The old-school Joker of 'Batman: The Animated Series' calls the new origin movie brilliant while the Thanos of MCU explains how one can truly appreciate the movie's dark plot.
- Oct 6, 2019
AceShowbiz - "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" actor Mark Hamill and "Avengers: Endgame" star Josh Brolin gushed about "Joker" on social media as critics and fans were divided on the movie. Since its screening, the film led by Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips has sparked debate on the violent scenes.
Hamill, the voice behind the DC deranged clown in "Batman: The Animated Series", took to Twitter to give his thumbs-up. "The #JokerMovie opens today. The awesome Joaquin Phoenix, Todd Phillips & Scott Silver brilliantly reimagine the character as never seen before! 2 thumbs up from that old-school, comic book version... me," he posted.
Brolin applauded the DC anti-hero movie in his own Instagram for shining a light on mental health issues. "To appreciate 'Joker' I believe you have to have either gone through something traumatic in your lifetime (and I believe most of us have) or understand somewhere in your psyche what true compassion is (which usually comes from having gone through something traumatic, unfortunately)," he wrote.
"An example of dangerous compassion would be to, say, make a film made about the fragility of the human psyche, and make it so raw, so brutal, so balletic that by the time you leave the theatre you not only don't want to hurt anything but you desperately want an answer and a solution to the violence and mental health issues that have spun out of control around us."
He continued, "This film makes you hurt and only in pain do we ever want to change. It's all in the irony of trauma - a fine line between the resentment of wanting to hurt society back for raping you of a decent life, for not protecting you, and accepting what feels like alien feelings with softening to those others who seem freakish in our era of judgment, and digital damnation."
"Like kids in Middle School: man, they can just be mean," he went on. "For no reason. And, sometimes, those awful little clicky kids breed an evil in someone that rages much later, when everyone pretends we are all back to normal, when we all thought it had just manned up and gone away."
"We have a habit of hating and ostracizing and dividing and sweeping our problems under the rug. Joker, is simply lifting the rug and looking underneath it," the Thanos of Marvel Cinematic Universe ended his post. "Nothing more. Nothing less. It's there."
Director Todd Phillips himself responded to the criticisms, "That's the surprising thing to me. I thought, isn't that a good thing, to put real-world implications on violence? Isn't it a good thing to take away the cartoon element about violence that we've become so immune to?"
He added, "I was a little surprised when it turns into that direction, that it's irresponsible. Because, to me, it's very responsible to make it feel real and make it have weight and implications."
