Spoilers, I guess.

I saw the new Todd Phillips movie Joker on Saturday. It was really goddamned stupid.

I mean, that’s the short of my review. But let me elucidate a bit more on my feelings because they are complex.

There was a whole mess of discourse that blew up surrounding the movie, but I like a gritty crime thriller, so I figured I’d go see the movie, quietly enjoy myself, and not really say anything about it online and let the internet have its exhausting if completely justified debate. Then I saw the movie. Oy.

The biggest problem with Joker is that it’s a cowardly movie with no real point or vision. I’m not the first person to say that. If you look at a lot of the negative reviews, you see the same thing. And I highly recommend you read this review of the movie that talks about the ways it calls up imagery from cases such as the Central Park Five among others — I don’t know that I agree with everything in the article? But it definitely raises some really good points, especially given the time period the movie is set in.

For the first two-thirds of the movie, I was somewhat enjoying myself. The film has a well-done pseudo-70’s and 80’s crime movie aesthetic, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is really good, and I personally thought the movie did a pretty good job of setting up how society fails Arthur Fleck until lashing out at the system makes sense. This, I figured, is the story of a man radicalized against an unjust system. He loses his job — which already didn’t pay much. He lives in squalor with a mother who is herself ill. The city cuts funding for healthcare, so he loses his therapist and the various medications he takes for several mental disorders. Thomas Wayne is running for mayor, but his platform seems to be “Vote for me. I’m rich,” but he doesn’t really show much sympathy or concern for the plights of the underclass and disenfranchised folks.

I mean…this could easily be a case for why public services are vital for the well-being of a city and how people dehumanized by capitalism will eventually strike back. It wouldn’t be a traditional take on the Joker, but it would make sense given the parameters they set up in their movie. That’s, of course, not where the story goes.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it thinks that it’s deep, but it isn’t. It presents everything with this grandiose tone of importance…but without every really showing anything important or letting anything pay off.

Here’s what I mean:

A small example, but at the end of the film, while the city is rioting, Thomas, Martha, and Bruce sneak out of a theater into an alleyway — yes, we get to see Thomas and Martha get shot for the fifty-thousandth time. The camera hangs on the marquee for a second so that we can see that the theater is showing Zorro: The Gay Blade.

It’s a fact long established in Batman lore that Bruce and his family went to go see Zorro the night of his parents’ murders. It’s meant to be a subtle little nod to where Bruce gets the idea to dress in black with a mask and cape and fight crime. It’s pretty clear that Todd Phillips, knowing this little factoid, went onto Google and searched for “Zorro films 1980” and found one that fit. But consider this: is this the kind of film that Thomas and Martha would take their young son to? A movie in which Zorro is swapped out for his effeminate sissy brother, who re-does the costume in lavenders and pinks and uses a whip instead of a sword? And more importantly, am I meant to believe that’s the movie that inspires Bruce to become the Dark Knight?

And that’s kind of the vibe the whole movie has. Decisions are made, but they’re made based on a very surface level understanding of things, and no further thought is given.

At one point, Arthur is on a subway and gets attacked by five Wall Street bros singing “Send in the Clowns” — because of course they are. What Wall Street bro doesn’t know those lyrics? Arthur shoots them in self defense, killing all but one, who he chases down and shoots on the subway stairs.

This spawns an entire subplot where first there are rumors of a clown vigilante. This clown eventually becomes a hero to the people. Thomas Wayne offhandedly refers to his critics as clowns, so folks begin holding protests wearing clown makeup and/or wearing clown masks carrying signs that literally say “We are all clowns.” (Coincidentally the masks and makeup look very similar to the makeup that Arthur wore when he worked as a clown–and I mean coincidentally because it is literally never brought up or addressed in any meaningful way). Finally the protests escalate, becoming riots in the streets. At one point, you see an armed clown sprinting after someone else, and the clown is carrying a sign that says, “Resist.”

Seriously.

Now, you might be thinking– surely for this subplot to be woven throughout the movie, Arthur Fleck must have sparked it, right? People sympathized with his story? Or he was charismatic enough to rally the people together? Maybe he gave a speech that galvanized everyone into action? At the very least, maybe someone caught video of him getting beaten up and then fighting back, and that’s what sparks this movement?

No. None of that happens. Besides actually being the clown that does the subway killing, no one knows it’s him, and he in fact at one point POINTEDLY says that he doesn’t care about the clowns or their protests because he doesn’t care about politics.

It would make sense, given all of the work the movie does to make Arthur’s actions understandable, that he might start a movement for change, but find himself enamored with the power, letting it change him until he eventually goes too far but can no longer turn back.

Instead, here’s how Arthur actually becomes the Joker:

Thomas Wayne punches him in the face.

That’s honestly it. Arthur thinks Thomas is his real dad (he isn’t). He confronts him in a bathroom and gets punched. Then he goes to hang out with his girlfriend, but it’s revealed that the woman he’s been hanging out with the whole movie isn’t actually his girlfriend — that was all a delusion. So then he decides to murder his sick mom…I think because he learned she let him get abused by her boyfriend when he was a baby and it’s implied that brain damage from this is why he’s mentally ill. Then he murders an ex-coworker who got him fired, but he lets the other coworker go because he was always nice. Somewhere in all of this, he decides to paint his face…but it’s not related to the clown protests that have reached a fever pitch. It’s a separate reason. He just feels like it–he literally says this.

There’s not really a lowest point that pushes Arthur over the edge into action. And yet all of Arthur’s murders have identifiable motives: neglectful mom, violent Wall Streeters, co-worker that got him fired, talk show host that ridicules him. So it doens’t jive when, at the very last minute, the movie tries to make Arthur into this figure of chaos who’s just in it for the lulz in spite of LITERALLY EVERYTHING YOU’VE BEEN SHOWING US FOR THE LAST HOUR AND 45 MINUTES.

He then gives a speech about how society is bad and that’s why he killed people. Conversely, the mob outside that’s protesting the system and the way it advantages the rich is ALSO portrayed as bad — as a senseless mob causing wanton destruction for no reason.

So to summarize: society is bad and we should all feel bad, but we shouldn’t blame or take meaningful action against the very people that perpetuate this harmful system because that’s also bad.

(One quick aside: any director that can’t tell that Anonymous, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter are three different political movements with very different motivations is probably someone that shouldn’t try commenting on current events.)

It’s the most flaccid, nothing movie. It’s a king prancing through the streets demanding you tell him how nice his Sunday dress clothes are, but he’s actually not wearing anything. It’s Gob and his magicians demanding to be taken seriously. It’s one of those giant chocolate bunnies you can buy around Easter that looks like solid chocolatey, but it’s actually hollow inside and tastes a bit like sour milk.

It’s an incredibly stupid movie that mimics the grittiness of 70s Scorsese, but doesn’t understand the actual message behind those movies, doesn’t follow through on the message it’s setting up, and doesn’t understand the very political and cultural movements that it’s trying to comment on. It is goddamn stupid.