YMMV / Joker (2019)

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• Accidental Aesop:
  • The film contains possible arguments both for and against gun control:
    • The pro-gun control/pro-security message is that it was ridiculously easy for Arthur to get a gun for "self-defense" and then murder people with it. Later, Franklin fails to screen Arthur for weapons when he's appearing on his show, resulting in his death. The film's plot would not be possible if Arthur could not get a gun. Other weapons would not have been nearly as effective, and regardless Arthur definitely needed to be screened.
    • The pro-gun/anti-gun-control argument is that Arthur is constantly attacked and victimized with nobody to help him, which is why he resorts to arming himself with a gun in the first place. Without the gun, it's very possible he would have been killed by the Wayne businessmen assaulting him in the subway. Sophie could have potentially defended herself if she had been armed when Arthur broke into her apartment. In addition, due to gun control laws, Arthur is ineligible to own a gun due to his mental illness, but he manages to bypass the law anyways. Which of course can lead straight back to a pro-gun-control argument that the laws aren't strict enough, or an anti-gun-control argument that no matter how strict the laws are some will find ways around them. Either way, the fact is that, though Arthur isn't legally allowed to wield a gun, he was able to get one anyway, and not able to defend himself until he had one.
  • While the audience is supposed to blame Arthur's turn to evil on the mistreatment of society, one could interpret it as because of a lack of positive father figures instead. Throughout the film, Arthur is constantly searching for a father. He seems to view Murray Franklin as a kind of father figure, and he finally snaps when Franklin inadvertently brushes him aside. He befriends his older co-worker Randall who affectionately calls him "my boy" and gives him something to protect himself, only to be betrayed when it's inconvenient. Arthur also tries to get help from Thomas Wayne, believing him to be his father, and demanding a hug. Arthur's adopted father was incredibly abusive. It's possible that even in a bad society, Arthur would've struggled along if he had only had a good father.
  • Though it's up for debate how accidental it is, you could walk away from the movie with the Aesop that a little positivity can change the world. While this doesn't happen in the movie, Arthur's struggle largely stems from nobody giving a shit about him and the viewer is left with the impression that if just one person had valued him, things would have gone completely different. Considering Arthur goes out of his way to spare Gary, his only friendly co-worker, it shows Arthur could've gotten better with kindness. It's worth noting that this is an Aesop that a lot of other Batman properties are fond of.
  • Play to your strengths. Arthur's standup routine is incredibly milquetoast (with stagefright causing him to flub quite badly on his first joke) and when he becomes the Joker, his jokes only get more offensive without improving in quality. His clown act on the other hand showcases his true talent for comedy, as he gets in full character, makes good use of his lanky frame and can improvise under stress (best seen with the gun in the hospital). On the Murray Franklin show, Arthur's flamboyant entrance got the audience cheering for him, but his "joke" killed off that goodwill instantly.
  • Have a career to fall back in case your dreams don't go anywhere. While his mom is rude about it, Arthur's comedic performance does leave a lot to be desired, and he should try and find a new path in life.
  • Being right about someone's bad behavior doesn't justify throwing gasoline into the fire and making them feel worse. While Arthur's behavior leaves a lot to be desired, and many people are right to be annoyed with him, nobody actually tries to spell out for him what he should do to better himself. His therapist asks him useless questions, he is constantly berated by the people around him, and Murray Franklin makes the extremely unwise decision of castigating a self-confessed murderer, which ends quite poorly.
  • If you choose to carry a weapon, treat it carefully. If Arthur had used his gun responsibly instead of bringing it to the children's hospital, he wouldn't have been fired, sending him further into his downward spiral.
  • If you want to be famous, public ridicule and criticism are something you need to accept. While Murray mocking Arthur's stand-up routine wasn't a nice thing to do, Arthur ought to have taken in stride and tried to improve his act.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • Treat people with kindness, otherwise you won’t be spared from any violent outbursts.
  • When you are dealing with a violent person, don't get confrontational with them-most especially when they have admitted to murder. No matter how just you might feel you are to call them out, that person is still dangerous and will not think twice about harming you.
  • Whatever your misfortunes in life, you are responsible for your actions. While Arthur's plight is unfortunate, some of the bad things that happen to him are partly his own doing. While Randall was a cowardly dick, Arthur should have known better than to carry a gun unsecured into a hospital, and kind of did deserve to be fired. Thomas Wayne, while not a nice man, did have a right to be angry at Arthur for touching Bruce. And Murray Franklin himself is right to tell Arthur that his anger at the world is no excuse to be a murderous goon. And even if Thomas was Arthur's illegitimate father, Penny should've been a grown adult and taken care of her son rather than ask an old flame to do it for her.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Arthur's uncontrollable laughter is a real medical condition, called the pseudobulbar affect. Ironically, because of the popularity of the character, it is often unofficially referred to as "Joker syndrome".
  • The conditions in Gotham might also strike some as exaggerated to dystopian extremes but are a solid reflection of New York City in the early 1980s, complete with self-compounding sanitation department issues like a series of garbage collection strikes exacerbating a huge rat problem (both in the sense of being rampant and in being friendly to producing well-fed examples of already large rat species like the Hanover Rat and Gambian Pouched Rat).
• And You Thought It Would Fail: The premise was met with skepticism upon announcement and box office predictions varied between "will barely recoup its budget" at worst and "will gross like SHAZAM!" at best. While it received good-to-mixed reception with American critics, it managed to become a monster hit domestically and worldwide (even beating the October opening weekend record established by Venom), and even won the Leone d'Oro award at the 76th Venice Film Festival, which is nothing to scoff at. The movie found a sizeable audience and much praise among it, becoming Warner Bros.' biggest and most profitable film of 2019 by its second week (2019 was an awful year for WB, it was just what they needed), and one of the most profitable comic book films and R-rated films period by its third, surpassing the records broken by Deadpool and Deadpool 2 and grossing over $1 billion, despite not fitting the "four-quadrant" demographics most comic book films — namely the Marvel Cinematic Universe and what the DC Extended Universe had been swerved into doing — usually aim at for maximum success. It is now more profitable than the most massive (and costly) films of the MCU. Furthermore, it managed to make that sum without any box office gains from China due to ratings issues and topicality precluding a release there, whereas China used to provide a big chunk of profits for films released internationally. It then ended up doing the impossible and garnered 11 nominations at the Academy Awards, beating Black Panther to become the most nominated comic book film in history, and ended up winning two of them in major categories (Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix and Best Original Score for Hildur Guðnadóttir). It is no wonder that the first officially announced DC Studios project following the creation of Warner Bros. Discovery was its Lady Gaga-costarring sequel, Folie à Deux.
• Angst Aversion: Some people who don't want to watch the movie have cited that they aren't very interested in a story about a man being tormented and turned to villainy by a Crapsack World.
• Applicability: Trilbee Reviews described the film as a Rorschach test, since many people were seeing what they wanted to see in the themes of the movie, especially about what it says about politics. For example, some see the movie as being pro-social programs, others see the rioters as a critique to Antifa, some as a cautionary tale towards incels, and so on. And then, there are the people debating whether the movie has right-wing or left-wing politics, and even if the movie can fit into (or if it is about) that binary at all.
• Anvilicious:
  • The film is extremely heavy-handed on the idea that some criminals are just regular people who've been pushed to the breaking point by the wrong side of society.
  • Equally heavy-handed is the idea that mocking a two-bit or beginner for a failure on national television is a really crappy thing to do. Arthur's first stand-up routine fails miserably, which is really common for newbies (in fact, it's seen as a rite of passage for comedians to bomb a couple of times before they gain any fame).
• Award Snub: One of the highest-grossing films of all time, profiting over a billion dollars, and one of only a few films which won less than a third of the Academy Awards it was nominated for. Parasite was frequently cited by fans as having stolen several wins from it, though there are fans who’ve seen the movie as a Worthy Opponent, especially considering both films are about the lower class taking revenge on the rich.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sophie. Fans will say she provides an effective twist while detractors feel her role is so underwritten and nonexistent that you can see it coming from a mile away. There's also a split on whether the twist itself means much at all, since we already see Arthur having similar delusional visions before, while defenders claim that it works since Arthur's hallucinations of Sophie aren't the same as his earlier dream of meeting Murray.
  • Murray Franklin. Viewers, including on this wiki, either see him as a sympathetic Jerk with a Heart of Gold who's one of the few good people in an otherwise bleak setting and who cooly cuts through Arthur's self-pitiful justifications for his crimes or a self-righteous Hypocrite who is just as bad as others in Gotham, just in a different way, and who doesn't actually refute Arthur's legitimate points about how awful Gotham is.
• Broken Base: The idea of making the Joker a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds that the audience is meant to sympathize with has been quite divisive among fans, even though it has been done before. One half of the fandom thinks it's a unique take on the character and a good Deconstruction of the Joker mythos, while the other half are used to seeing the Joker as a monster and feel that portraying such a monstrous character like him in a sympathetic light feels awkward and jarring, especially when one considers all the horrific and vile things he is known for doing in other media.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Arthur wasn't really dating Sophie, he just imagined her there during times we see them together to cope with his loneliness. Problem is, nobody else sees Sophie with Arthur either, not even Sophie's young daughter, and also, why would Sophie be so cavalier about dating a lonely, mentally ill weirdo who lives with his mother and stalked her to work? Granted Arthur didn't mean any harm at that point, but still, there was no reason why Sophie would have been interested in a man like him in the first place, so the twist she barely knows who he is really isn't a shock.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Arthur's first two victims can easily fall into this as he kills two men brutally beating him up, but it quickly turns into Nightmare Fuel when he hunts Ryan down who is running away wounded and in utter panic.
  • In a sense, Arthur, now named Joker, giving his rant about how society has abandoned him and the mentally ill. Even killing Murray Franklin can be added as icing on the cake. Granted his only wrong was mocking the guy on live television. On the other hand, it’s a satisfying middle finger to those who made a living out of ridiculing, insulting, and outright demonizing the mentally ill and similar people for laughs or other selfish reasons, completely unaware of how much it hurts real-life people. Indeed, you get what you deserve.
• Cliché Storm: Most of the negative reviews dismiss the movie as being a retread of the familiar "abused loner becomes a psychopath" story, drawing specific parallels to Martin Scorsese's previous films Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy.
• Critical Dissonance: The film has a Rotten Tomatoes critic rating of 68% while the audience rating is 88%. It was also very successful at the box office, grossing over a billion dollars on a $55 million budget. Most of the negative reviews criticize the film for being too dark, humanizing a villain like the Joker, being too similar to the movies that inspired it (namely, Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy), lacking any authentic politics of its own in favor of mere attempts at provocation, and potentially inspiring moviegoers to be more like the Joker. The general audience just seems to think it's a very good film overall. However, it did win the Golden Lion in the 2019 Venice Film Festival, one of the "Big Three" most prestigious film festivals, and it also won two Golden Globes for Best Actor and Best Original Score, which is nothing to scoff at. And then the film was nominated for eleven Oscars, the most for any film based off of a comic, and won two of them.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Arthur spares Gary Because You Were Nice to Me... but still pranks him by briefly lunging at him. Then Gary has to awkwardly ask him to take off the door's deadbolt that he can't reach.
  • Arthur bringing a gun into a children's hospital? Not funny. Arthur unintentionally tormenting a group of disabled kids in the hospital? Not funny. Arthur singing "If you're happy and you know it, stomp your feet" to a group of kids that includes one in a wheelchair, accidentally dropping his gun, and then awkwardly trying to pretend that didn't happen? Now that's funny.
  • Arthur's mom's insulting him by asking him "Don't you have to be funny to be a comedian?" So thoughtlessly cruel, and yet so hilariously rude at the same time.
  • The one actual "joke" that Arthur tells in full is so utterly horrific (and totally unfunny) that it's hard not to laugh. It calls to mind "Surprise! Your wife's dead and the baby's a spastic!"
    Arthur: Knock knock.
    Murray: Who's there?
    Arthur: It's the police, ma'am. Your son's been hit by a drunk driver. He's dead!
• Delusion Conclusion: Due to the film not attempting to differentiate between Arthur's imagination and reality (such as The Reveal that his relationship with his neighbour Sophie was all in his head), some viewers have interpreted many of the later scenes (or even the entire movie) as similarly being a fantasy he dreamed up where nearly everyone that wronged him is dead and he finally gets the cheering audience he always wanted. It certainly fits in with the Joker's common portrayal of an ambiguous and inconsistent backstory.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Arthur has multiple psychological disorders that are never fully defined, aside from PBA (which is not mentioned by name in the film, but its symptoms are accurately described and portrayed). He is very socially awkward, shows signs of extreme depression and anxiety, and worse yet, suffers hallucinations. It turns out that he's actually brain damaged due to prior abuses from his adoptive mother and her boyfriend, so it's even left ambiguous if his laughing condition is indeed a mental disorder, a result of the aforementioned brain damage, learned behavior, a biological condition which causes him to react to stressful situations with laughter, a bizarre sense of humor, or perhaps even all of the above.
  • Regardless of her psychiatric records from Arkham Asylum being fake or not, there are still some signs that Penny may actually have narcissistic personality disorder and delusional psychosis like the same papers suggest. The most obvious sign is her obsession with Thomas Wayne. She believes that not only is he Arthur's father, but he will also actually give them financial aid if she asks simply because "they're family". Believing to be deeply connected to a famous person is common in delusional disorders, while her assumptions of being given money because of their past relationship ^note  Though to be fair if Thomas Wayne is the father she would be legally entitled to back child support even with Arthur being an adult and Lack of Empathy are some of the symptoms in narcissistic personality disorder, although it's said that her former boyfriend beat her up as well as Arthur and narcissists become furious if disrespected, making them more likely to abuse than to be abused. This creates the impression that the psychiatric records may have been faked.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The Joker has always received this from some fans, but the humanizing of the character in this film allows it to reach new heights. Some see him as a hero of lower-class rebellion. For his part, Phillips has confirmed people are not supposed to sympathize with Arthur as his crimes grow more heinous.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite not being all that heavily involved in the movie's plot, Gary is a surprising bright spot for many fans, thanks to being a non-stereotypical character with dwarfism and being one of the few completely sympathetic people in the movie.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With fans of Jared Leto's Joker in the DCEU. While Phoenix's performance was well-received, Leto's was more controversial and divisive; not helping matters is how Warner Bros' Executive Meddling reduced Leto's role. The fact that a jealous Leto tried to get this film canned did nothing to endear him to this fanbase, and many laughed at him over being nominated for a Razzie for his Joker in between two actors who won Academy Awards for theirs.
  • With Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. It was never hidden that they inspired this movie, but many of those pictures' fans feel that Joker was just ripping them off with less depth and pathos.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With fans of Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight since both actors were good friends in real life. The fact that both movies are incredibly dark and gritty certainly helps.
  • The corners of the DCEU fandom that prefer Darker and Edgier comic book films are very much onboard with the film even though it's not part of the current shared movie universe.
  • The fanbase of the film shared one with, of all films, Parasite due to its similar class warfare themes, and director Bong Joon-ho commenting on the similarities while praising Joker. Although Parasite beat Joker for Best Picture at the Oscars, the fanbase congratulated Bong for the achievement.
• Fountain of Memes: As with many incarnations before him, Joaquin Phoenix's Joker has reached memetic levels. From images of him sitting on a chair, to dancing on the stairs, to running down a street, to ranting about society, countless memes, image sets, and jokes have spawned.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Arthur putting on the full Joker outfit for the first time is scored with "Rock and Roll" by Gary Glitter, a once-beloved entertainer who is now known only for his criminal actions.
  • The movie theater where Arthur confronts Thomas Wayne is playing Modern Times. The song "Smile", which is played in both the trailer and movie, was a song written for Modern Times. Also, Modern Times was about the underprivileged Tramp trying to survive The Great Depression, which isn't too far off from one of this movie's themes about the struggling poor trying to survive while the rich benefit. Even better, the movie follows a story of a man who suffers a nervous breakdown, loses a job, and accidentally becomes the leader of an angry crowd that just happened to walk in the same direction.
  • Arthur killing the Wayne Enterprises employees is a reference to the Bernie Goetz incident, complete with the city taking sides for and against the shooter.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Much of the film's negative press has come from the US, often attributed to the country's particular socio-political issues at the time of its release (and continuing today), while it has gotten nigh-universal praise from foreign critics — perhaps exemplified by the Venice Film Festival where it got a standing ovation and won the Leone d'Oro grand prize.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Joaquin Phoenix was good friends with the late Joker actor Heath Ledger.
  • At the end of the movie, some rioters driving a stolen ambulance crash into the squad car carrying Arthur, and get him out once they recognize him as the Joker. Around the same time as the film's release, Joaquin Phoenix crashed his Tesla while making a right turn out of a parking lot into an emergency vehicle. His car was damaged in the low velocity crash, but the unoccupied emergency vehicle only got a few noticeable scratches, and after tracking down the paramedics, he explained what happened, and after the police filed the report, they decided not cite him since he didn't raise a fuss, and apologized.
• Hype Backlash: Many people have this view of the movie, seeing it as not worth all the attention behind it, with the biggest criticisms being that it's too over-the-top in its darkness and derivative of other works.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • By the end of the movie, Arthur has become a violent Serial Killer. But his tirade at Murray's show is the words of a man broken by years of abuse that you can't help but feel sorry for.
  • Murray Franklin shouldn't have humiliated Arthur on live television, that much is true. And yet, when we're finally introduced to him in-person at the film, he's revealed to be a pretty decent guy who is respectful to both his employees and Arthur, and calmly tries to de-escalate the situation when Arthur goes on his Motive Rant. As much of a jerk as he could be, Murray certainly didn't deserve to die.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Arthur is definitely a full-blown Villain Protagonist by the end of the movie, but many moviegoers felt greater hatred toward the people who drove him to madness.
  • The Wayne Investments executives were drunken cretins who harassed a woman and beat Arthur over his laughing fits and probably deserved to be shot by Arthur.
  • Penny, a crazed and deranged adoptive mother who allowed her boyfriends to beat Arthur severely.
  • Randall, who helped Arthur get fired by passing him a gun and then lying to Arthur's boss.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Some audiences who dislike or even openly hate comic book movies were excited for this movie just because it stars Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro.
  • After release, high praise to Phoenix's work was common even among those who disliked the film.
• Memetic Mutation: As seen here.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Clown masks like those of Gotham's rioters and the makeup of this incarnation of the Joker have sort of become the new Guy Fawkes face symbols among a number of demonstrators and rioters throughout the world. This is despite the fact that Arthur more or less admits he doesn't care about making a statement and caused the Eat the Rich riots in the film by accident.
  • A number of viewers of the film often say that Sophie should have really been Arthur's romantic interest in the film, or at the very least, the twist about her being in Arthur's head should not have happened but instead she was real. While understandable people would want the character to be used more, this misses the fact that Arthur having Sophie genuinely love him/interested in him would essentially ruin the movie's whole point of Arthur slowly becoming the Joker, as Arthur being alone and not having people to turn to is one of the biggest contributing factors to him eventually snapping. If Sophie did like him, it would make Arthur's transformation into the Joker either impossible, or would require her getting Stuffed in the Fridge, which is arguably a worse usage of the character.
  • There are a wealth of videos on YouTube and images on websites like Twitter that use Joker as a background for sharing advice, most infamously business and moneymaking advice, despite the film being about a man fighting against the wealthy.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • When exactly Arthur crosses this line is a matter of interpretation. He certainly seems to view murdering his hospitalized mother as this, as it's after this point that he drops any delusion of a normal, happy life and starts "celebrating" by transforming himself into the new Joker persona. His murder of his longtime idol Murray on live television could also qualify, but if he hasn't crossed it by then he certainly does at the end, when he (presumably) kills the therapist who has done nothing whatsoever to hurt him, unlike his other murders previously.
  • The Wall Street Three cross it when they attempt to beat Arthur to death simply for laughing.
• Movement Mascot: The film itself not only treats mental illness as a serious issue, but also social nonconformity that can lead into a massive riot against their authorities if it's not treated well. With this issue in mind, most of the recent social movements in different countries like Hong Kong, Lebanon, Ecuador and Chile now have the figure of Arthur Fleck, aka The Joker, as a symbol for these protests, even appearing via various cosplayers in the middle of the demonstrations in diverse cities of these countries, being held up as the "new" Guy Fawkes.^note To clarify: this movie's version is the one which the people identify with, the original source character is a different story.
• Narm:
  • The shot with Arthur lying on the ground after being beaten up is meant to be a Tear Jerker (which, to some people, it is). However, many have pointed out that it bears resemblance to "Man Getting Hit By Football".
  • Thomas and Martha Wayne's murders come across as more "funny" than "shocking/dramatic" when the gunman awkwardly works in what is, to him, a quote from a guy on a late night talk show. Even taking away the context of the line's introduction, the delivery is awkward and pretty funny.
  • For some, the setting and plot can be hard to take seriously on account of being just so dark, with a huge portion of the runtime just being Arthur going through a long Trauma Conga Line with a seemingly unending series of casually despicable characters starting to get really over-the-top after awhile.
• Narm Charm:
  • Arthur dancing down the stairs to the tune of "Rock and Roll" garnered many comparisons to the similarly ridiculous Emo Peter Parker dance, yet it became a beloved, iconic moment in the film as it shows Arthur's detachment from reality and his absurd mentality.
  • "We live in a society" memes aside, the reason that Joker's speech at the end about how he believes that society is awful works because of Joaquin Phoenix's delivery, along with the rest of the movie going out of its way to show that, as horrible as the Joker is, he's not wrong about Gotham. Following that...
    • Arthur killing Murray. It’s painfully obvious that the blood is CG, but, because of how convincing Joaquin Phoenix sounds as he’s having a Villainous Breakdown along with the suspenseful music that slowly creeps in and gets more intense, it still comes off as absolutely terrifying.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: With all the press and criticism it received over its content, the film still made over $96 million on its opening weekend, immediately putting it into profit territory thanks to its $55 million budget, and then over half a billion dollars in less than two weeks — and finally making one full billion after over a month. Even memes poking fun at the film did nothing but popularize it. This also applies to many tirades and criticisms people on Twitter threw about the film, especially after Phillips' infamous interview with Vanity Fair in which he sarcastically remarked that "woke culture" killed his interests in making comedy films, resulting in him making Joker. With the amount of ranting, snarky Take Thats, and caustic attitude and accusations of the film mistreating the idea of a mentally ill person going on a rampage (despite the fact Arthur's descent into the Joker was caused by multiple factors, not just his illness driving him to the deep end) only made people watch the film and also note the film was instead treating the topic of mental illness with a good amount of respect, especially if you take into account the subtle criticism towards the stigma of mental illness during the scene of the final therapy session with Arthur and his therapist.
• No Yay: Many fans shipped The Joker with Batman. With this film however, and Bruce Wayne being a child and The Joker being a young adult, leaves many fans put off by their age difference as well as the possibility of the two being half-siblings.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Joker being a failed comedian who had "a bad day"; this was the case in The Killing Joke.
  • This isn't the first time Thomas Wayne has been portrayed in a less-than-positive light. He was made into an outright villainous figure in Batman: The Telltale Series, compared to this version being more of a dick than usual.
  • Being an Elseworld story the premise of Joker established as being an adult when Bruce Wayne was still a child has more or less been explored in Tim Burton's Batman.
  • This movie isn't the first time the concept of Batman and the Joker possibly being brothers was explored, as the out-of-continuity crossover Batman/Lobo portrayed the Joker as Bruce Wayne's twin brother Joey Wayne.
  • Memetic Variation. This incarnation of the Joker is practically synonymous with the "We live in a society" meme. However, said meme was actually based around Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight and predates this film significantly.
• One-Scene Wonder: A preteen Bruce Wayne is hanging out by the gates of Wayne Manor when Arthur shows up. He's incredibly dour and his lips don't so much as twitch at Arthur's clownish antics.
• Out of the Ghetto: In two flavors.
  • Joker was the first comic book-inspired movie to leave the Venice Film Festival with the Golden Lion. And, against all odds, the movie was nominated to a great sum of eleven Oscars, and won two of them (Best Actor and Best Score).
  • Despite being a grim R-rated drama with none of the "four quadrants" usually associated with comic book movies, it found a large audience that skyrocketed it past $1 billion at the box office.
• Padding: Sophie's entire screentime can count, as she barely does anything and her twist doesn't impact the plot, as Arthur's delusions are made clear early into the film when he dreams of meeting Murray. Of course, it's that much padding given her screentime is rather scant.
• Periphery Demographic: Though this time it's by design. The film has attracted comic book movie crowds and Batman mythos fans as well as people who are more onboard with raw dramas ala Martin Scorsese (which it homages in numerous ways) and usually don't go to see comic book movies and/or don't care about comics.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • One of the reasons why the film is as scary as it is is because it's the story of a man who goes crazy and becomes a Spree Killer, a pretty harsh reality that has only become harsher with the sharp rise in these kind of criminals since Columbine, and it's the most realistic interpretation of a Joker Origin Story to date.
  • Arthur's miserable life of abuse, alienation, poverty, and despair is also a mundane horror that many people have to live with.
• Rooting for the Empire: While Arthur went too far in his retribution, a few viewers were rooting for him when he finally got fed up with being bullied and harassed. So when he's on the train and he once again gets harassed and even assaulted, people rooted for him when he took out his gun and shot his attackers. Some even root for him for killing Penny because she abused and neglected him as a child. It's when he kills Randall and Murray when he starts to lose this.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • While the depiction of Thomas Wayne is definitely colder, more hostile and more of a jerk than his typical depiction in the comics, there seems to be a tendency to exaggerate precisely how villainous and sleazy he is actually depicted as being. While there is a hint of ambiguity concerning whether or not he is actually Arthur's father, this evidence is presented in the film as deeply unreliable at best, and potentially an entirely fabricated delusion. Meanwhile, what we actually see him do is express shock at the violent slaying of three of his employees during an interview (reasonable enough) and consequently make some poorly-chosen if not outright classist comments (less so), and have a surprise confrontation with a clearly unstable man who approached his young son without permission while no one else was around before physically assaulting his butler, and who is now ranting about being his son. The second situation in particular makes a cold, hostile attitude on Thomas's part at very least understandable, if not entirely justified, and yet this is often framed as if he is merely being an unreasonable asshole. It is also common for people to assume or hypothesize that Thomas framed Penny as being mentally disturbed and abusive in order to hide his affair with her when, even being an Adaptational Jerkass, there is nothing to suggest he is anywhere near being so cruel, ruthless, amoral and sadistic.
  • Arthur also gets a weird example of this from the film's detractors. It's very common among people who disliked the film to frame him as an entitled and immature guy who was doing fine but lashed out at the world solely for not indulging his absurdly inflated view of himself and expectations from it, comparing him to real-life killers like Eliot Rodgers who had extremely privileged upbringings. This ignores that Arthur had spent years dealing with serious mental health issues which his sincere efforts to deal with were undermined by factors outside his control, that he lived in poverty and in a city with an out of control crime rate and that he was right to point out how the wealthy in Gotham don't really care about the poor or respect them. He's still evil but it's clear Arthur had a seriously hard life which made him the way he was.
• Signature Scene:
  • The subway scene has become one; even many critics who disliked the movie admitted that that scene was well done.
  • The scene where Joker dances down the steps to the tune of "Rock and Roll, Part 2". It was featured prominently on one of the film's main posters, and even turned the steps he danced down into a proper tourist attraction.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The Batman origin imagery aside, this is as close Warner Bros will ever get in providing a remake of The King of Comedy right down to the similar characters and setting. Arthur's relationship with Sophie has also been compared with fellow Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver.^note Amusingly, Joaquin Phoenix's film from a year prior, You Were Never Really Here, was also frequently compared to Taxi Driver, though for a different aspect of the narrative.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many have complained that Sophie, considering that her relationship with Arthur is all his imagination, could be removed from the plot entirely with little effect. She's considered to be a waste of Zazie Beetz. This may be an unforeseen consequence of the rewrites that overhauled Sophie's character.
  • Murray Franklin. Given how he is one of the few sympathetic and reasonable characters, as well as a major inspiration to Arthur, several critics and audiences wished he had more screentime and plot relevance. While his death is genuinely tragic and horrifying, some felt that this scene would've had more emotional weight had audiences spent more time with Franklin. Also counts as a waste of Robert De Niro.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A common observation of the film is that, due to being an In Name Only adaption of the Joker character, the movie discards the opportunity to do a character study of the Joker, the iconic comic book character, as was initially advertised. Rather instead being a character study of an unrelated character who happens to take up the "Joker" mantle. This doesn't make the resulting film bad, necessarily, but it still counts as a missed opportunity.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Though Gotham's always been a miserable place, it's exacerbated here by its awfulness being unchanged in a realistic setting devoid of heroes. The vast majority of people Arthur meets are terrible, and he winds up being no better than them. It's understandable that some viewers struggle to connect to or care for a nearly exclusively grim narrative.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Some clueless parents were taking their kids to see this movie just because it was part of the Batman franchise, unaware that it was rated R. Alamo Drafthouse had to issue a PSA to said parents about not taking their kids to see it, and at least one theater placed signs at the ticket office stating that the movie was a hard "R", listed a content warning, and stated that they'd be strictly carding younger-looking ticket customers. And while there's no shortage of R-Rated superhero movies not meant for younger audiences, most of them still have enough elements of typical superhero fare (colourful characters or creative, superpowered battle sequences) that kids can get into them. Meanwhile, Joker is an adult drama entirely devoid of action and focused mainly on dialogue, meaning that it would probably bore any kid who did manage to see it.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • Joker's actions inspire a riot that is eerily similar in message to Occupy Wall Street, with clown masks instead of Guy Fawkes masks, and with heavily increased violence.
  • Thomas Wayne is depicted as a wealthy, powerful and arrogant elitist, running for public office under a pretense of representing and caring about the downtrodden which is a common interpretation of Donald Trump by his critics. This is ramped up by information that they intended to cast Alec Baldwin first (who notably satirized Trump on Saturday Night Live) and that the casting call described Wayne as "Trumpesque". However, the rioters' Appropriated Appellation of "clowns" seems taken from Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" debacle.
• The Woobie: Arthur Fleck, especially before he became dangerously homicidal. The man has been through such horrible things that it's impossible not to feel sorry for him. He lives in perpetual poverty, suffers from a mental illness, has been beaten, humiliated, and bullied throughout his life on a regular basis, was constantly tortured by his mom's boyfriend, and all he wants is to bring laughter and joy to children and people in an environment of economic recession. Before the climax of the film, he runs out of money, therapy, medicine and, as if that wasn't enough, he was possibly adopted and Murray invites him to his show to tease him on TV. It is no wonder why Arthur ended up becoming The Joker.

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