Joker has the honor of being the first movie ever to get one of my video reviews. It’s quite worthy.

You might think, “Of course the guy who has an entire section of his site devoted to the MCU will say that about a comic book movie” but I don’t really consider this a comic book movie. It’s really an intense drama about mental health.

Granted, the main character becomes the most famous villain of a legendary comic book franchise, the title of the film is his what he’s known by in that franchise, and the hero of said franchise and his dad have small parts. Still, you could change all of that and the movie would work just as well!

Joaquin Phoenix is astonishing. This is still technically a comic book movie but I hope he ends the forever-long drought of comic book actors not getting Oscar nominations unless they’re dead. DC raised a lot of eyebrows when it announced a Joker origin story, and for good reasons: 1) Movies with villains as the main characters are a tough sell 2) Suicide Squad had been a recent villain-centric film and many people (myself included) thought it was terrible 3) They made the odd-sounding decision to say this wasn’t in the DC Extended Universe but rather a standalone Joker movie 4) Joqauin Phoenix is barely younger than Jared Leto, the DECU’s Joker.

Yet the gamble paid off! Like I said, it’s not a movie about comic adventures. It’s simply about a social pariah during a time when New York City was one of America’s most dangerous places. You kind of feel like you’re transported there between the terrific 1980s set design and 1980s costuming. Yet you kind of feel like you aren’t, as there’s the dichotomy of a 1950s soundtrack and cinematography that recalls Technicolor films of that era. I feel like that gives you a sense of what it’s like to be inside the mind of this man Arthur Fleck, who literally lives in this world with the rest of us but always feels disconnected from it due to his neurological issues.

I am now going to address the major criticism levied at this movie prior to its release. Women on socially media were airing their grievances, saying that they don’t need to see a movie about a white male driven to rage and violence because of how badly the world treats him.

I completely understand those women’s sentiment in our country, replete with shootings carried on the lions’ share of the time by angry white men, who then get a pass from a media that refers to them as mentally ill lone wolves instead of as domestic terrorists. Particularly galling is how when a teen commits the crime the victims get blamed for supposedly bullying him, in spite of no evidence of any correlation between bullying and gun violence. I’ve seen great memes pointing out how if bullying caused gun violence at school, the shooters would be ethnic minorities, LGBT, and sexually harassed females, not angry white males.

I also completely understand those women’s sentiment considering our country is replete with “incels” who get mad that every hot girl they want won’t jump into bed with them and not only grow violently misogynistic but justify it by claiming women never go for “nice guys” like them. The level of violence women face at the hands of men in our country is truly unsettling, especially when you compare it to other developed nations.

Okay, I’m stepping off my soapbox now to say that I can’t imagine women angry for the aforementioned reasons after watching the Joker trailer would feel the same way after actually seeing the movie. Yes, the main character feels upset about the way he gets treated in this world where he feels he doesn’t fit in, but he really doesn’t fit in – he’s mentally ill as a result of severe neurological trauma when he was little. There’s no statement about all mass killers being like him.

<Spoilers/> In fact he’s not even a mass killer. He kills his mom and a talk show host, both of whom had really wronged him, but doesn’t use either as a jumping ground for any sort of killing spree. The only other acts of violence he committed were essentially self-defense against the very sort of men women protesting this movie truly hate: entitled rich white guys trying to force themselves upon a woman. Even there Arthur isn’t made to look like a hero for his actions; he only shoots those men after they attacked him personally.

While he does later get hurt by a woman he liked, he ends up more confused than anything, as due to his psychosis he had thought they were together. He certainly doesn’t harm her in any way as a result.

You could argue that the rash of clown imitators at the end of the movie end up becoming a violent mob after being inspired by him, but I don’t think they’re glorified. After we’ve spent the previous two hours seeing how unhinged and miserable Arthur is, needing to retreat into his own fantasy world, the other violent perpetrators are, AT BEST, guilty of misaimed fandom. Heck you could argue for the interpretation that they’re not even real; our neurologically impaired protagonist might be imagining them in an effort to make himself feel better about his existence.

TL; DR This movie does not make excuses for mass shooters or rapists as Arthur is neither. He’s a mentally ill, abused man who uses SOME violence as a coping mechanism. </Spoilers>

This is a challenging movie to write about and defend and perhaps it came out at the wrong time. Yet that didn’t stop it from just becoming the most profitable comic book movie of all time!

Yup. Whether you consider it a comic book movie or not nearly a billion dollars at the box office on a budget of well under $100 million is nearly a billion dollars at the box office on a budget of well under $100 million!

Bottom line: Captivating and magnificent.

Up Next: A spiritual predecessor.