Joker – Discussion Over Amusement

The biggest fear that I had – that, I think, everyone probably had – when a solo Joker was announced was that one of Batman’s most mysterious villains would be ruined by a backstory. It’s happened before – the remakes of both Willy Wonka and The Grinch attempted to give their lead characters a sympathetic backstory, and all it did was take the mysticism out of them. To do that to the Joker would be a huge disservice, because part of what makes him such an amazing villain is not knowing his motivations, his desires, or anything concrete. So, with all that said, did this version of the Joker, not tied to any current DC films, do justice to one of the most well-known villains in pop culture? A lot of it depends on how the audience member takes the story – do you believe what Arthur Fleck is telling you and showing you? Do you agree with the portrayal of mental illness? And can you sit through two hours of what turns out to be a very emotionally draining and difficult film? While the Joker may be a comic book character, this movie is anything but your regular comic book movie.

Brightburn: A Concept That Didn’t Take

Between Marvel’s rapidly growing universe and DC’s scrambling to catch up, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the superhero genre, while being one of the biggest continuous moneymakers in Hollywood, might also be starting to grate on people. After all, an origin story is still an origin story, no matter what kind of powers you throw into the mix or which relative you choose to kill. To make a superhero movie now, you have to have something special, something that will set your movie apart and make it feel different than what can feel a little formulaic coming from the larger companies. Into the Spider-Verse had an animation style reminiscent of comic books; Venom capitalized on an anti-hero (however the movie turned out); the current show The Boys focuses on superheroes who’ve been corrupted and must be kept under control. In a little bit of that thread, Brightburn asks a simple question: what if Superman was a bad person? What if, instead of being a hero for mankind, he was a danger to us all? As a premise, it’s not a bad one – the idea of Superman going dark isn’t exactly new, there is an excellent game series based around it – but this film seemed to get stuck at a bit of a crossroads on how to actually make the premise work. The concept is a horror superhero, but there was almost too much Superman, and not enough of an attempt to flesh out the concept to make it something new.

I Dare You – To See a Better Movie

After their success with Get Out (2017), I get the sense that Blumhouse wants to try and create more horror films that mean something, rather than just being scary for the sake of it. Truth or Dare is the first movie they’ve attached their name to (I think technically it’s supposed to be called Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare, but that’s long and ridiculous and I’m not going to), as well as tried to throw in an aspect of “coming clean” as you play a kid’s sleepover game. There’s also a certain sense of having their cake and eating it too – sure, they’re trying to go deeper, but they’re also marketing a movie released on Friday the 13^th (like its predecessor Happy Death Day (2017)), casting familiar “teen” faces like Lucy Hale and Tyler Posey, and hitting the technical generation hard by making sure their characters are big fans of creating YouTube and Snapchat videos. Because they hit the middle ground, however, the result is a bit of a mess – not really scary, not really deep, and not really worth the one hundred minutes you spend in the theater.