Hacker Cinema
Joker
2019 · Film · 122 min
Part of Joker Collection
Directed by Todd Phillips
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
21 positive7 negative3 mixed34 neutralfrom 65 commenters
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70 comments on Hacker News
Recent good movies, just going in release order off my letterboxd, although I have to be careful to include only "Hollywood" here:
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - beautifully shot and a beautiful theme about what humanity is
- One Battle After Another - it's PTA, all his movies are good
- Bugonia - incredible dark comedy
- Weapons - fun little horror comedy movie
- Sinners - just won an oscar for the soundtrack, not a perfect movie but a fun watch with some incredible scenes
- Companion
- Nosferatu - incredibly atmospheric
- The Surfer - total trip with good old Nicholas Cage
- Love Lies Bleeding - just a fun, a bit crazy movie
- Dream Scenario - another trippy Cage movie
- Poor Things
- Oppenheimer ...
- Renfield
- The Menu
- The Banshees of Insherin
- Barbarian (same director as Weapons)
- Prey
- Bullet Train - fun action movie
- The Northman
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- The Invisible Man - most effective horror movie I've ever seen
- The Gentlemen
- Joker -how close can you get to looking like Taxi Driver without being Taxi Driver ...
- The Vast of Night - some scenes that really draw you in and pretty nostalgic
in 2019 now, so I won't continue, but there are plenty of good movies made nowadays, and I won't say I've seen even a close amount of them from the past few years. Of course I'm watching these at home, not in theatres, so that's certainly an argument.
Solid debunking.
This is just the same computer ‘magic’ that I’ve seen my whole life. From the dawn of home computing in the 80’s, to Hollywood films like Weird Science and War Games, through videos games of the 90’s and CGI… it tickles the imagination but never really pans out.
The idea of film fans pooling together and generating the films they really want to see, from Star Wars sequels that don’t suck, to TMNT films that look like the original, was exciting to me and many others, even if they were copyright infringement. Want a Joker sequel where he doesn’t get shanked in prison? We can do that!
I think that’s why they used Pitt vs Cruise in this demo. They’re selling a dream. Sad, really.
I mean, one actor took their role so seriously they locked themselves up in hotel room for a month in isolation to prepare for their role as Joker. Many people in film took it seriously.
Just because a piece is fictional or imaginative doesn't mean it can't be taken seriously
One interesting example here is Joker. It seems like the filmmakers did not like the audience they attracted with the first film, nor the messages that this audience took away. So the sequel seems like it was intentionally designed to piss that audience off.
Not necessarily. I think the interesting idea the article dances around is changing attitudes and sensibilities. In many ways, I think media of the 90s and even 2000s had a different balance of optimism and cynicism. Critical commentary was an edgy (or in this case humorous) counterpoint. 1999 saw dark edgy and dystopian films like the matrix, fight club that felt like a warning, criticism of a future to be avoided.
Similar subjects today are noticably darker without the buttress of social optimism. Films like The Joker seem less like a cautionary tale and more like a documentary. Is the joker now the protagonist?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43736805 is one example. Another is the Highway of Death, which inspired a Call of Duty level, but swapped the perpetrators from US to Russians [1]. Yet another might be A Time to Kill [2], based on a novel [3], inspired by a true event. Again, perpetrator and victim were swapped - in the novel and film, there are two white attackers, and the victim is black. In the real event that inspired it, the attacker was black, and the two victims were white. The subway killing of the three scoundrels in the Joker film was likewise inspired by a real event [4], but again, the antagonists were changed from black to white. Or how Dr. Who deliberately alters historical settings [5]. Especially amusing is the case of The Sum of All Fears - in the film, the villains trying to construct a nuclear bomb are neo-nazis. In the book it is based on, the villains were Palestinian terrorists. Finally, in the real event the book was inspired by [6], the uranium was stolen by Israel.
A more straightforward example is the many times that the New York Times 'mistakenly' claimed Iraq had expelled nuclear weapons inspectors, in the run up to the Iraq invasion [7]. This is more obviously false/a lie, while the prior examples use the cover of fiction to mislead.
'Small' changes, but pervasive, like water, mostly cut only one way, and they add up.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death#In_popular_culture
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_(1996_film)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_(Grisham_novel)#Inspiration
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shooting#In_popular_culture
[5] “And we’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’ - https://www.doctorwhotv.co.uk/moffat-on-diversity-in-doctor-who-we-must-do-better-80637.htm
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_affair
[7] https://theintercept.com/2023/03/30/new-york-times-iraq-war-error/7
It feels like living through the 2019 Joker movie, everyone's lost a sense of what's decent and what's not. At the risk of derailing the conversation, people are even arguing whether dropping bombs on women and children is humane or not, and far too many are finding excuses to say it's fine.
Meanwhile the assassin needs a name.. the Midtown Hilton Shooter? The 3D Killer? (since there were 3 bullets found with D-words written on them).
Don't be greedy, or The 3D-Killer will go after you next!
I just re-watched the Todd Phillips' Joker movie last night and was pondering how "easy" it is to get the audience to root for a schizophrenic murderer. I say "easy" because I think it is a masterful film, but still, shouldn't the audience be insurmountably revolted by the Joker?
Taken solely by their on camera presentations, Thomas Wayne, Murray, and the police seem pretty reasonable people. However, this is overshadowed by the screen time and depth given to the joker.[1] The audience might briefly wonder if they deserve to die, but before that question can sink in, the plot advances, and the question is forgotten. It is easy to see how time, perspective, speed, and narrative saturation drive emotion.
I think our modern political environment has a lot of parallels. It is all thinking fast and no thinking slow.
[1] Aside, I think it is a great example of cinematic dissonance, where multiple meanings are intentionally or unintentionally layered. Eneaz Brodski had a great article about that introduced me to the term: https://deathisbad.substack.com/p/cinemanarrative-dissonance-the-subversiveness
Fixed it! thank you for pointing it out, didn't realize that.
Joker Stairs Dance: https://scenestamps.com/scenestamp/01hv65eahhtfr58phx5keb1b1k
Timestamp :1:30:19 to 1:31:39
joker stair dance takes place between (starting from elevator)1:30:19 to 1:31:39(running from the cops where the dance ends) in the movie.
timestamp related to how long the scene takes place.
Eg :Joker Stairs Dance: https://scenestamps.com/scenestamp/01hv65eahhtfr58phx5keb1b1k
Timestamp :1:30:19 to 1:30:16
joker dance takes place between 1:30:19 to 1:30:16 in the movie.
These are just my favorites, and in the order of which the popped into my mind.
- Office Space, 1999 (especially for people who work at offices) - The Matrix, 1999 - Fight Club, 1999 :)
Umm, what else? - Spirited Away, 2001 (and many others from Miyazaki) - Requiem for a Dream, 2000 (Very Heavy addiction-related film! I actually got watery eyes just by typing this, I've seen it too many times.) - Joker, 2019 - Full Metal Jacket, 1987 (and many others from Kubrick, such as Dr. Strangelove and The Shining) - Django Unchained, 2012 (and many others from Tarantino, at least Pulp Fiction) - Alien, 1979 - The Silence of the Lambs, 1991 - Saw, 2004
I made a bit longer list, so that I can share the link to my friends.
Actually there are many quirky ones which came to my mind, such as Borat, the South Park movie, Team America, Airplane! (alternatively titled Flying High!), Idiocracy and Hangover, but I wouldn't say these are in the must-see category. Actually I wouldn't even recommend these to most people, if I didn't know what kind of humor they like.
No?
If you ask it to "Create an image of Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie, 2019, screenshot from a movie, movie scene" I would expect it to possibly (and probably) make an image that resembles the copyrighted Warner Brothers image. That's example 1. I fully expect systems which are trained on large corpora to reproduce copyrighted images like this.
If you ask it to generate a "popular movie screencap" I would expect it to generate an image that possible (and probably) resembles a copyrighted image.
As for the mario example, where they didn't explicitly say Mario, just "italian video game character", given that mario has been ubiquitous in our culture for 43 years, and mario is the most common italian video game character, I wouldn't expect it to produce another character (such as luigi, or... are there other italian video game characters?).
The datasets used to train these models almost certainly contain lots of images that closely resemble the one it created. I know that OpenAI says their corpora is "fair use" but I would be absolutely completely surprised if it didn't contain large numbers of images that are extremely close to what it produced.
In the future I would expect that training companies will reduce the amount of copyrighted imagery in their data sets, and also improve their loss functions to avoid images that appear to be copyrighted.
Just some more detail about this.
Reid Southen has been testing out Midjourney V6. He quickly found out that you could easily generate images of Thanos that are direct copies of images from the Avengers films. https://twitter.com/Rahll/status/1738286342390374882
In response to his and more discoveries like his, Midjourney updated their ToS to place the blame on users for infringing copyright. https://twitter.com/Rahll/status/1739155446726791470
Reid Southen had all his content erased without permission for his grievous transgression of showing just how easily it is to make copyright infringing material using Midjourney V6. This is after they update their ToS to persecute him and people like him, who are posting this kind of imagery on X. https://twitter.com/Rahll/status/1738408490543054949
He (and others) moved on and made more examples, using the film Joker: https://twitter.com/Rahll/status/1739331983992406508 And the film Dune: https://twitter.com/Rahll/status/1739003201221718466 And Star Wars Rogue One: https://twitter.com/KatieConradKS/status/1739765791996711034
A new account has also showed up that's collecting examples of this called Ai Piracy https://twitter.com/ai_piracy
Ed Newton Rex, a former Stability AI employee, has chimed in here https://twitter.com/ednewtonrex/status/1738141349172453785
It would still be interesting to do that excersice but with more recent movies. I do think the formula works quite well.
As for the Joker I wasn't agreeing with the critics just describing the consensus based on reviews I've heard. To me personally it did feel like it took a bit too much inspiration from the movies it was trying to pay tribute to. When does a homage becomes a copy?
The political angle is irrelevant and I agree with you on that.
I don't necessarily disagree with this as a rule of thumb, but I thought it would be fun to come up with a few counter-examples. Most of these I would consider "artsy-fartsy" or "artsy-fartsy lite" movies that are popular with audiences but less so with critics.
Lost Highway (1997) - 68% Tomatometer - 87% Audience Score
Fight Club (1999) - 79% Tomatometer - 96% Audience Score
American Psycho (2000) - 68% Tomatometer - 85% Audience Score
Requiem for a Dream (2000) - 78% Tomatometer - 93% Audience Score
Dancer in the Dark (2000) - 69% Tomatometer - 91% Audience Score
Oldboy (2003) - 82% Tomatometer - 94% Audience Score
The Prestige (2006) - 77% Tomatometer - 92% Audience Score
Joker (2019) - 69% Tomatometer - 88% Audience Score
>Critics aren't a proxy or predictor of some objectively verifiable outcome
Critical Drinker ones usually align quite well with both my opinion and the audience score.
The guardian came with the following real headline in 2019:
>Forget Joker: here's the film you should see about an extremist loner While Todd Phillips’ vacuous DC origins tale fails to go beneath its grimy surface, low-budget drama Cuck offers a braver alternative
Uhm interstellar, inception, Batman, Joker, LODR. And these are just so called block busters. There many good Arthouse movies released each year …
I found this video, "Edgelord Movies and the Men who Love Them " [1] by sociologist F.D Signifier, to be a particularly interesting exploration of this specific disappointment. His thesis is that young white men are more attracted to edgelord movies like Joker, Falling Down, American Psycho, or Fight Club that portray a sudden violent break from social norms because they start with an elevated expectation of how society will cater to them that gets shattered one day. The idea of a protagonist that lashes out and punishes "the system" through stochastic violence is very attractive.
Young non-white men are less likely to be under the impression that society is looking out for them in the first place, so their choice of anti-social entertainment looks very different. It's more about detachment and the use of violence for personal enrichment because the social system doesn't matter.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_--JOjsTHjo
There are quite a few recommendations for the classics, but if someone doesn't enjoy the slow burn of those deep books, maybe they should start with something lot more dopaminergic: animes and movies!
PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan.
So, movies. I only saw The Shawshank Redemption a few years ago, and it's really really good. Classic. Human. Touching. I'm not even sure how to characterize it except yes, really go see it, it's really at the top of the power distribution of movies.
12 Angry Men. At this point it's the cliché of old but good movies. At this point it's a satire of a socially interesting movie due to its naivete, yet for someone who seems a bit close minded it might be just the right thing. (Or not? :D)
The Pianist. Again, simple. Brutal. Or the recent Joker.
. . .
But really when it comes to AI and fiction.
Blade Runner. If that's not fiction that's worth investing time into, then what is? Even typing this I've got the chills thinking about Roy Batty.
<<What of these is more important?
You put me in a difficult position. I don't really watch movies anymore ( Joaquin's Joker was ok ). I rarely get into shows ( I was amused by Boys ). I still read a little. That said, I can absolutely guarantee you that never have I ever in my entire existence on this planet read something and thought to myself "If only Geralt was black, or at least a gypsy, the world would be a better place" for several different yet related reasons:
1. It is supposed to be my entertainment and not a social project ( or more accurately, it can be both, but entertainment should be the primary consideration; after all, if I pay, I expect some value )
2. I do not accept the assertion that it does make better place for underrepresented and disadvantaged people. Right now, it is actually making it worse. You may not be seeing it, but counter-culture is rejecting it pretty hard and that is with all the internet censorship in full swing ( granted, currently for corporate reasons, but censorship is censorship is censorship ). If anything, this hamfisted approach creates a whole new generation of actual racists.. I do not think that makes for a better place for "underrepresented and disadvantaged people".
I don't buy the binary framing either. To me, neither is important.
No, like it has absolutely no give initially. Then it briefly opens and air floods in, and then force you were exerting is no longer held back by the force of the atmosphere on the suction sphere (treat the opposing force of the other team as horses as being symmetrical, despite it not being so, they communicate with their force on usually a man getting torn apart, the basis for the experiment, science being stronger than the human body). Horses don't want to put their poor specially adapted (for riding) backbone into a prank. When they sense weird shit, they don't pull the same way, looks like it but eh, if you could go back in time and put a spring measuring newtons of force (which this contributed to developing, hence back in time, Hooke came later), they're not going for it like an executioner's horse quartering a man told to die. Then yes and I think the opposite forces of horses in both directions is based on quartering, tearing limbs apart, tearing the sphere in two. That's what it's based on. Horses don't frequently pull things apart except those told to die. Like to work it has to be antagonistic, like there ought to be a bet of some sort. Bets as challenges have their place, it can be very little money or mutually desired rivalrous good. The setup is a huge thing, like how do you cast the ball, how thick is the metal (this makes it give initially when pulled, that comes into play), not just how much pressure and how good the seal, which are of course the figures of merit. The measurement, how much you can pull, what the limit is.
This was good science overall, but beware using living things in experiments like this.
The experimenter and participant can switch places.
Changing the subject a bit, the scientist must have made smaller brass balls for himself to try to pull apart. And it's so subjective, like the puppies that were smarter than the shrinks electrocuting them, knew it was torture and being a dog.
Spesh a puppy, according to the shrinks because then they learn faster which was what the learned helplessness experiment was about, also blank slate for reproducible experiments, and finally a bit of cruelty. I've seen the faces they make sometimes, in sick mode. Again, might as well switch places, me telling them what's up. They were practicing for humans later, the industry for electric dog collars is nothing like the industry around torture. Torture is very expensive to administer, huge losses. What 1984 outlines is incredibly expensive if that's the only form of oppression. But it's not, that's only for the patsy, the hero, whatever you prefer to call him. Even in Chile, where it was massive, they just couldn't torture such an incredible number of people because it's so dirty and it takes a lot of people to run the torture apparatus. Couldn't torture four million people, that would require four hundred million people just to operate at a loss, meaning all of humanity as its slave class subsidizing it, and then who tortures all humanity? No, that doesn't scale. What scales is fear. And never revealing their own fear, like they did to me, never being exposed as being the only true bitch in the system. Like in 1984, which it turns out I live-action-role-played, you read it and at some point it's like, O'Brien is a complete bitch. He needs a full-on Egyptian pyramid (inefficient for space, good for monuments though, which is what Miniluv actually is), with a dungeon, tons of guards for a mile on all sides, no getting out no getting in (secret passages), no Brotherhood. And logistically it's a crazy money-loser. Says so right in the book, they're very wasteful.
Like get this: they actually have a guy carefully putting dust back on Winston Smith's book exactly like he did with in one second, taking like an hour very very carefully, that's a career path for some total loser. It's 3600-to-1 and they brag about it anyway.
O'Brien gets a great wage let me tell you, and everyone in that building is at least in their own view handsomely paid for blind loyalty, and their sadism really, job requirement, like the sadism bribes of government land Pinochet handed out for pittances to the most sadistic and abstracted political supporters, in the elite of course, way below market prices. And they loved him forever, set up a flight Santiago to London direct motherfucking Pinochet airlift, again the inefficiency plane after plane of sychophant must have been weekly or biweekly, just to get the one asshole out without any consequence. Call it 100 airplanes to lift that fat ass out of London, just to clean up after his shit. All the people that the operation required, duh yes lawyers but so much more behind the scenes, so many specialists, each with their field working together as a team.
Like in 1984 there's a guy preparing the heroin for the hero to him addicted to giving in just a tiny bit, you know that bartender went to an institute to specialize in getting the measures right, just enough heroin (it's heroin, it's real heroin in the Miniluv, uncut) to seduce him into thinking he can think he is a bitch, but not that much, they're still mostly torturing him. The funhouse mirrors with screens behind them, same thing, that's a national security first priority getting those special effects built to the highest standard, like there's a make-up crew to paint Winston Smith horribly when he's passed out to make him believe that he really is being bitched in his heart of hearts. Dude and nobody does any work in that book, tells you how privileged Orwell was in a way, he thought he could be a writer or intellectual, yeah. Yeah an intellectual who participates in torture, O'Brien, then yes. Need that degree though, very into the certificate and especially the prestige. Typically, though, intellectuals are persecuted just as Salvador Allende predicted in his final radio address, when the Republic of Chile announced it was operating under the same name, but a change in management due to treason. Still in power, a long golden age for traitors, and it seemed like it would last forever...
Or let's put it another way.
Your choice.
Be a bitch or die being a hero. Die under torture. Or be a bitch.
And in the end, people get what they want. Ends up being, the subtext, is millions of Chileans were subjected to the threat of torture, millions of cases of extortion, because most people aren't so...stupid, as the shrinks put it. They're smart, they let someone else take the fall. But don't underestimate yourself! There is absolutely some threshold of abuse (eg making you eat dog meat, or human feces, or force you to penetrate another victim) at which you wouldn't try delegating the dying to someone else. Don't think there's not a hero in there somewhere! Why else would you watch those movies? That Batman Superman Joker shit resonates with you because in fact most of the genome comes from heroes. It's a remote possibility but that's the entire genome, heroes and heroines. Like most of the genome, like 66% is from the Cambrian explosion, that's the basic outline of vertebrates, crazy era, the Justice League, so idealistic. So every so often, and you can tell age of fossils with this because it's like a clock, a mutation brings about a new protein. Molecular clock, literally. Like 10,000 years. A defect within a defect, in fact. There is a local maximum, this is a departure from that, hence defect, with the stigma, defect. Then, something happens and you go even farther out--and attempts to go with the herd are hopeless. And this protein made him different. It's rare but it's like the whole genome, apart from that it's remixes, like deciding in what order to watch Batman and Superman movies for the millionth time.
But don't think those actors with their special effects are the heroes! You're more of a hero for watching that movie than they are for starring in it, by a lot. And they aren't actually heroes in a Roman Law capacity as they , people confuse actor with character. On the contrary, Heath Ledger! I actually did that exact same shit to a real gangster, made my getaway just like Heath Ledger, like a glitch in the system. Declared a hero, told what I did was perfect. And that was just the beginning, long weekend, long ten years of silence. But what happened ultimately? Justice, the dungeon being put to original intended use. A bitch in the system.
There are two ways of looking at hero portrayal: moral uprightness and cultural form. Morally as in did the person do the right thing as per our current mores. Cultural form as in did he person have a similar form as other traditional heroes of our culture. Riding on a white horse, brandishing your national flag, acting as a lonely paragon, and saying bombastic statement are ways of going about this.
Rorschach (and actually a lot of villains) fit the form of a hero. He works alone, is driven by his beliefs and is willing to sacrifice himself for his cause.
The only way to separate him (and other villains) from heroes is by judgment of his actions morally. If you agree with his morals, then he’s a hero. If not, then he’s a villain with good PR.
Joker funny enough has been recently portrayed as almost as an anti hero. In the latest movie, he’s delusional and violent but has a large following because he’s acting “for us”. Even when he kills an innocent TV host, he is portrayed as releasing all the stress we feel at seeing talking heads on TV jeering at people. The movie underlines that Joker is morally wrong, but nihilism is seductive and if you agree with it then Joker is a hero too.
Tangentially related: the German news portal kino.de which is run by a "real" publisher and has news all around cinema, movies, streaming, has this article[1] about illegal streaming services where they try to suggest legal alternatives that cost little money and sometimes even have an ad-supported limited free tier. The bizarre thing is that they go through great lengths in their first paragraph to list over a dozen of those illegal streaming sites as examples. It's like, every time your favorite illegal streaming site is down, just go to kino.de to get a list of available alternatives.
What the?
[1] https://www.kino.de/film/joker-2019/news/kinox.to-online-movie-streams-filme-und-serien-online-schauen-kostenlos-legal-oder-illegal/
I have experienced episodes of depression throughout my teenage years and now my mid-20's, but never allowed myself to believe that I was having depression because I thought I wasn't "one of them" I thought I was stronger, somehow better than everyone else. YouTube started recommending red pill videos such as edits of American Psycho, Fight Club, The Joker, basically movies of men expressing their feelings via violence.
I recently sought out a psychiatrist as well as a therapist, and have been taking medication. My psychic pain has been alleviated thanks to the medication, which has given me breathing room to work on a lot of toxic mentalities that I carried. Like that the most important thing about my life was my job or how much money I made, caring about status and prestige above all things, thinking of myself as a machine solely to milk for money, among other things like toxic masculinity.
While I never had easy access to weapons, nor do I think I would have ever committed a mass shooting, I can easily see how someone with a weaker support system than I had would be driven to retaliate against society because violence is oftentimes seen as a valid means of emotional expression for young men.
Anyways, thanks for asking :)
Honestly I would rather blame some fans (Musk included) of great shows like Rick & Morty, IASIP, Breaking Bad or the Joker movie for mistaking protagonists/anti-heros/funny characters for people to emulate and completely missing the point.
If you cheer the part you're supposed to laugh at/feel sad for, I start to get a picture of what "dangerous" media could mean.
With properties like The Boys, Bright Burn, and Batman movies and spinoffs like Joker, it's starting to sneak back in.
There was a similar cycle in the late 80s and 90s, when there was a rush of "mature" super hero comics.
IMHO, a little of column A and a little of column B. It's happening from both sides.
As quantity goes up, cultural relevance of any particular single show goes down.
Thus it becomes harder to run a platform on "one" hit, thus everyone turns to the Netflix model of a billion micro-targeted shows, thus demand for content becomes a series of niche requirements, and anything actually creative has to percolate through them (a la Joker's "Sure, I'm a superhero movie" or La Casa de Papel's "Sure, I'm a Spanish Ocean's Eleven" or Dark's "Sure, I'm a German Stranger Things").
That's hard, and so what you actually get for the majority of content is the media equivalent of a box of Crayola crayons -- 256 different colors, with zero depth under the surface.
>Even the talented people—you could take Dune, made by Denis Villeneuve, an extremely talented, gifted artist, and you could take No Time to Die, directed by…Gary?”
Cary Fukunaga.
Cary Fukunaga—extremely gifted, talented, beautiful artists, and you could take both those movies, and you and I could go and pull the same sequence out of both of them and put them together. The same sequence where the cars all crash into each other. They all have that stuff in it, and they almost have to have it, if they're going to justify their budget. And that's the good films, and the talented filmmakers.
It is interesting but when I watch Denis Villeneuve last films I really ignore all this genre thing because I'm so at awe of his execution. Similarly, when I first watched Tarkovsky's Solaris I quickly lost track of the plot but was drawn to the uniquely crafted cinematography and hypnotized by the deliberate manipulation of pace; at the end I was watching a movie by itself instead of contrasting it with my reading experience beforehand. The same could be said about the seamless implementation of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" into the Vietnam setting of "Apocalypse Now"
[Arrival has imho a very noticeable weak plot, it is only when you read the short story "Story of your Life" that it fits nicely in. Nevertheless once you ignore that apparent flaw, it is a wonderful shot movie.]
The "marvelisation" has gone so absurd that here you are in 2019 after dozens of franchises watching "Joker" (in parallel with another Joker version at the backdrop of Ledgers last peformance) which subversively utilized the marketing ploy into tricking the audience watching a deeply disburting indie-film about the chasms of our society depicted in a masterfully balanced unstable character drawing by an actor using nearly his whole skill set.
Cervantes as a prisoner of his time quite successfully played with the readers expectations of "chivalry romance" (a popular franchise back then) to express himself artistically in a new way we now call a "novel". You laugh and cry at the same time when reading through the book, a comedy, tragedy, persiflage, psychoanlysis, slap-stick ... it really is a mess. Embrassing the mess is not something you can persuade "rational thinking" types in the movie industry making the decisions, so you trick 'em. Unfortunately nowadays you have to do a lot of lip-service. I don't know about Chloé Zhao but "The Rider" and "Nomadland" were great movies, I wonder what "Eternals" meant to her aside the recognition of entrusting her with a 200$ million budget.
Every era is an era of horrible films. That’s Sturgeon’s law for you.
Looking at the 2010s as a whole, we got to watch some amazing films.
We got great hard sci-fi like Gravity, Arrival, Ex Machina. The coming of age genre saw entries like Ladybird, Eighth Grade and Booksmart. Animation reached new heights with films like Inside Out, Spider-Man into the Spiderverse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
We got comedies like The Artist, Grand Budapest Hotel, Death of Stalin, and Jojo Rabbit. Dramas like Moonlight, Fences, Spotlight, Parasite, Blue Jasmine.
Even in the ever-popular comic book genre, we got Logan and Joker playing at a very different level.
But also, it was the decade of the MCU. Let’s not underestimate what Disney has achieved with that — one big overarching story spanning over twenty films, bringing much deeper character development and more serious themes than what we’d gotten used to from blockbusters.
I dunno, Batman spans the gamut from "campy bang pows" to "lite morality plays" -- not quite to the extent of, say, Joker, but some of the Nolan Batmans were way more existential and dialogue/monologue-driven than the older Batmans.
Maybe a more similar distinction would be the X-Men/Wolverine movies vs Logan, where the latter is a more introspective take on the character, and so the story is relatively more important than the action sequences.
The article frames the issue in way that's too black-and-white. Providing a backstory isn't necessarily bad storytelling it's just very difficult to get right so that most prequels, backstories, and flashbacks do not turn out well. It is absolutely a fair criticism to say that Hollywood uses prequels to milk existing IP and there are endless examples of cases where a vague or mysterious backstory was preferable to the one some studio decided to canonize. That's not always the case though.
Rogue One worked because it provided plausible explanations for points about the original film that didn't seem to make any sense. It seemed impossible that the Death Star could be destroyed so easily or that the rebels could find that flaw so quickly. Now we see why. Solo fell flat because nothing about Solo's past, as depicted in the film, significantly changed how we see his character.
I suppose Joker worked for some people because every version of the Joker is different so you could look at Joaquin Phoenix's Joker as a stand-alone character driven to insanity through various things in his life. It surely didn't work for anyone who expected an origin story for a version of the character that would eventually turn out anything like Heath Ledger's Joker. It's just not possible to draw a line from one to the other.
Plenty of recent movies do that. Sorting by release date: The Father, Joker, Parasite, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Hacksaw Ridge, Room, Gone Girl, Whiplash, Prisoners, 12 Years a Slave, Django Unchained.
* https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/?sort=us,desc
And that's just going back ten years.
I also found Blade Runner 2049 terrible. It felt totally empty. The original movie had an interesting story and built an interesting world. I don’t even know what 2049 was really about.
I felt the same about the “Joker” movie. Good acting and production but ultimately not interesting .
I would like to see more standalone movies like the Joker. DC has a good opportunity to cash in on niche art pieces like that, which really digs into the character and motivations.
It was a far superior movie than all the Marvel formulaic pieces combined.
Joker? Thought that movie was great, the acting by Phoenix was amazing and it is based in a superhero universe.
I also am not a big fan of marvel formulaic movies.
I saw the Robocop (2014) remake on telly the other day. I couldn't help but wonder why the movie even existed. Its production values were vastly higher than the original, but it was just a completely boring movie. It's like the Total Recall remake. They just have no soul. There's just nothing there in terms of writing. Nothing witty, no great lines. In the original a guy rips his face of revealing his skull, and collapses. Completely daft to be sure, but it was funny. There's a creative spark that current films just don't seem to have. The characters have no personality. The actors have no charisma. Let's face it, Arnie is not a great actor. But he does have onscreen charisma.
There's just a different level of acting in the original Total Recall. Arnie, Ronny Cox, the growling Michael Ironside, Sharon Stone. The other supporting actors bought something to the table. With the remake? Nothing! Colin Farrell was boring, and his wife was leagues behind what Stone portrayed.
Maybe the problem is with the film certificate. RoboCop was a 12A, so I guess the executives thought "to hell with the writing, writing is hard."
Hollywood occasionally gets it right, I guess. Joker (2019) was pretty good, despite being a 15. I thought it was a very cohesive film in the way they chose characters like the dwarf, why Fleck committed the murders he did, and how the whole thing developed. You could tell there was a whole lot more thought put into the script.
Yeah, movies nowadays largely belong to two groups, with not much in between: (1) the brainless mass-market type (comic/video game adaptation, remake etc.) which (hopefully) make money, but don't stand a chance at the Oscars (except for rare exceptions like 2019's "Joker"), and (2) the "arthouse" type, which feel like an application for an Oscar nomination, but are not really commercially successful.
I disagree. There are quite a few interesting movies out there. From 2019 alone: Uncut gems, Marriage Story, the Irishman, Us, 1917, Jojo Rabbit and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. All of those are good movies depending on the preference. In fact, they are innovative and creative. The main problem with judging now vs past, is the survivorship bias of the good movies, the bad ones are forgotten and lost.
Two of those are netflix movies - Irishman and Marriage Story, I don't see them any more synthetic than 1980's RAMBO 2-5? or God Father 2,3 etc. Movies were always based on the popularity, the difference being the better data.
> bad comic adaptations, getting their rating from wide fan base
The amount of haters and lovers might not offset each other perfectly, yet it should not matter after the hype dwindles. Besides, the top rated comic books adaptations are quite good - Joker?
> Partially, there is great sanitization of Western films to be accepted by foreign censors.
It's min/maxing, optimizing for the biggest revenue, and it's paying massive dividends. Film projects produce record breaking amounts of revenue. If a blockbuster film passes the Chinese censors (and/or is made with Chinese cooperation), it will produce hundreds of millions more in revenue.
But that's the blockbusters. At the same time, the movie industry is booming with independent and original films. Joker is one example, it's not a Hollywood blockbuster, it's not 'sexy', there's no overblown action scenes, it's not targeting a PG-13 audience (it's an R rated film), and yet it still broke all records, earning over a billion in revenue with at a 55-70 million budget.
At some point the compressed version of "Joker" will be 45 chars:
"Sequel to Dark Night starring Joaquin Phoenix"
Of course we will not have to film movies in the first place then. We will just put a description into a compressor start watching.
That's the new thing. When a film doesn't agree with the reviewer's political biases, he never admits it. Instead, the movie is terrible and nobody should see it.
Remember Joker and the terrified reaction to it? It got panned in review after review. I watched it and it was fantastic. I immediately understood why it got bad reviews because it correctly pointed out how the media are the source of many problems in our society.
>>I think the media has been playing this up like crazy to try and get the alt-right to react.
The media already tried this tactic once and failed: with the release of the "Joker" film. Remember all the hysteria about angry white incels? It was as if the mainstream media WANTED a theater to become a bloodbath. But in a lot of the YT comment sections I read the atmosphere was "We're on to these scumbags, everybody just be chill, don't prove them correct."
Avg ticket price in the US according to Google $9.26, cinemas normally sell tickets in pairs and up so pretty close to the cost of the rental. Cinema theatres make very little out of the cost of the ticket during the first month of a run and make the bulk of their income from concession sales and upgrades to the watching experience.
So the way I see it is this price is about the studio not giving a discount on the “ticket price” but throwing the customer a bone of a 48 hour watch period and the ability to pause / rewind at your own convenience in Lou of the rest of the “cinema experience”.
For me personally it depends on the movie and my motivation to watch it. $20 for The Hunt? Nope, skip.
But Joker, dead pool, Sonic, movies I actually want to see? then I would prob go for it and make it into a planned movie night with popcorn and other lovely junk food instead of a drop of the hat impulse purchase like how I treat my Cinema visits these days anyways.
Edit: price does feel a little steep, but I think I would use it from time to time. So they hit that sweet spot of extracting the maximum amount of money I’m willing to spend on being able to watch day 1 cinema releases, not have others distracting me cause they can’t stay off their phones and have all the comforts of my own home.
(Throwaway account)
Depends on the content but if it’s something remotely popular, and was released on BluRay, the answer is yes. The most popular torrent at the moment apparently 1.92GB BluRay rip of Joker (2019), with 8k seeders.
There’re 2 higher-quality versions found on the Internets, 6GB and 16GB. Both have 4k video encoded in 10-bit h265, have 5.1 / 7.1 audio, the former one has 1k seeders, the latter 100. These numbers are very approximate, I haven’t downloaded nor watched that movie. But usually, even 100 seeders is enough to saturate my 120 mbit/sec download link.
YMMV.
6 million pages! A quick look at their distribution:
3.6M of these pages got less than 10 views during December. 4.3M pages got less than 100 views each. 2.3M got less than 1000 views. That's the long tail. On the other side 680K pages got more than 1,000 views, 111K pages got more than 10k views, only 6k pages got more than 100k views, and 90 pages were able to gather more than 1M views (Star Wars, The Mandalorian, The Witcher...).
In summary: The top 7.2% of Wikipedia pages earn 87% of all the monthly views.
Yesterday I posted a deeper analysis on how these pages get their daily views:
- https://towardsdatascience.com/interactive-the-top-2019-wikipedia-pages-d3b96335b6ae
Apparently the most popular pages are all related to movies (Avengers, Joker, ...), series (Ted Bundy, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones), and deaths.
I honestly think the new Joker movie is easily the best batman movie I've ever watched.
That ending scene was pure fucking genius. It transformed that character for me. That crazy was believable, and I can't wait to see what they do next.
I cry less and less as I age:
Teens? All the time. Perhaps monthly or even weekly at times.
20s? Less so, but more intensely. Perhaps every six months on average.
30s? Only twice in two years, and I'm a 32-year-old male now.
Those times were basically weeping, and I'd thought I'd hit rock bottom in a mental health/depression context. Maybe I had, but life got much, much worse after that. The interesting thing however, is that somewhere along the line I lost the ability to cry. I'd want to cry, but I couldn't anymore.
Haven't been able to for over a year now. It's like when you hit what you think is the bottom, you drop through to the basement. I hesitate to say it's an unfeeling basement—if anything it's more extreme feelings of despair—but it's certainly one where for whatever reason, crying no longer exists.
When things were really bad recently, I'd look in a mirror and just see this tearless dry laugh or heave of despair. Wanted to cry, but it's like the emotional pain or stress or anxiety was too high to allow it.
My best friend and I saw Joker during the midst of all this, and then we went home to make dinner after. It disturbed him a little when I nailed emulating the laugh without even trying, the first time. Usually I'm the one that can't do voices to save my life, and he's the one who can do anything. He couldn't do the Joker laugh no matter how much he tried.
My theory is I had already experienced the aforementioned feeling in the mirror. I unwittingly had practice. You have to be either a really good actor, or seriously hurting to emulate that laugh correctly. It's a laugh because the tears are dry for some reason.
That said, I'm sure despair can go far deeper still, and I really hope to never experience that.
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It could be that crying is like a muscle. Perhaps it's a developed emotional mechanism that—when used appropriately—is beneficial to emotional well-being. However, like any muscle it can atrophy if it isn't used frequently enough, or lacks in sufficient nutrition.
Maybe crying can only happen when conditions are right. If things get too bad, or you're too worn down, you lose the ability to do so.
Perhaps crying doesn't happen because depression in combination with stress or anxiety are the primary reason for the despair. I'd probably cry immediately for the death of a loved one, for example.
Whatever the case, that's my take on it. Everyone's different and likely has their own reasons why they cry or don't cry. As the article points out, societal factors of course play an outsized role as well.
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Disclaimer: Wrote this simply for the exercise of it, to explore the topic. Not a plea for help or anything, I'm fine. Joker was a flawed yet excellent film that explored some serious mental health topics, and I dislike the notion that it somehow had a violent or anarchic message. Quite obviously the contrary in my opinion.
I watched Joker in the cinema the other night. As the credits rolled I wondered if I should stay to see any post-credits scenes. I googled it quickly, and got this long-winded article as one of the top results: https://www.thewrap.com/does-joker-movie-have-post-credits-scene-ending-dc-comics-todd-phillips-joaquin-phoenix-oscars-batman-billion/
Fucking hell, so much SEO-attracting bullshit instead of just 2 bytes (N and O). It even blahs blahs that "you are here because you want to know if the movie has post-credits scenes". And the next paragraph repeats the fucking question!
Time Warner has the Harry Potter license, Nolan's Batman movies and Joker, The Hobbit, Lego Movie, Wonder Woman, and all of Turner Communications, including CNN & Adult Swim / Cartoon Network.
Joker is an R-rated film. Your 12-year-old niece being affected is to be expected, the rating is set for a reason.
Most people would think the government is responsible for all these drug epidemics: the DEA jailing minorities on minor infractions or the CIA hustling cocaine between countries (look it up).
But really the true culprit is just the youth, and always has been. Ever since the early 1900s traditional family values and social community/cohesion has been seriously on decline. Say what you will about Ted Kaczynski, but his essay/book Industrial Society and its Future is a wealth of knowledge on this subject (strange I know coming from a Christian woman).
But look at it this way: people resort to drugs because reality sucks. Why does reality suck? Well, we live in a society, and this very society (and its implicit social network) causes our youth to suffer.
Just look at how much the new Joker movie resonated with kids, teenagers and young adults! Heck, my niece of 12 years was itching to put on a mask and march in the street after she walked out of the theater. It was terrifying.
Seems kind of negligent not to mention Saul Bass' WB worms logo (the one that looks like \\') used for a decade by Warner Bros and still trotted out for movies set in the '70s & '80s like Joker.
So it's not necessarily that there were 20+ MCU movies in the span of 10 years (and from what I understand the majority were at least good and some great), it's that during that time period the MCU movies became a dominant slice of the overall movie pie instead of the entire pie growing bigger. That, overall, seems to be Scorsese's gripe, because Avengers Endgame and DC's Justice League and Joker, etc... suck up so much oxygen Scorsese couldn't find a studio to back The Irishman so now he had go with Netflix. Now I'm starting to diverge a lot from where Scorsese and Moore intersect and it becomes more about Scorsese and a matter of sour grapes.
I don't think the recent Joker movie is a good counterpoint. This iteration of the Joker was rather whiny and needy. More than anything, he embodied the kid mentality of "pay attention to me, or I will throw a tantrum!" over the "I don't give a f..., I'll just do what I want" mindset that's normally associated with Joker.
If anything, this Joker felt like a typical incel, a typical angry young man. It's not a superhero movie as there were no superpowers on display.
I tend to agree. Movies in general seem to be escapism[0]. Even incredibly depressing/artful movies like Requiem For A Dream, Joker (since it was brought up on this thread), Irréversible, The Truman Show, Martyrs, Saw, etc. are a form of escapism.
Now, each person may have their own preferences as to what type of escapism they want, but ultimately it's really just spending a few hours at a theatre or in front of a TV.
(We could argue about the intellectual merits of each of the films I've mentioned, but that's irrelevant as to whether they're escapism or not.)
Hot take: The problem isn't "shallow movies" or similar. It's that well-enough-off people are increasingly getting bored.
[0] Hell, I'd even extend that to most art.
I think the recent Joker movie was a good counter-example, of a comic book character study that was not comfortable to watch. Most people I know left the theatre with a lot of questions and/or a sense of unease, not with a spring in their step.
On the other hand, perhaps Joker is the exception that proves the rule. It was certainly unlike every other superhero movie thus far.
Would you consider the recent Joker movie to be a superhero movie? I do absolutely consider it cinema.
If we define cinema to exclude boring and predictable, then a lot of US cinema stops being so, super hero movie or not. The same goes for most Hollywood comedies and tons and tons of love stories. Guess it is time to switch to French arthouse.
Guess my point is, whether a movie is considered cinema or not has little to do with whether it is a super hero movie.
> [Marvel movies are] theme parks. It isn't the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being. --Martin Scorsese
I find so much wrong with that view. Scorsese thinks they should be "something other than cinema." Cinema is just movies. There are all kinds of flavors. I like to just tune out and enjoy the ride on some movies, and some talk to the depths of the human condition. I find lots of things relatable in the Marvel movies. Loss of loved ones, awkward social interactions, elbow jabbing at friends.
When I'm searching for something to watch, I tend to go with Rotten Tomato scores as a valuable data point. One very valuable data point is high critics score and low audience score. Critics want everything to be psychological experiences, but I think a lot of them fail to realize that some movies will ring closer to home for some vs others.
An example is Joker. Not your typical comic book movie at all. With a very limited data set, I've seen people who have experienced the kind of life that Arthur experiences in that movie and it hits too close to home. Meanwhile, others who can't conceive of that as a reality dismiss the movie. Different films speak to different people.
We might disagree forever, however this is my argument. What connects the Joker movie to the Batman universe are essentially three names: the Joker's himself, Bruce Wayne, and Gotham City. And names are labels: you can stick the label of a bottle of wine on a bottle of coke, but it remains a bottle of coke: it's sweet, fizzy, and won't make you drunk.
If you take a Harry Potter novel and rename him as Batman, his enemy Voldemort as Joker and Hogwarts as Gotham School, it doesn't make it into a DC superhero story. If you take a fantasy novel and replace kingdoms with planets and castles and horses with starships, it doesn't make it into a science fiction story- despite Star Wars being labeled as one.
The Joker is, by definition, a superhero movie because it takes place within the universe of a DC property. It (re)tells the origin story of one of the most famous comic book villains of all time.
It may be stretching the boundaries of the genre, but it's still in the genre.
> I saw my first superhero movie in several years recently when I saw The Joker
The Joker (whatever its qualities) is definitely not a superhero movie.
My own resentment with superhero movies started with "The Avengers" (2012). Joss Whedon made the excellent space adventure Firefly and the even better "Dollhouse". Both series were intriguing, leaving you something to think about.
"Joker" was good however, and "Black Panther" was fun (there may be a few others I haven't seen).
Superhero movies are mostly throwaway pop culture. No one is going to mention Iron Man 2 and Spiderman Reboot 4 in the same sentence as Goodfellas or Cape Fear in 30 years, to name a couple excellent Scorsese films. Honestly they won't even be mentioned at all, in any context.
That being said, I saw my first superhero movie in several years recently when I saw The Joker. That was a truly excellent film! I believe it was excellent because it was not throwaway pop culture but a disturbing character study based on dark source material that happened to be in the comic book universe. If more superhero movies were like that I would pay to see them.
> Where does "Joker" fit?
Well, Scorsese considered directing "Joker" (but ultimately didn't) and calls the movie "a remarkable work":
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/martin-scorsese-joker-directing-todd-phillips-1203391839/
I’ve seen all of those movies except “Joker” and they’re largely drivel, certainly of lower aesthetic and intellectual value than the films Scorsese cites. And I’m a huge comic book fan and illustrator. These movies are primarily IP cash-ins on work stolen from writers and artists through shady work-for-hire deals and other predatory arrangements.
Do we benefit from drawing lines between "cinema" and... whatever you might call a Marvel film? What do we call a Marvel film, if not "cinema"?
Further, why isn't anything at risk? Infinity War got about as close to real risk as any MCU film has so far, and I think if Mr. Scorsese watched that film he'd realize it's actually possible to create emotional drama within the context of a "Marvel Movie".
Also, are we really drawing the line arbitrarily at Marvel specifically? Where does "Joker" fit? Watchmen, The Dark Knight, Wonderwoman, 300, Scott Pilgrim, V for Vendetta? What about undeniably "Marvel" films like Logan, and Into the Spiderverse? Do we dismiss all media sourced from the pages of comics, or just the MCU specifically?
I ask both to make a rhetorical point, and because I genuinely don't understand. Mr. Scorsese writes this opinion piece like there's a shared understanding of what a "Marvel movie" is, but I don't know that there is such an understanding.
Ken Loach said this of superhero films: "They're made as commodities like hamburgers, and it's not about communicating, and it's not about sharing our imagination."
Superhero films are just a genre, like any other. It's a constraint that lets you better express other themes or ideas.
Think about the best superhero films vs the worst ones. The good ones were all about something, not just people running around in costumes. And all the bad ones were just people running around in costumes.
Nolan Batman: does power make right? (all) who has the right the enforce justice? (bb and dkr) does peace by force breed a worse evil? (dk) how far can you push people before they embrace their darker haves? (dk and dkr)
Captain America: what is patriotism? (all) can you trust authority? (WS) the risks of concentrating power (WS) is rehabilitation viable (WS and CW) is safety more important than liberty? (CW)
Wonder Woman: is it better to be a part of society or apart from it? is the world worth saving? do woman have the power to shape the world?
Captain Marvel: can a woman succeed in a hero role without a male romantic/sexual interest to feminize her? also, the power of propaganda to literally shape how we view others (and especially, "The Other")
Black Panther: can black culture be identified with modernity and success? what is the role of tradition and culture in modern society? does our true power come from external sources or from within?
Spiderman (HC, FFH, IS): how much would the events of the Avengers films actually affect daily life? (HC, FFH) what are the consequences of casual implementation of government policy? (HC) what does it mean to be a superhero? (IS) what is identity (IS) how much of life is driven by deception (FFH)?
X-Men: what does it mean to be an outsider/The Other? (1, 2) can The Other become part of society (2, FC, DOFP)? Contrast with the universally derided 3, Apocalypse, and DP, which don't appear to have any driving themes.
Aquaman: can man and nature exist together in a non-destructive state? can mankind save itself?
Joker: what is sanity? how thin is the line between thought and action? does inequality justify class-based warfare? does abuse justify retribution?
Contrast with the DC Justice League ensemble films, which don't have any themes. They just have people in costumes stand around a fight CGI villains. Snyder's Superman films have a concept (what if Superman killed?) but no themes (since they backed away from actually exploring any of the religious themes likening Superman to Jesus).
For those of you who haven't had to suffer through Ken Loach's works: they're all pretentious, insufferable dramas that claim to be about something. But they're trying so hard that they have to hit you over the head over and over and over again so that you know that they're supposed to be about something. Because if his works didn't explicitly tell you they were about something you wouldn't know from the play/show/movie that it was anything deeper than the poorly directed, poorly acted crap in front of you.
Well, of course - these are 'Blockbuster' films, designed with high budgets, like AAA games - they need to be guaranteed to make back a significant investment made into something with such high production values.
South Park recently lambasted this in S26E02, 'Band in China,' where we saw a host of characters on their way to China - part of a group the series was lambasting on selling out to China with regards to censorship. The characters had been 'selling out' to expand their financial markets to China.
A film usually needs to make back twice its budget in order to be deemed a 'financial success.' If that film has a budget of $80-180mil, the execs are going to want it to fly with the lowest common denominator. If it happens to actually say something as well, and become critically-acclaimed, such as Joker, or the Dark Knight, well, that's an exception.
tl;dr: High budget superhero action films need to be guaranteed to make their budget back. They are made to hit the lowest common denominator and sell tickets. If they happen to be brilliant they are an outlier to the rule.
This is the second time that this article (from May 2019) has been on the front page of HN in the past 24 hours.
Presumably this is due to the news about the Army being on alert for Involuntary Celibates planning a mass shooting in US theaters for the screening of Joker. [1]
[1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/army-warns-soldiers-about-incel-threat-joker-movie-report-83451
I am not sure if I would call Jack Nicholson's Joker a goofy prankster. Well he was, but... he was just a different flavor "all out sociopath" than Ledger's Joker. I say this as a huge fan of both Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight (2008).
I am assuming you must have been talking about the Adam West TV series Joker.
I do observe the same trend as you however in general. I think the rise of of video games has a big role. People can play action movies now. If they are going to be reduced to spectators, the movies need to one up the games on other metrics like storyline and acting (rare), or effects and violence (more common).