I’m really not into the current set of DC movies, but I’ll watch pretty much anything if it means spending time with friends. So I sat down to watch with some real life friends, and also two French bulldogs, although the latter weren’t real invested in it.

Spoiler warnings for Joker (unavoidably talking about the ending, here). Content warnings for some discussion of mental health, suicide, stalking and . . . oh yeah, murder.

I haven’t really enjoyed the DC film universe movies I’ve seen so far, because of the writing being dull and unfun. Joker was also unfun, but definitely not dull. The writing is fantastic, but it’s not a film that was designed to be enjoyed. It’s basically a horror film, but without any of the typical marks of horror. There are no jump-scares, and the story is told from the perspective of the dangerous element, rather than from the victims. The entire film has a constant, increasing mood of suspense and foreboding. There’s a lot of red herring foreshadowing that wants to make the viewer think Arthur is going to kill himself at the end, but the real foreshadowing is all of the murders he commits, because of course it just ends with more murder.

Joker tackles the idea of health care provision failing, and people who need them getting left behind and hurt because of it. The more traditional portrayal of the Joker would have been a terrible option for tackling that topic, but this film made the wise choice of giving us a pre-Joker, a broken and hurting man who hadn’t committed any crimes yet at the film’s start. This, combined with the incredible emotional performance of a man who is just uncontrollably awkward at all times, made it easier to sympathize with and pity Arthur, and the situation he was in. Even then, though, it was impossible to forget the title of this movie; it was impossible to forget what this man was going to become, that he was going to take lives. That aura of suspense really never leaves the screen, even during the mundane scenes; there’s just always a sense of watching things go wrong before my eyes, with no power to stop them. And I’m still rather messed up about the fact that we don’t know for certain whether he hurt that one neighbor lady. I wish she had just locker her dang apartment . . .

During the watch, I was a bit bothered by the film’s portrayal of Thomas Wayne, even though some of what we think we know about him turns out to be delusion later on. I’m used to Bruce’s parents being held up as such paragons, champions of the poor and supporting civil services . . . But one of my friends pointed out that the Thomas in this film is a lot more realistic. There are no paragons in real life, and neither Thomas nor Bruce in any incarnation of this universe seem capable of spending enough of their obscene fortune to prevent Gotham’s slide into cesspooldom. A Thomas Wayne who derides protestors as clowns, punches a man that he knows to have been manipulated into a misunderstanding, and wanting to gain political power feels a lot more like the billionaires we know. And that’s maybe the real takeaway of this movie? I’ve always though in terms of the over-the-top crime activity in Gotham as being a necessary writing choice to justify the in-universe need for Batman. But when you take Gotham City, set it pre-Batman, don’t include any superpowers, and present us with a Joker who is formed not from a vat of mysterious chemicals, but from lacking the medication needed to remain a functioning individual . . . what you’re left with is just . . . the real world United States. Protestors demanding fair wages and an equal voice, and an upper class that just doesn’t care, because they already have the world.

The instant I saw the Zorro title on the theater marquee, I realized what was about to happen to the Waynes. Except . . . did it? That same friend pointed out that because the film features scenes that are later shown overtly to be imagined by Arthur, it begs us to consider if any given scene really happened the way it’s presented, or whether that’s Arthur’s viewpoint of it. The most obvious example is when Arthur’s coworker gives him the gun. Their boss later says that same coworker told him that Arthur had attempted to buy a gun from him, and seemed unsure of Arthur’s memory of events when they confront each other towards the end. Additionally, Arthur being freed from the police by the protestors, and dancing on the hood of the police car while they cheer, contradicts him being in a prison or asylum at the end. So how much of the film is factual to this universe? And how much is Joker making up after-the-fact? Specifically, did his murder of a talk show host really inspire the murder of one of his failed father figures? And did that father figure’s son really go on to dress as a bat and exact unending fruitless war against the Joker, with the Joker constantly escaping from prison? Or does Arthur stay in that asylum for the rest of his life, concocting this self-aggrandizing fiction in his head, with Gotham’s favorite son being the rather bland CEO of a rather bland company?

A few last minor points I liked. I loved the small nod to Batman Beyond with the rioters taking on the clown aesthetic to rage against society, just like the Joker gangs in the animated universe’s future Gotham. I also think the soundtrack intentionally used instrumentation similar to the Dark Knight Trilogy, since they both have similar motifs of societal class warfare. Joker’s music uses much fewer notes, perhaps representing the fact that said class warfare is still developing towards the point we saw it in The Dark Knight Rises. (I’m not saying they’re in the same universe/timeline, just that they feature similar motifs.)

—doctorlit gets tired of smiling sometimes, too

“I worked for Thomas Wayne for thirty spoilers.” “I worked for Thomas Wayne for thirty spoilers.” “I worked for Thomas Wayne for thirty spoilers.”