Wey
The most topical and controversial work in the global film industry so far this year is undoubtedly "Joker", which was officially released last week. On the one hand, it won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, which represents the supremacy of art films, attracting the attention of a large number of fans; on the other hand, it also stood up to the gimmick of a DC Comics superhero film spin-off, making the average commercial film audience equally eagerly awaited. However, with the soaring of the box office market, many so-called "negative news" around the drama inside and outside the play have also made "Joker" continue to grab the media headlines, which is quite overwhelming.
Joker poster
Terrible misunderstanding, urban legend
The protagonist of "Joker", derived from the villain in the DC Comics "Batman" series, the film shows the young Arthur who dreams of becoming a talk show actor because of the accident and the tragedy of his own fate, and finally loses control, and then becomes the "Joker". As far as comic book adaptations of superhero movies are concerned, this image is worthy of one of the most famous villains, including Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, etc. have been played in different versions of the "Batman" series of movies. However, beyond the virtual movie world, the "Joker" is also closely related to a real tragedy.
On July 20, 2012, on the night of the premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises," directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bell, a crazy gunman shot at an audience watching the film with relish, resulting in 12 deaths and 58 injuries. At the first time, there was a legend in the United States that when the murderer James Holmes committed the crime, he dressed up as the "clown" in the movie.
The earliest cause of this misunderstanding was a press conference held by the US police in Manhattan, New York, where a police officer said that the culprit had dyed his hair red and called himself the "Joker", "that is, the villain in Batman". Since then, Kirk Johnsondan Frosch, a reporter for The New York Times, has not reviewed the facts, citing third-hand information from federal agents from local police, saying that witnesses at the scene said that the murderer had said "I am a clown" when committing the crime.
In fact, however, colorado prosecutors in charge of investigating the case came forward shortly afterwards to refute that claim. The murderer, James Holmes, never said he was imitating the Joker, and dyeing his hair red had nothing to do with the Joker, and whether it was a comic or a movie, the color of the Joker's hair was green. In fact, it was all just a coincidence, and the night he chose to commit the crime, in that unfortunate movie theater, it happened to be screening "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises." Holmes later said that the first time he heard others call him a "clown" was after he was in prison, he himself felt very confused, knowing that he had never thought like that. However, Mu has become a boat, and now he is serving a life sentence in prison, his nickname has long become "Joker", and in the public mind, this unfortunate event has long been associated with the image of the "Batman" movie and the Joker.
It is this kind of misunderstanding that has brought all kinds of trouble and embarrassment to the release of "Joker" today - of course, from another point of view, it has also become a kind of publicity in disguise. On September 24, more than a week after the film's official release, the families of the victims of the cinema shooting in Aurora city jointly sent an open letter to the producer Warner Bros. They said: "When we heard that Warner was going to release a movie called 'Joker' with the Joker as the protagonist, we were all stunned. We are not opposed to your right to create freely, but, as the comic book adaptation says, the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. So, hopefully, you'll join us and use your enormous influence to work to change the problem of the proliferation of guns in the United States. The mother of a young victim also told the media: "Now, as soon as I see the movie poster of Joker, the appearance of the murderer appears in front of my eyes again." ”
In this regard, Warner can only say that its parent company AT&T will do its best to fulfill its social responsibility; but on the other hand, it also hopes that everyone will distinguish between movies, fictional characters and violent crimes in the real world. At the same time, they also canceled the red carpet question session of the film's U.S. premiere to avoid embarrassing questions for director Todd Phillips and lead actor Joaquin Phoenix.
Earlier, during the British propaganda of "Joker", the "Daily Telegraph" reporter tortured Phoenix's soul, and was coldly treated by him, and the reporter was left hanging aside for a full hour. At that time, the british reporter asked him the question: Do you think "Joker" will lead to imitation crime?
ImDb page of Joker.
The film premiered and was on high alert
Once the urban legend is formed, no matter how to dispel the rumors, it can only be more and more dark, and the more chaotic it is. The fate of "Joker" seems to have been doomed since the media revealed the wrong news seven years ago. Today, the American police, who fear someone imitating the crime, have to face the enemy. However, it was not the police who first unleashed the horror, but the U.S. military. Some media found that the military issued a memorandum to the active soldiers, reminding everyone that there may be violent incidents at the screening site of "Joker", so "after taking a seat, first find two escape routes", in case of encountering extremists to fight, if you can escape, you can escape, you can't escape, you can't hide, you can't hide, you can't hide, you can use whatever tools. The military said its intelligence came from the FBI, which discovered on the so-called "dark web" that someone was plotting to attack one of the Joker's screening sites. They believed that this statement was not a bluff, so they felt the need to plan ahead.
Subsequently, the local police have strengthened the security measures of local theaters, and the New York Police Department even announced that it will arrange plainclothes police officers on duty in the theaters to blend in with the movie-going crowd, hoping that in case something happens, they can take action at the first time. On the evening of October 4, local time, a large theater in Huntington Beach, California, temporarily announced the closure of its doors and canceled all screening plans, saying that it had received a reliable tip that someone was going to have a problem during the "Joker" screening, but it turned out to be a pure false alarm. The caution of the theater is evident from this.
Alamo Drafthouse, which operates more than forty theaters across the United States, even took the initiative to push away guests, posting notices on their homepages and movie theater doors, warning parents not to take their children to see "Joker": "There is no Batman in this movie, it is not for children, they just watch it, they will not like it." In addition, a number of theaters have specifically proposed that audiences be prohibited from wearing any mask or wearing any form of Cosplay costume to watch "Joker".
Comments are mixed and polarized
When "Joker" first made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, most critics from all walks of life gave the film high praise. After that, it unexpectedly won the Venice Golden Lion Award, and it was even more sought after by the American media: after all, it was the first film ever to win the highest honor of the three major European film festivals, born from superhero comics. However, by the time the film premiered in North America at the Toronto Film Festival, many critics who had come back to the film had lowered their ratings. By the time of the official release in North America and other places, there were a considerable number of negative voices, including even the extreme view of devaluing it as a bad film, so that its praise on the film review collection website "Rotten Tomatoes" fell all the way to 68% now.
Peter Bradshaw, the guardian's chief film critic, titled "The Most Disappointing Film of the Year" full of "title party" meaning, bluntly said that "Joker" is a "first act only" film, with a good start, photography, and choreography, and the atmosphere is first-class, but the more you look back, the more you feel that it is not so. Director and screenwriter Todd Phillips seems to have put all his efforts on creating a single character of the "Joker", which has many loopholes in the plot and lacks depth in the intention.
New York Times Chief Film Critic A.O. Scott Scott's title firepower is also comparable— "Aren't you kidding me?" 》（Are You Kidding Me？ ）。 He said: If a film is made and wants to have the value of being discussed, it should first be interesting, it must have some thought-provoking themes after careful consideration, and "Joker" does not have such qualities at all. So, in such a movie, everyone has to talk about it like the real thing, "Are you kidding me?" ”
Although it sounds harsh, these two are at least talking about movies. More "Joker" film critics have long since left the scope of the film itself, focusing only on its social effects, worrying about whether it will teach bad kids and whether it will attract hate crimes from imitators. In this regard, director Todd Phillips has repeatedly said: "The bad problems of the real world cannot be blamed on a certain movie. The Aurora shooting was horrific indeed, but even that time, the fault was no longer the movie itself. ”
Movies, on the other hand, seem to have to relate to the real world. Far away, "Fight Club", which was also a topical work, was released in 1999 because it was only five months after the Columbine school shooting, which made the producer 20th Century Fox bear a lot of insults for "lack of social responsibility". Recently, there is the action thriller "The Hunt" originally scheduled to be released at the end of September, because of the relationship between two serious shootings in succession, Universal Pictures withstood multiple pressures from all walks of life and US President Trump, and withdrew the original release plan.
The film was well received on Rotten Tomatoes.
"Joker" Douban score.
However, contrary to the 68% of professional film critics' praise, Joker has a 90% reputation on Rotten Tomatoes. Not only "Rotten Tomatoes", but also on a variety of general audience score websites, its ratings are high, such as IMDb's score of 9.0, and the domestic "Douban" score of 9.3.
The reasons for this apparent gap are complex, including the provocative performances of the male protagonist Joaquin Phoenix, including the incitement that such films with the villain as a single protagonist are bound to have (from gangster films such as "Blood Of fighters" and "Blood of The Private", to "Taxi Driver" directed by Martin Scorsese, "Scarface Star" starring Al Pacino, and then to Oliver Stone's "Born Killer", similar to this anti-hero image with a personal aura, In fact, it is not uncommon in Hollywood movies), including some of Todd Phillips's clever practices in setting up the plot close to the real world, and also echoing the current trend of the times when populism prevails and mass movements are no longer led by leaders but spontaneously formed...
The left and the right have their own talks
Judging from the current network volume, the criticism of "Joker" is still dominated by American leftist film critics and the public, and the right-wing media and conservative people are relatively more supportive of this work. Because Todd Phillips, who is well-known in the "Hangover" series, said earlier that the current politically correct environment makes comedies more and more difficult to make, so he had to find another way to use "Joker" to convey his provocative anger. It is this statement that deeply displeases the leftist media, which advocates social progress and political correctness. Therefore, they emphasized that "Joker" deliberately renders violence and beautifies the villain protagonist, which will cause bad social effects and lead people to commit crimes. Paradoxically, this overemphasization of the role of cinema is not much different from the undesirable rhetoric of US President Donald Trump when criticizing Hollywood.
Will movies (or cultural consumer goods such as music, books, video games, etc.) lead to crime and depravity? The debate over this issue has appeared almost since the beginning of the birth of the film. However, whether it is scientific research in recent years or slightly more in-depth observation and analysis, it has long been proved that this statement is completely inverted. As Todd Phillips defended himself, the person who really had that intention, if not stimulated by a movie, would be triggered by something else else, and in the final analysis, the root cause is not in the movie, but in the human heart itself.
This issue is edited by Xing Tan