Joker (2019) was a masterful film that not only broke the stigma that DC movies were facing at the time but all comic book movies as a whole. A stigma of simplicity and overly action-packed. DC movies before Joker’s release, the likes of Justice League, Batman V Superman, and Wonderwoman, were very simple movies with simple themes and received poorly by general audiences. Joker is none of these things. Joker was a box-office masterpiece earning 18 times the amount of money that went into its budget. From a 55 million dollar budget to a 1 billion dollar income, it was a financial success unlike any movie of its type. Justice League didn’t even come close to Joker’s profits or budget. Justice League only released 2 years before and had 6x the budget but made half of the profit Joker did. Justice League still made money, don’t get me wrong, but it could not compare to Joker’s success. If comparing just the Domestic box office success, then Joker was the 9th highest-grossing movie of 2019, but it had stiff competition with the likes of Avengers: End Game, Frozen II, and Toy Story 4. For the movies it was up against, it did a splendid job financially.
Joker as a movie was liked by many of its audiences, many calling it the best film of the year along with the best DC film of all time, But that’s a pretty low bar compared to the other DC films. Journalistic reviews were afraid that the movie would cause riots, mostly due to the unfortunate and unfavorable community surrounding Joker as a character. This was only before the movie was released and afterward, most journals praised the movie for being different from other comic-book movies at the time and even to this day. Scholarly articles were targeting the possible misrepresentation of mental illness that this movie can be seen as having. Kamran Ahmed, a psychiatrist, was concerned that this movie would incorrectly connect violence and mental illness. She was worried that this would cause our society to see mental illness as something that causes violence and we would see less help for the kind of people that joker, the character, was supposed to represent.
Something that caught my eye during my watching of the film was Joker’s attire. The suit that Joker wears in the film, A red two-piece suit, an orange undersuit, and a green scarf, was a very strange outfit for Joker to wear. Jokers in other mediums usually wear purple suits, it’s almost iconic to his character. Green hair, clown paint face, and the purple suit is the outfit most jokers wore. If it was a tv show, movie, animated film, comic book, it’s usually those elements. But in 2019 Joker, they changed it. They changed it because this joker is not like the ones before. This joker needs to be different from other Jokers yet still recognizable. The purple suit didn’t fit this character. purple represents corruption, extravagance, and impatience, which are many of the character traits most jokers in any medium show, but not 2019 joker. This joker is angry at the world for not helping him. This Joker is passionate about making other laughs. This joker is malicious towards others. Anger, Passion, and Malice, all traits represented by red, just like the color of his suit.