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JOKER: THE MOVIE produced by Martin Scorsese (TBD)
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Started by Bosco685,

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Bosco685

Bosco685

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Todd Phillips' Joker got the last laugh in its box office debut, earning a huge $93.5 million domestically from 4,374 theaters to set a new opening record for the month of October despite heightened security at cinemas across the U.S. The dark R-rated supervillain movie starring Joaquin Phoenix did even more business overseas, raking in $140.5 million from more than 70 markets for a global start of $234 million (it doesn't yet have a release date in China). Both stats likewise set a new benchmark for the month of October.

 

In North America, Joker:

  • bested last year's Venom, which started off with $80.3 million domestically
  • danced to one of the best three-day openings of all time for an R-rated title
  • is the fifth biggest weekend launch of 2019 to date
  • is Warner Bros.' highest opening in two years

 

Joker — far from an ordinary superhero pic but an origin story laced with realism — has sparked widespread headlines and concern for its nihilistic themes and violence, prompting cinemas and police departments to ramp up security and remind patrons that face paint, masks and toy weapons aren't allowed. Theaters are also checking IDs and informing guests that the film's rating is a "hard R," and that anyone under 17 must be accompanied by a parent or adult when buying a ticket.

 

Only 8 percent of ticket buyers were between ages 13 and 17, according to PostTrak's exit polling service (stats aren't available for those 12 and under). Overall, males made up 62 percent of the audience. Joker played to an ethnically diverse crowd: 44 percent of ticket buyers were Caucasian, followed by Hispanics (24 percent), African Americans (16 percent) and Asians/Other (14 percent). The majority of the audience (65 percent) was between ages 18 and 34.

 

Audiences gave the film a B+ CinemaScore, while its Rotten Tomatoes freshness rating is 69 percent. Village Roadshow and Bron Studios each have a stake in the film, which cost north of $60 million to produce before marketing.

Joker_Release_Schedule.PNG.26887fa0ed166aa72e1088717441b88b.PNG

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Bosco685

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Since CNN and other news outlets didn't get their theater shooting this weekend, now they are publishing articles about the reason why Joker went over so strongly was due to other reasons not so nice to post on here (code word 'THE FORGOTTEN MAN').

I am just floored news outlets would do something like this over tragedy avoided sour grapes. :facepalm:

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Bosco685

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36 minutes ago, Callaway29 said:

There's going to be a sequel...calling it now. Only wildcard is Phoenix and I watched an interview where he seemed amenable to doing more with the Joker. Can't find it again unfortunately...

Look above. Three posts up. But don't tell anyone. It's our secret.

:baiting: :foryou:

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fantastic_four

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On 10/5/2019 at 7:43 PM, ComicConnoisseur said:

I wonder if it has a shot at the Oscars?

Phoenix, yes.  And maybe the cinematographer.  Not much else.

Wasn't a huge fan on the first viewing.  He didn't creep me out nearly as much my other top 3 movie villains (Lecter, Ledger Joker, and Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh).  I enjoyed it, but not a lot.  There was a ton I need multiple viewings of to fully digest.  Initial impression was that I can't really compare Phoenix to Ledger because the movie around Ledger was FAR better, so Phoenix's portrayal didn't stand out as much to me because the excellence of everything else in "The Dark Knight" amplified Ledger's performance so much that it biased me towards it.  Phoenix also had a FAR harder job since he was on-screen almost every moment of the film, whereas Ledger's performance was far more rationed out.  Had we seen two full hours of Ledger he may have seemed more mundane by the end.

I wish this wasn't an origin film.  One of the aspects of my favorite villains (Lecter, DK Joker, Chigurh) is that they seem like supermen, whereas this Joker seemed sad and entirely vulnerable.  By the end he looks well on his way towards becoming the criminal mastermind we're used to, he was anything but that throughout this entire movie.

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fantastic_four

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Oh, and the criticism of the violence/message of this film seems laughable.  It's easy to list dozens, probably HUNDREDS, of films whose violence and capacity to inspire dark thoughts in the unbalanced far exceeds what we saw in Joker.

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fantastic_four

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Aside from just absorbing Phoenix's portrayal a few more times, this is the question I'm still pondering that I'm not sure I'd have an opinion on without repeat viewings:

Spoiler

I wasn't convinced that the Joker subway killings and then his killing of the DeNiro talk show host character would have inspired a movement or riots.  OK, so this fictional version of Gotham was heavily beset by massive income inequality.  Is there historical precedent for even massive levels of income inequality leading to anything like what the film depicted?  Maybe, none jump to mind though.  And that's particularly true in modern society since no matter how rich or poor you are medical treatment, food, and even entertainment are at historically cheap levels, so even if you're homeless your basic needs are better met today than at ANY point in the history of human civilization.  This was the 1970s so all three of those things were not as cheap then as they are now, but still even in the 1970s you were FAR better off than any of your historical human counterparts whose discontent didn't rise to the level of riots or even revolution when faced with even worse levels of income inequality.

So why did these Gothamites riot?  I don't know, I'm just not at all sure.  That part of it seemed very comic-book-y, like you just had to go with it and the film didn't establish that it could actually happen.  Or maybe I'm wrong and there are close historical parallels.  I need to watch it another time or two and ponder possible parallels before I decide if it's as unrealistic as it felt on a first viewing.

 

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Bosco685

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2 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Aside from just absorbing Phoenix's portrayal a few more times, this is the question I'm still pondering that I'm not sure I'd have an opinion on without repeat viewings:

  Hide contents

I wasn't convinced that the Joker subway killings and then his killing of the DeNiro talk show host character would have inspired a movement or riots.  OK, so this fictional version of Gotham was heavily beset by massive income inequality.  Is there historical precedent for even massive levels of income inequality leading to anything like what the film depicted?  Maybe, none jump to mind though.  And that's particularly true in modern society since no matter how rich or poor you are medical treatment, food, and even entertainment are at historically cheap levels, so even if you're homeless your basic needs are better met today than at ANY point in the history of human civilization.  This was the 1970s so all three of those things were not as cheap then as they are now, but still even in the 1970s you were better off than any of your historical human counterparts whose discontent rose to the level of riots or even revolution.

 

I'll give it a try.

Spoiler

Throughout the film we learn of Gotham city leadership cutting budgets for sanitation services, mental wellness support and even pharmacy services with Arthur's medicine. Then with Thomas Wayne making comments at political rallies the lower class are clowns that only he can bring good to their lives, talking them down.

So probably all the lower class citizens needed was ANY example of taking action in their name (e.g. killing 3 Wayne employees with nasty chips on their shoulders) and the fuse was lit. Him going on the show and revealing it was him - and now Murry was his next victim for disrespecting people - and BOOM! The riots explode.

That's how I interpreted the film.

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fantastic_four

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40 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

I wish this wasn't an origin film.  One of the aspects of my favorite villains (Lecter, DK Joker, Chigurh) is that they seem like supermen, whereas this Joker seemed sad and entirely vulnerable.  By the end he looks well on his way towards becoming the criminal mastermind we're used to, he was anything but that throughout this entire movie.

Another reason I wish it wasn't an origin film is that almost nothing about what we saw him go through was at all surprising.  Yep, if that's your life, I can see you being the Joker.  But just about any of us could have filled in that kind of back story.  After seeing "Silence of the Lambs" I was fascinated by what could make someone like a Lecter (or Dahmer) resort to cannibalism, so I rather enjoyed the part of Thomas Harris's novel "Hannibal" which wasn't shown in the "Hannibal" film but was in the "Hannibal Rising" movie that established how he became that way.  And after hearing what happened to Lecter as a kid it made immediate sense as to how he might start doing that.

So did we need a Joker origin tale?  Probably not.  I'm left preferring David Goyer's clear implication from "The Dark Knight" that he's just an evil, twisted guy who likes to "watch the world burn" whose origin didn't need establishing.  It's not difficult to see how people might become that way.

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