I’m writing this post because it’s getting very low ratings. From the reviews that I read, many people say it doesn’t meet their expectations of what a superhero movie should be.
I’m not a capeshit enjoyer. I chose to see Joker 2 because Joker 1 had vague themes of “defunding welfare programs is bad”. In the first movie, Joker loses access to his mental illness medication because the politicians defund the welfare programs and that leads Joker to start doing crimes.
What I liked about Joker 2 is that everyone around him wants to make him miserable, but instead he chooses to be happy. In my opinion, it is the most pure example of absurdity. The whole world wants to make Joker miserable and he is powerless to change other people, but he can deny giving the world what they want so he chooses to laugh. I find that to be entertaining.
The movie was about 60% musical. Whenever Joker starts to hallucinate, everyone starts singing. I think it was okay, but other people did not like that. You probably won’t like the movie if you are expecting it to follow the superhero movie formula.
I don’t dislike musicals as a rule, but I feel musical has gone beyond being a medium and now more closely resembles a genre insofar as most musicals are just super campy and the music has a particular feeling.
I’d be more interested if I felt the music was more differentiated or more to my tastes. I like concept albums that tell a story over the whole album. That’s basically a musical, but I actually enjoy the music.
I’ve thought a lot about this and yes. I want musicals to be made about times that would actually feel appropriate for song and dance. So modern viewers can get their “grit and realism” the desire from every single genre. A Joe Hill movie specifically comes to mind.
Like “Once”! That movie was definitely a musical but every song had a reason to be there in that time.