Joker: All Joke No Punchline

Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker

The Joker is one of those characters who didn't need an origin story. Not knowing what made him a sadistic psychopath is what made him a scary but memorable villain. True, there have been several iterations that hinted his past but never the whole picture. Tim Burton's Batman being the one exception but isn't seen as part of the Batman lore and neither is this version, brought to us by Todd Phillips, the director of The Hangover. 

Arthur Fleck before his transformation.

Working as a clown brings joy and misery to Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). He wants to make people laugh by being a stand-up comedian and be on his favorite talk-show hosted by Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Unfortunately, his sick sense of humor only brings voids of silence. Being mentally-ill and suffering a laugh disorder that has him cackle at the wrong time, bring ridicule and pain from street punks to his own co-workers. The few nice people in his life are his mother (Frances Conroy) who used to work for millionaire Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen), Sophie (Zazie Beetz) his next-door neighbor, and Gary (Leigh Gill), a fellow clown co-worker. As Arthur's world slowly starts to crumble he begins to see life as nothing but a joke....

Joker is a film that fits alongside Watchmen, a comic book movie that looks amazing and has great acting but is nihilistic and depressing to the core. If Arthur Fleck lived in Watchmen world, he would perfectly get along with Jefferey Dean Morgan's Comedian and his life-is-a-cruel-joke-philosophy. One critic pointed out how Watchmen embodies the vision of Heath Ledger's Joker of a cruel and miserable world; both clown princes of crime would feel right at home, only to get easily bored in such a place.

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly of Evil Origin Stories

Super-villain origin stories are hard to tackle, as Megamind put it "I'm a villain without a hero, a yin with no yang, a bullfighter with no bull to fight - in other words, I have no purpose!" Even Joker in Batman; The Animated Series admitted that "without Batman, crime has no punchline." This was the main problem with the live-action Venom movie with the absence of Spider-Man (not to mention that the titular ooze was as threatening as Jim Carrey's The Mask). Split worked because we didn't know it was an origin story part of a bigger universe until the last scene, same with Unbreakable as both films took time to establish its villain and hero.

Sure, we see young Bruce Wayne (Dante Pereira-Olson) and the fate of his parents that strangely plays a part in Arthur's descent to madness more than what Tim Burton did in his version, minus the heroics. Joker revels in its repulsive realm that despite its last minute effort of saying anything relevant, I stopped caring.

Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.

I recommend No Country For Old Men as it feature's a more terrifying sociopath that could give Joker a run for his money and make a coin-flip more sinister than Harvey Dent's Two-Face. Compared to Joker, No Country is more uplifting. If you want a serious and realistic take on a comic-book genre check out M. Night Shyamalan's Eastrail 177 Trilogy (Unbreakable, Split & Glass).

The New Dark Knight vs. the Clown Prince of Crime
in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. 

I kept thinking back to Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, where we see a new Batman take on the the Dark Knight's arch-nemesis and the way he taunts Joker, does a better job at summing up the character as a whole.

Final Verdict: D