No laughing matter.

A good villain is worth their weight in gold. You can put all your time and effort into honing your hero but if you mess up the villain, you might as well go home.

Hollywood’s current villain fixation is, on the surface at least, fully understandable. After all, they’re pretty cool, right? I mean, how many times has Batman been outshone by his various nemeses over the years? Or Spider-Man for that matter? As iconic as these heroes are, their respective rogues’ galleries always threaten to outshine them.

Now, take that hero away from the situation and you have something else entirely. It’s one thing putting in the groundwork to bolster a potentially one-dimensional monster like Thanos as part of an ensemble, but remove your hero completely and give the bad guy the spotlight and you’ve got yourself an altogether different predicament.

How do you even begin making a protagonist out of a natural antagonist? And how do you pull off an interesting solo tale for a villain who has willingly admitted in the past that he is incomplete without Batman opposite him?

As Gotham City crumbles around him, clown-for-hire and aspiring stand-up comedian, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), struggles to cope with his mental health issues and his place in a society that has disregarded him. With Gotham’s population increasingly disenfranchised, Arthur’s growing unease with the status quo and his hopeless situation leads him into a downward spiral of violence, vigilantism, and villainy. 

If discourse equalled box office dollars, even Endgame would be looking nervously over its shoulder at Joker. The online and offline discussion circling this film (for that’s all it is – a film) has, quite frankly, been draining. 

Try as one might, it’s difficult to separate Joker from the painfully real world it’s been birthed into. The film’s plot, after all, concerns the agonising descent and murderous aftermath of a mentally troubled, delusional loaner and has at least one oversized clown shoe planted outside the realms of comic book fantasy and firmly in our current reality.

As it is, Joker’s very premise appears tailor-made to put you on edge. Its blunt approach to a painfully pertinent issue and the positioning of its protagonist in at least some form of heroic light means the film should not be approached lightly. It’s always hard to accept the frequent accusation that films are directly responsible for heinous real world actions, but there’s no doubt that Joker’s potentially combustible approach treads a fine, regularly uncomfortable line.

Whether it sees itself as a political statement or not, Joker is intrinsically linked to the world around it and, as such, is often highly uneasy, borderline troubling viewing. However, taken on its own terms, the film is an effective piece of evocative, uncompromising cinema that throws everything it’s got out there to tease a potential new dawn for comic book movies.

As a bleakly beautiful spectacle, Joker is certainly one of the smartest looking comic book films out there. Stuffed with muted greens, browns, yellows, and blacks, Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is dripping with eye-popping, grimly stylish period visuals and a dingy 70s vibe that director Todd Phillips works double-time to embrace.

Beautifully shot and immaculately framed, Phillips shakes off the baggage of being “that Hangover guy” to offer a visual flair that marks Joker out as one of the sharpest looking films this year. Dark and gritty but with a playful, otherworldly tone, Gotham feels as dank, decrepit, and hellish as we’ve ever seen it, yet, through the occasional splash of vivid colour from a talk show curtain or Joker’s dapper suit, the film is given an unnervingly colourful, oddly alluring edge. 

Paired with Hildur Guðnadóttir’s beautifully ominous, cello-led score, Joker is an unrelentingly grim viewing experience, punctuated by only the rarest slithers of light. Not even attempting to hide his affections for 70s cinema and, in particular, Martin Scorsese, Todd Phillips brazenly mimics Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy in an orgy of relentless nihilism that does well to evoke the decade without adding anything new to the mix.

This overenthusiasm to tap Joker directly into half of Scorsese’s back catalogue exposes the film’s primary flaw. Despite its assertions, the film isn’t half as original or smart as it believes it is and, as Phillips takes his Scorsese love-in as far as humanly possible, you can’t shake the feeling that you’re watching a tribute act, albeit a very well-honed one.

While the grand designs are there for all to see, Phillips and Joker have little to say of note beyond “we live in a society”. Landing with all the subtlety of an Arthur Fleck punch line, Joker’s script feels compelled to hammer home just how awful society is at any given opportunity, which, despite the relevant nature of that sentiment, lacks significant substance. 

Arthur’s descent and the notion that we’re all one bad day away from being a villain is a well-worn trope, one that has been used to mark the thin divide between Joker and Batman for years. It’s a simple story and Joker tells it well, yet there’s something in Phillips’ approach that clearly aspires to more.

Agonisingly ham-fisted at times, the writer-director’s methods lack the subtlety to get as deep into the character as his ambitions suggest, and without the natural counterbalance of the Dark Knight for Joker to bounce off, the story feels incomplete. Ultimately, what we have is two hours of one mentally unstable man getting relentlessly beat on and the slow, grinding spiral that ensues. That is, in itself, intriguing, yet the notion that it has anything particularly insightful to say about society or mental health is well wide of the mark.

As an embodiment of its protagonist, Joker is a film of confliction. From the get-go, the film goes to great lengths to put itself out there as high art and apart from the comic book rabble, with writing and direction that makes no bones about its desire to distance itself from its source material. However, despite these lofty pretentions, there’s no doubt that Joker is every inch a comic book movie.

Attempting to have its comic cake and eat it, despite all prior noise to the contrary, there are clear moments throughout Joker that link it directly into the Batman mythology, whether it’s the mainline DC universe or not. Certainly, the choice to insert the Waynes and all the baggage that name brings with it into the story is about as Batman as it gets, yet the film never appears entirely comfortable embracing it.

Aiming high and aspiring to a Scorsese brand of cinema is certainly no bad thing, yet Joker never fulfils its huge ambitions. However, taken from the angle of an ‘Elseworlds’-style alternate DC reality, Joker is a fine example of the superhero genre and an interesting, original take on a well-worn character.

While Joker works hard to milk Scorsese for all he’s got, the film is perhaps best viewed instead as a contemporary to something like Logan. While not as successful at hitting its mark as Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine swansong, Joker plays a similar hand by showing smarts and highlighting the true potential of the comic book movie as it bludgeons a hole through the genre and offers unlimited possibilities for the future.

With its muted tone and arthouse aesthetic, Logan felt like a pivotal point in superhero filmmaking and Joker feels like the natural progression to this. To exclaim it as a masterpiece anywhere near Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy is unnecessarily hyperbolic, yet, what the film is, is a unique and challenging comic book film that emphasises the potential of the genre and exposes the shortcomings in the often forecast “superhero fatigue”.

Much can be said - and has been said - about Joker, with polarized opinion across the board, yet what can’t be denied is just how utterly different it looks from any other superhero effort out there. Marvel do their thing and do it very well, but you just can’t see them putting something like Joker out there – not now at least. Regardless of its R-rating, the film feels like a punt Marvel aren’t ready to take right now, and this contrast is embodied by the very presence of Joaquin Phoenix himself.

Having once famously turned down the role of Doctor Strange - presumably because he didn’t want to get tied down to such an expansive universe and a multi-picture contract - Phoenix is Joker’s wild card. Brimming with sinewy, unnerving pitifulness and menacing physicality, Joaquin Phoenix leans so far into his role that, at points, you feel genuinely terrified for the man’s physical and mental health.

Throwing elements of both Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger into the mix, Phoenix takes an utterly unique stab at the character as he morphs wholesale into the emaciated frame of Arthur Fleck. There’s certainly something in Joker as a character that appears to demand a full-bodied, all-in approach and Phoenix offers just that as he twists, turns, and dances his way through the film.

In a filmography littered with standout performances, Arthur Fleck may well go down as one of Phoenix’s finest as he loses himself in the character, simultaneously dominating the screen and everyone around him. So dominating is the performance that it inevitably consigns a talented cast that includes Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy, Marc Maron, and the one and only Robert De Niro to little more than bit parts in the Joaquin show.

Informing Joker’s nasty, unnerving atmosphere, Phoenix’s mission is clearly to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible. As we awkwardly focus on society and Arthur’s torturous downward spiral, the camera never diverts gaze from Phoenix, giving us no choice but to confront the problems of both the character and the decaying world around him.

The limited quality of Todd Phillips’ writing may let the film down in its attempt to make grand, poignant statements about the ills of society and the class divide, however, the sheer determination on Phoenix’s part to convey this message at least makes for a riveting, albeit disturbing, viewing experience. 

Elevated by Joaquin Phoenix’s bulldozing performance and Todd Phillips’ keen visual eye, Joker isn’t the grand comment on society and mental health it aspires to, yet, taken as the comic book film it is, it’s certainly a powerful piece. Nasty, cynical, and nihilistic, Joker makes no bones about its love for Scorsese and 70s cinema, yet it lacks the nuance to do anything with it. The understandable debate as to whether this is the time or place for a film like Joker will surely rage on and it’s hard to argue that the film’s approach to its villainous hero isn’t at least a little troubling - especially without the Bat to counterbalance the argument. However, judging the film in isolation, Joker is an uncomfortably affecting piece of cinema and a fine example of what can be done within the ever-expanding confines of the comic book movie.