I don’t think anyone, including Heath Ledger, could top Nicholson’s Joker. I really feel that was the best one to appear on a movie screen as of yet. And I know a lot of people would disagree but I think Tim Burton was perfect for Batman, and his interpretation of that universe remains the coolest to date. I think the Nolan/Bale Batmans were horribly boring.
With that being said, Joaquin Phoenix is the fucking man, so I think ANYTHING with him in it could be great. (I’ll give him a pass on “The Village” - everyone should get one pass, don’t you think?)
Ugh. Respectfully disagree. Burton’s Batman always felt like the Broadway Show version to me. They could have added a few musical numbers and they would have fit right in. And Nicholson’s Joker had nothing menacing about him. I’d compare his version to Jim Carrey’s Grinch.
I appear to be in the minority, because this looks horrid. I’ve never found Phoenix a particularly talented actor, and the trailer says to me that I should expect more of the same. Based off of the trailer, I feel like I’d rather go out for drinks with Bill Cosby while letting Casey Anthony watch my kids.
This has a real chance of destroying the Joker mythos. I felt similarly when I heard that there was going to be a Darth Vader origin story. We don’t need to explore the “why” for the Joker. Doing so is just going to let us down. I quote Stephen King:
In trying to tell the oranges of the Joker, you destroy the allure of the character.
I suspect something like this. WB is still trying to maintain a loosely connected universe. It’d be odd to just have this one Joker movie out there without any connection to what we’ve seen so far. Even if it’s a faceless cameo.
Disagree. Sure, you can be one of those people who say “What XYZ 3? Everyone knows the XYZ franchise ended with 2! Hur hur!” but the new material will still exist, still influence future works, still be part of the conversation. You can cling to the previous works but, if you say, “Isn’t it awesome that we never really learn where he got his shoes?” then everyone else will be correct to say “Uh, no… we know where he got his shoes because it was in the fourth movie” and while you can cover your ears and pretend it doesn’t exist, the fact remains that there is no shoe mystery left.
If there’s a mythos of a character as being of unknown and mysterious origins and a story comes out that clears up his origins then there’s no mystery. You can continue to enjoy the stories prior but you can’t escape the fact that everyone knows his origins now. when you say “How about that character?” to people, they’re going to say “Yeah, the guy who used to this this and that?” When you say “Boy, that character sure is mysterious huh?” then they’re going to say “No he’s not. Not since the last story.” It’s gone.
Heck, even if you say “But this character is different from previous incarnations” it’s still going to inform people’s opinions and future works. It’s hard to go back to mysterious and say this time it’s different when people were already rolling their eyes or laughing.
Do you enjoy a work because you can read or watch or listen to it or because other people agree with what you say about it?
Why would you consider this a necessary step? I don’t like any Star Wars movies except “Star Wars” and “Empire Strikes Back,” so those are the only ones I rewatch. I don’t have to pretend that the other movies don’t exist.
This is a bizarre attitude towards fiction. Anybody can write anything about a fictional character. The point is that it’s all fiction. None of it really happened. It’s all just something someone made up. You can like one and dislike the other. The disliked one can’t “ruin” the liked one, because it is will always exist as work that you can enjoy over and over.
The trailer looks bad, to me. Like, truly awful. An unnecessary backstory for a villian, for one & a poorly conceived and written backstory, for two. And really, really bad casting for three. I suppose there’s a small element of “haha Rupert Pupkin is now the dickish King of Comedy” to it all, but IMO the story and casting of DeNiro is just really, really bad.
Also, he’s the Joker, not just “Joker”.
I’m not looking forward to watching this film, but I guess I am looking forward to seeing another failed DC movie, if just for the lulz thinking of all the studio execs wondering “why don’t people want to see DC comics movies?” and then still not getting it.
Both? Neither? Depending on the work, it may be one I enjoy because I can watch/read/etc it AND have discussions about it using an equal understanding of the material with other people. I mean, this is… not that strange? Like… this is what a TON of conversations about fictional worlds and world building (such as, say, the DC Universe) are all about? And some people enjoy these conversations?
Honestly, it strikes me as bizarre that you think it’s bizarre. But that’s fine; we obviously have radically different approaches to fictional world building and how we embrace and discuss them.
I spend a lot of time discussing fiction, even on this board. So I don’t think it’s bizarre to want to discuss something. I think it’s bizarre to have the attitude that something you don’t like can ruin something you do like.
I loved Battlestar Galactica up until the last season and a half. I loved Game of Thrones up until the last two seasons. The parts I hated didn’t “ruin” the parts I liked. And I eagerly discussed all of them. I didn’t have to pretend that the parts I disliked didn’t exist. I just said “I didn’t like that part and this is why.”
I loved the vast majority of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I didn’t like how he died and how he returned. That didn’t ruin the rest of Sherlock Holmes. I liked some adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and I didn’t like others. The one with Lucy Liu doesn’t ruin the one with Benedict Cumberbatch or the one with Jeremy Brett.
I love P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories. I also loved Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in those roles. A few of the episodes were dumb. The dumb episodes didn’t ruin Jeeves and Wooster.
I said it can destroy the mythos. That’s the entire point of canon which is a big part of discussing fictional worlds. You don’t get to just ignore the works you don’t like in those discussions (or, at least, you should expect other people to disregard your opinion when you start saying “But those don’t count 'cause I didn’t like 'em”).
You can like and rewatch Aliens while hating the other films. You can’t go into a discussion about that world and say “Well, xenomorphs never met Predators because I didn’t like those movies” and expect to be taken seriously. If part of the mythos of Aliens is no one knowing where they come from, films saying where they come from destroys that mythos even if you refuse to watch the films and only watch the ones where it doesn’t come up. Cat’s out of the bag, innocence is lost, yadda yadda. I can refuse to watch the Star Wars prequels all I want and watch the ones I do like all I want but I can’t deny that, canonically, “The Force” is connected to little blood critters and not just magic space wizard-ninjas.
Do you know what a mythos actually is? Greek mythology forms some of the oldest mythos in Western culture. They contradict each other all the time. What was the origin of Aphrodite’s birth? There are at least three different stories. Each new author picks and chooses what E likes. Same with the Arthurian mythos or the Robin Hood mythos.
And you shouldn’t be taken seriously when you say something did or didn’t happen, because none of it actually happened. It’s all fiction. None of these things actually happened, so arguing about what “really” happened is silly.
Canon is a delusional idea. There’s no such thing as canon and non-canon. They’re all just fiction.
And especially since we are talking about comic book characters, which work exactly like mythology. Every few years someone writes a new origin story for the Joker. It’s all just stories. Pick the one you like. There is no “canon.”
You know this isn’t the first time they’ve given the Joker an origin story, right? They’ve given him a dozen different origins in the comics, going back to 1951. Hasn’t seemed to do much damage to the character.
My issue with this movie is that it seems to be a story I’m simply not interested in - for me, it was always enough tht the Joker simply was - I don’t need to empathize with him or understand his origins. Heath’s joker was a perfect agent of chaos, Suicide Squads joker was the perfect gangster, Burton’s Joker was a great foil… there is little doubt that the ‘origin’ for each of these versions would be different in many ways.
I mean… duh? No kidding? Pretty sure everyone is aware of that but people still use it as a baseline for discussing the material. What’s the point of discussing fictional worlds and works if you’re just going to say “Never happened who cares doesn’t count!!”? Maybe that’s how you approach it but it seems like it’s be a lot of no-fun to take that approach. Seems to work for you though so I’m happy to drop it
It seems like you don’t understand my approach at all.
As Miller pointed out, the Joker has been the subject of multiple stories. Do your conversations about Joker stories depend on which one of them is “real”?
We do actually see the origin of Nicholson’s Joker in Burton’s first Batman film. He’s Jack Napier, a gangster who got doublecrossed, shot in the face, and dumped in a vat of toxic chemicals.
