Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
160 Plays5 years ago
Joker spawned a lot of hot opinions on both sides, and Derrick and Perry get into it a bit themselves as they dissect the movie. Listen for their opinions on the film, some of their different interpretations, and how they feel this isn't really the Joker from the comics.
---
Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/superherocinephiles/message
Recommended
Transcript
Audible Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Derek, guess what? Hit me with it. We just got a promotion with Audible. Audible, fantastic. I love Audible. Do you know what the cool thing about this deal is? What's that? If our listeners go to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod, they get a free trial with Audible. And do you know what they get with that?
00:00:22
Speaker
What do they get with that? Tell me. They get one free audiobook of their choice and they get two free Audible Originals, which is special content that Audible makes available free for all its subscribers. Are you kidding me? That deal is so good I may go myself and sign them. Do you think they let you keep the books after you're done?
00:00:42
Speaker
No, you're not gonna tell me they let you keep the books after you're done. Yes, in fact, you can go sign up for a trial and you can cancel before the trial ends and you get to keep the books you've already downloaded.
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, I don't see how you can beat that with a stick. Exactly, yeah. And you can, lots of great books, especially for fans of the show. You can listen to Super Gods by Grant Morrison, which is all about like how the superhero comics have changed and evolved over time. Or you can check out Marvel Comics, The Untold Story. Which is a terrific book. I have that both in hardcover and I listened to that on Audible myself in my car while traveling back and forth.
00:01:21
Speaker
And there's also another similar book that's called Slugfest, which is about like the wars between Marvel and DC Comics. Oh, okay. So that's another one you got to check out too. So yeah, head on over to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod and start your free trial right now. You got one free audio book and two free audible originals and you can keep them even if you cancel before it's over.
Fictional Financial Troubles
00:02:15
Speaker
I always hated that name. You know, he used to tell me that my laugh was a condition, that there was something wrong with me. There isn't. That's the real me.
00:02:45
Speaker
I haven't been happy one minute of my entire fucking life. You know what's funny? You know what really makes me laugh? I used to think that my life was a tragedy.
00:03:14
Speaker
But now I realize it's a fucking comedy.
00:03:44
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am half of your host Perry Constantine.
00:03:49
Speaker
And as always, I am the other half, Derek Ferguson. Now first, we got to give a bit of an explanation because we missed a week. And so here's what happened. You guys know how Derek owes all this money all over town because he had been taking bets against Black Panther being a thing. Well, some people apparently got a little upset. They found out where he lives. They were going to send a hit man after him. So we had to get him an underground bunker. And of course, they didn't have an internet hookup. So we had to wait a week for them to get
00:04:19
Speaker
Get all that set up. And so how are you doing out and hiding there, Derek? I'm listening. I'm barricaded with a bunch of ammunition. I'm over here like Charlie Heston in Omega Man. So listen.
00:04:32
Speaker
If they can't wait, listen, if you can't wait for your money, then come for me. That's all I got to say. Don't say that, man. We can't, we don't, we can't spend the show's money on yet another underground bunker for you. Sure. Later for that. Listen, I told people you will get your money. You just got to be patient.
00:04:51
Speaker
Rumors to the contrary, I am not rolling in dough. I remember you had talked about that one time, how you had relatives saying, well, you're a writer. Don't you have all this money? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. To this day, I have relatives that don't talk to me. They don't talk to me because, yeah, because they've asked to borrow money. I said, I don't have that much money. And they tell me, come on, you write all them books. You got plenty of money. I said, listen, trust me.
00:05:20
Speaker
I said, I'm not making any money off of them books, trust me. But no, but yeah, but people...
00:05:26
Speaker
you know, they don't believe that. You know, they read about guys like Stephen King and George R. R. Martin making millions of dollars in the movies and that's nothing that my relatives always be saying to me. Well, I don't understand why you just don't give your books to somebody and let them make a movie out of it. I say, well damn, why did I think of that? I love how many misconceptions people have about the industry. It's like, well, no, it doesn't work like that.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I get that all, oh, you want to get one of your books to Spike Lee or Tyler Perry, let him make a movie out of it. Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just get, yeah. Okay. Give me, let me just call up Spike. He's got, I got his number in my Rolodex right here. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and you tried to explain it to them and you know, they don't want to hear that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:16
Speaker
But that, yeah, exactly. That's how it is. Well, I remember, and I've got, I'm in one of my, my author friends, I'm in her Facebook group and someone posts like, oh, we should see a movie of your characters. And someone else posted and they're like, only if, you know, they don't change anything. And she has to make sure I'm like, they, they don't really have that option. Like it's either like, this is the offer, take it or leave it. Well, yeah. Yeah. And, and I know I get, well, I stopped having discussions with people like that.
00:06:45
Speaker
long ago because they said, well, I'm not going to sell my book unless I get total control. And then that's when I usually go into gales a while after. Yeah. Yeah. You know, really. OK. Yeah. It's like, OK. So look, if you're not going to take their money, then they'll just say, OK, well, you know what? There's like about a million other authors on Amazon we can go to instead. Listen, I make no secret of the fact I'm very mercenary. If the price is right,
00:07:16
Speaker
OK, where do I sign? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I just take that. And people say, yeah, well, what if they mess it up? Well, if they mess it up, that's on them. I'm just going to use that as a vehicle to point people toward my other work, my print stuff. Yeah, that's what you do. You make it work for you. That's the way I see it.
00:07:36
Speaker
And there's also the the famous Chandler quote right Raymond Chandler when he said, like, you know, and it might be apocryphal. I'm not sure. I can't remember call exactly. But he said, like, he was asked how he feels about Hollywood butchering his books. He's like, Hollywood hasn't done shit to my books. They're right there on the shelf. Yeah, exactly. That's what it is. But it goes back to what we were saying.
00:07:57
Speaker
a couple of episodes back when, when, you know, I was pontificating as I want to do. And I said that I was going to get into the habit of not calling movies that are based on books and comics adaptations, but I'm going to start calling them translations instead, because the filmic version of any work in print
00:08:24
Speaker
is a different animal, because it's got to serve different needs than print does. It's so funny you mentioned that, because just last night, I was re-listening to the episode we did on my other podcast, Japan on Film, about Unforgiven, where you made the exact same point about that movie, how it's more than a translation. Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's a better term to use when we're talking about
00:08:54
Speaker
movies that are adapted from comic books and books and stuff like that. Instead of saying it's an adaptation, it's a translation because it's like translating something literally from one language to another. You're translating it from a language that you have to read and you interpret with your own imagination to another language where the visual work is done for you. Exactly, yeah. So it's a different animal completely.
00:09:22
Speaker
Right, so, sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead. No, I was just gonna move on to something else. So if you have something else to add. No, no, no, move on, I pontificate enough. All right, so I did wanna just mention that we had some potentially industry altering news in comic books lately in the past two weeks or so.
DC Comics Layoffs and Industry Challenges
00:09:45
Speaker
I mean, you heard about this, right? About how DC is laying off pretty much like a third of its staff.
00:09:52
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Now, my little thing though is I saw a bunch of people, a bunch of supposed comic book fans actually cheering this online.
00:10:06
Speaker
And they're saying like, oh, well, yes, this is exactly what I've been predicting for 20 years. And I'm like, well, first off, you haven't been predicting anything. If you say the comics industry is going to die every year for 20 years, then of course, eventually, you're going to hit it. You're going to get right. A stop clock is right twice a day type of thing. But also, I hate this thing where people are gloating about the fact that a lot of people lost their jobs, especially in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crisis. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:38
Speaker
I don't know. I've been a comic book fan for a long time. Longer than a lot of people listening to this have been alive, finally. I've been the comic book fan for a long time. And I have never seen the mean-spiritedness that I see evidence among... Okay, actually, I don't understand why people are comic book fans now because
00:11:02
Speaker
being a fan of something means it's something that you love. These are people that do not love the thing, you know, they don't love comic books. Right. I also love the business ignorance when they say, well, the comic books would be doing much better if they just did what I, a guy who has no experience in anything even remotely related to the publishing industry, if they did what I tell them to do. Well, okay. Well, you know what?
Internet Dangers and Misinformation
00:11:30
Speaker
That goes back to what I always say. This is one of the problems with the internet in that it has convinced everybody that they're an expert. Yes. That it goes back to that BS that, well, my opinion is just as valuable as everybody else's. Well, no, it's not. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's just not. If you don't know what you're talking about, keep your mouth shut. And I'm sorry. Some people don't get pissed off about that. But hey, I come from a different planet where
00:12:01
Speaker
if you did not know what you were talking about, A, you educated yourself on it until you could talk about it or you listened to other people that were more qualified. Yeah. And you know, yeah, I mean, you have too many armchair, I don't know what you would call them armchair. Armchair experts, yeah. Yeah, armchair, you know, experts that know every fucking thing.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, I had literally just gotten through this yesterday with a relative of mine. I'm not sure if you saw, I posted this on Facebook, but relative of mine sent me like this ridiculous bullet point list of political propaganda stuff with, of course, nothing backing it up, no sourcing or anything like that.
00:12:44
Speaker
And I just had, I, you know, I was done dealing with this individual because this is like the umpteenth time it's happened. So I responded with a 42-page essay with citations and everything. And her response was, oh, well, you know, my opinion is just like, well, no, it's not because I'm actually bringing facts and, you know, citations here and you're bringing me bullshit. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's like,
00:13:11
Speaker
You know, like the thing now is that everybody prefaces everything they say. Well, this is just my opinion, but yeah. Yeah. And your point being, of course it's your opinion, you know, unless like you say, you show me, you know, facts and evidence to back up your argument or your opinion. And then I can say, okay, well, you know what? Now I got to change my opinion. I'm not going to change my opinion just because
00:13:39
Speaker
you say, well, this is my opinion, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know. I am going through what I like to call a, I don't know, I'm going through some sort of spiritual change in regards to the way that I deal with people on the internet. You know, I've been going through this for like, I think really like last month. And I think it's like, it's coming to,
00:14:10
Speaker
the point where I'm going to be radically shifting how I interact with people on the internet. Oh, you know what? Because my whole thing is I got a kid on the way, and I don't want anyone who endorses racism or anything like that to be involved in my kid's life. Because I don't want my kid growing up thinking that's OK or thinking that because they're going to be half Asian, obviously, that they're somehow inferior because they're not completely white. Right, exactly. And listen.
00:14:41
Speaker
I support you 100%, bro. Because you know what? The internet now is a dangerous, scary place. It is. Yeah.
00:14:49
Speaker
And in a lot of respects, and don't get me wrong, I love the internet. The internet has allowed me to do things like what I'm doing right now, which I greatly enjoy and to communicate with you. A good friend of mine, who even though we've never seen each other, never met, I consider you, I consider us to be extraordinary close. Oh, absolutely. I've said to many people, you're probably my best friend that I've never met in person.
00:15:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot about it that I love, but over the years, and especially in, I would say like the last five to eight years, the internet has become a very dangerous, scary place populated by a lot of dangerous, scary people. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
Because even to this day, I will still read something and say, my God, did a human consciousness actually think of this? Oh, I mean, the stuff that's out there is nuts. But anyway, yeah, I mean, this is big news for DC. And I feel sorry for those people who have
00:15:51
Speaker
uh lost their jobs um but um i mean that's something you should never celebrate unless it's someone who's like particularly odious no exactly i mean you know even though i haven't picked up a dc or marvel comics and i don't know how long that doesn't mean i don't want them to be out there for other people to read if that's what they want to do yeah
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And like you said, there's a lot of people, you know, this is their livelihood, you know, what are they going to do now? And we're not just talking about the writers and the artists, there's a whole other lot of like editors and other and other people involved in the publishing side, like in the technical stuff that that have lost their jobs. Yeah, exactly. This is the thing.
00:16:30
Speaker
But those people, and because like, you know, with artists and writers, it always sucks when they lose their jobs, but they're also aware of the type of industry they're working in and they are freelancers. So they've become prepared enough to where they can maneuver around and become, but those other people who are salary employees, like they're facing a much harder time of it right now.
00:16:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, when I read that news, I read it and I said, wow.
Joker: Societal Themes and Industry Impact
00:17:07
Speaker
I said, I wonder how long it's gonna be before Marvel makes the same, if they ever do, but Marvel is in a completely different. Well, I don't think it's like, here's one of the misconceptions everyone's been making is they're thinking like, oh, this means that DC sales are terrible and all that. That's not necessarily the case because this seems,
00:17:28
Speaker
completely tied in with the AT&T Time Warner merger. So it seems more like it's just the new CEO is restructuring stuff. And also to put another aspect on it, we subscribe to Direct TV, right? Which is also owned by AT&T. Now AT&T for the last couple of years, they've been looking to sell Direct TV.
00:17:54
Speaker
You know, they want to get rid of, I guess, because they want to start their own, you know, streaming service. Right. They got HBO Max now.
00:18:03
Speaker
Right. Exactly. Yeah. So they've been looking to get rid of Direct TV. So, I mean, this is not to say that they're not making any money from Direct TV. It's got nothing to do with it, just like comic books. It's not that they're not making money from it. It's just that, you know, they found another way, more efficient way to make money off of the same product. Right. And they are still doing, they are still publishing comics. Like Jim Lee said, like, yeah, there's some stuff that's been scaling back, but there's, it was like, it was like the bottom
00:18:33
Speaker
like the bottom quarter of the line is what it was that it was sacrificed, but everything else is still there. And they got other stuff coming out too. Like they've got a few events coming up. They've got a new, I just found out about this now, but there's apparently a suicide squad game coming out.
00:18:51
Speaker
Oh, okay. Yeah, it's called Suicide Squad, Kill the Justice League. And they're gonna, they got a panel this weekend at the DC, you know, virtual convention Fandome. And so some interesting stuff in here, like it's apparently going to be a co-op with RPG elements. And the main goal is either assassinate or capture the members of the Justice League.
00:19:15
Speaker
Superman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash cannot be killed. They can only be captured. Batman is not in it because Warner Brothers apparently didn't want their number one character to be a punching bag. Yeah, they're golden goose. Right, right. And then it looks like the characters you'll get to play are Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Cheetah, Bane, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, and Gorilla Grodd. And this is just rumors, right? This is just something that, but we'll probably find out this weekend.
00:19:45
Speaker
But yeah, this is looking pretty interesting. Because they've been teasing a Suicide Squad game. I don't know if you ever played the Batman Arkham Origins game from like 10 years ago or so? No. So in it you have Deathstroke was one of the enemies you fight in that game. And at the end of the game, there's a post credit scene where Deathstroke is in prison and he's like working out. And then Amanda Waller approaches him with an offer to join the Suicide Squad.
00:20:17
Speaker
So apparently back then there were this belief that they were going to make a Suicide Squad game. I think it was actually in the works, but it just didn't happen for whatever reason. And now here we are now where we're finally getting it. So I'm looking forward to this, especially now that I finally got my PlayStation back. Yeah, I see you.
00:20:43
Speaker
You finally got the thing. I finally got it back, yeah. Because you know what happened is that it just would not turn on. Yeah, I remember. Oh, god. I was like, I'm just going to play a game today. And then 2020 is like, no, you're fucking not. Yup. So I sent it in for repair. It took them like a week even to acknowledge that they received the damn thing. And then another week went by. And then finally they call me up and they say, OK, we can't repair it. I'm like, ooh.
00:21:09
Speaker
I'm like, so what can you do? And they said, we can give you a new system instead for like, you know, not as expensive as you buy it brand new, but still like, you know, not as cheap as the repair would have been. So I'm like, all right, well, might as well. So I bought the replacement console. And now I finally get to, and I got my, I got myself a birthday present last week for, and bought The Outer Worlds, and I've been playing that, which is very like Firefly-esque.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, I completely missed your birthday. I'm very sorry. Oh, that's all right. You had your own stuff going on. You were, you know, ducking assassins and stuff like that. Yeah. Happy birthday. I gotta, I gotta send you something. Oh, well, thank you. You don't have to do that, but I appreciate it. All right. I like to acknowledge birthdays, even though I keep mine a secret, but I like that.
00:21:58
Speaker
All right, so I think we've kind of rambled enough for one day. So let's, the DC news is actually a good transition because we're talking about your movie pick this week, and that's Joker from 2019. Yeah, yeah. And keeping in spirit with the previous movie that we discussed before, Vendetta, was a movie that I characterized as,
00:22:26
Speaker
Society was the super villain in that movie. And really, the real villain of the piece was the breakdown of society and the institutions that are supposed to protect us and nurture us and sustain us.
00:22:40
Speaker
don't work. And I saw the same elements in this movie as well. Yes. Yeah, very much so. And I heard you mentioned that the V for Vendetta episode on another podcast you were a guest on, I was listening to last night, the six questions one.
00:22:58
Speaker
Oh, how was that? How'd it come out? It turned out pretty good, you know? Always good time. I haven't even listened to it yet. I'm on the damn big and I haven't listened to it. No, it turned out pretty good. You had some really interesting answers to the questions that he asked. So yeah, it was really good. Good interview.
00:23:16
Speaker
I can't remember the exact name of the podcast. Does anyone else, do you remember, it's like DeMond something, DeMond does or something like that? Yeah, DeMond does, yeah. I'll look it up while we're talking. Go ahead. Okay, but yeah, everyone you know, you should go check out that interview, and it's short too, it's only like 30 minutes, so it's not a really- Yeah, yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah. And know what? He actually, we talked for actually about two hours, to be honest. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. So he's got a whole lot, because he was saying that he was going to make it a two-parter. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, we talked for about two hours. OK, wow. Yeah. But yeah, it was a great interview. And anyway, so with Joker, I remember when this was announced, my first thought was, why?
00:24:06
Speaker
Right, because it's just the Joker, and I think I mentioned this before, but my view of the Joker is that he's not really a character. He's more of a force of nature. So how you're gonna do a movie with the Joker as the protagonist didn't really make a lot of sense to me, unless you're gonna be doing something like the Joker graphic novel that Brian Azarello and Lee Bramejo did like several years ago, where the main character was one of the Joker's henchmen. And it was kind of like him viewing the world
00:24:35
Speaker
what he sees and experiences working for the Joker. And that way is like the only way I think you could really do like a Joker movie justice because otherwise it's difficult to use him as a main character unless you take away that aspect of him being this kind of force of nature. Yeah. What were your thoughts when they announced the movie? When they announced it, I was, I said, wait a minute.
00:25:07
Speaker
I was kind of like you, because I'm like this. I'm one of these people of the opinion that the Joker's real identity should never be revealed. We should never have an origin form. We should never know where he comes from, why he does what he does. So in that respect, I'm with you. He's a force of nature. We don't know where he comes from. We don't know why he does what he does, why he's fixated on Batman.
00:25:37
Speaker
You know, and I think that he works very well that way. Of course, we have had origin stories for him before, but I think that the genius of this movie and why it works for me in that it's a joker, but it's not the joker. Yeah, yeah. You know, this isn't Batman's alternative. Right, yeah. I see this movie as the guy who
00:26:08
Speaker
infected Gotham City with his madness and started the whole thing. And that's how we get to the Gotham City that Batman has to take care of because of this guy through some, you know, he's able to unleash something in people because at the end of the movie, of course, we see that the city is total anarchy. It's a mass riot going on, you know, and everything. And somehow this guy has managed to infect
00:26:33
Speaker
the very city of Gotham, the very nature of Gotham with his own man. So this guy isn't Batman's archen. Right. Yeah. But he definitely inspired, you know.
00:26:44
Speaker
Right. The guy that we know later on as Batman is our journey. Yes. Yeah. And so I had no interest in really seeing this movie. I said, well, you know, I'll probably watch it once it becomes a rental. And but you know what, ironically enough, it was it was not me who wanted to see this in the movie theater, but my wife, she was like, you know what, let's go see Joker this weekend. I'm like,
00:27:06
Speaker
oh really okay all right fine you you want to go see joker we'll go see joker so if not for her i would not have seen it in the movie theater and um my reaction coming out of the theater was you know because it this it had been out for um i think like about a week a few weeks by this point when we saw it and
00:27:24
Speaker
Everyone was talking about how great it was, right? And then there were other people who were talking about how terrible it was. And even in like the lead up to the movie, there were a lot of people who were saying, oh, it's gonna be like incel porn for the extreme right wing and all that kind of stuff. And- Oh yeah, yeah. And I watched it and I'm like, you know what?
00:27:44
Speaker
It wasn't as amazing as everybody thought it was. I didn't think it was anything revelatory or anything like that. It didn't change my life or anything. But I also did not understand all the hate it got either. Because it was not at all what people were saying it was, the whole incel thing. And I'd be the first to call that shit out if it was. But I did not get that vibe from it at all. OK. You want to know why this movie was so revelatory and why people reacted to it the way that they did? Hit me with it.
00:28:15
Speaker
OK, I'm going to throw out some names to you. OK, Sidney Lumet, John Cassabettis, Werner Herzog, Roman Polonsky, Milos Forman, William Friedkin, Michael Cimino, Sidney Pollack, Paul Mazursky, Don Siegel, Arthur Penn. What do all of these directors have in common?
00:28:38
Speaker
The Werner Herzog thing, I just can't stop thinking about that Pringles meme that's been floating around the internet now. But I'm not sure. What do they all have in common? What they had in common, they're back during the 70s and 80s. This was exactly the type of movie that they were making.
00:28:56
Speaker
Okay, this is why Joker was so revelatory for people. Because see, I was around back in the 1970s and 1980s. This is the story of a movie that you went every week to the theater and they had a movie that was dealing with subject matter. We haven't seen a movie dealing with subject matter like this in so long that we don't know how to deal with it. We've had CGI blockbusters,
00:29:20
Speaker
And actually calling this a superhero movie, it's not, you know, it's not, first of all, it's not a superhero movie. No, no. It's a psychological study. Yes. You know, about a guy who quite frankly cracks up. It's how this movie is how we get serial killers. Right. I mean, once you take away all of the guns and
00:29:44
Speaker
Here's the other genius thing about it. The director, Todd Phillips, has even admitted that this movie is a bait and switch because the only reason he could get this movie made was they said, oh, well, it's going to be about Batman's archenemy. And then they said, oh, yeah, if he had made it as a straight movie with Arthur Fleck being, you know, without all the makeup and stuff like that, yeah, he probably could have got it made because the subject matter was too disturbing for most people.
00:30:08
Speaker
Right. And apparently the genesis of this idea came from Joaquin Phoenix, because in like around 2014 or so, he told his agent that he was interested in acting in a low budget character study type of film about a comic book villain. And he had actually, when he was asked about it, he'd actually dismiss the idea of the Joker because it's been done before.
00:30:31
Speaker
Um, but, uh, so, and Todd Phillips had been offered, and so they, the agent set up a meeting with Warner brothers. Todd Phillips had been offered a number of comic book films, but he, he, they were, he wasn't interested. Um, but he had this idea of doing a more grounded type of film and, um,
00:30:51
Speaker
And he thought like, because the Joker doesn't really have a definitive portrayal, that it would provide a lot of creative freedom. And basically, yeah, he went to Joaquin Viene, he's like, well, you know what, let's use studio money and do like a Martin Scorsese-esque 1980s period piece, but we just kind of, we throw in this comic book kind of like veneer to it, so that they'll give us the money to do it.
00:31:19
Speaker
And speaking of Martin Scorsese, it should be mentioned that his name was actually, he was actually involved in this project at one point. Yeah, well, I think he was still involved in producing in some ways as well. Okay, I didn't, I haven't- I'm not 100% sure about that, but I think he was involved in the- I would have to look at the credits, but I do know that at one point that would, and it was even rumored that he might even be directing, but that was the rumor that lasted about
00:31:48
Speaker
30 seconds and I don't believe it. But yeah, because this movie was so heavily influenced by, you know, Martin Scorsese movies, especially me. I always tell people when you watch this at home, watch King of Comedy first, then watch this. It's been compared to Taxi Driver, but I say, no, not really. I said, watch King of Comedy. Right, right.
00:32:16
Speaker
And also, along with the Scorsese stuff, apparently, rumor was that Warner Brothers wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play the Joker. Yeah, I heard, okay, yeah. And they were hoping that Scorsese was more than- See, that's the period where Martin Scorsese was attached to it. Right, yeah. Yeah. But Phillips said like he had only wanted Phoenix and that he and the writer, they wrote the script with the idea that Phoenix would be playing the role.
00:32:48
Speaker
And you know what really impressed me about this movie though, because it, like I said, it wasn't what a lot of people thought it would be. Like it wasn't like, you know, a pro in some movie or anything like that, but what it really, what I thought was really interesting about it were the class warfare elements of this movie. Like that's the kind of stuff that really jumped out to me watching it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
And I thought- See, and to me, that's what elevated it and didn't make it a superhero. That's why I tell people, well, no, because people are asking me, well, should I go see it? I don't like superhero movies. I said, no, trust me. I said, it's not a superhero movie. Right, yeah. It's based on a superhero character, but it's not a superhero movie whatsoever. So yeah, if you don't like superhero movies, which if you're listening to this show after 30-some episodes, I'm kind of wondering why,
00:33:40
Speaker
But this is a good movie for you to check out then. Yeah, yeah. And, and even, okay, even a comic book fan, right? You can go see this and take this as an Elseworld story. Yeah. You know, this is what this is. This is the Elseworld version of The Joker's Origin. And
00:34:00
Speaker
If you're a comic book fan, you know what I'm talking about when I'm saying Elseworlds. So, you know, if you take it on that level, you can sit back and you can watch it and it's still not violating anything in your, you know, personal continuity. Yeah, yeah. All right, so let's jump into the movie itself. So, I mean, first off, you know, we got to talk about Joaquin Phoenix, obviously.
00:34:27
Speaker
What were your thoughts about him as the Joker or as him as Arthur Fleck, I should say? Oh, well, this is, I mean, I mean, hey, this movie is his from start to finish. I mean, I don't believe that there's a scene where he's not on camera. You know, this is one of the few movies where, you know, the main character is on here, is on camera from start to finish. And we get to see his mental crumbling
00:34:54
Speaker
You know, that's the only way to describe it. He doesn't have a breakdown as much as, you know, he's broken down. Yeah. Yeah. You know, because when you talk about a guy that can't get a break, that's him. He can't get a break. Yeah. You know, shit just happens to him. And, you know, okay, this movie works hard at making him sympathetic. And a lot of people have a problem with,
00:35:23
Speaker
a character, yeah, that becomes a serial killer, make him sympathetic. But when you look at the way that society has failed him, and then you think about how he's the avatar for everybody's society has failed. See, that's a good thing about this movie that I like. People, and you and I have talked about this a lot of times,
00:35:51
Speaker
You know, I really get tired of this thing about, well, I just want to turn off my brain. You know, people say that a lot of times. I just want to turn off my brain. You know, no, no, no. Why turn off your brain? It's the best organ that's in your body that you've got full of thinking. So why not think when you go see a movie? And this is a movie that does indeed have you thinking about
00:36:13
Speaker
the levels of society, you know, classism, you know, especially classism. Yeah, I was really surprised at how much class played a role in this movie. And especially now, just like we were talking about V for Vendetta, this is a movie, yeah, that's more relevant now than when it was released last year. Yeah, yeah.
00:36:38
Speaker
You know, I was watching part of it last night. I didn't watch the whole thing, I just watched some clips in relation to what I wanted to talk about. But I said, you know what, I really got to sit down and watch this whole thing all over again because, yeah, there's a lot of things in there that resonated that are going on right now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:37:02
Speaker
Well, on the whole sympathetic front, because I got into it several times with people over this, that having an understanding where a character comes from and why he does what he does, doesn't mean it's justifying him.
00:37:22
Speaker
Right? And that was a lot of things that I saw a lot of people saying. It's like, oh, well, you know, this movie makes them out to, well, no, he's never portrayed as like a heroic figure. It's always portrayed as, look, this guy's damaged, but that doesn't excuse what he's doing. I mean, the stuff he does in the movie, it's horrifying. And, you know, Todd Phillips doesn't, the director doesn't shy away from depicting the violence that Arthur Fleck
00:37:50
Speaker
you know, uses against people as anything that should be praised. Like other people in the city are praising it, but as the viewer, you never get the sense that what he's doing is justified. At least I certainly didn't.
00:38:04
Speaker
And see, once again, that goes back to, see, this is why he set this movie during the 1970s. And this is a very 1970s movie, because back in the 70s, they were not obsessed about NID. And again, this is something I hear from people all the time. I'm sick and tired of hearing it. Well, that character wasn't likable. Well,
00:38:26
Speaker
No, not every character in the movie has to be likable. That's not the point that you go see a movie and then you have to like every character. This is a character you're not supposed to like this guy. Maybe you might feel a little bit sorry for him. This is a movie about the psychological breakdown
00:38:50
Speaker
of a human being that was already damaged. And how shit just gets worse for him until he gets to the point where he sees no other way out than to give in to the insanity.
00:39:03
Speaker
You know, it's a frightening subject and it's supposed to be frightening. Now, something you mentioned in there that I've been wanting to touch on with you about this is, you know, like you said, you were around back then in the 70s and 80s and this film is set in 81 and it's set in the middle of a garbage strike in Gotham City.
Joker's 1970s New York Atmosphere
00:39:23
Speaker
And I didn't know this when I saw the movie, but I recently watched the Trump documentary series on his
00:39:32
Speaker
on his uh his business career and his life and it was you know Trump and American an American Dream I think it was called or something like that um and it goes through like you know his rise in real estate and like all the shady deals he had done and it it it holds nothing back about it really good documentary series if anyone hasn't seen it on Netflix called you know Trump and American Dream and it blows the myths a lot of like the you know I'm a self-made billionaire type of shit um
00:39:57
Speaker
But one of the things that I thought was really interesting in it, watching it, was that they talk about the garbage strike in the late 70s, early 80s. So being someone who was in New York at that time, I kind of want to get your take on how you felt this movie depicted that era of New York. Oh.
00:40:16
Speaker
Listen, yeah, yeah, New York, I can't, it's funny because I will occasionally get an email from somebody who will read one of my reviews of a movie that is set in New York during the 70s, such as, you know, Midnight Cowboy.
00:40:33
Speaker
And that person would say to me, well, New York wasn't really that bad, was it? They just, you know, did that for the movie. I said, no, that's exactly how New York was back then. And yeah, when I was watching Joker in the movie theater, both myself and my wife would say, oh my God, that's just how New York looked back then. Yeah, that's how, the, so is your wife also a New York native by the way?
00:40:59
Speaker
Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. She grew up in, she grew up in Brooklyn, just like I did. Yeah. So we, yeah. So we lived through a lot of the same things that, you know, that were depicted in this movie. Like the scene where Arthur shoots the three yuppies that are bothering him that are on the subway. Right. Yeah. Well, that's the Berna Getz thing. That was inspired by, you know, Berna Getz, the, uh,
00:41:28
Speaker
the guy that shot the Black youth on the subway that he claimed were out to rob him. They said they weren't. He said they were. And, you know, he shot him. But the whole look of the city, you know, the subway scenes, especially the subway scenes, that's just out of subways in New York back then. This movie was very effective.
00:41:55
Speaker
at capturing the mood and feel of, you know, the 70s, 80s, you know, and my hat is off to Todd Phillips because the only thing I know him from is from the Hangover movies.
00:42:09
Speaker
Yeah, I was really surprised, because I remember watching the movie and I remember thinking like, well, Tom Phillips, that name sounds familiar. And then looking up later and finding out that he was the guy who did Road Trip, he did Old School, The Hangover, you know, these like really like raunchy comedy movies, which, you know, don't get me wrong, The Hangover especially is hilarious, but you would not expect him to be the guy who makes something like this. And he also made more dogs, which was a bit more serious, but still, like he was not someone you'd expect to tackle a movie like this.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, when I wrote my review of this movie a couple of days after I saw it and I looked up Todd Phillips. And like you said, I said, I said, wait a minute, the guy who did the Hangover movies, he did this? Oh, also, apparently he did the Starsky and Hutch movie, which I hated that thing. Oh, I hated that movie. Yeah, that was hard. Yeah. But I mean,
00:43:01
Speaker
Listen, if it took him making Starsky and Hutch to build up the directorial muscles where he got to Joker, yeah, okay, I'll take it. Because that's something that I believe in that certain times when people say, oh, well, he made these lousy movies and stuff like that. Yeah, well, sometimes you have to build up your muscles in order to
00:43:27
Speaker
get to the point where you can do the movie or write the book, right, that you want to write, you have to build up those creative muscles. And, you know, like I said, if it took doing a piece of crap like Starsky and Hutch for him to build up the directorial and creative muscles to make this movie.
00:43:47
Speaker
Well, then it was worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, did you see War Dogs? It was with Jonah Hill. Yes, I did. I'm surprised now that you mentioned it. I saw that movie. I said, wow. Yeah, I saw War Dogs. Yeah, that was a really good movie, too. I liked it a lot. And until now, you told me I didn't realize Todd Phillips had directed that one, too.
00:44:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Wow. So now I want to go back and see it again. I know. I was thinking the same thing, reading all this stuff about Todd Phillips. And I was thinking like, man, I should rewatch War Dogs now. Yeah, that was a good one. But wait a minute. Me and my wife, matter of fact, we were on vacation. We were in, where are we at? We were somewhere. Were we in Washington? I think we were in Washington, DC. And we went to see it. And you know, just went to see it, just to see it, you know, to have something to do.
00:44:38
Speaker
And both of us ended up enjoying it.
Director Todd Phillips' Evolution
00:44:43
Speaker
a great deal, Jonah Hill. I haven't been, and you know what, it's so funny because I've been having like kind of a private Jonah Hill mini marathon. I watched Moneyball last night. That was, he was great in that. You know, it's really impressed me like how his career has changed and like how much range he turns out capable of exhibiting where so, because when he first came in, you know, it looked like he was just going to be the funny fat guy.
00:45:09
Speaker
The funny fat guy. Exactly. Yeah. That was kind of. Yeah. And you know, it's the same thing with Seth Rogen, too, because he had something not so much funny fat guy, but funny stoner fat guy. You're right. And that's kind of like the but, you know, he'll kind of reinvented himself as like the serious, dramatic actor. And and, you know, and Seth Rogen, he's kind of, you know, he's taken a lot of people
00:45:34
Speaker
judge him harshly on his acting I think he just kind of does what he's, what he's being asked to do, but he's done a lot of amazing work behind the camera as a writer I mean he's responsible for the, the preacher TV series and you know if you like the boys on Amazon Seth Rogan's behind that as well.
00:45:51
Speaker
And there was some announcement that there was some project, I can't remember what it was, but he was announced as being involved in it. And people were already starting to bitch about it. I'm like, they're like, oh, why is Seth, I'm like, you guys like Preacher, you guys like the boys. You should be happy that Seth Rogen is getting involved with this other stuff. Okay.
00:46:11
Speaker
So yeah, I mean, he's someone who's doing a lot of work behind the camera, just like Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck is much better behind the camera than he is in front of it. I think the same thing applies to Seth Rogen. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I've been saying for years that Ben Affleck, I really think his talent.
00:46:32
Speaker
lies more in being a director than an actor. Yes, yeah. Let his brother act. His brother is the one that can act. But he's not a bad actor in his own right either. No, he's not. No, he's not. He just took some bad roles. Yeah, well, bingo. But anyway, so yeah, Joaquin Phoenix,
00:46:58
Speaker
I was really impressed. And you know what the funny thing is, like the way he, I love like the little dances he does in the movie. And it just feels like, I feel like, you know, Todd Phillips is probably setting up the camera and Phoenix is just dancing, wait, wait. I got this image of Phoenix just dancing as he's waiting for the camera to get set up. And then Phillips like, okay, Joaquin ready to go. And Joaquin's like, no, I just want to dance. He's like, all right, fuck it, we're shooting this. It's a very improvisational feel when he dances. Like he has not rehearsed this at all.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, that is, you know, it's a very spontaneous feel. But there's a very spontaneous feel to a lot of things he does in this movie. Yeah, and I think that one of the most difficult things about acting must be
00:47:47
Speaker
to get to that point where you're acting so good that it feels like you're making it up right on the spot. Yeah. And there's a lot of times I got that feeling, which led to the air of unpredictability of the character of Arthur Fleck, because you didn't know what he was going to do next. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know. And I said, yeah, yeah, you know. Yeah, I mean, you know, while he, I mean, I'm not going to say he's a bad actor. He's an actor. Let me put it this way.
00:48:16
Speaker
I don't go running out to a Joaquin Phoenix movie every time it hits the theater. Matter of fact, I actively hated the master. Oh, okay. Really? That was the one that was kind of loosely based on L. Ron Hubbard, right? On Scientology. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:37
Speaker
But I think that was more because of the directing than the acting. That was P.T. Anderson, right? Yeah. The writing and the directing more than anything else. He's really hit or miss with a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because some of this stuff I've liked and some I've hated. Yeah. I mean, I love Boogie Nights. Oh, Boogie Nights is a classic. Yeah. Yeah. And Punch-Drunk Love was just surprising to see Adam Sandler in such a different role. Well, that's, you know,
00:49:05
Speaker
Like the only Adam Sandler movie, I think I've seen more than once. Park Shrunk Love, yeah. His style of comedy really doesn't. He also had more of a, I'm not sure if you ever, and we'll get back to Joker in a minute, guys, just wanted to toss this out there. But he was also in this movie, I think James L. Brooks directed it called Spanglish. I'm not sure if you ever saw that.
00:49:29
Speaker
No, my wife seen it. She said it's good. It's not, yeah, like I didn't think it was great, but it was, it was not bad. And Sandler, you know, he plays a normal, a normal role in it. He's not like playing like, you know, the, the man baby type of comedy that he usually does. But that was a, that was a really interesting, that was a nice change of pace for him as well. So he's a guy. Go ahead. Wait a minute. Okay. Nevermind.
00:49:53
Speaker
No, go ahead. I just thought of something, but I know what my next pick is gonna be when my turn comes around. Okay, all right. And it's got to do with Adam Sandler, yeah. Okay, all right. All right, so, oh, I think I know what you're talking about, because I think we talked about this before. But anyway, yeah, so Joaquin Phoenix, making it back to this movie, like, and you know, he lost, like, he shed like 50 pounds of weight for this movie.
00:50:23
Speaker
And it shows because watching him in it, it's like the scene when he's trying to stretch out his clown shoes and the angle on it, it looks like his back is completely malformed. The weight looks really, it adds an interesting aspect to the character. He looks like he's dehydrated.
00:50:51
Speaker
He looks like he doesn't eat. Even, you know what, I really don't remember a scene in the movie where we see him feeding his mother. Yeah, yeah. But I don't recall seeing the scene where he actually eats, he smokes, he chain smokes cigarettes, like, you know, like he's crazy.
00:51:13
Speaker
But that is a good point. Yeah. I don't think we ever see a scene where he's eaten in the movie. So it does kind of add the aspect with the kind of life they lead and you know how little and how he's the only one who's bringing in money basically. And so it kind of makes you wonder is he like that's that's interesting. I never thought about that. Like maybe he's starving himself a little bit so that he can take care of his mother. Yeah. Yeah. Because yeah. Because listen.
00:51:36
Speaker
OK, when we meet him, the guy is actually working as a client. Right. And he's one of these guys that stand out in front of these stores, and he's got one of these signs, and trying to get people inside the store. Now, I always wonder about those things. Like, does anyone ever actually go into those stores when they see those guys? Oh, hell no. I mean, because I'm seeing a clown out on the street saying, like, come over here. I'm like, fuck you. No way. Oh, no. Yeah, no, I'm not going in there. No, get away from it.
00:52:07
Speaker
In fact, we're rewatching this movie to prepare for this episode, my wife and I. And she asked me, she's like, is it true that people in America get scared by clowns? I'm like, oh yeah. She's like, why? I'm like, I don't know why, but it's just like, I'm like, you don't think clowns are creepy? And she's like, no, they're funny. I'm like, I don't get my, I love my wife, but I don't get her sometimes.
00:52:30
Speaker
You know when clouds are creepy? Clowns are OK in the circus. Yeah, yeah. Clowns are creepy when we see them outside of their environment. Yeah, yeah. That's when they creep. Wait a minute. Why are you dressed up like a clown in the middle of the street? Yeah. It's 3 o'clock in the morning. See, that's creepy. See, if you go to the circus and see a clown, you laugh. Because you expect to see a clown there. Right, yeah.
00:52:53
Speaker
You don't expect to see a clown anywhere else except the circus, which is what makes them creepy when they're taken out of their environment. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. That's what it is. Yeah. I mean, I don't mind clowns when I go to the circus. I expect to see a clown. I do not expect to come home and find a clown sitting in my living room. See, that would freak the shit out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah.
00:53:20
Speaker
So he's standing on the sidewalk, he's trying to get people in and a bunch of hooligans to be polite about it. They take his sign and author chases them and they beat the shit out of him quite frankly. So then we go back to his place of business, which is some sleazy little office somewhere where apparently
00:53:45
Speaker
These guys go out on various jobs that call for a client. At one point, he goes to a children's hospital and stuff like that. But he can't be making a lot of money at this. So that's what I was thinking, the same thing that you was, that he's not eating a lot because he's got to save his money to feed his mother. Because as we see, he's totally devoted to her. Yeah, yeah.
00:54:11
Speaker
It's like a Norman Bates kind of thing working with him and his mother. Exactly. Yeah, I was thinking of Norman Bates as well.
Character Deep Dive: Frances Conroy and Zazie Beetz
00:54:18
Speaker
And also, you know, that's a good time to talk about Frances Conroy because I thought she, what do you think of her in this movie? Like I thought she did a really, really good job. I thought she did a really good, because she does portray it as, you know, she seems just like the standard, you know,
00:54:37
Speaker
devoted sickly mother, like an Aunt May type throughout most of the movie. And then when you find out about her background, like you can suddenly see that aspect of it in her performance. I thought she did a really good job with that. Yeah, you find out that because yeah, because of course in the earlier scenes that we see her, we say, oh, she's this nice, sweet little old lady, you know, a little bit delusional maybe because she's got this fixed station with Thomas Wayne. Right.
00:55:05
Speaker
And I kind of like to hints that in the movie that Arthur may actually be Thomas Wayne's illegitimate son. Well, not even the hints. I mean, she flat out tells him, right? Because he finds the letter that she sends to Thomas Wayne gets sent back. Yeah, but she's not reliable. Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, Arthur, he's not reliable either. Because as we find out, there's a relationship he has in the movie that
00:55:35
Speaker
he's been completely, you know, that's been all in his head. Yeah, you know. And yeah, and you know, it's so funny seeing Frances Conroy in this because the first thing I really know her from and what she'll always be to me is Barney Stinson's mother.
00:55:53
Speaker
from how I met your mother. Because she, yeah, because she places mom in that. And like, that's like the first thing that I really recognized her in. And then like, and then after that, I go from that to watching her in like American Horror Story and all this other stuff. I'm like. But yeah, I thought she did a really good job in it. And that little subtle aspect of her actually being insane, which
00:56:19
Speaker
Once he goes to the hospital, once he goes to Arkham and he finds out about her past and everything, and you find out how delusional she really is, suddenly,
00:56:29
Speaker
everything she's been doing throughout the whole movie clicks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a whole, yeah, you get a whole new paradigm shift. Now you said, wait a minute, old one, make sure you wanna go back to the start of the movie and say, wait a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and to a lesser extent you had, and it's funny because everybody talks about the revelation about Zazie Bates's character.
00:56:51
Speaker
right, that she plays a single mother who lives down the hall from Arthur and his mom. Her character's name is Sophie. And, you know, Zazie Bates, you know, I love what, I'm so glad that she's getting a lot more roles now. And, you know, if Marvel's got any sense, when they end up bringing back Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool, they should bring back Zazie Bates' Domino again as well.
00:57:20
Speaker
But the big revelation that like kind of Fight Club-esque revelation that his relationship with her has all been in his imagination. And like the only time he's ever really interacted with her was in that elevator scene when we first see her.
00:57:37
Speaker
But everyone talks about that as being so revelatory. But I think the stuff about his mom and like Frances Conroy's performance in that role, I felt that was much better done. Well, actually, you know what? I kind of think that they did kind of telegraph early on that his relationship with her was all in his head. OK.
00:58:03
Speaker
When did you first get that sense? Because I did not catch that at all. You know why? Because if you notice, he interacts with four Black women in the movie. And I think that none of them were real. Oh, OK. Even the doctor? Well, he kills a doctor.
00:58:26
Speaker
No, no, no, no, he doesn't, the psychiatrist or is not the doctor, the social worker at the beginning of the, not the one at the end, not the one at the end, the one at the beginning of the movie that he's going to see. Right, the one at the beginning, okay. Because he interacts with four black women and I can't, and I'm sorry, I can't discount that fact that, you know,
00:58:53
Speaker
that there's something more behind it. Because the only white woman he really has any interaction with is his mother. And also the, yeah, and I guess also the woman on the Murray show. Yeah, but that's not really interaction. Yeah, yeah. But the only other women he interacts with, there's the woman that's on the bus that's got the little boy. She tells him, stop bothering my son. There's a social worker.
00:59:21
Speaker
There's the psychiatrist since that, you know. At the end of the movie, yeah. Yeah. And, and Sophie. Sophie, yeah. So you think like all the other ones were also not, not real. Well, I think that if you got one black woman is not real and he only interacts with black women, you have to kind of take, you kind of have to entertain the theory that maybe none of them are real.
00:59:48
Speaker
I don't know. That's me. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. If I am, folks, please let me know. But this was something that just came to me, you know, while I'm thinking about it. You know, yeah, because those are the only women he interacts with for Black women. Yeah, I can't agree. I don't. I don't. I can't agree with you on that. Because I think. Show us some backbone, man. Say I'm full of shit. You're full of shit. Oh, I see. There you go. Oh, Lord. Show us some backbone, man.
01:00:18
Speaker
No, because yeah, I don't know. But I think I'm trying to run through the theory in my head as I'm talking to you. So that's part of the reason. But I'm thinking that because the woman on the bus, like I think each of those characters that he kills, there's a reason for them to be real. And they kind of have to be for what the movie's doing. Because for the first woman, the social worker or whatever,
01:00:47
Speaker
You kind of need her to be real because of what she says to him when they cut the funding.
01:00:54
Speaker
And her kind of like distance from him and like her disinterest in his case is kind of like a metaphor for the system as a whole. And like how the system is failing him and how like, yeah, there are these social services that he's taking advantage of, but the social services are so underfunded that the people involved, they don't make enough money to really care about what's going on.
01:01:18
Speaker
they don't have enough they don't have enough initiative to get involved in any serious way in their lives and their patients and they really can't right they don't because they don't there's all they can really do is have these sessions with them ask them how they're doing ask them how work is and then give them a prescription for the next week of pills and that's really all that they're
01:01:38
Speaker
able to do that the system has enabled them to do. Okay. So I think she has to be real from that aspect of it. And the woman on the bus, I think, because that's when we find out about his laughing condition. When he hands her the card saying that, you know, my laughter is involuntary, I can't control it. Right, right.
01:02:02
Speaker
So I think that that's kind of necessary as well. And at the end, now the end I will say is I'm 50-50 on. I will give you that. I'm 50-50 on the psychiatrist at the end, just because of the fact that he's so completely lost his mind now. And I think that can be read either, yes, he killed her or he's just thinking about killing her and just imagining what it would be like if he did.
01:02:28
Speaker
Oh, okay. So that one I'll give you up. I'm 50 50 on that one. But the I think the other three would have to be real for what's happening in the movie. Okay. Although you do bring up a one thing that that I didn't want to mention in relation to this, which I saw some people talking about is the fact that with the exception of Francis Conroy's character, the exception of his mother, you know, you got four black women in this movie and the movie does not do any of them any favors.
01:02:58
Speaker
Oh, no, no. Which I thought was, and people were marked on this. People were saying like, why is it that it's got such shitty treatment of black women in this movie? And I did not realize that as I was watching it. But after people said that and rewatching it, that stood out to me a lot more. What were your thoughts about that? Well, see, this is why I'm saying that was one of the things that made me think that made all of these women
01:03:27
Speaker
were imaginary because of, you know, they're not nice people. You know, none of them are really, you know, they don't treat them. The woman with the kid, I'm trying to understand, you know, because... Yeah, I mean, like, she's nice enough to him, and then he freaks her out later by just showing up in her apartment. So I think, like, her... She's... I think she does fine. But yeah, the other women, I think you're right. They're not nice people. Yeah. They're not nice at all. Even though the...
01:03:56
Speaker
The social worker, she's kind of sympathetic when she's trying to explain to him about the budget cuts.
01:04:02
Speaker
Well, the thing that I- No, sorry, go ahead. You know, but at the same time, it's like, you know, she's got this, well, it is what it is attitude, you know, just deal with it. Yeah, more than that too. I also thought a lot of what she was saying in that had to do with more like self-pity than actual concern for Arthur, because she says, you know, they don't give a shit about you, Arthur. And then she also adds, you know, which was kind of telling, they don't give a shit about me either.
01:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, she's more worried about losing her job than anything else. Right. That's what I got from that. And the anger that she feels about Arthur getting the shaft is more an extension of her being pissed off that she's losing her own job. And that's what I took from that part. And also, the woman on the bus, like, man, what a bitch. I mean, she's just making your son laugh.
01:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, but it's a strange white man, you know, you're on the bus. She's probably, you know, had a shitty day at work or whatever. And now she's got to take the kid home. She's got to fix some dinner and stuff like that, you know. But I don't know. Listen, all I can say is that I don't think it's a
01:05:12
Speaker
It's an accident or a coincidence that the only meaningful relationship he has with a woman outside of his mother, who is insane, is this Black woman who's in his imagination. And then all the other women who he has dialogue with, meaningful dialogue with, are also Black as well. Yeah.
01:05:36
Speaker
That was the alley I walked down. I walked down many strange alleys. That was the alley that I went down. Now that you say this though, it gives me another idea. And this is just, let me know what you think of this, okay? So you've got Sophie, who's a single mother living in this poor neighborhood. She's struggling and everything.
01:06:04
Speaker
You got Arthur and his mother who his mother has had largely a similar type of background, right, you know, lower class, you know, single mother raising kid on her own living in this shitty part of town. And then you got the, the other black women that he interacts with. So I wonder if maybe like
01:06:25
Speaker
when he imagines like being with Sophie and all that and why he picks her to be kind of like the ideal woman for him is because it's kind of like a combination of those two things, right? His mother and these other black women that he interacts with who don't really care about him that much. And so maybe I'm kind of throwing shit at the wall now, but
01:06:51
Speaker
that somehow it's kind of like his own self-loathing or something like that with how these other women treat him. And then he combines that with the love of his mother and they kind of combine into Sophie. The only thing I know for sure is that I don't think it's a coincidence. That's all.
01:07:14
Speaker
That's where I'm going to leave it at for now. OK. Like I said, if anybody out there, if you've been listening to this and you think I'm full of shit or I've got something, please let me know and we'll revisit this. But I just can't believe that that was a random thing that you have. The only women he has meaningful dialogue with is these four Black women. And one of them turns out to be imaginary.
01:07:41
Speaker
Now, I think you're right in that it's not a coincidence. I just don't agree with the conclusion that they're all imaginary. But I do think you're right that it's not a coincidence that it's all these black women in there. Yeah. Yeah. And that we can definitely agree. All right.
Gotham's Characters: Thomas Wayne and Alfred
01:08:00
Speaker
Let's talk Thomas Wayne now, because this is not any version of Thomas Wayne that I've ever thought of, right? Because this guy is a dick.
01:08:12
Speaker
with a capital D. There's no other way to put it. Well you know who was originally cast in this role? You know what I do know
01:08:29
Speaker
I can't think of his name now, but I do know it's a well-known actor. Yeah, it was Alec Baldwin. Alec Baldwin, they're right. That's who. And you know, when you're watching this guy who's playing Thomas Wayne in the movie, I'm going to double check. You can see it in his book. Yeah.
01:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, because this guy is kind of like Alec Baldwin in his body language and the way he talks. Yeah, Brett Cullen is the answer. Yeah, Brett Cullen. Yeah. And yeah, you get the feeling that because Alec Baldwin, he was cast and then he had to drop out a few days later because of scheduling conflicts. So you get the sense that, OK, so what's happening here is, yeah, this guy is basically like, all right, I know you wanted Alec Baldwin, so I'm going to give you my best Alec Baldwin impersonation.
01:09:17
Speaker
And usually like other times when we've seen Thomas Wayne, he's portrayed as being like this guy who's a philanthropist and he's very caring because he's a doctor.
01:09:35
Speaker
Yes, yeah. And you know, he usually portrays being a doctor, a healer. So, you know, he's usually a very sympathetic character. Now he's, I don't recall him being a doctor in this incarnation, but he definitely is not sympathetic. No, that was something I was also gonna mention too, is I don't, I also don't remember anything about him being a doctor in this movie. And they, I thought that was telling that they left that out because they wanted to focus more on the, you know, the CEO type of character.
01:10:05
Speaker
He's a money growing bastard. Yes, yeah, he is. Now let me ask you a question. Okay, because this is a theme that they play on in this movie because Arthur's mother keeps saying it. And it's a thing that we always come back to in Batman movie for some reason or another. Why is everybody obsessed with saving Gotham? And what exactly does it have to be saved from?
01:10:34
Speaker
You know what, I think it's just, that's the, because, I don't know, I think that, I don't know, you know what, I don't know. Yeah, that's a good point, yeah. They do bring that up in every single, every single Batman movie, there's someone who's trying to save Dolpho. Yeah, okay, I get it. But exactly save it from what, financial ruin? Well, a lot of cities face financial ruins and they just pull through it. There's no super villains at this time. Yeah.
01:11:01
Speaker
So it's not like he's got to say, you know, from supervillains, you know, what urban decay, you know, what floor dation, you know, what, what exactly, why is it that in every Batman movie, there is this imperative that Gotham has to be saved?
01:11:20
Speaker
Yeah, I got nothing on that. All right, well, okay. I'm with you on that one. Yeah, I got nowhere to go with that. Yeah, it's like, you know, Gotham is this horrible, terrible place. Okay, well, I get it. It's a hard, but guess what? Most cities are horrible, terrible places that, you know, on some level.
01:11:39
Speaker
I mean the only thing I can say the only thing I can maybe take a stab at is that it's just their way of trying to show like how terrible Gotham is but it never quite lands very well. Now I know that at one I know and I vaguely remember reading this somewhere but Gotham is such a bad place to live in because there's something about the actual architecture of the city
01:12:07
Speaker
I remember reading something like that at one point as well. Yeah, that makes people kind of screwy if you live there too long. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of other stuff that probably factors into that they've done over the years, like... Yeah, Indian burial grounds and all that. Yeah, yeah, they'll introduce stuff and then other writers will come in and they'll forget about it. And yeah, so that's always how it goes.
01:12:36
Speaker
But I did think it was interesting that they made, because yeah, I can't imagine this being the same Thomas Wayne who instills those values of like justice and indecency into Bruce Wayne. Because, you know, Thomas Wayne, you know, not only was he a doctor, a healer, as you so accurately mentioned, but, you know, he still was, you still had Wayne Enterprises and all that, but he used it for, as a force of good.
01:13:06
Speaker
whereas which that which Bruce Wayne later continues right I mean he uses his money and resources to to do what he can to help people about them like there have been lots of stories where like I remember one episode of Batman the Animated Series where Nightwing is talking to Robin he's talking about what happened with him in Batman and why he quit being Robin and it was this one instance when
01:13:30
Speaker
They go after one of two-faced, I think it was the Joker's henchmen, and Batman assaults him in his home in front of his kid. And Robin tells him, Dick Grayson tells him, not like this, not in front of his kid. And Batman's just having none of it. But then later, at the end of the episode, Nightwing finds out that
01:13:52
Speaker
Bruce Wayne actually went and hired the guy as a security guard then and gave him a second chance. And he said, there's this really great team. He's like, yeah, Bruce Wayne's such a great man. He's never too busy to ask me how my kid's doing or anything like that. And there are lots of types of stories like that of Batman not only beating the crap out of people, but also trying to help people who need a hand to get a second chance at life.
01:14:18
Speaker
And you can't picture this Thomas Wayne raising that guy. Yeah, because as we've seen many times in, like you said, not only the animated series, but the comic books and in the movie, Bruce Wayne actually worships his parents. Yes. He doesn't believe in God, but if he believes in anything, he believes in his parents. Yes. But I don't see how he could believe in this guy here.
01:14:47
Speaker
because this guy is very unsympathetic, very unlikable. Like you say, he's a total dick. Well, also along those lines is it influences the whole relationship with Alfred then as well, because you can't have, again, I can't picture this guy to trust Alfred so much that he would give him custody of his only son.
01:15:13
Speaker
Whereas, but in the, but in other incarnations that we've seen, like, you know, Alfred worked for the Waynes, but him and Thomas Wayne, they were still friends. Right. Like, they still viewed, they viewed Alfred as part of the family, which is why Alfred is the one who gets custody of Bruce Wayne. I can't picture this Thomas Wayne viewing Alfred as anything other than the hired help.
01:15:36
Speaker
And actually, we should mention that there is a brief scene that we do see Bruce Wayne in this movie where Arthur goes to Wayne Manor and Bruce is playing near the fence for one reason or another. I can't remember why.
01:15:54
Speaker
but Arthur's on one side of the fence and Bruce is on the other. And obviously, okay, this can't be the Joker that will be his arch enemy because Bruce is what, like 10 years old? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and Arthur, he's a grown man. He's like in his 30s already. So, I mean, yes, I know that didn't bother Gotham because- Oh, don't get me started. Yeah, that didn't bother Gotham.
01:16:20
Speaker
OK, so he briefly runs into Alfred, and that's the, well, this isn't the Alfred that I know, because anybody put their hands on Bruce, he would have broke their neck. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, but I go along with your hypothesis that, yeah, I can't imagine the Thomas Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth of this movie having the relationship that I'm used to them having. Yes, yeah. Like you said, this Alfred is just a higher level. Right, exactly.
01:16:51
Speaker
And well, one thing, I'm glad you mentioned that scene where he goes up to Bruce Wayne, because I thought that was a nice way of showing the relationship between Batman and the Joker in a very small way, where he keeps trying to get Bruce to smile and Bruce doesn't. Yeah, yeah.
01:17:11
Speaker
So I thought that was a nice little, a nice little nod to the comics and like they're the whole dichotomy between them. Whereas the Joker's always smiling, Batman's never smiling. He's never smiling yet. He doesn't know. He never practiced. Even at this age, Bruce Wayne's a sour piece of shit. Yes. Your parents haven't even been murdered yet and you're already invisible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, kiddo. What is wrong with you?
Is Thomas Wayne Arthur's Father?
01:17:41
Speaker
Bruce Wayne should have had psychological hell all before his parents. And then again, this is a different Bruce Wayne. So we don't know, maybe as far as beating the shit out of him. I mean, I actually got judging from Thomas Wayne in this movie, I'm thinking he doesn't even beat the shit out of him. He just neglects him. He doesn't give a shit about him at all. Well, yeah. Well, maybe that's it. The kid just feels neglected. Because if the parents don't pay any attention to him.
01:18:09
Speaker
I do want to keep you know why because Thomas Wayne is too busy, you know, grinding money, you know, taking money for not giving anybody any jobs at all. You know, the city is in the state of utter chaos, you know, and apparently he's, he's too busy going to the opera, you know,
01:18:33
Speaker
Yeah, and so now I wanted to ask you, cause you kind of hinted at this earlier when we were talking about the idea of Arthur's parentage. Yeah. Do you think that Thomas Wayne is his real father or no? In this movie? Yes. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think this Thomas Wayne was a woman as a bastard and you know,
01:19:00
Speaker
She was working for him, because it was shown that she was working, I mean, from Wayne Enterprises. Yeah, and Alfred knows her too, because she used to work, not only working for Wayne Enterprises, but she worked at the house. And she worked at the house, right, exactly, yeah. So she was like a maid or something, or something like that. Right, yeah, she was a domestic. Yeah, yeah. You know, like on some level. So yeah, I can see very easily that Thomas Wayne was diddling the maid.
01:19:30
Speaker
I'm halfway with you. I think that, yeah, he was definitely diddling the maid and. Let me put it this way. I think it's an extremely strong possibility that at least they were having a sexual relationship and
01:19:46
Speaker
before his wife found out, he kicked her out, and that sent her down the road to man-less. That's what I'm thinking. And here's something, and adding on that, I don't think that Arthur was a child from that, but I think she wanted a kid, and him helping her with the adoption was like buying her silence. Yeah. That's my theory on how that went down.
01:20:10
Speaker
Which, and then, you know, I think that does fit because I think no matter what though, I think you are right that he was having an affair with her because otherwise, you know, it's telling that when Arthur mentions his mother's Penny Fleck, the reactions that both Alfred and Thomas Wayne have to that. Exactly, exactly, you know. And now they don't know who he's talking about. Right, yeah, yeah. Is it Penny who? Yeah, yeah, no, they know exactly who she was.
01:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, Alfred has got that wing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because it was probably Alfred that gave us some money and said, listen, it's time for you to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what Alfred does in this Thomas Wayne. He takes out the trash. Yeah, exactly. He does the dirty work, literally. Yeah, yeah. All right.
De Niro's Role and Arthur's Breakdown
01:21:03
Speaker
And you've got to talk about Robert De Niro's performance in this, too.
01:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, well, see, this is why I always recommend to people that they watch King of Comedy before, because the character he plays here, the talk show, Murray Franklin, could very well be his King of Comedy character 30 years down the road. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, and De Niro said as much too. He said that his role is an homage to that character in King of Comedy. Oh, okay.
01:21:36
Speaker
Now, I've never seen King of Comedy, so how does this kind of compare with all the homages and stuff to that movie? Okay, because both of the main characters of those movies are comedians.
01:21:55
Speaker
It's a lot of similarities in that they're both unreliable narrators. As we can see, as we, you know, when Arthur has these hallucinations and he's making up characters and everything, so by the time we get to the end of the movie, we're really not sure what was actually real or what was in his imagination. You know, and it's the same thing in King Comedy. Robert De Niro plays this character that is obsessed with
01:22:23
Speaker
a talk show host played by Jerry Lewis. Yeah. And he, similarity has scenes where he's hallucinating his relationship with other characters that turn out not to be true. So, and like Arthur, he attempted the Robert De Niro character in King of Comedy wants to be a comedian, but he's not funny. Yeah, yeah. He's not funny at all.
01:22:52
Speaker
you know, but his dream is to be on this talk show with his idol. Much like Arthur, you know, he has that whole extended scene where he stands up in the audience and, you know, Robert De Niro invites him on stage and they have a dialogue and everything. There's a scene just like that in King of the Comedy.
01:23:14
Speaker
Okay, okay. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that scene, because I wanted to mention that. Like that scene is so heartbreaking when he hallucinates himself being in the crowd with, and then, you know, Murray Franklin invites him on stage. Oh. And then he's after the, when they go to commercial, he says to him, he's like, look, all the lights, all the fame, I'd trade it all if I could have a kid like you. And it's like, you feel so bad for the guy at that point. Yeah, yeah. You know what? You feel bad for anybody whose life
01:23:44
Speaker
has gotten to that point where they have to hallucinate that strongly and make themselves feel better. Yeah. And also, well, he even hallucinates that Murray Franklin had a life just like his, right? Because he says, I live here in Gotham with my mother. And then the audience laughs. And Murray's like, no, wait, wait, wait. I live with my mother before I broke in, too.
01:24:06
Speaker
And so he's projecting his own life story onto Murray. And he's saying, well, Murray made it. He's my guiding star. I can make it too. I'm just like him. And of course, when you have an actor with the gravitas and the reputation of Robert De Niro in a movie like this, well, automatically, you say, OK, well, this must be a pretty damn good movie. Robert De Niro is in it.
01:24:34
Speaker
not discounting the fact that he spent a whole decade acting as shit. But in the few minutes he's in this movie, he reminds us of why he's Robert De Niro. Because he's better in the few minutes he's in this movie than he was in like the whole 90 minutes of
01:24:58
Speaker
other movies he made, like that crap movie he made with Sylvester Stallone, you know, what was that boxing movie? Oh, I don't know. I never saw it. I was trying to think. I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. But I was thinking of the Meet the Parent sequels. Oh, the Meet the Parent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in this one, this movie reminds us of why he dropped the mirror when he had that confrontation at the end
01:25:23
Speaker
when Arthur comes on as Joker, finally. He's got the costume, he's got the face painted, and they come and they have that dialogue on stage.
01:25:35
Speaker
and Arthur admits that he killed the guy and he pours out his heart to Murray Franklin and Murray Franklin turns on him. Yeah, yeah. And that's when Arthur finally, like he really snaps. Right, because remember his whole plan was he was gonna shoot himself on TV. Yeah, he was gonna kill himself. Yeah, but then when Murray strikes back at him, he realizes Murray's not who I thought he was. Yeah, right. And then he breaks and he's like, fuck you all.
01:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, because now he feels betrayed. Yeah. I mean, this is the guy that he worshiped. Speaking of that betrayal thing and talking about the hallucinations. So the scene when he goes into Sophie's apartment and we find out that he's been hallucinating his relationship with her.
01:26:19
Speaker
And I noticed that at the end of the movie, when he leaves the psychiatrist, the examining room in Arkham, and he's walking down the hallway, it's a very similar feel to when he leaves her apartment, and he's walking down the hallway back to his place. Now, they don't make any statement one way or the other, but do you think he killed Sophie? I don't think Sophie wasn't real.
01:26:44
Speaker
No, she was real, but just his relationship with her wasn't. So like the elevator scene, that was real. And then when she comes out of the bathroom and finds him in her apartment, that was real. Because she says, who are you? And that's when we find out that he's been hallucinating her.
01:27:02
Speaker
See, this is why I've got to watch it. See, this is why I sit down and watch these movies before we talk. See, I got to watch the whole movie because I only watched a couple of parts last night. I didn't watch the whole thing. I got to sit down and watch the whole thing because when I saw it, what I got from it was that Sophie wasn't real.
01:27:19
Speaker
No, my thing is that's kind of one of the reasons he fixated on her is because her daughter's bugging her in the elevator and she makes the blowing your head off gesture and she kind of smiles. I get the sense that she's a real person and she's been nice to Arthur in passing. She smiles at him in the hallway or says hi to him or something like that. And he mistakes that for genuine affection.
01:27:46
Speaker
Right. Okay. Then he starts to hallucinate that he's in this relationship with her after he kills them at the, if he kills the guys in the subway, then he hallucinates that he goes to her apartment and kisses her.
01:28:00
Speaker
And then everything she does in the movie from that point on, like when he sees the newspaper article and she says, if you ask me that guy's a hero, the clown killer, and he imagines her in the standup scene too. You see the first bits of his set and then the audio goes out.
01:28:20
Speaker
And all we see are like the lights on him. And then we see a close up of her sitting in a booth in the back smiling. And the field we're getting there is that he's actually doing a good job in the stand up. Like the first few minutes were rocky, but then he kind of found his footing. But then we find out later in the,
01:28:39
Speaker
when Murray plays the clip that it was actually, he actually was terrible. Okay. You know something? Now that you, okay. I'm replaying the movie in my head and there's some, you're right. Yeah. Sophie was real. It was the, it was a relationship was imaginary, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're right. I'm just replayed the whole, just replayed the old movie in my head real quick. Yeah. Okay. Right. So, Sophie was real. Sophie was real. The relationship was imagined. Right. Right. So do you think he killed her?
01:29:12
Speaker
Well, just because he seems to, at this point in the movie, he's losing his sanity and he seems to be going after everyone who's wronged him in some way. Well, he kills his own mother. Exactly, yeah. So that's why I'm saying it's not, and just like that whole walk when he walks out of her apartment, because they never show the end of that conversation when she finds him there.
01:29:41
Speaker
Right? We just cut to, when she comes out and she's surprised, she's like, you're Arthur, right? And she's like, do you want me to call your mother or something? Do you want me to call someone? And he just looks away and then we get the flashbacks and it shows that he was alone in all those other scenes with her. Right. And then it cuts to him walking out of the apartment.
01:29:57
Speaker
which led me to believe that she was, you know, that she was a fabrication. Okay, I see. Mike, my thing is, I was wondering, I didn't get it the first time, but I was wondering this time if maybe she killed her because his walk out of her apartment seems very similar to his walk out of the, in the prison at the end.
01:30:16
Speaker
when he walks the bloody footprints. Okay, well, you know what? I can go with you on this because like you said, he's at this point in his mental breakdown where he's killing everybody that he feels has betrayed him. Yes, yeah. So yeah, so yeah, so I can go with you on that. Yeah, I can follow you on that. Okay. Listen, listen, hey.
01:30:38
Speaker
If a guy is going to kill his mother, it's not too much of a step for him to go and kill, you know, somebody else. No, especially. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that that showed it when he when he killed his mother, that kind of showed that he had
01:30:50
Speaker
He had no boundaries left. Exactly, yeah. I mean, the guys, he's not only crossed the line, he just jumped over the castle. Yeah. And also, then he kills his coworker, right? When him and the, when his two coworkers come over. Yeah, when they come over to his house. He lets one go. He lets the other one go. He's like, you've always been nice to me, right? And then he lets him go. Yeah, but the other guy, he chops him up in the hand. Oh my God, he beats the, yeah.
01:31:21
Speaker
I mean, there was blood all over the walls of the ceiling. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh my God. Damn, okay.
Joker's Iconic Dance and Locations
01:31:29
Speaker
Okay, and then also there's the famous dance sequence on the steps.
01:31:35
Speaker
ah the famous or or by now infamous dance yeah yeah yeah you know my one of my favorite um i love that there are people who splice together his dancing on the steps with um toby mcguire and spider-man 3 his dancing i haven't seen i like i liked it myself i like with you i like
01:32:00
Speaker
it because okay that dance that he does not have steps shows that okay the shit is about to get real yeah yeah yeah because Arthur finally feels liberated now you know and um those those steps unless i'm mistaken weren't those the same steps used in the exorcist
01:32:21
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know where those steps are. I'd have to look that up. I know that there are people that, like you said, they found those steps. Yeah, I'm checking it right now. Okay. Oh, no, no. So it's just a similar scene because these steps are in, they're in the 132 steps in the Bronx.
01:32:51
Speaker
Oh, they're in the box, okay, yeah. And the ones from the exorcists are in Georgetown. In Georgetown, yeah. So yeah, they look very similar, but they're different. Now, there are a lot of scenes that I recognize. There is one scene, remember after Arthur when he shoots the three guys in the subway? Yes, yeah. And he's running on the street and he runs through this long tunnel right there right there? Yeah. That's right here in Brooklyn, I know what I'm saying. Oh, okay, okay.
01:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's right in Brooklyn. There's some scenes I love. It's like, OK, I know where that's at. OK, so now here's a proposal I got for you. Since you're not that far from the one, three, two steps, I think maybe you should put on some Joker makeup and reenact the dance on those steps for the fans of the show. Not on your life.
01:33:46
Speaker
Not on your life. You know how long it's been since I've been to the Bronx? I have been to the Bronx. Wow. I would say it's been about a good 20, 25 years since I've been to the Bronx.
01:34:00
Speaker
Oh, okay. Which I mean, you know, when I was young, like back in the 70s and 80s, I forget about it. I went all over the city. I've probably seen those steps. Yeah, I've probably seen them. Because I used to go to the Bronx all the time. I've probably seen them.
01:34:20
Speaker
But not to mention it, I may go there and I may just take a short video. I'm not gonna go to dress up and make it. What do I look like? Do I look crazy to you? Well, you know, in certain lights. Just a thought that came to my mind. Stop thinking.
01:34:48
Speaker
You know what else I thought about when I was watching the scene of the talk show is it reminded me a lot of the talk show scene in The Dark Knight Returns, right?
Comparisons to Other Batman Films
01:34:59
Speaker
When the Joker goes on the talk show with his, like it's a totally different vibe because in The Dark Knight Returns, the whole idea is his psychiatrist thinks he's like cured and everything and wants to show like, you know, rehabilitation as possible. And then Joker is going on there because he wants to get Batman's attention basically.
01:35:18
Speaker
But I did, I kept, every time I see that, I'm always reminded of the talk show. Like, so that's why when I was watching this the first time, I was like, oh, Robert Thierry was about to get his ass killed. Because when Joaquin Phoenix, when he comes out, he does the same thing that, because they got that little woman there that looks like, you know, what's her name? Dr. Ruth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he gives her a big kiss the same way that in the comic book,
01:35:47
Speaker
you know, the dark night, you know, the jump comes out and gives her, cause there's like some woman in there that's supposed to be Dr. Ruth and it gives her a big kiss too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. There's a lot of similarities there to that scene from the dark night returns. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. I can see it now. Yeah. Also now the last thing I wanted, and one thing that kind of I hated about this movie is we still have to see the Waynes die again.
01:36:18
Speaker
Oh, God, yeah. I mean, you know, you can't get away from it. And I think that there are some things in comic book movies that we should never see again. We should never see the origins of Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Superman. And we should never see Thomas and Martha Wayne get shot again. Yeah.
01:36:46
Speaker
Something too is, now if they had done the original idea for this, which was the original idea was not that it would be some random guy in a clown mask who kills them, but that it would be Arthur himself. And then after he shoots Thomas and Martha, he then turns the gun on Bruce and shoots Bruce as well.
01:37:12
Speaker
Now, if they had done it that way, I think I would have liked that scene a lot better, because it would have shown that it would have been completely, it would have been completely different that way, right? It would have shown that this is definitely an Elseworld story. Yeah. Yeah. But you know what? I would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that some suit
01:37:37
Speaker
said, well, if you do that, how can we have a sequel? Yes, yeah. Well, somebody sitting at that table, when they said, OK, well, this will firmly establish that this isn't the Batman that we know, and it'll cut it off, and it'll be a shock at the end of the movie, and blah, blah, blah, and this and that. And somebody said, yeah, yeah, yeah, but what about the sequel?
01:38:05
Speaker
If you kill him, how can he be Batman? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's exactly why they cut it out.
01:38:13
Speaker
because they didn't want, because even though Joaquin Phoenix was only doing this as a one-shot, right? Yeah, I mean, you know what? There is absolutely no reason for this movie to have a sequel. No, no, absolutely none. And, cause Joaquin Phoenix was offered roles in Marvel movies. Like he was offered Dr. Strange, he was offered Hulk and he turned him down because he didn't want to have to commit to, you know, replaying the role.
01:38:43
Speaker
Right, yeah. So everyone who was saying, oh, well, he's going to be Joker in the DCE. Well, no, he's not, because he doesn't want to do that. And like you said, I'm totally fine. This is not a movie that needs a sequel. And I think it would be a disservice to this movie, and also to the Joker's character in general, if they tried to shoehorn this into a DC Universe type thing. This movie.
01:39:14
Speaker
was an experiment in a lot of ways, I think.
Success of Standalone Films
01:39:18
Speaker
But it was an important experiment because I think that with this, DC and Warner Brothers has found a way that they can go where they can finally stop trying to chase Marvel, which is a fool's, I mean, really. You can't copy what they did. The Marvel Cinematic Universe
01:39:40
Speaker
is an achievement that I don't think any studio is going to be able to top for the next 100 years. Yeah. But I think that with this movie, they have discovered that they can do standalone movies with characters from DC Comics and give them to talented directors and actors and just let them do their vision. Yes, yeah.
01:40:03
Speaker
Like they did with this movie, and there's nothing wrong with that. You can do a Joker movie outside of the continuity that we know. They proved that you can do it, because they did it with this movie. Yeah. Now, apparently, this has been, now, apparently, even though they didn't intend for this to have a sequel, like, apparently, Phillips and Phoenix would both be interested, and there's a possibility that there might be a sequel, which I don't think they need one, but
01:40:30
Speaker
But I think you're right. It's much better instead to do other types of movies in the same vein where you're using some of these DC properties and you're finding new and unique ways to do that. Yeah. I mean, you could finally get a John Constantine movie that does justice to the character. Well, I was going to say, yeah. You should just, I mean, like get, what's his name? Matt Smith, Matt Ryan, whatever. I always get his name wrong. I know what you're talking about. Yeah.
01:41:02
Speaker
You know, you can do any DC character. Matt Ryan, Matt Ryan, that's it, yeah. Yeah, you can do any DC character. If you grew up, okay, well, you like, I don't know, challenges of the unknown, but you don't wanna do a whole series. You just wanna do one challenges of the unknown movie. Set it in period, say, you said, well, I wanna do it back in the 1960s. Well, yeah, you can do that now because you show with Joker that you can just do a standalone movie.
01:41:30
Speaker
or something like some of the, yeah, some of the darker stuff like you can do something like The Spectre or Dead Man or stuff like that. And I think you can find a really interesting ways to do that with these types of movies. Yeah. And you can make it R rating if that's what you want. Right. And go as dark as you want. And you can make the movie
Societal Failures and Joker's Creation
01:42:00
Speaker
you know, that you want to make the movie that you see. Yeah. And it doesn't have to fit into a larger tapestry like the MCU, you know. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're, you're spot on right there. A hundred percent. I think that, yeah. I mean, I think that really Joker pointed the way to, I mean, yeah. Okay. You can do the other movies like Aquaman and Wonder Woman that are set in, you know, a loose continuity. Mm-hmm.
01:42:25
Speaker
But if somebody comes to you and say, OK, well, you know what? I want to do a, I don't know, a Jonah Hex movie. But I want to do it right. I want to do it in the vein of a spaghetti Western. Oh, OK. Well, here you go. Here's $80 million. Go do it. And that would be perfect for this, right? Because you don't need a whole lot of money to make a Western. And that's all Jonah Hex is. So you don't have to make some big CGI spectacle for that. You just make a low budget, R-rated Western movie. And Jonah Hex is a great way to do that.
01:42:55
Speaker
Exactly. Exactly. So I think, yeah, so I think that that's the way that they go because Joker turned out to be an event that I think a lot of people didn't, a lot of people really didn't expect this movie to be as good as it was. And I think that that's because it dealt with a subject matter that a lot of people, whether they realize it or not,
01:43:23
Speaker
came to realize that this is an important issue of our time, mental health and how we deal with mental health and how our society deals with mental health. And these are the people that we're producing because we refuse to take care of them. And we're gonna keep on having people like him, like Arthur Fleck, because we do have Arthur Fleck in real life. Yes, yeah, absolutely.
01:43:50
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no, go ahead. I was just gonna say that this movie is, it kind of shows like how,
01:43:58
Speaker
If society keeps failing these people, then society is going to be responsible for creating a lot more monsters. Exactly. And that's what this movie is actually about. It's not about Batman's archenity. That's what I said. I don't believe. That's why I said when we started, I don't believe this movie is about Batman's archenity. But this is about a monster. But it's a monster that is created by society. Society has failed this man terribly. And if we don't figure out a way
01:44:27
Speaker
to take care of these people and heal them. We're gonna keep on having them. It's just as simple. And that's not to say that, you know, that excuse, because that's, I know some people have made that mis, that, that misassumption that if, well, if you're saying that society is responsible for these people, and that means you're excusing their actions. No, like he's still responsible for what he does. But that doesn't mean society is innocent.
01:44:50
Speaker
No, no. I mean, listen, there's plenty of blame to go around. Exactly, yeah. There's plenty of blame to be shared on all sides. Yeah, yeah. All right. Also, the scene when he gets, when the police car gets hit and he gets out and he climbs up on the roof of the car and like holds his fist up and everybody's kind of like in worship of him.
Joker's Hallucinations: Real or Not?
01:45:14
Speaker
Did you think that was a hallucination? Because I did.
01:45:24
Speaker
I think, you know what, I think that everything after he shoots Rob De Niro is an hallucination. Okay. All right. So yeah. So pretty much along the same lines of thinking then. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I thought that was a little bit, cause nobody really knows who he is. Like they don't even, yeah, it was cause all those people were out there rioting. They weren't watching the Murray Franklin show live. So they didn't hear him admitting killing those guys. So they have no reason to believe that he's anything other than just another clown and who's part of the protests.
01:45:51
Speaker
Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, you know, why would they all of a sudden decide to watch? But again, like I said, if you go by my earlier theory, where I postulated that this is the guy that infects Gotham madness, you know, for one reason or another, and
01:46:12
Speaker
This was the point in Gotham's history where it started to go a little bit wonky. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And this is where we got all of the super villains and the costume crazies and everything like that. Or you could just take this as a story about a guy that loses his mind.
01:46:34
Speaker
I mean, you know what, I think that if anything, the dialogue that we've had for the past hour or so about this movie demonstrates why such a good movie, because there were so many ways that you could take this movie, right? And you could watch, you could have a dozen people sitting down and watch this movie come in and everybody comes away with something different. Yeah, see something different on this movie. You and I see a lot of things,
01:47:00
Speaker
you know, like along the same lines, but we, okay, but we're sitting here and we've seen the same scene and we see them two different ways. Exactly. Yeah. Very good. That was thinking the exact same thing. We've got very different interpretations of, you know, what happened and we both saw the same thing.
01:47:16
Speaker
Well, there are also some points where we had the same interpretation up until a certain point. And then with the same scene, we diverged into two different conclusions of it, too. Exactly, which is why I think that this movie is still going to be watched and debated. And there's one of these movies that, OK, 20 years from now, they're going to be talking about, oh, this is a masterpiece. Why didn't more people see this? It's that type of movie. Yeah, yeah.
01:47:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's probably good as places I need to come to final concluding thoughts, which I think that pretty much summarizes it for, I think you summarized it pretty well, but do you have anything else you wanted to close out on with this movie?
Exploration of Adult Themes
01:48:00
Speaker
Only that, okay, if you haven't seen Joker yet, because you said, well, I'm not interested in superheroes, I'm not. As both Perry and I have said,
01:48:12
Speaker
This is not a superhero movie. If you, like me, enjoy the movies of the 70s and 80s, those classic movies that dealt with dark adult themes and heavy psychological issues, this is the movie for you.
01:48:28
Speaker
Yeah. You know, there is not a cape in sight, a cape mask in sight in this one. Well, they got the clown masks. Well, yeah. OK, clown masks. But I mean, there's nobody flying. There's nobody crawling up walls. Nobody trying to take over the world. This is not a movie about a supervillain. This is a movie about a seriously damaged man. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
01:48:56
Speaker
And you know what, this is, and I agree with a lot of what you said, as I said at the beginning of the episode, like I'm between the two camps. Like I did not think this was the greatest movie ever, but also I did not think it was terrible. Like it's a good movie is basically just how I come to it. But you're right, there are also a lot of, I think the strength of the movie is not so much in the movie itself, but as you've kind of pointed out in these different ways you can draw interpretations from it.
01:49:26
Speaker
And again, I don't think that's a coincidence. I think that the director, Todd Phillips, and the writer, whoever wrote this movie. Scott Silver. OK. I think that was they sat down and they planned it that way in the writing of this movie that people come away from it with all of these different interpretations of what happened and how it happened and why it happened.
01:49:55
Speaker
Yeah, that very good point. Yeah. And I think that's probably the best best way to end on this. So that about does it with our our discussion on Joker. You know, as we said, even if you think whatever your preconceptions of this movie are,
01:50:15
Speaker
They might be right, they might be wrong, but I'd say whatever preconceptions have stopped you from seeing this movie, I suggest you give it a chance and see if those preconceptions were right. Because I had preconceptions about this movie and they turned out to be wrong. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I did. I had a lot of preconceptions about this movie, I admit it. And yeah, by the time
01:50:40
Speaker
I got to the end credits. I had to admit that I had it all wrong. Yeah, I did.
01:50:47
Speaker
I had this movie on, it wasn't anything like what I thought it was gonna be, seriously. Exactly, yeah, yeah. All right, so that means that the next pick is mine. And so I was trying to think, what would be a good movie to go
Next Discussion: Witchblade
01:51:02
Speaker
into this time? And I'm gonna go, because usually you're the one who recommends the more, the low budget, the lesser known TV movie stuff. I'm gonna see if I can pick one that you have never seen before.
01:51:14
Speaker
Okay. And that is the Witchblade made for TV movie that served as a backdoor pilot for the TNT TV series. Were Yancey Butler? Yes. Seen it. Damn it. Damn it, I thought I had you. No, you know why? Because this was the movie that, oh, I was in love with Yancey Butler for so long after seeing the movie. Oh, really? Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yancey Butler, oh, man. Yeah.
01:51:40
Speaker
And of course, I hope for the longest. OK. Now, I'm not sure how easy this is for you to find. But if you have any trouble finding it, let me know, because I think I can find a way for you to see it. OK. Well, you know what? I have found that recently, Tubi, I have found that that is a great resource for a lot of crappy movies. Oh, OK.
01:52:05
Speaker
I spent one Saturday just watching one crappy movie that I hadn't seen in a long time. And I said, oh my God, I can't believe this on there. Okay, which blade is not on there, but I do have a way to get it if you can't find it. Okay.
01:52:22
Speaker
Okay, give me a couple of days. If I cannot find it on my own, trust me, I will be in touch with you. Okay, and because this one came to mind because they had recently had a big image sale and they had like the Witchblade, like the early issues of like the Witchblade comic book. So I bought that and I read it, you know, like I haven't read those comics in years. So, and then it made me think about the TV series, which I've got, and I'm like, oh, I should actually sit down and that'd be a good thing is to go back and rewatch the film that launched into the series.
01:52:51
Speaker
Yeah, it was a short-lived TV series on TNT. Right, it lasted two seasons and it was actually like the highest rated cable show at the time. Yeah, it was a very popular show. Unfortunately, Yancey Butler, she had severe problems with alcohol. Right, yeah.
01:53:11
Speaker
that led to the cancellation of the show. Yeah, yeah. So join us next week. We'll be talking about the Witchblade Telefilm. And you know what? I actually saw this with Yancey Butler.
01:53:24
Speaker
Really? Yeah, because they premiered it at Wizard World Chicago. And Yancey Butler was there, Anthony Sestaro was there. And so yeah, I got to see it at the, I can't blink it on the name, but there's this really old famous theater in Park Ridge, Illinois, which is in one of the Chicago suburbs. And we got to watch it there. So I got to watch it with Yancey Butler. In fact, I got a picture with her. That's it. Which unfortunately, I don't know what happened to that picture.
01:53:52
Speaker
like all my convention pictures. I don't know what happened to them. I had a picture with her. I had a picture with Stan Lee. I think I had a picture with Kevin Smith as well, but I don't know what happened to those photos. I think I had one with Paul Jenkins as well, I think, but yeah, I don't know what happened to him. I got a,
01:54:07
Speaker
I'm worried that maybe they got thrown out, they got mixed up with the trash somehow at some point with my many moves or when my parents downsized their place. Oh, these were actual picture pictures? Physical pictures, yeah, yeah. Oh, physical pictures, right. Okay, they were on the phone. No, no, no, this was back when I was in high school. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay then, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, I'm afraid that those maybe lost a time, but if I ever find them, I'll definitely post them up somewhere. But yeah.
01:54:36
Speaker
I got to see it with the Auntie Butler. I got to meet her. I got to meet Anthony Sestaro. And yeah, it was a really cool experience to being able to go to this theater I've been to all my life and to go there and watch this comic book movie on the big screen. Go to the world premiere of it. So it was a pretty cool experience.
01:54:57
Speaker
So that about does it for us now. Join us next week. We'll be talking about Witchblade. Hopefully Derek will have successfully dispatched with his assassins who don't have any more delays. Matter of fact, I think I'm going to spend a weekend hunting them down. I'm in a very proactive mood now. After having talked about Joker, I feel like he's a little bit crazy myself now.
01:55:24
Speaker
All right. So if you want to join in the conversation, chime in, let us know what you think. Head on over to the Facebook group, Superhero Cine Files, or go to our website or drop us a line on Twitter. Let us know what you think. And yeah, and we will talk to you later.
01:55:43
Speaker
Okay, one thing I just want to end with, because you had mentioned about the interview, the name of the podcast is Demond Does. Oh yes, yeah. D-E-M-O-N-D. And you can listen to that on Spotify.
01:56:04
Speaker
Stitcher, you know, all of the major, whatever you listen, Apple, you know, whatever you listen to podcasts. Yeah. Yeah, it's a short episode. It's about 30 minutes. So if you haven't got enough of hearing me ramble on here, you can go listen to that. You can hear me ramble on for another 30 minutes. Yeah, and it was a really good interview. I definitely recommend checking it out. Oh, thank you, sir. I appreciate that. Anytime. Okay, that's it for now. We will see you next time. Good night and God bless.
01:56:37
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroescinephiles at gmail.com, or you can also visit us on the web at superheroescinephiles.com.
01:56:57
Speaker
If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners. You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of ezlionstudios.com.