Posted on 09/11/2019 2:44:34 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The film is "Joker," and while it comes in the form of a comic-book movie, it is the opposite of light. The movie focuses on the pre-Joker Arthur Fleck, circa early 1980s Gotham - a sad-sack clown slowly unraveling u At the Venice premiere, a moviegoer approached Phillips and said he thought Paris would burn as a result of the movie.
Stephanie Zacharek wrote that Phoenix's character "could easily be adopted as the patron saint of incels," referring to the "involuntary celibates" group of frustrated males whose beliefs have come up in several mass killings.
"In America, there's a mass shooting or attempted act of violence by a guy like Arthur practically every other week. And yet we're supposed to feel some sympathy for Arthur." The film "lionizes and glamorizes" the character, she wrote. She concluded that "there's a sick joke in there somewhere. Unfortunately, it's on us."
Is Phillips trying to understand his mind or glorify his thinking? Indict the mental-health system that failed him or cheer that he broke free from conventionality?
At the post-screening party Monday night, a debate broke out among journalists and industry executives over whether the movie could become part of the texts cited by potential future mass shooters...
Warner Bros is understandably eager to play down any such talk. That's in part because the current climate has led rivals to cancel movies - Universal Pictures, most recently, scrapped "The Hunt" after last month's shootings in Ohio and Texas. Any future tragedies could lead to similar pressure on Warner.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Phoenix is an excellent, excellent actor.
Morons always gonna be morons. The only past, present, and future is now. See all things thru the filter of now. And by the way, if it isn’t happening to me, or in my twitter feed, then it isn’t important.
Morons.
Hey, everyone knows it’s art and life never imitates it....according to the left.
To me, The Joker will always be the guy who whacked Batman’s parents, and ended up looking like he did by falling into a vat of chemicals. Everything else is just fanboy misappropriation, so don’t be a buzzkill.
The original, authentic Joker is simply an evil man.
This is just more leftist revisionism, to make him pathetic and sympathetic.
Not to me - and I was collecting Detective and Batman comics in my youth in 1962.
Heath Ledger plays a creepy psychopath, but not the Joker.
The closest to the real character that goes back to 1940 is Jack Nicholson.
Joaquin Phoenix will just be another example of Whollyweird revisionism.
Yup. Nobody can beat Ledger. He was perfect.
His insomnia, his means of method acting, and his taking non-prescription drugs against his doctor’s orders are more likely candidates for his demise: https://www.quora.com/Did-his-role-as-the-Joker-drive-Heath-Ledger-to-his-death-Was-the-role-too-challenging-and-harmful-for-the-actors-psyche-or-sanity
There have been objectively more immoral/crazed roles in film history than Ledger’s Joker, yet those actore didn’t go on to overdose on medication (Hannibal Lecter comes to mind). To blame his death on a singular movie role is to ignore the other factors.
The ultimate fate of comic book characters is to undergo constant reboots and revisions, at least as far as DC and Marvel are concerned.
It’s the nature of the industry, like it or not.
To say that the original Joker is the only authentic Joker is to ignore every single version of the character that has their own merits. Same holds for any other character that’s had a reboot or two or ten (like Batman, or Flash, or Spider-Man, etcetera).
There are even more people on Heath Ledger’s position now...with the opioid epidemic and everything...and more mass shootings since then. Why create content that enables people’s (and greater culture/society’s) demise?
Hollywood is sick. And so is America.
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