Half in the Bag: Joker

half in the bag hey Mike did you see Martin Scorsese is trending on Twitter oh no we lost Marty oh no he's still alive but people are very upset with him why for being absolutely right about everything Oh Marty we've been saying for years that movies are now theme park rides is that where all this 3d [ __ ] is gonna turn movies into like theme park rides you ready to send a little car that goes slowly through the kitchen look Mike if I'm gonna trust anyone's opinion on quality film it's not gonna be Martin Scorsese it's gonna be some guy that claims he has an emotional connection to ant-man and the wasp trust the Twitter Bob Jay always trust the Twitter mob speaking of which let's talk about Joker my mother always tells me to smile and put on a happy face spooky clown scare me Joker film so controversial Joaquin Phoenix didn't know how to answer a question in an interview on left for two hours that's that's where we should start before we get into the discussion is hot-button politics well that's that's the interesting thing more interesting than the movie I don't know how you feel about this movie we haven't talked about it yet but we call this time we live in the age of reactions yes very reactionary and that's as someone that grew up a horror fan it's weird to me because that's what you always heard there's the argument that like horror films they're gonna turn you into a violent psychopath this guy is to my way of thinking of vicarious sex criminal he has very antisocial attitudes I felt creepy sitting there or before that you had like tipper gore and her fight against music the evils of music we have always talked about the positive aspects of the music industry but of course the highlight has been on the excesses that have been allowed to develop as we have tried to focus our concern on it's a stack panic and satanic panic all that stuff and the it's still happening to this day people are still trying to blame movies on the world's problems and nots people movies and video games movies and video games has been a hot hot button issue forever as well people have been crazy since the dawn of time that's true that's true one out of every hundred people is crazy and will stab you or shoot at you well that's the regardless of what they're exposed to well that's the connection of this movie is obviously people are thinking of the the shooting that happened in Aurora even though that was mishandled and they were saying that the guy went there dressed as the Joker but he didn't he just happened to have dyed red hair yeah I think it was a police officer who misspoke and said he said he was the Joker yeah what happened during a Batman movie but but I think he said he just picked that movie because it was an opening weekend and it was crowded yeah it wasn't it's like the biggest movie of all time those are trying to be the Joker and then statement you know gets kind of like like twist it up in the in the the lens of the media yeah but that's what's been interesting and seen the lead-up to this movie is people that hadn't seen the movie saying this movie is going to embolden a white terrorism or this movie is going to empower in cells and all this stuff and now the movie is out and the movie is about the importance of mental healthcare and classism and now all these people that were whipped up into a frenzy look like complete buffoons and I think that's wonderful yeah well your politics start to become confused here because yeah they're saying it's going to embolden angry white in cells which is usually I think attributed to like your your right-wing gun-toting nutjob because in Cell I didn't know this for the longest time involuntarily celibate yes that's well they're very angry at women and angry at the world for mistreating them for the things they deserve right right which has zero to do with this memo it's more of a it leans the other way where it's it's it's anti anti there's on many signs people Holdings Thomas Wayne is a fascist and so clearly those like protests with the clown masks were very similar to a lot of the protesting like the remember one one percent it starts well that's if we're gonna get a gives high Wall Street yes if we're getting under the movie culture culture protest yeah yeah but the movie to me feels like it's very sloppy when it comes to all that stuff yeah this is big it's vague it's confusing it feels like a like a teenage anarchists that knows he's supposed to be angry but doesn't really understand the things he's supposed to be angry about the movie reminded me a lot like it's directed by Todd Phillips who primarily has done comedy yes you did all the hangover movies and my reaction to this movie is very similar to my reaction to those which is that it's sloppy broad and lacking any ounce of cleverness I kind of did a 180 on this halfway through okay I'm gonna say similar the final act of this movie I lights yes but the rest of it felt like babies first taxi driver well that's that's the thing that's why I had that switch is because I knew Todd Phillips directed this and so we had seen all I think we reviewed the third hangover movie we did ii am with her he did way back when and and everyone went nutso for the hangover hangover to me is sort of like as sort of like in funny in the way like Dane Cook was funny to those people that like that yeah where it's sort of like hangover was okay we can't find our friend after a wild party none of us remember oh my god it's frat boy humor there's a tiger oh my god crazy this crazy thing happened now this crazy thing happened and then so when you start Joker it immediately starts with him like putting on his makeup he works as a clown temp agency I guess they'd it's like the it's like this sort of taxi driver but they're assigning you know you take this route you take this route but they're clowns hire hire clown for the day I guess first gig is holding a sign outside of a store that everything's mather everything must go since itself is thematic yes it's for this for the movie if you didn't notice that we noticed things like that because we're film experts everything must go is the theme of the film and that's exactly what happens to the Joker it's true at the end of the film so teenage kids take a sign and then he and then they hit him over the head with it so you're literally being hit over the head with with like this obvious Ness and then I'm so I'm the first half I'm like yeah am I supposed to care I don't care about this character like okay all these and then it's like you know all these bad things are happening to him people treat that's like crap we got until we go through the checklist there's a wreckless just the the psychopath checklist in these movies lives with his mom Chuck fired from his job jug but it's not just guy down on his luck he has serious serious mental problems and I think that's portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix really well I think he's great in the movie I think he elevates the material because I think the script is especially his character is very underwritten it's it's he doesn't until that final act boilers I guess yeah well let's get into spoilers when you bring me out can you introduce me as Joker you he when he starts really ranting because he doesn't rant he's very it's a very passive character everything happens to him and until there's a transformation and I think I think it was really well handled like his slow demise and then rise to the Joker cuz I mean what this is is an origin movie yeah that hasn't been that deeply developed the Joker's always been mysterious and in 89 Batman it was just like he's like a common street thug then he falls in a vat of acid and he's crazy and then Heath Ledger's Joker was always a mystery which is my opinion still the best Joker sure yeah he told how did I get these scars and he tells different stories to different people yeah and that moment when Heath Ledger lights that giant pile of money on fire it's just so great because it's like okay yeah this guy's a true anarchist some men just want to watch the world burn yeah and what the Joker to me has always been crazy but intelligently crazy maniacal he's an anarchist but he's able to rally people to his cause he's able to help smart Batman he can't physically fight Batman so he has to have that level of intelligence in order to outwit him and and then that was the first half of this movie of me thinking like how was this guy gonna do anything so match for Batman he doesn't have all of his marbles right um but then the movie and then oh and then also his his love interest I saw this coming a mile away well I was I was stunned of the scores spoilers I didn't see the twists coming but I didn't like that they were doing it because I was like okay there's this woman who lives on his floor you know and and I'm like why are you even associating with this guy who's a creep yeah they're immediately friendly she starts going when his mom's in the hospital she's there she like kisses him on the head right I think she's had like three lines of dialogue up until that yeah there's one moment that kind of gives it away when he kind of pushes open her door and he starts passionately kissing her and the door closes and I'm like because he has fantasy sequences in his head before them yeah but see that's that's that was disappointed me because if that if they didn't establish earlier that he has delusions and that was the first time we realized that I think it would've been a bigger revelation sure but it's like we get the revelation oh she was in his head all the time and I'm hanging out was in his head all the time and it's like yeah but we already know he's delusional yeah it would have been it had more impact we didn't already see that the fact that those two were that she was even giving him the time of day yeah was was so unbelievable but I thought it could happen in a dumb movie like you know there would be on a date and then they were gonna get mugged and that killer was gonna kill her during the and that was gonna make him even more crazy I thought that was a checklist where it's like checklist oh you know oh he his therapist that he goes to because he was in an insane asylum the therapist gets her the the public funding cut so she can't he can't go see the therapist anymore so all these like hit you over the head like all these bad things are happening to this character and I thought that was going to be like the turning point she turns on him and then he flips out yeah or something she gets killed sure whatever I think the thing because clearly I don't want to keep bringing up like taxi driver and comparing this to taxi driver but it's so clearly inspired by that yeah and like to me because I didn't even think of this as like a Joker movie for most of it it feels like an existing script that they've done kind of like reworked to be a joker movie by adding in like Thomas Wayne and stuff but the thing that makes like Travis Bickle scary is that he can function normally in society he feels like a normal person he Woo's civil Shepard and it's believable unlike him getting along with the girl in this movie yeah but then like he tries to take civil Shepard on a date and then he goes to a porno movie and he doesn't understand why she would be turned off by that or why she would be upset by that you know I didn't know you feel that way about this movie I don't know much about movies but if i walking Phoenix's character is just sort of like has mental problems from the beginning so then there's really nowhere for his character to go the rest of the movie wrong-o his character his character transforms into the Joker at the end because I don't mind that he has mental issues his mental issues are crippling to him and I think and that's where it started to get interesting to me because the most of the time I'm thinking okay is he yeah he's a crazy guy he gets beat up and he gets life's down on them everything's bad up he tries to stand up and he's terrible at it now he's gonna now he's gonna put on this makeup and just start shooting people and become the Joker but then we get that wonderful little story with I love this actress she was she was the mom and Six Feet Under oh yes she was and lots of American Horror Story yeah damn it I can't remember names right she's great actress and I was pleasantly surprised to see her in this she plays Arthur flex mother yeah mother and then we get this she's writing letters to Thomas Wayne you know on cuz she used to work for him and then it turns out like and he goes and he investigates this and I'm like oh we're getting some something more is happening than just he's getting then they hang over plot they gotta find their friend they have to retrace all their steps to find their friends and then that doesn't lead anywhere and then they just say oh I think he's on the roof and then that's how the movie ends again otherwise a lack of clever it is yes and but but that's where the movie started to add layers to it it took a long time to get to oh yeah yeah no it was fine though um because he was crazy and then I mean real quick I mean without getting too much into it his mother thinks that she is also crazy as delusions um and and imagine she adopted a son and worked for the Wayne company Wayne Enterprises but she thinks she had an affair with the the elder Wayne what's his name Thomas Thomas Wayne and and that he's a love child from blah blah blah blah and then it turns out that she it's almost like a munchausen syndrome kind of situation I think because she he's being medicated and then he goes off his meds and that's that to me was like kind of when he got like set free yeah and he became like the because I was like how is this guy gonna be a criminal mastermind but maybe he is underneath all that medication and so there's a lot more though spent two hours building no they don't mention any because they mentioned he goes to his psychiatrists and she says we're cutting funding and like they're clearly commenting on you know mental health care yes and so I thought it was gonna be an issue with like oh he can't afford his medication now or something but nothing happens with that and then just when his to clown buddies visit is his apartment PETA says oh I stopped taking my medicine and it was just like that well really a major plot point is when he shoots the three the three guys on the subway yeah one of which who looked very suspiciously similar to one of the Trump sons clearly commenting and you know the wealth kill the kill the rich well that's another thing that felt muddled to me that wouldn't get into that was a socialist slogan you know the rich during the the Bolshevik Revolution that was on a newspaper headline in this movie - did it say something about it was it was questioning whether that was his motive yeah and that's the comparison people are making is this would be a rallying cry for the the basement-dwelling in cell which is not know because those people are are go out and just shoot people just to be awful when you think about it the Joker only killed anybody who like was awful and deserved it yeah like he wasn't out just and and even even while the cast was going out he's like he's like I'm not political yeah he says that when he's on the job I don't have a motive I'm just crazy yeah and yeah he kills the three like Wall Street dudes on the subway because they're being like awful they're throwing french fries at a lady and I think that's drunk or drugged and then they start beating him up and kicking them and rightly he defends himself a little too much a little extreme but but and then he kills the guy who gave him the gun his fellow clown ratted him out yeah he let the low person go because he was nice to him and then his mother I mean she lied to him his whole life and I've kept him medicated after that he's crazy classic sort of antihero stuff but yeah going back to the three people that he kills on the train I thought this was there was nothing before that scene to indicate that there was already some sort of revolution happening in Gotham was there there was nothing about like work because it starts it kind of feels like yeah Occupy Wall Street but that's after his shooting right it makes you seem like that's the inciting incident it is but that's such a bizarre stretch to me that a clown killing three people on a train that happened to be like rich businessmen the idea that all of a sudden that inspires all the the underbelly of the city all the the 99 percenters to rise up it felt very underdeveloped to me it's happened in history where an incident sparks a revolution I mean maybe if they'd built up to it it sprinkle it in like grows and grows it was like immediately they cut to hundreds of people a lien they did establish it by saying constantly like the very first scene when he's putting on the makeup it's the people on the news are talking about how how there's garbage everywhere oh yes like what you see the scene like and you know people garbage men are in a union probably so there's a sort of city funding issue and and he's like this world he's saying to his therapist he's like everything's [ __ ] awful isn't it she's like yeah yeah and so you could feel in all the scenes scenes they're all gross and ugly looking and there's all these problems and and it's it's you could feel that like that hatred of the rich guy it's the complete inverse of the Batman story oh that's another thing I liked about it too is that once you see like you know Thomas Wayne as as like a villain to the to the the common people yeah he's rich that all these people are rich in their tuxedo and so they hate the rich stuff and they're the bad guys and in in versus Batman is you know the good people have got them I've got to save them from those dirty criminals right and and you're taking that exact story and just polar inverting it yeah and that's neat well now when you get to the end and Batman's entire motivation that we've been so familiar with we see it from another perspective and that's the stuff I like I've just it's a lot of like the setups and the first like hour and a half of the movie I had issues with because I feel like yeah they establish the garbage strike and the cities you know all that I feel like showing protesters earlier it just feels bizarre to me that the Joker's shooting three people on a train is what incites because it's like I'm like right after that we see all these protesters it's it's like the super riots are after he kills Robert DeNiro yeah the there is there is some like like a stretch to me as well oh well I mean it was a little over the top but the you know are you going to the protest you know you're writing that clown mask it seemed like a thing that was happening but people weren't too concerned about him I'm okay with that I'm okay with that you can't like build everything up perfectly I mean you can plenty of movies I have I'm just saying that the storytelling this was sloppy is the joke to you once it got low once he became the Joker though that entire third acts him on the show on De Niro's Tokio I loved all that there's some slightly unintentional comedy when he's ranting and you see the little like dr. Ruth type oh yeah character Jesus like that's sit next to about the couch that the Joker to me and this was scary when he becomes a joke he becomes Lynette that entire last scene where he's on the talk show was like genuinely tense uh-huh I thought it built up to it just fine I was disappointed with the like the obvious setups and I thought that's what it was going to be yeah but once they involved the backstory of Arthur Fleck his relationship with his mother the the family secrets all that kind of stuff like gave it some some thickness that I didn't expect I thought it was just going to be guy who's who's insane has life you know [ __ ] on him and so he decides to go revenge and shoot people and become Joker I really expected that so that I think that's why I was pleasantly surprised because I was expected The Hangover of Joker origins there's a pull quote for the poster yes The Hangover of Joker movies I expected that I know I know and it didn't it didn't quite give us that and as far as an origin story good I have no idea this is based on anything real but the his whole like uncontrollable laughing oh yeah I liked that and I liked the scene did you notice the name of the comedy club that's another obvious get John Wayne Gacy call the comedy club pogos but then I think it's all just one shot where it starts on the other end of the room and it slowly goes towards him and it's like he doesn't know when you're supposed to laugh yes and a con at a joke right he's just like randomly starts laughing and like I'd loved that moment yeah yeah and he's writing down like like what a crazy person would do yeah you see his notes and there it's like the ramblings of a lunatic yeah he's like make make funny about sexual stuff people laugh at that yeah like he doesn't get humor he worked as the clown he fantasized about the the Robert De Niro talk show yeah and then it led to father issues and him performing in front of people the kid and and then that's sort of like at the end when the the mob pulls him out of the cop car saves him because he's like a superhero to them he's made it it is his chosen line of work he killed a symbol yeah one percent the the the famous talk-show host played well by Robert De Niro sure is always nice when he shows up in a movie and tries still happens sometimes but then they make him you know he stands up on top of the cop car or whatever and he starts dancing he's enjoying the spotlight yes that's kind of like what he wanted and that I think that was played a part with the stand-up comedian he wanted attention he wanted to be an entertainer and it was just all buried beneath layers and layers of crazy which was all like set free at the end yeah I will say even though I had issues with this movie yeah like the third act a lot thought the first part was kind of muddled messy but I applauds Warner Brothers we've had issues with recently but I applaud them for making a movie that there's like a big wide release movie that is a stripped down character driven story mm-hm even if it didn't completely work for me more movies like this please did you mean specifically in the comic book realm or just in general we don't get movies like this like I would have liked this movie more if it wasn't connected to Batman if it wasn't a Joker movie I think I think in my opinion the the Kevin Feige marvel universe in under Disney that that's its own thing I think this artsy DC it should be the reboot of the entire DC Universe start from scratch right here well we do have to point out that this is because we've complained so much about the Zack Snyder attempted super realistic Superman and this is not bad at all though those movies suck because they're so tone-deaf and because they try to still have the big over the top like headache-inducing action and this movie is closer in line so like the Christopher Nolan stuff a little bit it's not nearly as good but it's definitely a lot like grimy ER which is interesting and I want to say this is like lower budget than a lot of these movies which makes sense because there's not a lot of effects but if if Werner Brothers continued to go this route like almost like the Blum House model let me keep the budget slow give it to real filmmakers although I feel weird calling Todd Phillips a real filmmaker but yeah I'm doing a good job he had a vision he had a vision for this movie so if they continue with that I mean you know it's it's good for an audience because you're seeing smaller scale movies it's good for them because they cost less so they can make more but I think this is a this is a one and done situation because how do you do this with Superman well that's the thing the minute you have a Batman show up it'll look ridiculous as the Christopher Nolan movies always had that problem they always bordered on ridiculous any time Batman started talking but seeing just the Joker's story alone and the origin of how he became a crazy mastermind anarchist weirdo worked pretty much for me I mean a couple more at some more complexity to the story maybe would have helped made me remove some of the earlier like obvious things but those obvious things like that was a big hurdle for me to get over was the check mark stuff won't you jump over that hurdle once once they were like that annoyed me when they revealed that the girlfriend was a Wendy when he's in her apartment and she's like who are you get out you're that guy dumped from down the hall and I was like oh yeah yeah yeah and but then they show flashbacks and that's like oh yeah works in Fight Club doesn't work so well because it feels like it's again obvious it's hitting you over there right I was like oh I got it from when she said aren't you Arthur from down the hall yeah and I was like oh my gosh she was never there yeah we didn't need all those flashbacks that showed that she was never there but the movie itself was pretty solid I was unexpectedly surprised that I started to enjoy it halfway through and and like you said it's a it's a different thing it's a it's a comic book movie mixed with a little character study and you don't see much of that these days you're not gonna get your Man of Steel action you're gonna get very very very long as is Joaquin Phoenix in every frame of the movie just about a wonderful role for him acting his act as a little heart out yeah it goes right along with his filmography of other movies that are just close-ups of Joaquin Phoenix's face so this movie is it's such a heartwarming I cried three times during the course of it I don't believe you've ever cried in your life [Music]

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 2,162,137

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans, joker, dc, dceu, joaquin phoenix, todd phillips

Id: nAGA82ajAdo

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2019