Joker director Todd Phillips recently sat down with The Wrap, giving an interview about his views on the faux controversy surrounding the new Joker movie — a movie that has been well received by everyone who has seen it at this stage. In-between the irrelevant fear-mongering, emotional manipulation and demonization The Wrap’s article engages in, were several interesting cogitations expressed by the director on the entire matter.
For those excited for this movie either out of legitimate interest or spite for the critics, the director dropped early his sentiments on making a good movie. It wasn’t his intentions to make a controversial film, far from it. His intentions were to make a good film and slip it past the studios. I have to admit a lot of times the best movies made are ones where the studio has no expectations for it, leaving the creators to do as they please.
“I literally described to Joaquin at one point in those three months as like, ‘Look at this as a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film’. It wasn’t, ‘We want to glorify this behavior.’ It was literally like ‘Let’s make a real movie with a real budget and we’ll call it f–ing Joker’. That’s what it was.”
No surprise to anyone, tucked away at the very bottom of the article was the director’s position on the entire outrage surrounding his movie.
“I think it’s because outrage is a commodity, I think it’s something that has been a commodity for a while,” he said. “What’s outstanding to me in this discourse in this movie is how easily the far left can sound like the far right when it suits their agenda. It’s really been eye opening for me.”
Phillips doesn’t seem to understand the documented fact that the left comes to power then eats their own. The whole issue perplexes him as he does not understand the nuances of what’s going on. It isn’t that his movie is problematic by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a battleground for a much wider culture war.
“I’m surprised… Isn’t it good to have these discussions? Isn’t it good to have these discussions about these movies, about violence? Why is that a bad thing if the movie does lead to a discourse about it?”
Predictive Programming has been a useful tool in shaping societies since the times of Ancient Greece. To these people the idea that the group they spent years disenfranchising is going to be portrayed in anything approaching relatable is entirely unacceptable. Discourse is the last thing they want as evident by their irrational, emotional based attacks against a movie that hasn’t caused — through any Lovecraftian mechanisms — mass destruction and death at any theaters where it has been shown. To beggar that the 300 plus million people in the United States have to bow and kowtow to a vocal minority’s sensibilities — and because one o two nut jobs decided to carry out an act of violence — will never stand up to the scrutiny of rational discourse.
If these critics truly believed a movie could inspire this violence, where was the outrage over Ma? A glorified snuff file where a black psychopath tortures white teenagers? Or outrage over The First Purge which depicts the first people killed in the purge as black people? Keep in mind in the Purge universe the Purge works at improving American Society and the economy, so in their attempt to depict whites as racists they accidentally said killing blacks would improve the nation.
If the Joker’s relatable origin story promotes incels to violence why wasn’t the same criticism levied at any of the other increasingly vulgar displays of hatred and propaganda coming out of Hollywood?
