Batman, but not as a recurring villain and not as an organised crime boss.

[Jace, Extat]

33 minutes ago, The Drunkard said:

I think he could work in a specific, one-off confrontation with some version of Batman, but not as a recurring villain and not as an organised crime boss.

Especially 'cause DCEU Batman would kill this motherfucker dead in half an arrested heartbeat.

[Darth Richard II]

4 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Especially 'cause DCEU Batman would kill this motherfucker dead in half an arrested heartbeat.

Hahaha oh shit, I just laughed so hard I almost choked.,

[Jace, Extat]

4 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Hahaha oh shit, I just laughed so hard I almost choked.,

Here all night. Tip your waitresses!

[RumHam]

They should follow this up with a sequel called Jokers. Featuring all the iterations of the character fighting for control of Phoenix's mind, and whichever version takes control is how the character looks to the audience / Batman. 

(recast + CGI the dead ones, obviously. Keep the painted over mustache.) 

[Kalbear]

Batman meanwhile tries to tell people about the danger of the joker and eventually leads an elite marine unit to take out the threat of the joker once and for all. The marines greatly underestimate the fight, at one point calling it just another clown hunt, and are largely decimated. 

Batman had to take matters into his own hands, and rescues Robin from the Jokers clutches - only to come face to face with a bigger threat than he ever dreamed. The Joker queen. 

[RumHam]

17 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Batman meanwhile tries to tell people about the danger of the joker and eventually leads an elite marine unit to take out the threat of the joker once and for all. The marines greatly underestimate the fight, at one point calling it just another clown hunt, and are largely decimated. 

Batman had to take matters into his own hands, and rescues Robin from the Jokers clutches - only to come face to face with a bigger threat than he ever dreamed. The Joker queen. 

Bat-Xenomorph-repellent it from orbit. it's the only way to be sure. 

[SpaceChampion]

Live-action Batman Beyond rumours, with Michael Keaton for old man Bruce Wayne.