Todd Phillips’ Joker is terrible and also the worst

This review contains spoilers

by Zane Goins and Lucas Trevor

It started off innocently enough. We would start with Joker, we would see it in theaters, and then we would go back to Lucas’ apartment and pop on Batman 1989. You see, we knew that Batman would be better. We knew that Tim Burton was a better storyteller and Jack Nicholson was a better Joker. We would focus our review on the good movie with the entire joke being that we would quickly forget all about the subpar movie we had just seen, in favor of a much better one.

This became impossible when we actually saw Joker. To simply call this movie a bad experience would be a disservice to our readership. Asking for a refund of our ticket price? That implies that all we lost was $13 because, let me tell you, faithful readers, we lost so much more.

We (Zane and Lucas) disagree on many things regarding movies. We do so politely and respectfully. Lucas believes the Mission Impossible movies are near masterpieces which push both the genre and medium forward, Zane does not. Zane is confident that The VVitch is one of the most effectively constructed period pieces and suspense films released in recent history, Lucas not so much. (Although, he admits a need to revisit it before we see The Lighthouse). Our primary point of contention regarding Joker was whether, as Zane stated, it was “the worst film he had ever seen, no contest,” or as Lucas eloquently argued, “it was slightly better than the second Percy Jackson movie.”

You see, Joker is not simply bad because of its terrible performances, uncreative directing, and near motionless plot -- don’t worry we’ll get to those, too -- Joker is bad in every conceivable way. Its portrayal of mental illness is incredibly problematic, implying that all mentally ill people are a missed therapy appointment away from murdering someone. Its recurring characters of color are treated as plot points rather than people in stark contrast with the white supporting cast. Women of color in the movie are routinely killed offscreen as they seem to serve no purpose to writer/director Todd Phillips other than justifications for the Joker, Arthur Fleck, to murder people. The primary cause for Joker’s descent into crime seems to be that people of color (specifically women) want to do their jobs and live their lives, unharassed.

A black mother is a bad person because she won’t let her son interact with a stranger on the bus. A black clerk at the hospital where Arthur’s mother used to be a patient is evil because he won’t give over records to a stranger without proper paperwork being filed. A black woman and her child are presumably killed off-screen because she wouldn’t give Arthur the attention he felt owed. A black woman is again murdered off-screen while attempting to provide Arthur with mental healthcare, the lack of which the movie blames for Arthur’s actions.

From start to finish Joker is a mess of continuity, appallingly problematic images, and filmmaking without a soul. All of this, every single problem with the film could be excused -- or at least pushed to the side -- if Phillips had an opinion about anything going on on the screen. When the credits (mercifully) roll, the viewer is left with one question. 

What is Todd Phillips actually trying to say?

Now here’s the thing, this is true about a lot of movies. One thing that we both agree on is that the motivations behind the message of a film or even the message itself does not need to be immediately clear after a single viewing. However, lapses in logic and basic story structure reach a level in Joker that we could never have expected. Why does Joker reach through a fence to touch a young Bruce Wayne on the face? Cause he’s unhinged or something. Is Joker a hero, or a villain, or an anti-hero? Never really articulated. Is his movement a popular proletariat uprising against capital or disingenuous looters who set out for anarchy and personal gain? Not even remotely addressed. These questions have to be answered in a film with such political motivation seemingly inherent in its story.

Joker clearly wants to be a response to the political climate of today. But is it really? If Phillips wanted to comment on today, he could maybe, I don’t know, set the film in the present day. There is no reason for Joker to be set in the early ‘80s, beyond Todd Phillips’ clear obsession with better-made anti-hero driven films of the time.

As a result of his refusal to form an opinion about anything going on in his own movie, Phillips forces the audience to do so. And this at its core is what makes this movie so incredibly terrible. He leaves the film so open that the audience can take away, consciously or subconsciously, any one of a plethora of problematic views. Phillips just open-endedly brings up incredibly important issues like violence against women of color, access to proper mental healthcare and class stratifications in the United States without any connective tissue between them. So much of what is going on on-screen is explained away as, “Wow, Joker really is crazy,” and quite frankly, that’s bad and dangerous filmmaking.

Phillips seems to believe that his work will be a seminal testament to film and society by leaving a lasting impression through a pointed, intimate character study that unfolds in the politics of the modern-day. This is not what he does. Instead, he took imagery from better films, lazily piecing them together in the hopes that Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro on camera will provide engaging performances. Just for the record, they don’t, and De Niro needs to pick better movies. Phillips includes images for sheer shock value, not to establish character growth or form some coherent plot but seems to only make us uncomfortable. This is not to say that shock value can’t work in a movie or is never warranted. When talented filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino or Ari Aster insert imagery for shock value it is done so with a purpose, and it leads somewhere beyond simply the shock value. When Todd Phillips does this, it is hollow, poorly constructed, and gratuitous. What we’re trying to say is Todd Phillips is a very bad director.

Before we went to see Joker, we were told, “You’ll like it, it’s just like Midsommar cause it makes you very uncomfortable in your seat.” This was true in a way. Joker and Midsommar shared exactly one characteristic, they both made us want to watch better movies. In the case of Midsommar, we wanted to rewatch the slightly more tightly-written and suspense-driven Hereditary, which was also directed by Ari Aster. As for Joker, we wanted to see ANY OTHER MOVIE. Literally any other movie in existence would have been a more worthwhile experience.

Joker: 1/10